Jet off to Japan and take on Tokyo with these terrific fares from Qantas! Travel during October/November 2020. All bags and meals included!
Fares and dates can be found in the OP link.
Jet off to Japan and take on Tokyo with these terrific fares from Qantas! Travel during October/November 2020. All bags and meals included!
Fares and dates can be found in the OP link.
A month is not likely IMO, in the WA health system they’re expecting peak demand in 6-8 weeks time
I think he means Japan might curtail it in a month. Australia? No chance.
I'd certainly rather be going to Japan than Europe or Iran.
But you ignore the bigger risk: will Japan have relaxed their ban on Australian visitors by then?
Japan haven't banned Australian visitors
@WhatWouldBiggieDo: yet, duh!
I really believe the situation of Japan now would be much worse than US and Australia now since their requirements for Coronavirus test is incredible high which explain why their confirmed case are so low. In addition to that, Hokkaido has the highest numbers of case is completely joke since it only holds about 4% of total japan population and population are very scattered.
Damn always wanted to go to Iran lmao
It will be hard for any other country in the "free world" to emulate what China did..
I wouldn't be so sure of that.
Since we dont use a unified mobile payment system; it will be hard.
The required self-tracking would be impossible to enforce.
In china now, to buy anything, or to visit a public area you need to sign in, so contact tracing is near perfect.
Pretty clever really.
Wechat ftw.
Do you mean to suppress any info about the virus outbreak?
Like the China did until mid-January, until the SHTF?
If the initial outbreak happened in the "free world", we wouldn't be in this position.
FACTS:
The first cases of Covid-19 was reported into hospital in mid-November 2019. They did diagnostics on the cases before it was found to be a new disease. They reported it to WHO by December 31st 2019. That was roughly SIX weeks to be reported to International authorities.
The first actions against the virus through cleansing and public warnings happened in late December 2019 only after around 30 people coming down with it. The virus spread yes, all around China and the globe by that time. But they have managed to contain it with a massive slow down of infections within 3 months of the outbreak.
They have built hospitals in TWO weeks and almost every province's capital city has had two or more hospitals built in similar times to provide more beds and healthcare to their sick.
If you have ANY idea of what it is to diagnose and identify a new disease, to then identifying it as contagious and then advising public health warnings in six weeks to be released to WHO for assistance, you will find that is absolutely very fast speeds.
As a comparison, SARS took 3 months to be notified internationally. American (Swine) flu H1N1 took 4 months before US CDC did anything about it.
Sure - China bashing is easy. But hey, this wouldn't happen in the "Free world"? Look at Italy and how it got from @200 cases to 15,000 cases in less than 4 weeks. Let's see how it turns out in US where people can't afford health care and refuses to medicate themselves and see how that turns out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932…
@bchliu: From your wikipedia link:
The Chinese National Health Commission announced later that evening that 8 doctors engaging in this WeChat forum had been arrested by Wuhan Police and charged with "illegal acts of fabricating, spreading rumors and disrupting social order."
Yep, definitely sounds like China was proactive and transparent…
Fabricating…. nope
Spreading rumors…. nope
So basically the real story is the communist regime tried to suppress the news for a month at which point a group of doctors, one of who then died from the disease, heroically started leaking information to let the world know about the virus. Regime response, arrest them and claim it is 'fabricated' and a 'rumor', but it was too late, the word was out and the regime had to start trying to re-write the narrative.
Now they are trying to white wash their culpability, that might work behind the great firewall, but please don't spout that nonsense here.
@rheags: Nope. In the scientific circle, it is protocol to actually IDENTIFY the information, gather FACTS before it can be released. The doctors in this case had been researching on it and have not yet identified it to be released as public information. At that point in time, they released it as "Another strain of SARS" which it wasn't and even then did not know the full extent of what this new Coronavirus can do.
The doctors were then under lock down to avoid spreading speculations that could lead to a lot of fear in the community without having the facts correct. Once it was identified with scientific details two weeks later, the Chinese authorities issued official apologies to all of the doctors. All of this was reported to WHO from that point onwards to control the research and information flow.
Do I see anyone here complain about the covering up and whitewashing of epidemic information in USA or even in Australia with ScoMo? Oh yeah, let fake news and fear run through the community and let people buy out toilet paper and hand sanitisers all the way because of social media rumours.
