Takata airbags class actions – Notice of Proposed Settlement, is it a scam?

I received a message from a contact recently asking if the email they'd received was a scam or not. Their first thought is it may be a scam.

The subject of the email was "Takata airbags class actions – Notice of Proposed Settlement".

Looking at the links in the email and checking any of the links (Toyota Australia Class Action (nsw.gov.au), Takata Airbag Class Actions - Home) using a malware scanner site everything appeared to be in order. It does look like this is a court ordered email.

I decided to check out the class action information, but do keep in mind I have no legal background. This was just out of interest.

First checking the cars listed it, whilst this person's partner owns a Mazda (they personally do not own a Mazda) and secondly the Mazda in question does not fall into the date range listed. So it does appear the email list "Notice of Proposed Settlement" was possibly quite broad and may not be relevant to many people.

In the past I've felt the individuals who register for such a settlement are likely to end up getting very little, so I wondered if it was possible to estimate what each person might get.

Reading the documents provided the settlement appears to cover 2 million vehicles. The total settlement is for $52 million and the two groups mentioned in points 4a and 4b would potentially receive $13 million and $15.3 million respectively. This would leave $23.7 million  less possible other amounts.

Assuming the full $23.7 million was then equally allocated to the 2 million individuals owning the vehicles, that would amount to $11.85.

Is this a scam, probably not. Is it worth it for potentially $11.85? Probably not.

Kelvin

NOTE: This email should not be considered advice in any shape or form. Any action you choose take is entirely your own choice and entirely at your own risk.

How many weeks until Christmas?

Some time ago I wrote a Days between Dates calculator and then recently someone asked me how many weeks until Christmas. The Days between Dates calculator already has a convenient option to work out the number of days until Christmas, but it's very common for people to ask for the number of weeks.

I decided to add the number of weeks between dates to the Days between Dates calculator since it was a fairly easy task. Now when someone asks me how many weeks until Christmas, I can tell them the number of weeks and days until Christmas.

You can find the Days between Dates calculator at https://www.daysbetweendates.com.au/.

Enjoy

Kelvin

Titbits on COVID-19 I find interesting and useful

The Victorian government has a lot of interesting and useful information but unfortunately most of the time we don't have access to that information. However, sometimes some of that information gets published and if we're lucky we got to read it. The aim of this post is to collect what I feel to be useful titbits of information.

"According to the Victorian government, 45 per cent of all household primary close contacts test positive even when fully vaccinated"
Covid-19 Victoria: Isolation for fully vaccinated close contacts reduced to 7 days | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

"Within yesterday’s cases, there are 1245 newly impacted households which previously did not have COVID-19 present." - There were 2,297 cases.
Department of Health and Human Services Victoria | Coronavirus update for Victoria - 14 October 2021 (dhhs.vic.gov.au)

"almost 90 per cent of people infected with the Delta variant turn positive by day seven"
Covid-19 Victoria: Isolation for fully vaccinated close contacts reduced to 7 days | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

For me this information is very useful as it helps me to get an idea of the level of COVID-19 around me and thus the risk of exposure. From the above we can estimate:

1. Around half the cases are in new households.

2. Around half the cases will occur within a household when someone is already infected.

3. We know those who are a household where someone's already infected they could perhaps already be quarantine so present little risk to the community.

4. The new case for a household may have only been in the community for a short period of time whilst infected.

5. What is missing but may be interesting to know is how many of the new infections for a new household is a direct contact or an existing infected person. The reason is if they're a direct contact they may have already been in quarantine when they test positive so also a lower risk to the community.

By using the Victorian government's COVID-19 data by postcode I collate the data so I can see how the data is changing over the last seven days (Victoria COVID-19 Cases By Postcode (onlineconnections.com.au).

Using the information about I can make rather loose assumptions that for each household where there's a new case there will be an additional case that occurs. Thus I can halve the number of cases in an area as they'll be in the same household. In addition, once the first person is found to be infected, that person plus the entire household will need to be in quarantine. Thus the second infected person (or half the cases) may generally not be a risk to the community.

By shopping, socialising and exercising in areas with low numbers of COVID-19 infections I am hopeful I can reduce my level of risk when I'm not at home. At this point in time I work from home and no longer go out to clients. I only go out a couple of times a week to shop, socialise or exercise so my movements  and contact with others is fairly limited so hopefully my risk is limited. 

However I do accept the risk will increase as the Victorian government has failed to suppress COVID-19 in the community, so will now open up the community on the basis that being vaccinated will reduce the risk of severe infection by a factor of 2-5 for Astrazenica and 5-10 for Pfizer and this shouldn't overwhelm our health system.
Living Evidence - COVID-19 vaccines | Agency for Clinical Innovation (nsw.gov.au)

As I find more useful titbits I hope to add them to this post.

Kelvin

Update: 19 October 2021
The Victorian government has stopped publishing tier 2 sites and in fact even before doing this did not include sites people had told me about. In essence leaving us blind as to the level of exposure in our community. Since shopping is something we all do most weeks, if not more often, it's good to see Coles and Woolworths still publishing COVID-19 exposure sites for customers.

