Coronavirus - Australia
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Good idea @Duluth - here's the latest chart I put together on case increase rate from this site, based on their case count.
As stated elsewhere - tracking from March 1st because case increases were pretty flat in Feb, and then from March 10th as that was where the 100th case was identified, and a lot of sites seem to use this as an important base.
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The issue we're facing is multiple governments at State and Federal level, with different political strains (federal conservatives and NSW state conservatives don't see eye-to-eye, as one example), trying to implement consistent messaging and frameworks for dealing with it.
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Anecdotally it's very quiet and whilst we're not in enforced lock down it appears many are effectively enforcing their own.
Picked up Mrs Boo from work yesterday and drove along the Esplanade here.
Dead. Absolutely dead.
I've been to the supermarket a couple of times this week and they've been busier than normal but hadn't observed a lack of traffic, but it's really died off now.
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@booboo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@NTA I struggle with the stats as it's identified cases. How many don't we know about.
Worth keeping an eye on various Health Dept/Ministry pages e.g. NSW Health:
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/diseases/Pages/covid-19-latest.aspx
As of 8pm 26 March 2020:
Confirmed cases (incl. interstate residents in NSW health care facilities) 1,405
Cases tested and excluded 76,284Total 77,689
Total confirmed cases 1,405
Admitted - Hospital in the home 62
Admitted - Hospital ward 53
Admitted - Intensive care unit 19 (9 on mechanical ventilation)
Total hospital admissions 134
Total deaths 7Think that death count now 8 after an 91yo woman died today.
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@booboo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Anecdotally it's very quiet and whilst we're not in enforced lock down it appears many are effectively enforcing their own.
Picked up Mrs Boo from work yesterday and drove along the Esplanade here.
Dead. Absolutely dead.
Traffic here is basically at between-Xmas-New-Year levels. I saw some stats the other day on phone GPS tracking that suggested Sydney and Melbourne were still 95% accurate two weeks ago, down to 55% a week ago and now less.
I've been to the supermarket a couple of times this week and they've been busier than normal but hadn't observed a lack of traffic, but it's really died off now.
Depends on time of day and your demographic. My local Woolies has been up and down like a roller coaster.
There are some dumb fucks out there who don't know how far 2 meters is.
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Regular shoppers at woolies will recognise the yellow sale tags that apply to some brands and products for about a week at regular intervals. Coffee at $3 dollars instead of $4.50, tuna, 4 for$6 etc. The shelves are uniformly peppered with these yellow price tags. They're a common strategy written into the quarterly budget of the supermarket chain. I assume Coles has the same.
But not this week at woolies.
They've done "Christmas" type turnover for 2 weeks now and the specials have been abandoned.
Really got the noggin joggin. Upsides to being essential services I guess -
@Siam said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Regular shoppers at woolies will recognise the yellow sale tags that apply to some brands and products for about a week at regular intervals. Coffee at $3 dollars instead of $4.50, tuna, 4 for$6 etc. The shelves are uniformly peppered with these yellow price tags. They're a common strategy written into the quarterly budget of the supermarket chain. I assume Coles has the same.
But not this week at woolies.
They've done "Christmas" type turnover for 2 weeks now and the specials have been abandoned.
Really got the noggin joggin. Upsides to being essential services I guessWell yeah, but also if you've got superannuation or investments, a health Woolworths share price is not a bad thing to invest in.
On a serious - and well-informed - side note, I've worked at Woolies HQ for over 12 years - including a long stint in IT Systems, particularly the software that runs stores, as well as the systems that feed them. I
havehad a working knowledge of how the pricing and specials come about. I moved out of that area a few years ago, but the basic principles stand.Fact: none of the supermarkets control the price of every single item.
They have margin to make on each item in order to keep operating, and generating shareholder profit. This is the market we chose. When specials come along, it can be supplier-driven (oversupply, end of line, etc), or the supermarket can chose specials as a loss-lead for generating profit on other items.
Either way, it is a negotiation between 2 parties where either one might approach the other. When the suppliers or supermarket have their logistics chain stretched thin, and the unit cost of delivery goes up, no specials, no discounts, no multi-buys. Given the strain the entire system is under, that is how things will be for a while.
Cynically, I'd also add that Supermarkets don't need specials right now when sales are like Easter and Christmas got drunk and had a daemonic step-child with a serious lack of self-control and a Black Amex.
Operationally, the logistics of running specials in-store, when you need staff taking up and putting down shelf talkers (the yellow labels) is fairly difficult to shoe-horn in when you're off your feet serving customers and stocking shelves.
Specials are generally started on a Wednesday and run for 1-4 weeks, generally speaking, so you're doing manual work ensuring the talkers you put up are right so that the customer is getting the correct info. If you don't have the correct price, the first item is free, then the second and subsequent item is at the lower of the 2 prices between label and scan.
