covid diary Saturday 28th March 2020- Lockdown Day 3

A bt delicate this morning, overindulged on Beer & the vine. Watched Harry Potter comfort film and had late night snacks and drinks. Not a smart move really. Weather bleak this morning so a good excuse for a lie in.

 There is discussion of government doing contra-cycle investment in infrastructure to inject funds into building to react against economic downturn. Might be an opportunity there for me which would be good.

Car WOF

My WOF on the car is coming up on the 5th April, I checked online and PitStop closed. I was wondering what to do about that. There was an article in Stuff suggesting you use if necessary but otherwise dont. Police could procecute on individual basis.

Neighbour shopping

I got a text from the lad below asking if I needed anything from shops. Unfortunately I didn't read the text until after his time of leaving had passed, so I think he headed out about 11.30am. I've just seen him arrive back at 1.45pm. I hope it didn't take him that long to do the shop.  That would be a couple of hours!!!

Walking

Weather a bit wet and squally today. Only a very few out and about at 11.30 when I went

Different strategies by US/UK & Ireland/NZ

An article in Irish Times looked at countries different strategies. US, UK & Netherlands not trying to track virus movement in population, whereas Ireland/ NZ both are.
This means that US/UK will get hit more heavily sooner , and their Health System will struggle under the load.
Ireland/NZ will control better and test more and will manage outbreaks better and do more containment, so will look to try and work within limited health resources.
This means that US/UK will have more people recovering from Covid quicker and so heard population that can go back to work quicker, but more deaths.
Ireland/NZ will take longer for people to get Covid, so there will be a longer period before people can go back to work. Less deaths but slower economic recovery.

Germany low death rate

I read an article about why Germany's death rate was so low. They are doing a LOT of testing, so identifying cases with mild symptoms and so classifying them as active cases. Because they are doing so much more screening they have a better handle on the number of  people infected. This is not the case in other countries, so their infected figures are way below where they should be.

Petrol

There was an item in the news about the issue of falling petrol prices, no demand and oversupply. I suppose the countries that are supplying have a production process that is difficult to reduce, so since they can't stockpile it and people are now not using too much transport, that is an industry that is going to suffer in the near future.

Russia calling Covid cases flu or SARS 

I was wondering why Russia's numbers were so low. Apparently Covid is in the SARS(Severe acute respitory syndrome) family. But the Russian Government is pretending it isn't. So numbers will burst forth from there soon.

covid diary 27th March 2020- Lockdown Day 2

 from Stuff:

Friday, Lockdown day 2.

Quite going for a walk this morning and very few vehicles on the road. A few flights early morning and now very quite (10am).
I spent quite a lot of yesterday afternoon trying to import information into MS SQL database, not that successfully as I had issues with putting a primary key on the tables and date headers were going wrong.
I 'm having a better run with Excel with basic data at the moment.
I came across this, share of population over 70, 2015. Italy has 16.24 & Spain has 13.8, Norway is up there too as well as Germany.

 Some interesting rates of change:
Spain has overtaken Italy in the number of peopledying daily.

 In the US the Relative change  for daily deaths is faster than in Spain, which is still rising by a phenominal amount 10000% for US 12000% versus Italy at 300% and World at 750%.

 Use this chart to add countries for deaths and rates of change.

covid diary 26th March 2020 Lockdown Day 1

Now in Lockdown in NZ. So, not a lot of news coming through.
I went for walk this morning and it was very quite, the hutt motorway was also very quite and looking down towards the Beehive there was almost no traffic on the road.
Wellington airport had an early flight I noticed but not much happening at all there at the moment.
Back at doing the covid data, now with Datawrapper have cases by region Map and table





NowI need to start refining data a bit more and also analysing it as well.
So, first off, the main areas are Auckland & Wellington, the Capital and The Main port of Entry to the country (Auckland), and quiter in the hinterland.
Since the infection came from abroad this seems reasonable.
Otago is higher than Canterbury because of the Cattle fair where a few people caught it.

Bugger

The MoH has restructured and simplified data source and  made a map, so I can' use that source anymore for analysis.

 Global information

Global daily Death rates so far

 This is a great website for data and you can modify by adding extra countries to conmpare rates here.

In the chart below, if you hover over a country it greys out others so you can see clearly where it lies. 



