Covid19 Reflections #16

Today’s Insight

Today, I’m looking at the testing data – how much is positive. The graph belows the trend of what proportion of Covid19 tests in Australia is positive. The graph shows that the percentage of positive tests is slowly increasing. When this data was first reported, NSW only had 1 in 200 tests for Covid19 coming back positive. But now, that number is around 2% each day. It is likely that this is an increase in prevalence of cases.  But it suggests to me that the proportion of flu-like symptoms that are a result of Covid19 is gradually increasing. It’s from a low base. We are nowhere near (say) the UK – where around 25% of tests so far have been positive (largely because the UK only has enough testing resources to test people who are quite sick). But that percentage is one to keep an eye on.

 

The flutracking survey, tells us that those flu like symptoms which will generally lead to a Covid19 test are not that common at any time. The survey asks around 50,000 people across Australia once a week to report whether they have had  flu like symptoms. At the peak of the flu season, around 2.5% of them would report fever and cough bad enough that they had take time off work. Last week only around 0.4% of them had bad enough symptoms to take time off. I’ll be watching flu tracking as well as the positive testing to see whether people seem to be getting sicker.

Today’s link

This article points out something that seems obvious now I’ve seen it pointed out – there is a reality to the toilet paper shortage. There are two toilet paper markets – which have completely different approaches to supply and sales. One is the household market which sells out in the supermarkets as soon as there is any paper on the shelves. But the other one is the market for toilet paper for offices, shops, schools, restaurants etc. If you think about any of those places, the kind of toilet paper there is different – both in quality and in the way it is delivered. Often in industrial/office settings there are big rolls, or big packets, that are completely different from what you would find in a supermarket.

In short, the toilet paper industry is split into two, largely separate markets: commercial and consumer. The pandemic has shifted the lion’s share of demand to the latter. People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.

So as a large proportion of the population moves to being full time at home – the need for toilet paper at home goes up. And it isn’t that easy to substitute (although here is someone who did as an emergency). It will fix itself eventually. But it makes me feel better about my fellow humans – it wasn’t all panic hoarding.

Life Glimpses

Normality is gradually returning to the shelves of the shops around here, although pasta and flour seem to be the last things to come back (and toilet paper of course is still nowhere to be seen). We found some flour at a shop a bit further away yesterday, so I may be able to have another go at baking the bread that I’ve been learning to bake over the last month. It takes 24 hours of rising time, so you do need to plan ahead.

Half of twitter seems to be baking bread at the moment, so I have no idea where they found the flour!

Bit of Beauty

Another lovely day on the Sydney foreshores today. Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one with that idea, even on a work/school day so social distancing was hard, but not impossible.