The world at a glance. To put into perspective where Australia is at. Red is bad, green is good. Orange means it’s improving.
We’ve surpassed 10.2mil total cases worldwide. Currently there’s 4,232,609 active cases worldwide. The worst being the US with 1,411,644 active cases, followed by Brazil with 570,616 active cases.
In Australia the number of new cases is looking a bit like mid March on the graph.
Closer to home, in Victoria we are current at 233 active cases, up from the 1 last week. The people in NSW have been told not to interact with people from Melbourne.
Interesting to note that there are 7 people hospitalised in Vic, and the only person in ICU in the whole country is also found in Victoria
Also the “Days since last case” seems to indicate the safe place to be seems to be the CBD, but then we’ve had 2 Flinders st staff who have tested positive, so it’s not attributing those cases to the CBD instead it’s attributing it to where those two people live. Which confirms my suspicion last week that the following map is not useful.
Hope you have stocked up, because there’s a 2 item limit at the supermarket again for essentials. But maybe it won’t be so bad this time since the limit was introduced earlier. However at the very least it limits the time you need to spend at the supermarket if you have stuff in stock. Don’t forget to pick up a mask while in stock at places if you don’t have any – in preparation of it getting worst.
At worst you can donate the excess stock of food to the food bank later or see if you can find people to help directly. There are families doing it tough out there, where even groceries are a struggle
Australian workers want a hybrid of home and office after COVID. Even though there’s very few cases in WA, the CBD has become quite empty as companies in Perth have been reducing their leases of the branded office space to allow people to work where they are most productive. If you need to come in for meetings then do it, if you’re doing focused work when work from home or a quiet space makes sense. Anyway, this might be of interest, the ultimate work from home guide from a company that’s been doing it for the last 7 years.
Ok worked it out the travel ban thing, essentially, you can enter the country if you’re an Australian citizen, or permanent resident, or a NZ resident who usually lives here, or if you have family here. It’s basically a tourist ban. On another note some French people would like to leave the country to permanently return to France, and since they also hold an Australian citizenship, they are forbidden to leave the country and require special permission, which is granted on the date of flight. Doesn’t matter that you are a dual citizen, Australian are restricted from travel.
Trump seems to be saying if we test less, we will have less cases.
But I do think we are set to get a second term of President Trump. We are entering a time where we are seeing the US abandon its commitment to liberal international order.
Social distancing -Parisian style
Markets and Economics.
The markets are nuts and all the squires are buying!
Howard Marks from Oaktree struggles with the question of why can’t the fed keep printing forever.
Make a submission to the senate inquiry to stop the banks being able to take your deposit in a crisis. The amendment to the bill is to remove ambiguity around banks being able to take your deposit in a crisis, since the government said that was not the intention in the first place, they should have no reason to not pass this bill amendment.
Bob Prince – Co-CIO of Bridgewater says we no longer should be tracking where interest rates go, but where money flows to.
HESTA is committed to have divested all coal investments by 2050. I don’t really understand why it takes 30 years, along with the whole we need to be a shareholder to influence the direction of the company to sustainable practice. Which for me is like saying we need to be a shareholder of the cigarette company to influence them to make less addictive products. Or like when Coca-Cola pauses social media advertising as it finds more ethical ways to give you diabetes. Feels a bit like the hypocrisy is unbelievable. I mean, we are supposed to be the sun burnt country, why aren’t we the first to have solar panel roads? Or solar panel lake?
There is $176 billion worth of frozen mortgages in Australia, I’m keenly watching what is going to happen in September.
Here’s a good explanation of why markets are now considered a bubble.
Other Stuff
Did you know that if you are mute on zoom, you can just hold down the spacebar when you want to talk? Like a walkie talkie kind of deal. Better than moving your mouse to the unmute button to unmute, then moving your mouse to the mute button to re-mute. You might need to enable that setting if the spacebar doesn’t work.
Here’s some of my hacks when presenting something
-Don’t read off a piece of paper or a screen. No matter if you are talking to a small group or a big group. DO NOT READ. It comes off as robotic and disingenuine
-Instead have some dot points to prompt you, and make sure you cover everything and then just improv off that.
-Slide decks are there to help prompt you. Do not have information on there for people to read. If people are reading, it means they are not listening to you. If they read ahead of you they will not listen to you. Even better is no slide deck, or slide deck with images only.
What’s for lunch today? Sous Vide Lamb shoulder which has been cooking for the last 14 hours with my Anova machine (I have a previous gen model). Worth researching, it makes a perfect steak every-single-time. Sometimes you can find it on sale.
Anyway enjoy your week, and I’ll leave you with the speech that broke the internet – “sleep faster”