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These millennials thinking a price crash will get them into a house are horribly deluded. When you're staring down the barrel of 26 percent unemployment, economic depression and prices going down, well, there are structural issues. Including buying in only to see another 10% drop and suddenly you're saddled with your own negative equity rather than having a few tens of grand in the bank...

https://asianinvasion2019.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-cracks-in-coronavirus-coalition.html Read this for amusement, if nothing else. Author is a professional director and a not so quiescent woman.

Tell you what, those who do not own a home are in a fortunate position right now, because the coming wave of negative equity is going to hurt big time. There's nothing quite like being trapped in your own home both physically and financially. It could be 10 percent, it could be 20, it could be more. We're all going to find out the hard way just exactly what a stuffed economy really means - and believe me, an economy is directly linked to health and wellness. It isn't something abstract, it feeds clothes and houses us.

Lives have value, but not all have the same value. From Harrison's paper: Focus of deaths needs to be supplemented with an adjustment for life years lost Not all deaths have the same social cost. The death of a 90 year old can be sad, but the death of a child or young adult is almost always a tragedy. Burden of disease estimates often adjust for the number of life years lost and this adjustment should be made in assessments of the benefits of intervention options. All of New Zealands nine deaths have been over 70 years old and had underlying health issues. This in line with international experience, which suggests that 85-90 percent of deaths have been in the 70+ age group. The true burden of the epidemic can be calculated by applying an factor of around 0.15 to the number of account for life years lost. 500 deaths becomes, 75 on an adjusted basis, and can be compared with the 350 lives lost on the roads each year.

They had to pivot to 'elimination' because there was no curve to flatten. See here https://thebfd.co.nz/2020/04/21/elimination-strategy-a-bullet-to-the-stomach-for-nz/ And remember the piece from an EPIDEMIOLOGIST, someone who studies infectious diseases and not that pink haired princess who is a MICROBIOLOGIST, who dared suggest 'are we squashing a mosquito with a sledgehammer' (and faced massive opprobrium as a result). That was on Stuff a while ago; Siouxsie Wiles subsequently went at him with all kinds of ad hominems.

Here is Ian Harrison's examination of the Treasury modelling. http://www.tailrisk.co.nz/documents/Corona.pdf Smart folk like Patches and Patham and Hayley and WP are likely to recognise, too, that modeling is just that: it is not the real world, it is a model, made by people, and therefore no more than an educated guess. How well educated rests on the soundness of the premises in the model, and it appears the premises in Treasury modelling weren't terrifically sound in the first instance. Once we've 'eliminated' coronavirus, when do we start adding up the bodies of those who will suicide as their life savings evaporate? When their businesses close? Their livelihoods ripped away from them? Because like night follows day, that is coming.

I too have a soul powered by coffee and donuts where possible.

This one small example shows up the immense problems which have always, always and everywhere, led to the abject failure of command and control economies. Bureaucrats, eager as they are with their clipboards and petty rules, cannot possibly hope to imagine all the scenarios, activities, exchanges, movements and actions of free men (and women, though the latter tend to be more quiescent), let alone the immensely complex interactions of a modern market economy. So now we have all manner of absurdities...like which business are and are not 'essential' (this one's easy: they're all essential, or they would not exist in the first place), which activities are OK and which are verboten. This whole thing stinks, enormously. I don't like existing under a jackboot, no matter how well intentioned.

Watch out for do-gooders, as Clive Staples Lewis noted back in the 40s (heroic second name there, Clive): “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Read, not rean.

Elimination is a pipe dream and Saint Jacinda has even gone as far now to redefine the word 'elimination' for political purposes, so elimination no longer means what you thought it did but now has a classic Orwellian twist on it. How we gonna eliminate a virus? One in which up to 80 percent of carriers are asymptomatic and probably won't ever be tested (but will infect others). The wave of devastation never was coming in the first place. Rean Ian Harrison's expose of the modeling used by treasury. We're committing economic suicide and sleepwalking into a totalitarian society where people are encouraged to nark on their neighbours for - get this- exercising their fundamental freedoms. While the health minister is absent mountain biking and the cops are the only ones with a cafe open. Mark my words, the cure is going to well outweigh a disease that upwards of 99 percent of us will recover from should we get it.

Not for an age, but for all time, they said, and so it has come to be. This lockdown bollocks is grating my carrot big time, so much so that we have to resort to a dose of Hamlet: I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Just looked him up, he's a COO at a fairly large organisation. Masters and 20 years does wonders for the career ;-)

Had a road racing mate back in the day complete his masters in science,laughed my ass off when he jokingly said 'yeah man now I'm a flippin HUGE larney'.

