-
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life or NZ, but it is a sad reality.
I think it is only a matter of time before it gets back out in NZ, we have been very lucky so far with the breaches we have had.
Maybe Govt's are banking on something being available by year end, if not, then re-evaluate?
With no supply or manufacturing secured for vaccine candidates, it will be some time before anything is available in NZ.
-
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life possibly, if Labour stay in, I'm not sure they have a plan or if thier plan is the status quo...
that will get old if the rest of the world starts getting on with it, and kiwis are still stuck in their bubble
absolutely the same goes for here.
anecdotally, we already have inquiries from European tourism agents wondering when we will be up and running again. Their tourism sector is moving again already, and they are struggling to wrap their head around us telling them we have no date to give.
-
@Tim said in Coronavirus - Australia:
With no supply or manufacturing secured for vaccine candidates, it will be some time before anything is available in NZ.
dont need to tell me, it's our Govt that needs to know these kinds of things, as it seems they have no plan B
-
@mariner4life nobody would’ve ever predicted that at any point in the season, the Saints would be the only Melbourne team in the top 4.
Just on the curfew issue, it does seem a little left field, arbitrary and even OTT, but I was talking to a friend who is a cop down here and they were getting lots of calls from “concerned citizens” about parties, big social gatherings, noise etc from particular hot spot communities.
The late night KFC runs are now off the table 😉
-
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
stay strong Vic ferners. This will suck. Especially because you can see other states at the pub, or watching your sports teams.
I have a sneaky suspicion Qld will close its borders again this week
No new cases today, but concerns about Mexicans crossing the border!
-
@ACT-Crusader said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
stay strong Vic ferners. This will suck. Especially because you can see other states at the pub, or watching your sports teams.
I have a sneaky suspicion Qld will close its borders again this week
No new cases today, but concerns about Mexicans crossing the border!
build a wall!
-
I couldn’t stop laughing yesterday watching the SA govt update. Two new cases and the Chief Health official said “it’s been a very busy weekend for my team”. So what do they do, apply restrictions. Two new cases???????
-
@ACT-Crusader said in Coronavirus - Australia:
I couldn’t stop laughing yesterday watching the SA govt update. Two new cases and the Chief Health official said “it’s been a very busy weekend for my team”. So what do they do, apply restrictions. Two new cases???????
ridiculous wasn't it?
Last night at the footy they had 20,000. Today, they can only have 10,000. Because of 2 new cases.
FMD. It's like they felt left out.
-
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
as an indicator of how serious this is, it is expected 1 in 7 people in Victoria (or melbourne, i can't remember which) will be out of a job by next week.
This will be a bitter pill to swallow. Businesses that already got through 2 months of no turnover, then 2 months of limited turnover, now have to shut the doors again. The toll that will take on people will be enormous.
Also people can't exist on limited wages indefinitely. We're already at 4 months, Victorians will be for months and months after this.
And just to muddy the waters, the WHO have now come out and said there may never be a vaccine, ad certainly won't be a silver bullet vaccine that gets us all out of this. So how does that affect government thinking?
Some of them have abrogated their responsibility to unelected officials so the smarter politicians take control of the narrative and reposition according to the updated information from the WHO and the realisation that we may have to live with this virus - i.e. focus on minimising harm to the aged.
This will inevitably mean they will hang some public servants out to dry. CHOs shouldn't be visible anyway - they're there to give advice to Ministers, not make pronouncements about which suburbs can leave their homes ffs.
-
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
the WHO have now come out and said there may never be a vaccine, ad certainly won't be a silver bullet vaccine that gets us all out of this. So how does that affect government thinking?
yep, governments need to be looking at a plan to live WITH the Virus.
Man, we have been beating that drum on this forum for a while now. I have to believe these discussions are happening within NZ and Australian government, but there certainly are no signs of their thinking being communicated to Joe public. As I've said previously, at the minimum there should be lots of consultation with the most affected industries, eg tourism, universities, property dev etc, all of whom could be actively repurposing, recutting strategy, or at worst shutting down (rather than sucking public funds for no gain) but it sounds like that isn't happening either.
-
We've always known that there might not be a vaccine though. It's just empty rhetoric from the likes of Trump that had anyone thinking otherwise.
there's lots of contemporaneous work going on to develop effective treatments that allow us to live successfully with the virus. That's what I am hoping anyway.
@mariner4life where'd you get that figure from 15% unemployment seems like a sudden jump. they're hoping here to keep it at more like 10-12. I guess we will find out when the subsidies end. - and in the months after that.
i did read today that heavy vehicle kms travelled is actually up in NZ for the last mth cf 2019. A KPI that is usually a good indicator of economic activity
-
@dogmeat said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life where'd you get that figure from 15% unemployment seems like a sudden jump. they're hoping here to keep it at more like 10-12. I guess we will find out when the subsidies end. - and in the months after that
heard it on the news on the way to work. Based on hospo, retail, and a significantly restricted construction industry
-
@mariner4life These are monoclonal antibodies that will be produced in bioreactors similar to fermenters. When administered to infected monkeys, they blocked viral replication at least as well as current vaccine candidates. i.e. they would be something that could be given to infected people to stop them developing serious symptoms, and stop producing more virus in their bodies.
