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izmeinaA week is a long time in politics. It is an even longer time in the Viral Times
And three weeks is an eternity
3 weeks ago there were 50 active cases of COVID 19 in Victoria. Now there are more than 800 and more than 200 confirmed new cases each day
The graph looks like a very steep U bend with peaks in March and July
It seems that the weakest link is the quarantine hotels. Most states in Australia have the army or police managing these places but Victoria for some inexplicable reason subcontracted the job out to private security firms. Probably the same dodgy sorts they outsource the refugee prison camps to.
Aside from claiming non existent security guards, it seems the real ones weren’t trained that well and some were to put it politely ‘fraternising with the enemy’
So some of these guards got infected and brought the bug into their own communities from where it spread like wildfire
Apparently it turned out to be a sufficiently big story that this outbreak was covered by the BBC and my sister in Amsterdam heard about it
She told me that she got the impression that the real reasons the Aussies were peeved was they’d had their Virus poster child status revoked. That gold medal that they were sharing with New Zealand has been snatched at the last minute
I said that is quite likely but its more probably that people are pissed off that they will now have to go without their beer and the football Grand Final.
All international flights coming into Melbourne and now Victoria in general, have been diverted to other states and a 6 week lockdown imposed on Melbourne. This means all cafes and restaurants are back to take away only, people permitted to leave their residence for work, essential shopping, exercise and care duties.
Many restaurants had started to ramp up after restrictions were eased. Putting on more staff and placing larger food orders with their suppliers etc. Now they are all back to the drawing board.
It’s still not clear if the outbreak came from just the one hotel or if there were several all over the place. Scary that one tiny break in the chain can cause so much chaos
The borders to New South Wales have been closed for the first time in over 100 years and there is a lot of mean sneering in many of the other states rather reminiscent of the attitude of Florida and Texas when New York was the centre of the epidemic.
I guess it takes a crisis to bring out both the worst and the best in people
The Wild West of course were like the greedy relatives at a wake. The corpse is not yet cold and they are all ready grabbing for the jewellery. In this case the Football trophy cabinet. Not just the local newspaper but a whole bunch of politicians too who really should know better.
It seems unlikely that the Grand Final will now be held in Melbourne according to the usual schedule. Packing so many people in a stadium is just the height of recklessness in these viral times but it really is not necessary for the football tragics here to go rubbing the Victorians noses in it by trying to snaffle the event for themselves.
They would be pretty pissed off if the shoe had been on the other foot.
This whole incident has now led the feds to restrict the flow of people coming in to Australia which was little more than a trickle anyway but still sufficient to trigger the latest outbreak
Over here in the Wild West, there still seems to be no sign of any community outbreak. All cases here are traceable to overseas and interstate arrivals, all of whom have to go into 14 day quarantine.
Recent Official Oz government statistics
Since the Federal Government intends to drastically reduce the number of people entering Australia, one obvious way to do this is to extend the travel ban on Australians leaving the country so that reduces the future supply of some of those trying to get back
There are exemptions on compassionate and other grounds but buying a plane ticket 6 months ago is not likely to be on that list
Back in June, it looked quite likely that those restrictions would be relaxed some time in August or September but now there seems little chance of that
So I think I can safely assume that long planned Grand European Adventure will not be happening after all despite having booked and paid for my flights way back in the first week of March. Everything escalated so quickly after that.
Even if my particular flights were not cancelled, there are so few left now that they would be crowded like a tin of sardines.
I would rather know that I am not going now than to spend the next 8 weeks in limbo. There is nothing this autistic serpent loathes so much as chaos and uncertainty
Now the thing will be to see how difficult Emirates Airlines and the travel agent will make it for me to change the dates to next September. Not sure at all what happens with the travel insurance since the reason for not travelling is a government ban and I bought and paid for the insurance before the virus had become a big thing here in Oz
In the meantime, I will look out for some more masks or just resort to using giant scarves when on the bus or otherwise out and about.
Being so isolated here means that the odds are in our favour but all you need is one case to slip through the net and all hell could break loose
The state border is so far away from the major cities so that is yet another obstacle and it is mostly long distance truck drivers that bother going near the place and it has been shut down anyway even when they do
The footy players and their entourage are still getting far too many free passes so I suspect if it does get past all our virus proof fences, it will find its way in on a football.