@bchliu: http://theconversation.com/chinas-coronavirus-cover-up-how-c…
Shill all you want for the regime
@bchliu: Where's the whitewashing by ScoMo? Yeah, I've been reading plenty from diverse media outlets stating we should NOT emulate the US in our response to this but seek to follow the asian tigers instead. Sorry that ScoMo isn't Xi, but I don't think he can really be blamed for the toilet roll fiasco. It points to a greater problem with our fragmented and immigration binge fueled society. Maybe we should ban WeChat then? It's certainly a platform for propaganda and rumour. Can you imagine the uproar if we did from, ahem certain quarters (and no, I don't think we should).
BTW when I went to the supermarket yesterday to try to get some toilet paper the pallet was savaged by a crowd of largely elderly Chinese. One was in a shouting match with an employee. Maybe it's got more to do with memories of hard times back in China than fake news here..
@bchliu: Interesting to see that even OzBargain is now infested with Communist Party of China shills.
@bchliu I'm not referring to you (good reply, though I disagree), but to influx of ghost accounts to vote the posts up/down along the party lines.
@Jef Tino: It's interesting on both sides though.. I'm trying to put forward some facts and evidence and people dismiss it because of Chinese antipathy. BTW, I'm no CCP shill - I have bagged them out in the past to my friends and all. But comes a point where fair is fair and people have to put down their own hypocrisy especially in public debates and forums.
People just can't win with facts and end up ad-hominem attacks on anything they can grasp.
@bchliu: Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong have all been successful in containing it without the draconian actions of China. China deserves some criticisms for their initial response (or lack of), although it's fair to say they have obviously done as best as could be hoped once they realised the severity of the issue. No guarantee anyone else would do better, and certainly, the US has been asleep at the wheel (no surprises with Trump), and frankly, I think we ought to be whacking a travel ban there to, but that's beside the point.
What's funny is that this demonstrated, yet again, the thin-skinned victim complex of China and so many Chinese. Just look at how they castigated Australia for having the temerity to put in place a travel ban and demanded compo (and they are still at it). And then, of course, trying to shut people up via playing the victim and 'racist' card ad infinitum.
We shouldn't try to make political capital out of this tragedy (not that China isn't), but I've no time either for the PRC acolytes whose precious nationalist sentiments get piqued at anything resembling criticism of the dear Middle Kingdom. Then of course, there's the reflexive inferiority complex & hostility toward the 'west' 'free world' and of course, always the USA. As we see here.
Let me guess, despite your derisory attitude you and others here live in (and benefit from) the 'free world' don't you? More than welcome to leave if things are so much better elsewhere mate.
@simonp86: Lets put it into some perspective here: China has 1.4 Billion people. Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are basically the size of individual cities in China and China has many dozens of cities that will compare in size and population to these places. Desperate measures require desperate means to resolve so having apparently a "draconian lockdown" to control the spread is that good or bad? The other cities are controlled through fear and panic leading to shortages of toilet paper and foods, whilst China continues to supply to their citizens in an orderly fashion during their lock downs.
You know who else haven't done state controlled lockdowns? Italy, South Korea. Look at them on the map and see where they are at.
Lol.. love it - classical Aussie racist "If you don't like it here, then go back to where you came from". Answer is NO. I'm Australian, with Australian passport and grew up here. If you don't like hearing the truth, then either you make a choice of ignoring my comments or not use public forums.
@bchliu: https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823
Lijian Zhao is the Spokesperson & Deputy Director General, Information Department, Foreign Ministry.
The Chinese 'truth machine' is now trying to blame the US Army for starting the pandemic and bringing it to Wuhan.
LOL.. the US doesn't suppress news does it? Free world wouldn't screw it up would they?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/trump-coronav…
@bchliu: this applies to all countries, but there's a difference between reporting unreliable figures and suppressing information.
Cases reported are going to be less than actual for a number of reasons. They only report confirmed cases, and a case is only confirmed after a test. A lot of people don't get tested either because kits aren't available, or people don't go and get tested because they have no symptoms yet. In the case of Wuhan, their health centers were overloaded and they couldn't process people fast enough, so not everyone is tested. Therefore figures are lower.
Is it more likely that people worldwide just aren't being tested enough, or did every government collude to suppress information deliberately?
