COVID-19 updates comments and concerns

[1AZRAEL1]

Got abused by a Social Distance Warrior (my phrase I coined it lol, someone taking it upon themselves to tell people off) for not doing enough to monitor social distancing. Beyond me making announcements to people, what else can I do? If I had to call the police every time people didn't adhere to social distancing or listen to me, I'd have police on my train the whole time. It's not possible.

[griffin]

This page is worth a read, for a look at how each state has been with the virus... including the sharp increase in Victoria, overtaking all other states in terms of case numbers and per-capita numbers.

The state-based graphs also show that NSW is currently where Victoria was 4 weeks ago, when they had just one area as a hotspot, with daily case numbers in the teens... which became 40-50 3 weeks ago, to 70-80 2 weeks ago, to 200-300 last week to today.

Worldwide, the only measure that has proven to work in reducing the virus numbers (not even trying to eradicate it), is total lockdown that only has people out of their houses for vital services, food/medicine shopping, and employment that isn't in the services sector and observes social distancing and cleaning. New Zealand did it, Singapore did it, Australia did it, and even New York did it... but every location or country that re-opened before the virus was eradicate, EVERY country, has seen a resurgence of the virus.

And countries that do eradicate the virus (like Australia and New Zealand) only takes one slip-up for the virus to repopulate (the quarantine hotel breach in Melbourne and the quarantine breach in New Zealand)... and no matter how much testing is being done, no matter how many people are tasked to find all contacts that could be infected, and how much we have selected suburbs being told to not travel out of their area, the virus will not be contained while people are allowed to mingle in public, especially before they know that they are infected (if they are eventually tracked down as a contact of someone else).
I would recommend QLD close its border again to NSW, and any states that are still virus free, to open up to each other. Then NSW and VIC need to go back to the April-May level of lockdown, to kill off the virus again... and they have to realise or remember, that a lockdown takes about 1 week to take effect, so what ever the daily case numbers are when you start it, double it and that will be the peak, with more deaths from the higher number.
It might not be something people there want to return to (especially for people who never returned to work since the first lockdown started), but if NSW locks down now, it will take less time to kill off the virus and return to the process of re-opening.... the state will only have a peak of 100 cases a day, which should limit deaths to 4 or 5. This would compare to waiting a couple weeks, with the virus hitting 100 cases per day, thinking in vain that the virus could be contained while people are able to interact with each other (masks, hand-washing and social distancing reduces the spread, but doesn't prevent it... and that's only if every single person does all three, which we know will never happen here).
If the state waits until 100 case per day to start acting, it will be another week of increases and deaths before the lockdown takes affect on reducing case numbers.

The same with QLD - they need to close the border now before any infected NSW people enter (with most going to themeparks and holiday locations that have concentrations of people, many of whom also travelled there from somewhere else, taking the virus back with them to more places, than if it was just a hotspot in a suburban location). Business groups and tourist companies have been pressuring the QLD government to open up the border, and they are not going to let it shut back down, even after we have virus cases show up in the state. But they need to understand that, if they close the border before the virus gets in, they can still do business with people from SA, WA, NT, TAS and QLD... however, if they force the border to stay open to be selfishly trying to make money from people in NSW, 2-3 weeks after the virus starts showing up here, every business in QLD will have to shut down again completely, preventing them from doing business with any state, including their own.
Having an economy crawling along at 50% and remain virus free, is much better than having a 70% economy for just 2-3 weeks and be operating at 0% for another couple of months during a new lockdown.
Since I'm in QLD, this bothers me, because it was really feeling like life was back to normal up here with more people returning to work and schools back to normal, without a risk of being infected after 3 months of no new domestic cases and our premier being so tough with locking up our borders for longer than necessary. But now I feel that with the state election just 3 months away, she is going to bow to business groups to not close the borders while there are no cases found within QLD... even though it will be too late after cases are found here. (if she closes the borders before infections appear, she will be targeted as being too hasty, but then how do you prove that it was the right time to do it)


The third alternative is to slog through the virus like in America, with businesses open for about 2 months, before too many cases and deaths force people to shut down voluntarily to avoid getting sick themselves (or infect their elderly relatives and friends).

Some stats are circulating on facebook at the moment about the true cost in lives and value to the economy if the virus worked its way through all of America, resulting in the average of 1% death-rate and the 10% of people who will have life-term health problems after recovering from the virus.
1% sounds really small, but in America that's 3.8 Million people dead, which would be the entire population of Brisbane wiped out. Each death costs money to the businesses they work for (if they were employed), and costs money to the families they were providing for, not to mention the insurance payouts of those who are life insurance.
Then look at the 10% of people who will never work again (another 38 million people - more than the population of Australia), or even be able to live life to the full ever again, needing constant medical treatment or assistance, as people who ended up with serious symptoms leave hospital with damaged lungs, organs and nervous systems. That's an extra 10% of people on the welfare system, who will be costing hospital systems through ongoing treatments (and the original covid treatment, on expensive ventilators and Intensive Care beds).
That's at least 11% of the entire population removed from the employment pool, and collecting welfare instead of paying taxes.
All the talk from business groups and politicians about lockdowns costing the economy... preventing deaths and serious illness, would save the economy more in the long run.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Covid-19 is very efficient in finding holes in a country's pandemic response. In Australia, it was initially the Ruby Princess, and it's now Victoria's quarantine process. In Singapore, it is the migrant working population. In America, it is...well everything.

Speaking as a someone lucky enough to be in W.A., I'm befuddled as to how Queensland and NSW don't immediately close their borders. I guess there's a real normalisation of travelling up and down the East Coast that us Sandgropers can't relate to. We feel pretty isolated ourselves so the idea of closing the border hasn't been given a second thought.

