Apple Stores in Australia to re-close amid coronavirus resurgence

AppleInsider

Apple this week will re-close at least four Apple Store locations in Victoria, Australia, due to a resurgence of coronavirus in the region.

Apple Highpoint re-closed on July 2 due to an uptick in virus cases.

The Cupertino tech giant updated its Australian retail website on Wednesday to reflect new information regarding store closures in the state of Victoria. Following limited operating hours today, Apple Chadstone, Apple Southland, Apple Doncaster and Apple Fountain Gate will re-shutter their doors in compliance with "stage 3" lockdown protocols enforced by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

The four mall locations join a fifth Victoria outlet, Apple Highpoint, which was listed as temporarily closed last week.

Victoria has over the last two weeks experienced a spike in reported coronavirus cases, with positive tests reaching a new peak of 191 cases on Tuesday, reports The Guardian. The upward trend prompted Andrews to reinstitute a strict six-week lockdown scheduled to take effect at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, July 8.

Citizens in the capital of Melbourne, as well as those living in other densely populated areas, face a stay-at-home order that restricts public exposure to shopping for food and essential items, caregiving, daily exercise, and work and study, the report said. Shopping centers and select retailers can remain open if they follow occupancy guidelines, though it appears Apple is once again taking a conservative approach to the public health emergency.

The company proactively shut down retail operations outside of China in March in a bid to protect customers and team members from the fast-spreading virus. Apple Stores began to reopen in May as part of a phased return to normalcy, though flare ups have prompted re-closures.

9to5Mac reported on the upcoming Australian store closures earlier today.

The iPhone maker is following similar procedures in the U.S., where rampant spread of the virus forced the closure of nearly 80 stores across 14 states.

Rayz2016

Someone tweeted that we’ll keep seeing spikes and shutdowns until someone comes up with a vaccine. 

But reading about some of these  “I can’t breath if I wear a mask” folk being thrown out of shops … seems a lot of them are also anti-vaxxers.  So now we have another problem. 

As one ER Doctor pointed out, if you think you can’t breathe wearing a mask then you haven’t seen what COVID-19 can do to change your perspective on what “can’t breathe” really means. 

sflocal

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

badmonk

Rayz2016 said:

Someone tweeted that we’ll keep seeing spikes and shutdowns until someone comes up with a vaccine. 

But reading about some of these  “I can’t breath if I wear a mask” folk being thrown out of shops … seems a lot of them are also anti-vaxxers.  So now we have another problem. 

As one ER Doctor pointed out, if you think you can’t breathe wearing a mask then you haven’t seen what COVID-19 can do to change your perspective on what “can’t breathe” really means. 

Agree, I was shocked by clip of the anti-mask sentiments of the West Palm Beachers at their city council meeting and how cult-like they sounded.  Clearly this is part of the anti-vax, Q, anti-G5, UFO nuttiness.

I also think that we need to have a wide roll out of the Apple-Google contact tracing app and encourage its use.  We need hyperlocal contact tracing much like what Dark Sky does for weather.  I would prefer to encourage its use through positive means and not negative and of course people would need to quarantine if positive but ultimately you need to do whatever it takes.


This is the only way to get the economy going.

mtriviso

This is an excellent move by Apple. Keep those stores closed. That way people will not be able to go there to purchase Apple products. It's actually a brilliant marketing move and will probably save thousands of lives!

hammeroftruth

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

SpamSandwich

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

hammeroftruth

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

So what would be an acceptable response be?

If we can’t rely on people policing themselves on social distancing and protecting themselves and each other when they are outside their homes, how do we proceed?

If there are so many people against it, why don’t they have a sensible alternative, because just re-opening everything and zero enforcement of social distancing and PPE isn’t working. 

It’s a horrible choice, you live and you’re bankrupt or you work and may get sick and die or end up with long term health issues, or if you’re lucky have minimal issues. 

I would rather run up the national debt on saving people physically and financially then spending it frivolously on bloat and pork projects, but neither party would do that. 

hentaiboy

Maybe the Aussie security guards shouldn’t have been bonking quarantined travellers...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491777/Security-guards-SEX-quarantined-travellers-replaced-flight-attendants.html

SpamSandwich

hammeroftruth said:

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

So what would be an acceptable response be?

If we can’t rely on people policing themselves on social distancing and protecting themselves and each other when they are outside their homes, how do we proceed?

If there are so many people against it, why don’t they have a sensible alternative, because just re-opening everything and zero enforcement of social distancing and PPE isn’t working. 