The US is doing a really bad job at getting testing kits out. They were slow in putting their orders in, and are last in line. Once they get more kits and test more people, their infected numbers will grow. This isn't a sign that more people are getting infected by the day. It's just that more people are getting tested.
Also, can you link sources that aren't paywalled? I would guess that most Ozbargainers don't pay for news.
@lostn: You are right in the cases reported become statistics and the number of people infected will always be higher than what the tally represents. However, there have not been any reports to say that testing is "overloaded" in Wuhan or other parts of China. It is plausible that this is happening, but the death rate would be much higher if this is the case. Again, there is no evidence for this or the mass graves that conspiracy theory sites have said existed with burials of hundreds of thousands of sick people.
China at least in this case has actually been transparent - basically WHO is overseeing and auditing all the cases in China in efforts to control it and gather the right levels of scientific data. A number of different high ranking WHO members have come out to verify this case and at least given China some credit for being able to control it so quickly.
@bchliu: Blame China is a political correctness in western world. No matter what they did, or no matter what they didn't do, that's china fault lol.
Who care the root issue?
@Misasagi: Brand new account to say this.
@bchliu: Please don't ever say China and transparent in the same sentence. And quite frankly, the WHO is complicit in this fiasco. Let us not forget the all powerful Xi knew about this for weeks while millions of people were leaving the infected province to infect the world.
@[Deactivated]: Where's your evidence on Chinese conspiracy with WHO? Just because you think that way doesn't make it true.
@bchliu: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-chin…
The influence is ridiculous.
Then you might look at WHO's leader being Ethiopian and the relationship between Ethiopia and China and then you might have a better understanding. Just because you are Chinese doesn't mean you must stop thinking for yourself.
@[Deactivated]: Just saying 'I am double-standarded' would save your energy in typing lol
@[Deactivated]: lol. American Media: Can't beat them with facts, lets ad-hominem on the WHO director general. Even though WHO organisation doesn't consist of a single Ethiopian person in conspiracy with China.
@bchliu: Bravo, more social points for you! Your family is safe back home (for now).
I would say some American media is factual. Not CNN as a general rule. But the description of China (and USA) influence on WHO is described adequately. Further, show me the media in China which disagrees with the party line. You don't think China's relationship with Ethiopia is an area of concern. Ethiopians do. The WHO dragged their feet because of the relationship (or alternatively, China lied to WHO, pick your favourite here). But I like a laugh, carry on.
@[Deactivated]: Lol.. What makes you think I have family in China specifically? Are you implying that I am CCP because I stated facts that clearly differs from your world perception? You have to do a bit better than that in pulling out some real evidence instead of your tin-foil conspiracies.
Keep bringing on the racial and personal attacks.. It's not going anywhere.
The World Health Organisation is NOT one Ethiopian guy that represents interests of his home country. It's made up of thousands of people from all different nationalities that contribute towards their organisation and their stance on China.
BTW.. your name checks out..
@[Deactivated]: If you think that most American media is factual no wonder you believe in baseless conspiracy theories. I could direct you to some fact checking sites, but you probably think they are “rigged” as well. But, by all means, continue to panic and spread disinformation. I’m sure you can load up your Ute and bug out to a doomsday cult somewhere. What we do know is the Chinese seem to be getting it under control over there. If you do want to worry about them then, I suspect, they are going to come out of this a lot stronger than the west. They are going to get up and running whilst we are still struggling.
BTW, I’m not a communist shill. I’m white and my family has been in Australia for over 100 years. I just prefer to deal in verifiable facts, rather than innuendo and rumour.
@try2bhelpful: I said some American media. Not most. Compare that with NONE Chinese media and you might get my point which has clearly evaded you at this junction.
@[Deactivated]: I don’t read all the Chinese media and I suspect neither do you; pretty bold statement you are making there.However, I’ve seen enough right wing media from America to know how dangerous that is. The main point, which seems to have eluded you, is that the Chinese could have no way in knowing how big this would get. Even we aren’t locking down cities like they are and we have a lot more information than they did. In hindsight there are a lot of things they could’ve done differently but as bad as this is there is still only a small percentage of the population that is going to be severely incapacitated or die from it. We need a frame work for the rest of us to keep going. We need energy, food on the table, utilities, etc. People, unnecessarily, staying home and panicking will mean other people starve, freeze to death, can’t get medical treatment etc. it is, always, a balancing act between too much caution and too little.