COVID-19 updates | Coles

COVID-19 store updates and latest news | Woolworths Group COVIDSafe

Aldi also have a page which looks to be up to date, but in the past I've found their page not always as good as it could be. Hopefully they've improved since last year. To be fair to Aldi, every recent exposure site I could find in the media is listed on the page. Aldi's layout is different as cases are listed together for each site. What is also good from a risk point of view is each shop generally has very few cases.
Customer Notices: COVID-19 Cases - ALDI Australia

"Covid-19 has a mortality rate of 1.06 per cent in Australia"
I do think it's poor that Greg Hunt didn't quantify the mortality rate for double vaccinated.
Greg Hunt reveals the likelihood of catching Covid-19 if you’re fully vaccinated | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Figures from the UK give us a better idea of the mortality rate for those double vaccinated. Out of 51,281 deaths during the period given there were 256 breakthrough deaths. Breakthrough deaths are those who had been double vaccinated and infected 14 days after second dose of vaccine. That's roughly 1 in 200. There were 2,159,287 cases during the nominated period which is a death rate of 2.37% overall and 0.012% for double vaccinated. It should also be kept in mind double vaccination rates went from less than 1% on the 2nd of January to 49.7% on the 2nd of July. Using a very rough average of 25% of the UK population double vaccinated this could possibly mean numbers could increase by a factor of 4 if the UK population was fully vaccinated. As figures are updated a better picture of the mortality rate for double vaccinated will become more apparent.
Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics
Cases in the UK | Coronavirus in the UK (data.gov.uk)
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations - Statistics and Research - Our World in Data

Update: 14/11/2021
I was thinking about hospitalisation rates for those who get infected and thought the following was an interesting summary showing relative likelihood of being hospitalised based on age.
Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Age Group | CDC

Update: 23/11/2021
Nick Coates, the earlier face of COVID-19, advises against vaccine mandates for under 12s.
Nick Coatsworth advises against Covid vaccine mandates for under 12s | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Update: 23/11/2021
Peak viral loads for vaccinated and unvaccinated similar but faster decline for vaccinated.
Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study - The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Victoria COVID-19 cases by postcode - finding safer postcodes to shop, socialise and exercise.

The Victorian government is reducing the amount of information available to help us keep safe in the current epidemic. This is a pity as the more informed we have access to the more we can look after our own health.

Each day the Victorian government posts the COVID-19 cases by postcode and LGA, but if you want to look at yesterdays data you can't, it's gone. That makes it hard to get an idea of what's happening over time.

Is the situation in your postcode and the surrounding postcodes getting better or worse? With the information presented by the Victorian government you don't know.

To the Victorian government's credit they do however make the data available for download and since you can download the data you can create whatever application you want using the data.

I decided I needed a better tool to help myself, family and friends.

What I wanted was to be able to easily see information for my postcode and the postcodes around me.

What I also wanted was to be able to see the number of new cases for each day for the last seven days.

By having the last seven days of data I get two things.

1. The ability to see if the situation is getting better or worse.

2. The ability to see which postcodes around me have less cases and thus potentially lower risk.

I should add the data provided by the Victorian government is for where people live, not where they acquired COVID-19. I figure most people probably don't realise they've caught COVID-19 until they develop symptoms, or others they know are diagnosed and they need to isolate. Before isolating however they may have been out in their local community for a couple of days whilst infectious.

Once a person is diagnosed with COVID-19 they're quarantined so really I consider the first few days were people are COVID-19 positive but still out in the community the highest risk. These people work and that often isn't in their local community, but when they're at home, they could be out shopping, socialising or exercising, and it's then there's a risk to others when they're out in the local community.

Low case numbers in an area reduces the chances of being exposed and anything that can reduce our risk of exposure I consider a good thing. By shopping, socialising and exercising in areas with low COVID-19 cases numbers gives me a feeling I might be reducing my risk to COVID-19. It might make no difference but at least I feel like I'm doing something positive to reduce the risk.

The web page I've written for Victorian - COVID-19 cases by postcode can be found at Victoria COVID-19 Cases By Postcode (onlineconnections.com.au).

I live in Templestowe which has the postcode of 3106. A suburb near me is Eltham (postcode 2095) but unfortunately it isn't included in the nearest 10 results because the postcode also includes a number of other suburbs and when the centre of all the suburbs is taken into account, the postcode is further away than other suburbs. That means I need to check the results for Eltham separately, or what I've done, is to replace the last postcode with the 3095 postcode.

By selecting the option to find the 10 nearest postcodes I get the following results.

Looking at the data provided there's a couple of things we can easily see.

1. The postcode 3111 (Donvale) has the lowest numbers. Perhaps a good place to socialise or exercise. There's no shopping facilities in 3111.

2. Postcodes 3093 and 3094 have low numbers. There's a good shopping strip with Aldi and also areas to socialise or exercise.

3. Compared with other areas around Melbourne even the worst area of Doncaster still isn't too bad.

4. Most areas are trending down except for 3106 and 3095.

5. Postcode 3105 has a Coles so that's looking like the best area if shopping at Coles.

6. We normally shop at 3108 (Doncaster), 3109 (Doncaster East) or 3095 (Eltham) but really this should be reconsidered due to the higher case numbers.

Whilst the Victorian government doesn't give me the information I'd really like, all hotspots and businesses where people have been exposed, information on whether exposed at work or home, at least some data is available I can use and that's appreciated.

Hopefully the site can help you as well.

Kelvin