It’s a horrible choice, you live and you’re bankrupt or you work and may get sick and die or end up with long term health issues, or if you’re lucky have minimal issues. 

I would rather run up the national debt on saving people physically and financially then spending it frivolously on bloat and pork projects, but neither party would do that. 

Your solution results in insolvency for businesses and the collapse of the country enforcing such draconian controls.

crowley

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

If only there was empirical evidence to put this clever theory to the test.... oh wait there is. Sweden didn't lock down, while Norway locked down early and heavily.  How's that working out?


https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-sweden-and-norway-handled-coronavirus-differently-2020-4?r=US&IR=T

Let's be clear, these graphs aren't the same, the Sweden chart axis's show much higher numbers and a much worse rate of growth.  They've really screwed themselves.  Their rate was over a 1000 new cases per day just a couple of weeks ago.  That's a stupendously high infection rate for a country of 10 million people.

More recent figures are available at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ and https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/, the difference is stark.

And the latest news is that Sweden's economy has stalled because of fear for the infection and death rate, while Norway is under control and is one of the earliest countries opening up and bouncing back.

JWSC

Apple is entitled to handle their COVID-19 response as they see fit. Their employees and their business should be of paramount importance to their leadership.  But I struggle with the fact that so many other retail businesses (supermarkets, pharmacies, etc.) appear to be handling COVID-19 reasonably well without completely shutting down retail operations.  And so a little perspective is in order since the media does a wretchedly poor job of providing it.

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

JWSC

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

If lockdowns had worked as advertised they wouldn’t be controversial. But the reality is they haven’t. You can blame people for not following guidelines to the letter all you want.  But any solution that does not take into account how any giving population is going to behave is just spitting into the wind. Any effective solution must be based on the reality of how a population will behave in real life and not on what one would wish all good citizens would do.

Lockdowns have not been effective. And COVID-19 is not going away any time soon (let me know when a MERS/SARS vaccine is developed). It is better that we all work to develop strategies to work under these conditions rather than perpetuate a failed strategy that has thrown tens of millions onto the unemployment line.

crowley

JWSC said:

Apple is entitled to handle their COVID-19 response as they see fit. Their employees and their business should be of paramount importance to their leadership.  But I struggle with the fact that so many other retail businesses (supermarkets, pharmacies, etc.) appear to be handling COVID-19 reasonably well without completely shutting down retail operations.  And so a little perspective is in order since the media does a wretchedly poor job of providing it.

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

Supermarkets and pharmacies supply food and drugs, which are a lot harder to do without than consumer electronics.

I'm not really sure what your link is supposed to prove, but what it does prove is that COVID-19 from a zero infection start has in six months killed (approximately 550,000) almost the number of people as malaria killed in 2017, even while much of the world has been under social distancing curfew and lockdown.  Malaria!

Without social distancing and lockdown measures the infection rate could have been a lot higher (12m infections is pretty well controlled, all things considered), and the deaths off the chart.

SpamSandwich

JWSC said:

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

If lockdowns had worked as advertised they wouldn’t be controversial. But the reality is they haven’t. You can blame people for not following guidelines to the letter all you want.  But any solution that does not take into account how any giving population is going to behave is just spitting into the wind. Any effective solution must be based on the reality of how a population will behave in real life and not on what one would wish all good citizens would do.

Lockdowns have not been effective. And COVID-19 is not going away any time soon (let me know when a MERS/SARS vaccine is developed). It is better that we all work to develop strategies to work under these conditions rather than perpetuate a failed strategy that has thrown tens of millions onto the unemployment line.

Although your response seems to be disagreeing with my post, we actually agree.

JWSC

SpamSandwich said:

JWSC said:

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

If lockdowns had worked as advertised they wouldn’t be controversial. But the reality is they haven’t. You can blame people for not following guidelines to the letter all you want.  But any solution that does not take into account how any giving population is going to behave is just spitting into the wind. Any effective solution must be based on the reality of how a population will behave in real life and not on what one would wish all good citizens would do.

Lockdowns have not been effective. And COVID-19 is not going away any time soon (let me know when a MERS/SARS vaccine is developed). It is better that we all work to develop strategies to work under these conditions rather than perpetuate a failed strategy that has thrown tens of millions onto the unemployment line.

Although your response seems to be disagreeing with my post, we actually agree.

We do agree.  I was writing for a larger audience.