[G1Optimal]

I heard from somewhere the nsw will go back into lockdown when they reach 100 cases
I think it was the news

[dirge]

Speaking as a someone lucky enough to be in W.A., I'm befuddled as to how Queensland and NSW don't immediately close their borders. I guess there's a real normalisation of travelling up and down the East Coast that us Sandgropers can't relate to. We feel pretty isolated ourselves so the idea of closing the border hasn't been given a second thought.

Part of it is the fact that there are border cities.

The reality is that Albury-Wodonga functions as one unit - Wodonga's (landline) area code is a NSW code, for example. Similarly, Tweed Heads (and Tweed Heads West, Banora Point, Kingscliff, Tweed Heads South etc) is a suburb of the Gold Coast.

There was a not unreasonable suggestion by the mayor of the Gold Coast this week that the "line" for the purposes of the Queensland bubble be drawn at Banora Point (which is on the north bank of the Tweed River). The catch with that is that Kingscliff & Chinderah are two suburbs on the south side of the river... and you'd be splitting the Tweed Shire up - making the delivery of services (such as rubbish collection) very difficult. Sure, the garbage trucks could be waved though, but they'd still be caught in the checkpoint queues. How to you ask garbos to spend 3 hours of overtime on every shift waiting to pass the checkpoint?.

I guess a Perth equivalent would be... do you cut off at Bibra Lake? Rockingham? Mandurah? No matter where you draw the line, you're bisecting interconnected settlements.

[Dan]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but is there such a thing, yet, as face masks made to look like the lower faces of Prime, Soundwave, Wheeljack etc?

[High_Q]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but is there such a thing, yet, as face masks made to look like the lower faces of Prime, Soundwave, Wheeljack etc?

I'd like to know too. I checked the Internet but found nothing fit for purpose within a reasonable price range. How hard can it be to design it to look like a OP or SW's faceplate?

For Wheeljack's design, i think we can get away from wrapping a bandage around our nose and mouth area like a mummy .

[Dan]

For Wheeljack's design, i think we can get away from wrapping a bandage around our nose and mouth area like a mummy .

That 'bandage' look is already rather surgical. Hey maybe it even contributed to my childhood conflation of Wheeljack and Ratchet as the same character.

[SharkyMcShark]

I'd like to know too. I checked the Internet but found nothing fit for purpose within a reasonable price range. How hard can it be to design it to look like a OP or SW's faceplate?

For Wheeljack's design, i think we can get away from wrapping a bandage around our nose and mouth area like a mummy .

Ive seen a Prime one floating around the net (reddit I think)

[griffin]

The numbers in Victoria are staying stubbornly high around 400 each day... but I guess the good thing about that is that it stopped increasing at the same rate it was in the first three weeks of this current outbreak (20s in the first week, 80s in the second week, 200s in the third week). The fact that the numbers aren't going back down like last time, suggests that people are still interacting with each other too much in public. Even though the VIC government is offering to pay people to get tested ($300, and then $1500 if they are positive, so that they don't keep going to work while waiting for the test results), people probably don't trust what government says, even if they are a popular one at the time. (and the payment probably takes a couple months to be processed and paid, which could be too late to pay for bills or food if they live week-to-week on minimum wage or a family)

NSW on the other hand, is surprisingly still having its case numbers stay in the 10s-20s.... considering how spread out the cases have been so far. In Victoria, most of the cases were in Melbourne, but in NSW, most of the cases have been outside of Sydney. Maybe that will change as cases show up in the city and then spread more easily as more people are concentrated together.

Tasmania, WA, SA and NT have set up a travel bubble, but not with QLD, probably while they keep their border open with NSW. I expect cases to show up in QLD by the end of next week from NSW, as people try to escape the virus, but end up bringing it with them. Once the virus shows up in QLD, it will follow NSW and VIC, attempting to test and trace a virus that is always 2-4 days ahead (when the news programs alert people to a case in certain area and that people need to get tested, it is always a few days ago, and everyone at that location during that time have already travelled around other areas and had contact with lots of other people).
QLD needs to re-close its borders (if it isn't already too late, as hundreds of people have given false details or not declared being in virus zones), and then be able to join the travel bubble. With most of the NSW population now considered a prohibited hotspot, QLD businesses who were demanding the border to be opened to NSW, would make more from the other "clean" states, than the limited number of NSW people who are currently allowed in. It would also give QLD earlier access to New Zealand when they open up their borders to Australian states that have no current outbreak.

The medical experts have mentioned that they can trace a strain of the virus (when they noted that all of the VIC cases came from one of the quarantine hotels), so I'm thinking that this more contagious outbreak means that the March-May outbreak killed off the weaker strains, leaving behind the more aggressive strains behind. It would explain how "second waves" are often worse than the first outbreak, despite communities and people already experienced in combating the virus, and more people are taking preventative measures than before (masks, distancing, staying home, testing, washing).

The number of deaths in Victoria is something people should know who are opposed to adhering to community guidelines on preventing the spread, as 1 out of every 100 people infected will die... and 1 in 10 will have life-long debilitating effects (nerve damage, lung damage, brain damage, organ failure, trouble walking, etc.).
There is no way of predicting who it will be, so it could be someone you know or are related to if you get infected and think you are too young to die from it. And a reminder of the much rarer, but still possible occurrence, to people on the other end of the age scale (children), who are still being struck down in more infected countries by the mysterious anti-body reaction, who had caught the virus without symptoms and now had anti-bodies that are supposed to protect them, but are being violently rejected by their immune system.