A quick fix of the recent federal government stats
And three weeks is an eternity
3 weeks ago there were 50 active cases of COVID 19 in Victoria. Now there are more than 800 and more than 200 confirmed new cases each day
The graph looks like a very steep U bend with peaks in March and July
It seems that the weakest link is the quarantine hotels. Most states in Australia have the army or police managing these places but Victoria for some inexplicable reason subcontracted the job out to private security firms. Probably the same dodgy sorts they outsource the refugee prison camps to.
Aside from claiming non existent security guards, it seems the real ones weren’t trained that well and some were to put it politely ‘fraternising with the enemy’
So some of these guards got infected and brought the bug into their own communities from where it spread like wildfire
Apparently it turned out to be a sufficiently big story that this outbreak was covered by the BBC and my sister in Amsterdam heard about it
She told me that she got the impression that the real reasons the Aussies were peeved was they’d had their Virus poster child status revoked. That gold medal that they were sharing with New Zealand has been snatched at the last minute
I said that is quite likely but its more probably that people are pissed off that they will now have to go without their beer and the football Grand Final.
All international flights coming into Melbourne and now Victoria in general, have been diverted to other states and a 6 week lockdown imposed on Melbourne. This means all cafes and restaurants are back to take away only, people permitted to leave their residence for work, essential shopping, exercise and care duties.
Many restaurants had started to ramp up after restrictions were eased. Putting on more staff and placing larger food orders with their suppliers etc. Now they are all back to the drawing board.
It’s still not clear if the outbreak came from just the one hotel or if there were several all over the place. Scary that one tiny break in the chain can cause so much chaos
The borders to New South Wales have been closed for the first time in over 100 years and there is a lot of mean sneering in many of the other states rather reminiscent of the attitude of Florida and Texas when New York was the centre of the epidemic.
I guess it takes a crisis to bring out both the worst and the best in people
The Wild West of course were like the greedy relatives at a wake. The corpse is not yet cold and they are all ready grabbing for the jewellery. In this case the Football trophy cabinet. Not just the local newspaper but a whole bunch of politicians too who really should know better.
It seems unlikely that the Grand Final will now be held in Melbourne according to the usual schedule. Packing so many people in a stadium is just the height of recklessness in these viral times but it really is not necessary for the football tragics here to go rubbing the Victorians noses in it by trying to snaffle the event for themselves.
They would be pretty pissed off if the shoe had been on the other foot.
This whole incident has now led the feds to restrict the flow of people coming in to Australia which was little more than a trickle anyway but still sufficient to trigger the latest outbreak
Over here in the Wild West, there still seems to be no sign of any community outbreak. All cases here are traceable to overseas and interstate arrivals, all of whom have to go into 14 day quarantine.
Recent Official Oz government statistics
Since the Federal Government intends to drastically reduce the number of people entering Australia, one obvious way to do this is to extend the travel ban on Australians leaving the country so that reduces the future supply of some of those trying to get back
There are exemptions on compassionate and other grounds but buying a plane ticket 6 months ago is not likely to be on that list
Back in June, it looked quite likely that those restrictions would be relaxed some time in August or September but now there seems little chance of that
So I think I can safely assume that long planned Grand European Adventure will not be happening after all despite having booked and paid for my flights way back in the first week of March. Everything escalated so quickly after that.
Even if my particular flights were not cancelled, there are so few left now that they would be crowded like a tin of sardines.
I would rather know that I am not going now than to spend the next 8 weeks in limbo. There is nothing this autistic serpent loathes so much as chaos and uncertainty
Now the thing will be to see how difficult Emirates Airlines and the travel agent will make it for me to change the dates to next September. Not sure at all what happens with the travel insurance since the reason for not travelling is a government ban and I bought and paid for the insurance before the virus had become a big thing here in Oz
In the meantime, I will look out for some more masks or just resort to using giant scarves when on the bus or otherwise out and about.
Being so isolated here means that the odds are in our favour but all you need is one case to slip through the net and all hell could break loose
The state border is so far away from the major cities so that is yet another obstacle and it is mostly long distance truck drivers that bother going near the place and it has been shut down anyway even when they do
The footy players and their entourage are still getting far too many free passes so I suspect if it does get past all our virus proof fences, it will find its way in on a football.
A quick fix of the recent federal government stats
