Covid-19.....lets help each other

[Robin4]

Reading many of the posts on this hosting board almost all correspondents are critical of the way Airbnb have handled this current pandemic situation.

What disturbs me is, some are trying to whip up hysteria by creating scenarios of their own which is not helping.

One host here  @Sheila22 has claimed she as a guest has double dipped on her travel insurance and also got a refund from Airbnb and then goes on to talk about price slashing, guests cancelling and rebooking at cheaper rates and even looting!! She then backtracks and says she is a host and just trying to put different ideas in the mix!

Sheila, I appreciate that you are simply trying to play the part of 'Devils Advocate' with your comments, but this is seriously not the time to be doing it! 

The hosting community are going through hell at the moment......as it stands this will cost me $20,000 this year if there is no short term remedy to the current pandemic. And all 3+ million of us hosts are going through the same thing.

I am also concerned that this pandemic could spell the end of Airbnb! To suddenly lose $94m in invest-able funds is not something a service company with few tangible assets can handle. Airbnb depend on cashflow and, that cashflow has stopped. The company may quite possibly not recover from this.

We are a community of hosts who collectively have a mass of experience and ideas to draw on. This is the time to be constructive and support each other and think of alternate ideas that may help us get our hosting wagons back on the tracks again once the worlds medical brains get on top of this. 

Please folks, can we be creative, not destructive!

Cheers........Rob

[Kath9]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 trust me, I am not one of those underestimating the virus - I'm constantly correcting those who are STILL saying 'oh it's just a flu, I don't know what everyone is worried about'. However, it is possible to clean a space. It is thought that the virus lasts for up to 3 days on surfaces (although this is still speculation at this stage given its novelty). If this is the case, one would wait three days, then go in with alcohol-based cleaners and clean every surface wearing gloves. I would have no problem doing this if I had an offsite unit. Obviously I wouldn't do it if I was 80 or immunocompromised, but this situation is also serious for people who might end up losing their houses!

[Helen350]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 @Kath9 I thought the virus only lived for 2-3 days on surfaces, outside a human incubator? So could you not host quarantine guests, with a period of 3 days+ between bookings? When a guest leaves, you could not enter the space for 3 days? By that time, any virus deposited on bedding or surfaces should have died, & the host need not suit up, but just clean normally?

[Helen350]

...just wrote this then saw @Lisa723 made the same point!

[Rebecca181]

The virus can live for up to 9 days on surfaces.

[Leanne99]

Hi @Rebecca181

Just wondering if you have a source for that figure of 9 days?

Here's a peer-reviewed one from the New England Journal of Medicine that backs up the 72 hours with data. It varies on different materials but seems like 72 hours may be around the limit for viable virus detection.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

Cheers,

Leanne

[Rebecca181]

@Leanne99 Here you go: 

"They concluded that if this new coronavirus resembles other human coronaviruses, such as its "cousins" that cause SARS and MERS, it can stay on surfaces —  such as metal, glass or plastic — for as long as nine days (In comparison, flu viruses can last on surfaces for only about 48 hours.)"  

Excerpted from: https://www.livescience.com/how-long-coronavirus-last-surfaces.html

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181  From all my reading, the 9 days has to do with certain conditions- a certain humidity and temperature. Cold plus high humidity is the optimal condition for it to survive the longest. Interestingly, it can't survive for any significant period of time on copper, just on other metals.

[Rebecca181]

Yes. I simply offered Leanne my source for this information. Nine days is possible, if certain conditions are met.

[Rebecca181]

Latest study says this coronavirus may live on surfaces for up to 27 days - This was based on the results of surface testing done on one of the Princess cruise-line ships.

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181  There are circumstances where it can live a lot longer than 3 days. But according to my reading (and I've been doing lots), that requires specific conditions. Cool temps and high humidity appear to be a combo in which it can live a long time. A ship would have those conditions. It would be interesting to know which surfaces the virus was found on for that long. Outside, where it would be cool and humid, or inside the staterooms, which would have been heated when there were passengers and likely less humid? Or all over the place?

[Rebecca181]

My mistake: 17 days. I agree that more research needed regarding transmission possibilities.

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/03/24/coronavirus-diamond-princess-cabin-surfaces...

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181 I had actually read 27 days on that ship, as well.

[Robin4]

@Rebecca181 

From what I am reading the virus has been found to last without  human contact for up to 19 days, but that is under special controlled experimental conditions which humans would not be likely to come across in daily life. 

The major concern at the moment, testing in South Korea has confirmed that people who have had the infection, recovered and been tested clean, have subsequently presented and tested positive again....they have become re-infected!

We just don't know enough at the moment, and globally, at both ends of the containment scale there is frustration!

My youngest daughter Kate is a casual nurse at the Wyong Hospital on the Central Coast of New South Wales, and she depends on having 4 shifts a week to keep the household together now her partner has been stood down!.

Our governments actions were swift in preparing for this pandemic, and some of the country's hospitals (including Wyong) were cleaned out to make way for Covid-19 sufferers.

The modelling was, there are 191 ICUs in Australia with 2378 available intensive care beds during baseline activity, (9.4 ICU beds per 100 000 population). Of the 175 ICUs contributing to the March 2020 surge survey, representing 2228 (94%) of available intensive care beds, maximal surge would add an additional 4258 intensive care beds (191% increase) and 2631 invasive ventilators (120% increase). This could require up to an additional 4092 senior doctors (325% increase over baseline), and 42 720 registered ICU nurses (365% increase over baseline). An additional 188 ventilators in veterinary facilities were reported.

Any non essential medical procedures have been cancelled or postponed!

We have a total around the country of 80 critical Covid-19 cases, and that number is falling with each passing day.  Our recovered cases now considerably exceeds our new cases.

Our daily average of new cases is now down to around 80 of which half may require some form of hospitalization

There has been a massive overreaction here to the scale of resources required to fight this pandemic in this country, and the result of that....Kate (along with many other nurses) has been stood down, she can't get nursing shifts because there are just too few patients in hospitals!

So Rebecca, that old saying.... "you are damned if you do and, you are damned if you don't!"

Cheers.......Rob.

@Sarah977 @Ian-And-Anne-Marie0 @Wende2 @Leanne99 @Lisa723

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-hospital-staff-stood-down-beds-empty-in-une...

[Kenneth12]

The maximal life of the virus surfaces is 72 hours on plastics -- far before that time, it will be down to 0.1% concentration.   You're over-reacting.

[Lisa723]

@Branka-and-Silvia0 the virus does not live forever with no human to infect. (Most recent data suggests three days maximum.) I would not hesitate to rent our "whole house" rentals to guests self-quarantining, in fact I would welcome the chance to help a local community member avoid exposing their family. Such a stay would either end with the person being clear, meaning no risk, or sick, meaning we know the place is contaminated, in which case I would allow the property to sit vacant for some period of time afterwards before cleaning. They're sitting vacant now anyway. In some ways this would be preferable to stays where we don't know whether guests are infectious so have to assume the worst.

I hope one of Airbnb's "big ideas" is to create a platform for hosts who are willing to do this, similar to the "open homes" program.