The nearest data I could find was 2014 and it showed that only 20% of adult Australians had a flu shot that year. Obviously most Australians don’t think flu is, generally, a big deal. it is when this thing took off that it became a monster. I’m not a great fan of the Chinese political system, but frankly ours sucks as well. It will be interesting to see how the various leadership styles fare with this crisis. As I said above, I suspect China will come out of this stronger, for all their missteps. It takes that sort of regime to put in place the measures they did.
@try2bhelpful: I have no idea why you would even think there is something to say about comparing Chinese media with America. It is a police state getting closer and closer to a dictatorship (if not already). Perhaps you should speak to some Chinese about what they are allowed to say online, much less the media. While you are it at, find out what happened to the whistle blower there. Waste of time talking to you to be honest.
Yes, I agree a dictatorship would be useful in times of a pandemic. I have not had a flu shot and I am not an anti vaxxer by the way.
@[Deactivated]: Frankly, I find talking to you a waste of time, myself.
I see why you put "free world" in quotes
The worst of Corona should hopefully be over by then, looking at the drastic action happening now, it should help curtail the breakout by the end of the month (Just looking what China has done).
I don't think you understand what is going on here.
China forced 60 million people to stay in one area. You are proposing to do the opposite and expecting the same results for some reason.
I have seen a lot of PHD virologists on ozbargain lately…
Its them udemy courses.
I have yet to see any evidence of "drastic" action happening other than large public events and activities being cancelled. Maybe a tad presumptuous at this stage but I hope you are right!
The government has failed it's citizens, there's been an unacceptable number of tests conducted thus far. It's clearly shown through South Korea's response what a proactive and effective response can do to reduce its circulation.
It's far from good value considering the weakening dollar and the strong indicators that suggest the trip will most definitely be effected in some way or another.
All for a couple of hundred per person? Gambling with hard earned money.
Scomo has got the footy on this weekend mate. He can’t cancel the footy!
on what basis are you assuming "it should be over by then"?
The worst of Corona should hopefully be over by then,
Let's hope so, because that is winter and flu season.
Just looking what China has done
What china has done is unprecedented and cannot be replicated by most countries. The WHO is truly impressed. If the world all agreed to set a date and impose the same restrictions on their citizens as China did, the virus could be defeated in a few months. This is highly unlikely to happen though because western democracies value their freedom of movement more than containing the virus. And it would be difficult to attempt to do anyway. The Chinese government is swift when it needs to take action because no one is there to oppose it and they don't need to debate it parliament or get the bill passed in the upper house. I don't think anyone else in the world can build a hospital in 10 days. Just the planning stage will take longer than that.
The effort of how Japan is used to control the virus comparing with China is not even at the same level.
in Japan atm and things are basically 1.5x the price :( with the bad AUD
Corona isn’t good for bargains outside of travel 😔
Agreed, was looking where to put "covid19" discount code when purchasing.
Lol
All purchases will be made in tins of bake beans. 100 tins gets a return flight to New York. 10% off using ‘covid19’
most of the cheaper flights aren't direct
Qantas only runs direct flights to NRT via Bris, Cairns and Melb.
They have flights to HND from Melb and Syd.
The fare is cheap, but with our inevitable recession the AUD to JPY rate is going to make you cry. It's currently 66 JPY for a 1 AUD….
Saw that, woeful. AUD to USD is 63c.. it didn't even drop that low in 2008.
if you can find anything to sell on USD markets its a great time. i sold some shoes for 500AUD that i bought for 300AUD
Ouch. I went when it was at 80 and the conversion was about right in terms of value for money. Anything lower would feel pricey.
And I thought 72 when we went in November 2019 was horrible
We booked our trip in September and we are (hopefully) going in April.
So we paid when it was expensive to buy tickets and now going over while exchange rate is bad and lots of places will be closed.
Sucks :(
Be EXTREMELY careful buying tickets through agents (as opposed to airlines directly) right now.
Fly365 had my money for 2 months before they went broke at the end of February this year.
Make sure you receive airline confirmation code (not the agent confirmation code) and the tickets from the airline promptly after purchasing via the agents.
I expect a number of agents like Fly365 will go broke soon enough. Be careful.
Bargain ticket price for Japan though!
I guess Fly365 couldn't handle the leap year.
I think the directors knew exactly how and when to leap!
