Perhaps more concerning is this:
Australia seizes faulty coronavirus protective equipment imported from China
Chinese websites are selling personal protective equipment that doesn't meet Australian standards.
Authorities have begun seizing Chinese-made faulty face masks and other protective clothing that is being exported to Australia to help halt the spread of coronavirus.
❝The ABC has learnt that in recent weeks, Australian Border Force (ABF) officers have intercepted several deliveries of personal protective equipment (PPE) that have been found to be counterfeit or otherwise faulty.❞
A law enforcement official told the ABC on condition of anonymity that ❝The dodgy material is coming via air cargo because there is a backlog of sea freight at Australian ports.❞
In the interests of fairness, the official also stressed that not all Chinese-made PPE is dodgy. There are legitimate ones, but they are approved through the TGA and listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods.
The main lesson is that the average person trying to buy surgical masks or P2/N95 masks from China is very probably buying cheaply-produced counterfeits that couldn't protect the wearer against so much as the common cold. It's foolish, uninformed, uncaring and selfish (in my opinion) to be importing such things - for many reasons, but at least one reason that I suspect would strike home with anyone who is worried about being infected with COVID-19 is this: wearing such masks gives the wearer a false sense of security and protection.
I was shopping in the morning - trying to find that pesky flour that I particularly want (and which is currently listed again on the Coles website, so I KNOW it's out there, somewhere, in some Coles supermarkets). There were also some other staples etc to buy with my mother. (I can no longer risk taking my father into supermarkets, much as he protests.) We were very quick in our shopping; I prefer to shop with a list prepared in advance, so that I'm not meandering through the aisles and impulse-buying. (I use the Out of Milk app, even though it's American. One of these days, I might code an Australian version to my exact taste and specifications, and see whether Apple will approve it. I was about to say "If I've got time..." Well! More "leisure time" is one thing that I think we all have at the moment, so it's not the lack of time, really...)
Armed with my app, and also using the Coles app to know in which aisle the products that we wanted were located, we didn't waste much time. Yet in that short period of perhaps 7 minutes in total, four people came within our four square metre bubble, in spite of my every care. It wasn't for longer than 3 seconds, but really...! Are some people simplyi so cocooned in their own view that this is much ado about nothing that they simply flout what is an enforceable directive and risks other people's lives?
Three of those four people were wearing masks. They are substituting their own uninformed opinion about how a mask (made of whatever dubious materials) protects them, while completely ignoring social distancing, the risk of infection from fomites, the possibility of on-the-spot fines, and the very life of other people who could not only become infected themselves, but carry that infection back to their household where potentially vulnerable family members are prohibited from going to supermarkets because of the very real danger of community transmission.
I started off politely saying things like "Please respect the 2 metre social distancing rule" and ended by glaring at offenders and wishing that they'd be pummelled by Hazmat-wearing martial artists.
I realise I've taken this thread slightly off its main trajectory... This may be the first time that I've vented on these boards. I don't know whether it felt good, but I do know that the cup of Melbourne Breakfast tea that I have just brewed was a very good idea.
