Coronavirus 3 - Al Pacino's turn to mumble

[David]

For what it's worth, if we're just talking locally acquired cases (i.e. not people in quarantine hotels), these are the recent month-by-month new local case numbers since the second wave started to wind down:

February (to today): VIC 16 / NSW 1
January (New Year's Eve outbreak in Melbourne; tail-end of Northern Beaches outbreak in Sydney): VIC 24 / NSW 47
December (Northern Beaches outbreak in Sydney): VIC 3 / NSW 170
November: VIC 0 / NSW 9
October (last month of Victoria's second wave; not sure what was happening in NSW): VIC 176 / NSW 64

[stui magpie]

^
Actually yesterday was 28 days since the last locally transmitted case in NSW and there are currently no active cases outside of HQ

[David]

The Covid Live site records one new NSW case last Monday, but I'm not precisely sure how they define that (and it seems to have been cancelled out by a downwards reclassification on 26 January), so there has been 0 net increase for 28 days at any rate.

[stui magpie]

Yeah, well with no local cases for 28 days and no local active cases, NSW has effectively achieved elimination of the virus in the ommunity without needing to resort to lockdowns.

Meanwhile, this sounds like a good idea to me.

Avalon Airport could be transformed into Victoria’s first outdoor international quarantine facility in just 30 days, if given the green light by the state government.

The Victorian Government confirmed on Sunday it was “considering” the use of Avalon Airport as a potential quarantine option to house international arrivals.

The airport’s chief executive officer Justin Giddings said preliminary plans to convert the international airport into a self-contained quarantine facility had been informally presented to the state government.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/natio ... d8c472d008

[Pies4shaw]

For what it's worth, if we're just talking locally acquired cases (i.e. not people in quarantine hotels), these are the recent month-by-month new local case numbers since the second wave started to wind down:

February (to today): VIC 16 / NSW 1
January (New Year's Eve outbreak in Melbourne; tail-end of Northern Beaches outbreak in Sydney): VIC 24 / NSW 47
December (Northern Beaches outbreak in Sydney): VIC 3 / NSW 170
November: VIC 0 / NSW 9
October (last month of Victoria's second wave; not sure what was happening in NSW): VIC 176 / NSW 64

So, the communiity transmissions since 1 December are running at 43 Victoria to 218 NSW. So, it's actually NSW ahead 5 to 1, not 4 to 1. Funny that.

[stui magpie]

Quiet morning, just ducked down to the supermarket but put some petrol in the car first.

Chatting to the bird in the servo, she was saying the town is nearly full as people have come up from Melbourne over the weekend, after the lockdown was supposedly started.

A lot of them are camping, beaches on the NSW side are pretty full but the ones on the Vic side near empty.

Only problem is, all these Victorian coming to NSW is lowering the IQ of both states

[Pies4shaw]

[David]

[Pies4shaw]

^ Yes, obviously. The initial concern I raised with Jezza (and he helpfully clarified in the quote I set out above) was that there were:

Rumours circulating that the ring of steel will be returning from Wednesday.

There's a bit of difference between businesses preparing for the possibility, without any inkling of that which is actually going to happen, and the sort of "rumours" that we frequently see come from the media in relation to COVID (many of which aren't rumours at all - they seem to be more like deliberate leaks in advance of announcements).

By the way, Victoria's CHO provided part of the logic for the management of the outbreak this morning (and the possibility that they might now enough about it to wrap up lockdown on Thursday, despite the concern I mentioned above about incubation periods), according to the ABC in its blog, saying that:

"As for the median incubation period, the time from being exposed to causing illness in individuals, I have also seen evidence and I can post it that relates to the fact that it might be up to eight days shorter, median, [than] previous variants.

[eddiesmith]

You would assume Victoria Police is preparing for the return of the ring of marshmallows which is where some rumours have come from given their whole excuse was if we can’t fine people for breaking the rules we won’t put them in place...

So if the 3-4 days they had been preparing for lockdown wasn’t enough for the return of the ring of marshmallows then you’d hope their getting it ready now just in case.

[stui magpie]

The problem is at the moment, the border checkpoints are gone and without the ring of chickenwire there's nothing preventing people just jumping in the car and leaving the state , unless of course you're stupid enough to try to take the caravan with you or load the roof rack with stuff.

They don't want to put any of the checkpoints back in place as it's a massive drain on resources and pisses off the Police who have to do it. It's nearly as bad as drawing Covid Hotel duty

[eddiesmith]

It’s bad enough all of Metropolitan Melbourne being forced into lockdown over something in a small geographical area, but the whole state paying for something in a small part of Melbourne is just absurd.

Fact is there is no reason they’d have to put back in their checkpoints, QLD didn’t think they needed checkpoints when they did a small localised lockdown. You just use roving patrols with the technology they’ve already got in their vehicles to scan licence plates.

But if you can’t fine people then Dan isn’t interested.

I’ll finish with some words from a true leader:

“Certain states have a way of doing things and NSW has a way of doing things. I think the way we dealt with the northern beaches cluster is the way NSW tends to deal with these issues," Ms Berejiklian told reporters on Monday.

"We avoid a lockdown at all costs, avoid closing our borders, allow our citizens as much freedom as we can while we're managing the virus.”

[David]

I would have thought you woop-woop denizens would support ringing Melbourne off, again, right?

In all seriousness, it does seem a bit over-the-top for the whole state to go into lockdown for what seems to be an issue exclusive to Melbourne at present. I understand New South Wales is much more geographically spread out, but it wouldn't have made any sense to me for Wagga Wagga to be locked down because things were out of hand in Sydney and I suppose it should be the same case for Mildura, Bendigo and so on. But making that distinction would require checkpoints somewhere to be at all enforceable, so I guess it depends on what side of the wall you'd rather be on.

[eddiesmith]

But Brisbane was locked down only and they didn’t require checkpoints to enforce it

[stui magpie]

The checkpoints they had around Melbourne last time only stopped the stupid people.