When you buy from Chinese eBay sellers, you run risks such as:
- item not genuine - you've bought a knock-off and other people can tell;
- electronic/electrical item not genuine and made of inferior components, resulting in item not being able to perform to standard;
- inferior components and item not to Australian Standards - item explodes or bursts into flames, thus damaging other items - your insurance compnan investigates and points to the clause in the policy which states that your insurance does not cover you if you use items not made to Australian Standards
- item explodes or bursts into flames and you are injured or die - or others in your vicinity at the time are injured or die.
While the risks of contracting COVID-19 are real (and I don't mean to downplay the seriousness of it, or the risk of widespread transmission within the community), those risks are low at present. You can maintain a low risk by always washing your hands appropriately (a quick 5 seconds won't cut it), avoiding touching your face unless you've washed your hands thoroughly, minimising contact with people who may have come into contact with the disease, not coming close enough to anyone coughing or sneezing for their droplets to reach you (and thoroughly washing hands or face, etc., after any such instance), and using the correct cough etiquette. If you're not feeling well and there's any chance at all that you might have contracted COVID-19, immediately self-isolate and contact your GP or local emergency department. Do NOT - as a recent Tasmanian man inexplicably did - drop by your local supermarket and put others at risk on the way home from being tested.
Detailed information available on the Australian Government Department of Health website: Coronavirus (COVID-19).
Thus far, the evidence shows that the countries which have poor understanding of and practice of personal hygiene (including washing hands properly every single time that it's necessary, a reliance on spraying disinfectant into streets as though that would stop COVID-19 transmission, insufficient measures for quarantining affected individuals, and countries in which reports of outbreaks and accurate data are not encouraged and where counter-measures are adopted too late, etc.) are those in which rapid and uncontrolled community transmission occur. Australia is one of the world's best in our standards of hygiene and our medical care. Just make sure you don't become complaisant; follow the WHO hand-washing routine, etc.
When to wash your hands: Health Direct - Hand Washing.
