Great to hear a personal experience in response to the coronavirus.

My mother in law, a widow has found it tough. Over the years all her family have left Sydney where they were raised, with 2 daughters in the Brisbane area, as was her sister, & her sons well over a day trip north west of Sydney.

So in her 80s she sold up & moved to the Gold Coast. With her sister now in a nursing home she is not allowed to visit, she has been alone in her home all lock down, with only a couple of visits from kids & grand kids. She has a couple of acquaintances here, but no real friends either. Actually who does have many friends left when in their 80s.

She had one family visit mothers day, & visited us yesterday. Now closer to 90 than 80, her most ardent wish is to be able to visit her sister again in the nursing home. A quite remarkable & very impressive lady is my mother in law. I don't think she wants any Lego, but rather than home delivered she is still doing her shopping in person weekly.

Hasbeen, I think the mainstream media should do more stories on the elderly, especially given they are the most adversely affected by the coronavirus.

I mainly watch ABC, SBS and Nine News, but don't see or hear that much on the experience of older people.

Probably have learned more from stories on Dateline about the European experience.

Every western-style economy, rests on just two (2) support pillars, energy and capital!

Fully imported petrol at $1.20 a litre at today's oil prices is blatant price gouging of the worst kind and smacks of cartel style collusion!

Whereas capital (money) has never been cheaper.

High, weaponised, energy prices are unsustainable!

And turn an economy crippling economic depression into something far worse!

And we need to stop rolling over to these cartels and begging for a tummy rub!

We can do two things right now to end this BS!

#1/ use our thermal coal as transport fuel and create jobs, jobs! And by using very, very cheap clean walk away safe nuclear power to cook coal and extract all the methane out of it, then scrub it to remove a modest CO2 content, then compress it to use it as a cleaner greener transitionary transport fuel that's superior to both petrol and traditional CNG.

And able to power any internal combustion engine, be it petrol or diesel! A cubic metre of gas having the calorific value as a litre of standard petrol.

And methane can then be put through a simple catalytic conversion process to knock off a few hydrogen molecules to make liquid methanol, which could replace avgas? And or, high octane racing fuel?

We cannot allow foreign weaponised liquid energy to compromise the essential recovery! Or the intended self-reliance, etc-etc!

Don't get too comfortable! Remember the frog in the bowl experiment and hop to it now! Sorry about the pun.
Alan B.

Hasbeen.

Nursing homes for the elderly? Is almost a recipe for unseen assisted suicide and or euthanasia?

I mean, where are the frail elderly at the greatest risk of covid-19 transmission?

And able to be locked in so as even their closest rallies aren't able to visit? And as such, almost qualify as gulags for the old and useless?

And have been very nice money-spinners for a bunch of, couldn't care less, wealthy foreigners?

Me, I'd insist I be allowed to visit or failing that, remove the lady to live once again in the family home, supported by a home care package.

Old folk still have rights!

And I dare say, in-home care, a superior model of care, every which way, to the often horror stories, we hear about various nursing homes?
Alan B.

Alan this particular lady had to go into a nursing home. Also a widow & with no kids, she has advancing dementia, she would be fine one day, then a danger to herself & everyone the next. First they took her car keys, but she was no longer capable of independent living, & was too hard to live with.

She was quite happy with her sister visiting daily, but is probably not so now, with no visiting. I don't know who this lock down has hurt most, those who have lost jobs, the elderly living alone, or those now very alone in nursing homes.