Just a side note, you know someone is a meneer when they have 2+ monitors

Thanks Patch, but don't feel sorry for me - I still have work, quite a lot of it (roughly the same as usual, TBH) and I am unlikely to suffer beyond losing equity in my house - which is nothing more than a perception thing anyway, as equity isn't quite the same as money in the bank. But ja. Everything is going to get more expensive, shortages are inevitable, and luxuries are well off the table.

I think they call that stagflation. Money is only valuable when it is backed by productivity. Productivity is compromised globally...productivity also gives us everything we eat, use, wear, etc. Money does none of those things, so govt printing and dishing money isn't a medium or long term solution. People now with an extra couple thousand *(unearned) are going to blow that, fast. And you're right, someone has to pay, and it will be those (like me) who are fortunate enough to be able to be productive even when all else is grinding to a halt.

Ha, all this time and the answer to my shambles was obvious! Disaster, thy name is ENTROPY! haha - gave me a good laugh thanks for that.

Oh David Clark is the Minister of Health, for those who don't know.

Not sure about how other chaps and chappettes are doing, so here's me: Have lost probably half of my clients. Luckily I have clients in Australia where they are still working. There is little prospect of those lost clients starting up again any time soon. I have put my boat up for sale at a discount, because a) lots of people have a bit of money now thanks to the Govt paying everyone out and b) within a few months or a year's time, you'll have any number of boats to choose from. And within a few months or a year, it is going to be difficult or impossible to sell anything (advice I saw in a 'finance' column the other day said 'if the going gets tough, consider selling one of your cars to become a 1 car family....uh, yeh, when the going gets tough, you ain't selling nuthin mate). Of course, now I wonder if holding cash is going to be better than holding a good, because the value of cash is about to hit reverse itself. Right now, I am not sure how I feel about home ownership vs not having a home. The market is about to lose 20 percent or more as there will be no buyers (I very nearly upgraded to a flash house towards the end of last year...thank heavens that fell through, the last thing I need right now is more debt). With around 60 or 70 percent equity in our place and a mortgage barely in 3 figures, and no car boat or other debt, I suppose our wicket is OK but that position is likely to deteriorate rapidly as the equity evaporates. I'd convince my wife to sell her M3 while there may be some buyers out there, but that ain't gonna happen. Cutting all luxuries. Planning on making regular (daily) trips to the supermarket and stocking up on semi durable foods, because all that stuff is going to get expensive and fast (you can't knock out half or more of the supply chain and expect pricing to stay steady - even if Jacinda decides bureaucrats must decide 'fair' pricing). And you know what? Hoarding in this climate is a perfectly rational response. The ethics, we can discuss another day. I am not stocking up on TP, though, let's not go completely crazy. I'm probably one of the luckier ones, because the nature of my work means I am still working quite a lot, despite shrinking client numbers, and I also work through good times and bad because companies still need comms even if it is announcing cutbacks, setbacks and closures. But I am chafing BIG time at the restrictions on movement etc, though it hasn't yet directly affected me in any way (I still walk the dog, get fresh air etc, and am concetrating on wheelie practice on the MTB because I can't piss the neighbours off with the dirt bike...which is what I really want to practice wheelies on). The chafe is made worse by the Stasi attitude of the cops, from Mike Bush to letters from the District Policing head, and then that unreconstructed moron David Clark going for a drive and a mountain bike in the very same week our head constable expressly told us plebs we are not to go mountain biking. This whole thing is a giant stuff up. Batten down the hatches, team, because we're gonna get hungry soon. Oh, and happy Friday people. May you be healthy, well and happy today and into the weekend. Take care of your families.

I've been working from home for 20 years...and your office looks way more professional than mine!

Nope...but from what I understand it is effectively a CoD answer to PUBG or Fortnite? Neither of which I particularly like in any event. Spend all day waiting for loads rather than actually playing, at least in my experience on the ole Xbox.

Haven't looked at this thread in detail, but with the lockdown and what have you I am likely to become an (even better) Call of Duty WW2 player. I went from PC to Xbox and sucked at it for months and months, but with perseverance, the controls have become spot on. Don't think I will ever go back to PC - console is (comparatively) super cheap and easy. Plus you can play in the lounge or bedroom. Major +.

Gosh. And just like that, we're a police state.

I've been collecting for years,still only have the 4 bottles I bought today...