What I see, in Europe from the 2 charts above is that there is a Southern social aspect, of hot weather and going out and meeting people more, to the Northern, colder clime where people are also a little more reserved, eg Norway, Sweden, Germany.
Reading the article where the graph above there was a comment:
What we do know if that the mortality risk is higher for older populations and those with underlying health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and respiratory disease 
 So, I wonder if these are areas of Europeans retiring to the sunny climes of Italy & Spain? I know on the South & East Coast of Spain there are quite a number of British retirees. So maybe a skewed population pyramid in those areas.
There is also another chart that shows deaths by age in China:

Why are southern european countries having more deaths than northern countries, eg Italy/Spain versus Germany, Norway Sweden?
More older people? I think that might be one factor as retirees would head to warmer climes.

covid diary 25th March 2020

Today is the last day of Level 3. As of tonight at 11.59pm it moves to Level 4, stay at home.
I recieved Watsapp texts form both my brothers about where they were at, and I realised NZ was going into lockdown. Then realised that I'd better get my bit of shopping in, also I should think about non- essential things such as batteries and other things I can't get from the supermarket.
I started reading a couple of articles on people in lockdown in Spain who have been that way for 10 days, they are not allowed out AT ALL, unless they have a pet, thats when the chap with a goat got done. The fines seem pretty high for going out. So young kids in an appartment for 4 weeks. That is tough. At least people will be able to go for a walk in Wellington.

 WHO said new cases accelerating. It only seems to have taken 2 days to get from 300K to 400k, yesterday they said 4 days from 200k to 300k.
I've been working on my NZ region covid map, extracting data from Wiki page and presenting it on a map. Legend next part of exercise.

Weather still nice, airport totally inactive.

 At the supermarke a few shelves were empty, mainly staples (flour in Pak'n'Save) and sanitisers etc, and in Countdown no Tonic water, but otherwise all fine. People were shopping as normal, a few with masks on.

There were a couple of police checking up at Pak,n,save and countdown with the managers, but all seemed fine.

At countdown there were cones up for getting in and staff were counting the numbers going into the shop, also manging people at the tills, Keeping people back so that there was clear distance at checkout. Nothing of that in Pak'n'save, that seemed to be business as usual.

Filled up with petrol, that seemed a lot cheaper than the last time I purchased it, it was, on returning from Zoe at the end of last month at about $2.30/l and it is about $1.94/l at the moment.

I went out in the afternoon to get some batteries and a couple of other non supermarket items before lockdown. I got all the stuff at Uncle Bills, it was pretty relaxed in there, I was going to go into the Warehouse but they were only letting a few people in at a time, so there were queues outside and what I wanted in there wasn't impotant enough to queue for. It was lovely down the beach, nice weather.

Lockdown in about 5 hours time. This will be interesting. 

covid diary 24th March 2020

The process continues, now some self isolation is taking place
World - 374,921 confirmed cases globally.
NZ has 102 as of about 2pm yesterday

The Bing map is getting more granular for the countries top on the list, as well as the US. So Italy, Spain & Germany are being shown as Regions within countries now. UK and Ireland still only by country.

I started to look around for Data for New Zealand by district and found that the Wiki site was pretty good.  Wiki NZ Covid page.
So I'm trying to exportXML in Google Sheets from this page to get regional numbers.

I was trying to think what this reminds me of and its Election nights when you watch the numbers coming in.
I'm also reminded of my 9th Birthday (1967) when Beirut was being strifed by Israili jets going after the palastinian camps in the Lebanon (in my memory I thought it was my 6th birthday). We had to stay at home and indoors and keep out of trouble. I drove the family mad as I was complaining I had no birthday presents and my dad took me into town to get something, he was not happy about that.
 I went for a walk at beach this morning, a few people out and about but a southerly so Lyall bay a bit exposed. It is quite though.


1pm news is its up to 155 confirmed at the moment. But the wiki page has not been updated as locations of new confirmed not released so far.
An early afternoon stroll in the town Belt, and a few people out doinggeneral activities. Tomorrow may be busier as kids off school and wanting to get out and about.

Coronavirus: Pandemic is 'accelerating', WHO warns as cases pass 300,000

 It took 67 days from the first reported of Covid-19 to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000, and just four days for the third 100,000

covid diary 23rd March

 23rd March 2020
NZ - 66 cases reported
World - 329,275 
Deaths- 14,376
Recovered- 95,656

This is a global pandemic that is becoming more serious all the time.
 I thought I'd start a post on how it seems to be evolving here in New Zealand. There is a lot of information on the web, but I think it will be superceded and some deleted, so I'm trying to do a basic journal with screenshots.





So far there have been 66 reported cases in NZ, so still in its infancy. China seems to have plateaued at the moment and Italy and Spain seem to be ramping up quite a lot. The US has now taken 2nd place, so that is spreading quite a lot. I think more being reported now.
 