Can we solve this through technology? Glad you asked!
I did two separate turns with 2 separate tech partners (one a very large Korean corporate) running electronic shelf label proof-of-concepts. They're reasonably widespread in NZ (saw both a Pak n Slave and New World when I was over there last time) which can automatically change pricing. You might wonder why we don't have these everywhere:
- the cost per supermarket ranges from about $250K to $450K just for the hardware (Woolies has about 1000 sites)
- Middleware for managing the back end to the store software is another few million when the screaming is over on standing it up, plus a few million a year to keep it running
- Marketing fucking hated it because they were scared that losing the shelf talkers would cause sales to fall.
- If you drop it into one metro store, you have to do it rapidly in others, or customers who don't like them will move to a competitor or to your store up the road that doesn't have it.
(Actually have fond memories of getting it working in a Supermarket near HQ having written a clunky version of the middleware using KixTart. One day I took current CEO Brad Banducci on a store walk when he was head of Liquor, as they were looking at it for Dan Murphys, where I think it would have been perfect.)
In any case, every time we revisited the numbers, it came down to a steep cost curve for potential losses - like cars, the entry cost of the technology never really changed, just the feature set and robustness of the hardware. I think we've got it in another site at the moment as part of a trial with yet another company.
It is worth noting that the labour and print savings were pretty good.
Random stat: a Supermarket does about 1000 price changes per day on average as the specials load per week is multiple thousands. Dan Murphys about 900 changes doing competitor matching.
Ultimately, if people weren't panic buying like fucking idiots, it might be better BUT the issue is really around logistics as things shut down.
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@barbarian said in Coronavirus - Australia:
New cases have been pretty steady in NSW for the past 4-5 days. It's been about 180-210 each day for a bit now.
A good sign that the exponential growth has halted and hopefully the curve is starting to flatten.
Thank fuck. I'll take 200 a day for a week. Helps pull us push back out past 4-day doubling rate.
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@Siam said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Regular shoppers at woolies will recognise the yellow sale tags that apply to some brands and products for about a week at regular intervals. Coffee at $3 dollars instead of $4.50, tuna, 4 for$6 etc. The shelves are uniformly peppered with these yellow price tags. They're a common strategy written into the quarterly budget of the supermarket chain. I assume Coles has the same.
But not this week at woolies.
They've done "Christmas" type turnover for 2 weeks now and the specials have been abandoned.
Really got the noggin joggin. Upsides to being essential services I guessI'm a bit worried now, even the chocolate isn't on special this week.
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@booboo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Anecdotally it's very quiet and whilst we're not in enforced lock down it appears many are effectively enforcing their own.
Picked up Mrs Boo from work yesterday and drove along the Esplanade here.
Dead. Absolutely dead.
I've been to the supermarket a couple of times this week and they've been busier than normal but hadn't observed a lack of traffic, but it's really died off now.
Only partially happening in Sydney I think. When I went on my walk in Darling Harbour today there was increased traffic ... lots of European/South American back packer types (who can't go to the beaches anymore I assume) so made for some great viewing (and wishing I was 20 years younger) but was a bit weird considering it's been a deadzone for over a week now.
Broadway shopping mall was almost at normal on the first two floors today (I had to pick up some Wifi modems for work otherwise I wouldnt have been there).
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@Nepia said in Coronavirus - Media Discussion:
@NTA said in Coronavirus - Media Discussion:
Multiple levels of government don't help. But the Libs in NSW are more aligned with the ALP in Victoria on this and other issues, than they are with the Federal LNP - mainly because it gets held hostage by a few rightwing crazies and can barely keep the rest in line.
I find this being thrown out to be disingenuous, the "it's harder for him because of states ...", it doesn't mean we can't measure his performance with all that taken into account.
Probably why he's the highest-paid Prime Ministers in the western world? 🙂
It isn't an excuse - but the problem with the Federal LNP is they stopped being small "L" liberals a long time ago, so they only exist on conflict.
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Good that growth figures seem to be improving. Would be better if more folk were getting on board the isolate train.
https://www.bay939.com.au/news/local-news/116110-epidemic-of-stupidity-at-local-beach
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Had a work colleague yesterday saying she was planning to visit her folks this weekend but her siblings were trying to convince her not to. The poor lass had stopped watching the news because it was too depressing. I imagine there are probably a few in that camp.
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@Rembrandt said in Coronavirus - Australia:
Had a work colleague yesterday saying she was planning to visit her folks this weekend but her siblings were trying to convince her not to. The poor lass had stopped watching the news because it was too depressing. I imagine there are probably a few in that camp.
She off to say her goodbyes while she potentially infects them with a death sentence?