COVID-19 updates comments and concerns

[griffin]

14 more cases today in NZ from the new outbreak.
I feel a bit more upset over this than the growing problem in Australia, as NZ was doing such a great job being the only country (that I'm aware of) that had managed to eliminate the virus, for over 3 months. As opposed to Australia, which was close to doing the same but took the issue of quarantine too lightly, and now has a long road ahead dealing with the current outbreak in a couple of states.

As I've said recently, I think we should probably be quarantining returning citizens off-shore (at any one of their immigration processing islands), and only transport them onto the mainland after their 14 days and with negative test results. At the moment, Australia has had to cut back on the number of returned citizens (who already have limited flight options and departure windows), because too many resources are now tied up with containing the community outbreak, and processing off-shore will help increase the number of people being able to come home, while preventing future community outbreaks.

[griffin]

It's good to see the case numbers in Victoria coming down in the last week, thanks to all the hard work most of the residents are doing to stop the spread of the virus.
The numbers have been 200-300 in the last few days, down from the peak days of 700+.
It's just the death rates that are still going to take a few more days to reach their peak, as it takes a week or two for the virus to fully develop and shut down the respiratory systems. Today was still seeing increases in hospital admissions and people in ICU or ventilators, so until those numbers start coming down, I fear that we will be seeing more bad news.
The good that can come of it though, is the lag in rising deaths that the media will be focussing on (for ratings) will help encourage people to stay committed to the lockdown restrictions while the case numbers are dropping - when all the numbers are dropping it could lead to people being complacent or demanding an end to the restrictions due to it being less likely to catch the virus, but the higher death numbers will still make it look like the situation is serious and a higher chance of catching it.

It is also good to see the daily numbers in NSW are still falling instead of increasing. I was sure that they would have been following the infection numbers of Victoria, but I guess they had a small enough number of cases for their resources to be able to track down most of the potentially infected people to isolate enough people to limit the community spread.
The numbers of people who they couldn't work out the source of their infection is getting smaller (just one person yesterday), so the contact tracing in conjunction with social distancing, masks and washing of hands and social surfaces, is actually working when the daily case numbers are small enough (under 20 in NSW at the peak of their second wave).
It was a shame that Victoria wasn't able to do the same when it's second wave had its daily case numbers sitting in the teens for a whole week at the beginning, before ballooning out to daily numbers of 70-80 in the second week, and triple digits from then on.

At least we aren't as bad as America, with over a thousand (reported) dead most days for the last 4 weeks... for their population compared to ours, it would be like us having 90-100 people dying each day here in Australia. Hopefully the number from yesterday (25) is the worst for us here.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I found myself having a chuckle at this webpage from NHK.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/n...kstories/1079/

I'd like to draw attention to the picture of people spaced out on the train seats, where is this magical train?
Also down the very bottom,
Work from home or stagger hours with collegues.
Also: Work in spacious rooms.

I appreciate their efforts, but there is not a lot of this going on. Also conflicting information.

One section suggests not travelling to areas with high infections and generally avoid travelling. YET the govt has initatied the ever so awesomely name "Go to Travel" campaign where they'll subsidize one's accommodation. So, am I to travel or not?
They'll follow that up with a "go to eat" campaign subsidizing visits to restaurants. While I see the need to get people spending money (despite the job losses of people), I'd rather see them set up some rules for businesses to follow in regards to spacing and amount of customers per metre etc.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Maybe they're all actually gaijin on the train, and that's why no-one's willing to sit next to them.

[jazzcomp]

One of the schools got shutdown because of COVID. All students told to self-isolate. What about the parents?

[griffin]

Good news about Victoria with new cases down to below 100 yesterday.
Unfortunately the case numbers in NSW and QLD keep putting along, with new outbreaks popping up just after old ones are considered contained (no more related cases in those areas).

[Autocon]

Australia has reached 600 deaths