JWSC

crowley said:

JWSC said:

Apple is entitled to handle their COVID-19 response as they see fit. Their employees and their business should be of paramount importance to their leadership.  But I struggle with the fact that so many other retail businesses (supermarkets, pharmacies, etc.) appear to be handling COVID-19 reasonably well without completely shutting down retail operations.  And so a little perspective is in order since the media does a wretchedly poor job of providing it.

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

Supermarkets and pharmacies supply food and drugs, which are a lot harder to do without than consumer electronics.

I'm not really sure what your link is supposed to prove, but what it does prove is that COVID-19 from a zero infection start has in six months killed (approximately 550,000) almost the number of people as malaria killed in 2017, even while much of the world has been under social distancing curfew and lockdown.  Malaria!

Without social distancing and lockdown measures the infection rate could have been a lot higher (12m infections is pretty well controlled, all things considered), and the deaths off the chart.

I pointed to those charts to put COVID-19 in perspective, which we are in very short supply of these days. I’m pleased that you, and hopefully others here, have looked at them.

Your claim that social distancing and lockdowns reduced infections can only be ranked as an opinion as precious little data exists to substantial that they did work. Lockdowns may indeed have slowed the infection rate, thereby keeping the spike down so that hospitals would not be so overwhelmed. But it is unclear that the overall number of infections was reduced, and some evidence supports the supposition that it had no effect whatsoever.

[Deleted User]

JWSC said:

SpamSandwich said:

hammeroftruth said:

sflocal said:

Anti-vaxxers have been out in full force preaching that they will never take the vaccine. I hope society in general  penalizes them harshly.  They are a danger to society.

It’s called Darwinism, and you are seeing it in action.

There is also economic Darwinism and those countries and individuals who are exposed and recover fastest are going to have a huge advantage. A people who are repeatedly locked down as a response to COVID is an unacceptable response.

If lockdowns had worked as advertised they wouldn’t be controversial. But the reality is they haven’t. You can blame people for not following guidelines to the letter all you want.  But any solution that does not take into account how any giving population is going to behave is just spitting into the wind. Any effective solution must be based on the reality of how a population will behave in real life and not on what one would wish all good citizens would do.

Lockdowns have not been effective. And COVID-19 is not going away any time soon (let me know when a MERS/SARS vaccine is developed). It is better that we all work to develop strategies to work under these conditions rather than perpetuate a failed strategy that has thrown tens of millions onto the unemployment line.

There are no shortage of countries that had success with lockdowns. The majority of the EU, Canada, Korea and New Zealand are all examples. The U.S. never really did a lockdown. The best estimate is we did 50%. We also squandered that time. 

Peza

And WHO has had to admit it cannot rule out the possibility of Covid being airborne, yet plenty of idiots refuse to wear masks, then again I live in the U.K. with the most incompetent government ever who refuse to enforce the wearing of masks.. I have been wearing one every time I go out for almost since day one! They said at the beginning it was suspected to be airborne, you can have herd immunity of course, so long as your comfortable with all the deaths that’ll be caused to get there... Potentially millions of deaths from totally over whelmed health systems.
lockdown is the only solution along with track and trace.

JWSC

Peza said:

And WHO has had to admit it cannot rule out the possibility of Covid being airborne, yet plenty of idiots refuse to wear masks, then again I live in the U.K. with the most incompetent government ever who refuse to enforce the wearing of masks.. I have been wearing one every time I go out for almost since day one! They said at the beginning it was suspected to be airborne, you can have herd immunity of course, so long as your comfortable with all the deaths that’ll be caused to get there... Potentially millions of deaths from totally over whelmed health systems.
lockdown is the only solution along with track and trace.

I must point out that an airborne COVID-19 virus is most likely in aerosol form, which would pass right through every single common face mask people wear.  Even N95 rated masks would only be partially effective.

The common face masks will work OK for coughs and sneezes as those will be comprised of large moisture particles with, presumably, the COVID-19 virus going along for the ride.  But stopping aerosols?  No chance.

entropys

There isn’t a simple answer. Island nations like Australia have better ability to control their borders, reducing disease entry and quarantine for new entrants. Lockdowns help kill the disease temporarily when quarantine procedures fail but as we can see in the case of Victoria, do not remove the problem and future spikes are inevitable anywhere until there is a vaccine or herd immunity.

if a government reacts with total lockdown each time there is a spike the economy will be destroyed. Aggressive life saving for a few now for long term quality for life loss (even shortened lives) for many. The cure could be much worse than the disease. 

Truth is there is no simple answer, There is the highly visible deaths of (predominately) much loved grandparents being addressed by risk adverse politicians compared with the economic, social and invisible life loss from the cost of a response for a generation.