Yeah and flight center just announced they're closing 100 Of it's least profitable centers
Excellent, Flight Centre have been ripping off customers off for years, it's about time they pissed off.
Yeah and people are now out of jobs
is it a ripe off if you walk into someone's shop and ask someone to do the work for you? It's called an AGENT.
Flight Centre has helped millions of Australians explore the world and saved many of them money all while being an Australian company employing Australian people.
absolutely… I booked via myholidays.com last time and I'm trying to get a refund because of the virus.
Their customer support is based in India so good luck with that. It's not worth it.
Huge gamble. Fantastic time to go btw! Autumn is a wonderful season and often overlooked by traveller's because of cherry blossoms in spring. There's plenty of autumn flavours and Halloween in Tokyo is absolutely next level. it's worth while going once in your life but for a few hundred dollars savings there is far too much risk attached to it.
These are the sort of prices and dates i would have killed for last year or year before.
29th October to 16th November (melb) is literally god tier for what i want to to see.
Obviously the coronavirus risk is a problem. But the currency rate is no small issue either. 35% worse than my trip 2 years ago, so doing the same things i would literally have to spend $1200 more this time (spent $3.4k last time). So its another risk on that, hoping our dollar recovers somewhat before your trip.
So 2 big issues that may or may not be better (and in fact could be worse) by the time of the trip.
Anyone doing this, take out travel insurance as soon as you book, or even better, book with a card you're churning for the points + complimentary insurance. Who knows what will happen re: travel restrictions.
No Aussie travel insurance policy covers pandemics and epidemics.
rip. good pick. buy with caution then
They all removed the pandemic type cover on Jan 23rd.
Get the cancel for any reason cover and you'll at least get a good proportion back.
You're apparently not the first person to come up with this idea.
https://www.traveller.com.au/how-to-get-travel-insurance-for…
UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, Covermore announced it was suspending sales of its "Cancel for any reason" travel insurance in Australia and New Zealand.
That's a great deal if you like doing nothing in Japan. Bargain.
December is a long way away. If the problem is still around in December, Japan likely will have to have canceled the July Olympics which they spent 7 years and over $20B getting ready for. It's what they're desperately trying to avoid. This is going to hurt.
They are paying people $514 to go to Japan?
They were paying cleaners to go Japan to clean up the Cruise ship.. lol..
Japan pays a lot of foreigners to do unskilled work. The locals don't want to do it. There is a workforce shortage in Japan due to aging population. They import people from other asian countries to do the jobs the locals won't do.
They are paying people $514 to go to Japan?
No, they are selling tickets to heaven for $514.
j/k
Australia has said avoid travelling overseas unless completely essential
These people think it's a hoax or something.
I'm not sure why you would ignore warnings to isolate yourself from experts after the declaration of a global pandemic.
Just like the person negging you.
Probably someone that thinks anyone who believes in this also emptied the supermarket of toilet rolls too….
Don't do it.
You have no idea what's going to happen by then.
These are uncertain times.
Whole family of 10 booked. Virus will be over, this is he best deal after the long hibernation
Don't think this is a very great deal. Before COVID 19, we have seen price around 600 ish. Paying only 100 less for a lot more uncertainties isn't worth it.
i wish 600 was available on the dates I'm going. :(
Qantas over over $1000 in late march and always arrives in the evening which is too late to meet my tour at the airport.
$100 less than a normal good sale price, and with good dates. Late october-through early mid november is something i haven't seen on a good qantas sale before and they are imo the best dates to go to japan.
i got $650 return with Qantas out of Canberra (obviously not direct though, but saves having to drive 2.5 hours to Sydney). Pretty happy with that price. I mean I can't even get Jetstar flights for that from sydney!
Why would anyone book flights??? Seriously…
To travel … duhhhh
What scuderiarmani likely means. Is why would anyone fly out overseas knowing a global pandemic has been declared. Specially being this trip is likely non essential and can wait.
he's probably expecting the situation to be better late 2020 than early 2020.
@lostn: It won't be.
Regardless, people are losing flight money all over the place, why risk it?
The worst of Corona should hopefully be over by then, looking at the drastic action happening now, it should help curtail the breakout by the end of the month (Just looking what China has done).
The main issue is that Australia might be in recession, so if your job is not as secure, it might be an issue around the time of the trip.
Trip is good value (bar the AUD slip against the JPY).