India and Africa are both being under reported in my opinion. India should have it sweeping through the country as they are well travelled from all parts of the globe and have a very high density population, so I can see it really taking over there.
Africa will be under reported due to limited medical facilities for testing. Over time that will take off when more people are infocted.

I think the more western countries are going to have a more difficult time of it as they are a lot more open. 
The example of closing Bondi beach in Sydney as there was no social distancing occuring.

The reporting seems to be haphazzard as detection/testing seems to be pretty limited. So countries could have far higher rates but as they have not been tested, so the cases are not reported.

Also the incubation period, when people have it but do not display symptoms, seems to be quite long, up to a week I think. So there is a discrete time when it can be passed without awareness, hence the explosion of cases that suddenly come to light.

My current knowledge of symptoms is pretty limited, I'm sure I'll be a lot more knowledgeable in the near future as the risk becomes greater.

Wellington and travel

Currently I'm looking out at Wellington airport and there are no planes on the runway, I can hear one small cesna in the sky heading north. monday morning is a busy time for flights up and down the country. Also not many planes at the terminal either.

 Also cobham drive traffic (to Airport & miramar) seems to be light, definitely not as much traffic. Especially going into town. It is 10am but its usually far busier.
The neighbours, who work over in Miramar, are at home on monday, that is unusual, so they must be self isolating early. 
 
I just put 1200 into KiwiSaver, as the Government puts in a dollop too. So that is worth doing for that amount. May not have been the wisest thing to do at this time, but its done now. But maybe Govt will give access to those funds later when things start biting.
Countries talking about relief packages so that will be interesting to see what is coming.

Mapping

The Bing map for the USA is mapping by  state and even by city regions, Japan, China and other areas of the Globe. I think Bing being US is doing this in US but not elsewhere.

NZ is still one dot for the whole country, so infected cases, although mentioned by region, are only giving country totals to date. I think soon there will be regional and city maps
There is the alert system on at the moment in NZ, and we are at level 2.

So, airports closed to tourists, only NZ nationals allowed in.
there are calls for total lockdown and for Schools to close, but that has not happened to date.
There is an economic balance to be struck with making people unemployed and keeping things going in the short term. The government seems to be taking the middle road at present.

Who's being affected

This will affect the vulnerable of society the most,as usual. Especially economically.
 But there seem to be distinct groups who will be more vulnerable, the eleerly and people with underlying deseases.
In Italy, where it is the worst at the moment, there is talk of triage and the more elderly are unlikely to get any medical support, the thinking being the younger have more years , and of productivity.

Services

Jobs being advertised in Wellington region today: 2369

Jobs advertised will drop a lot in the coming weeks.
 Council services: Most public facilities closed down.

Metlink:

Update 2pm

Up to level 3 and level 4, full shutdown in 48 hours. There will be a party at the supermarkets from now on. and a few empty shelves.
36 more positive cases identifide so over 100 cases now. That must have been the trigger point for moving to the next level. 
Lots of TV watching I suppose, or some drawing details.

Coconut macaroons

I found this recipe Bakery Style Coconut Macaroons and I thought I'd give it a try, it looks pretty simple and only a few ingredients:

• 2/3 cup (82g) flour
• 5 1/2 cups (402g) shredded sweetened coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 14 ounce can (396g) sweetened condensed milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (I didnt use as I dont have)
• 4 ounces white or semi-sweet baking chocolate or a combination of both or almond bark

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpat baking mats.
• Stir flour, coconut, and salt. Stir in sweetened condensed milk and both extracts. Stir until combined.
• Drop 2 tablespoon balls of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. These do not spread so you can crowd them close together. Wet your hands slightly and push down any sticking up or out single pieces of coconut as these might burn.
• Bake for about 11 minutes, until the bottoms are golden and the tops start to turn the tiniest bit golden. Cool completely before eating or dipping.
• To dip: melt chocolate according to package directions. I like to melt my chocolate on 50% power in 30 second increments, stirring after each, until it’s melted and smooth. Add a teaspoon of vegetable oil or crisco if needed to get it to melt smoother. Dip the bottoms or tops of each macaroon in chocolate. Let dry.  

   

  Tasting

  Yum. I used the air fryer, for about 7 minutes. For the balls it gets browned lightly on all sides, but if you do biscuit shaped  then you have to flip over to toast the underside. 

  Worth doing as they are simple and tasty and not too sweet. 

  Not sure whether to freeze the dough or cook and then freeze. 

  They haven't even beendipped them in chocolate, they are fine as they are. 

   A few I over browenedat the beginning, the outer layer is a bit more crusty but inside is fine. 

  I think I may put dough in the freezer otherwise I'll eat it all up.