-
@voodoo said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@taniwharugby said in Coronavirus - Australia:
@mariner4life said in Coronavirus - Australia:
the WHO have now come out and said there may never be a vaccine, ad certainly won't be a silver bullet vaccine that gets us all out of this. So how does that affect government thinking?
yep, governments need to be looking at a plan to live WITH the Virus.
Man, we have been beating that drum on this forum for a while now. I have to believe these discussions are happening within NZ and Australian government, but there certainly are no signs of their thinking being communicated to Joe public. As I've said previously, at the minimum there should be lots of consultation with the most affected industries, eg tourism, universities, property dev etc, all of whom could be actively repurposing, recutting strategy, or at worst shutting down (rather than sucking public funds for no gain) but it sounds like that isn't happening either.
If we look to Victoria as an example, they've shut down industries that weren't hot spots and kept open those that are:
While the restrictions will see most retail, manufacturing and administration businesses close and strict limits placed on numbers of workers in settings such as abattoirs, warehouses and construction sites, many industries in which there have been significant coronavirus clusters will continue to operate, including health, aged care and takeaway food.
Many businesses that managed to struggle through the first closure of three months and saw light at the end of the tunnel have now had to shutter again. A considerable amount of them won't be able to reopen as a result.
-
Article on the incompetence of Victoria:
Poorly trained security guards on a so-called “crazy floor” of the Rydges Hotel in Melbourne’s Swanston Street may have let COVID-19 escape into the community, after they became overwhelmed by hysterical guests who were screaming, crying and banging on walls, begging to be let out.
This week’s independent inquiry into the spread of the virus is expected to hear evidence that guests were begging, pleading and even offering money to security guards for a cigarette, a lighter, Valium or a breath of fresh air.
Many of those travellers, especially in the early days of the virus, were infectious, and the guards seemed unable to control them, with mental health professionals eventually called in.
The inquiry will hear that guards in one case struggled to handle a distraught women who collapsed and cried in the hotel hallway before making a bolt for the door, insisting on her need to “breathe”.
The Rydges Hotel was one of the first to take quarantine travellers, and one of the first to have a major virus breakout.
A guest of Rydges, released from the hotel after returning from Europe in April, has told The Australian he had been put on what guards described as the “crazy floor” of his hotel, “with people going absolutely nuts”.
“They had mental health people coming to sedate them,” said the guest, who asked not to be named. “They were asking for Valium, for sleeping pills.
“They were begging to be let out and running for the doors.”
The Victorian government was alone among the states in deciding to engage private security firms to manage hotel quarantine. By contrast, NSW relied on police officers, who are far more experienced at handling civilians under stress.
The guest told The Australian that the guards seem ill-equipped to handle people “who were coming off flights after 60 hours on the go, who wanted a cigarette, wanted fresh air, wanted to go home and see their family.
“And they were being told no, but the guards had no real authority … they gave the impression they could be talked around. And guests were going up to the security guards, begging and offering money to be let out. It was insane.”
More than 20 security guards, relatives and other contacts tested positive after coming into contact with guests at the 107-room Rydges Hotel.
There were outbreaks at the Stamford Plaza in Little Collins Street, too.
The emotional state of many quarantined travellers across Australia can be gleaned from the many posts still appearing on the “Hotel Quarantine” pages on Facebook.
One guest, from a hotel outside Victoria, admitting making “constant calls to reception” to get permission for fresh-air breaks.
“Tonight, I called reception at 10pm to get out for a break, they reply ‘Yes, I will put you on the list’ — I waited and waited for 15mins to get escorted out; still no-one, 10:15, 10:30, 10:45, I called.
“The officer only came to take me at 10:50pm which only gave me 10mins for fresh air.”
This break was permitted, under the program’s rules.
Others advised fellow guests to “lose your shit, cry” in order to get outside.
The pressure on others is apparent from their posts, with one saying: “I lost my shit on day 10. No amount of someone telling me that it was ‘going to be fine’ would comfort me.”
Another said they were “mentally broken” by the experience.
“The only thing we asked (pleaded) for when we arrived, was access to a mental health professional, and we were empathetically (convincingly) promised this,” she wrote.
“By the second day, still with no mental health support, which I naively assumed you would have ready for us the moment we arrived, or prescription medication that we had requested, our mental state had deteriorated further.
“By the third day, my partner was screaming — I mean, SCREAMING — for help, sobbing uncontrollably and wailing that she just wanted to die.”
An “imposing police officer” arrived to tell them to shut up.
Another guest of Rydges has complained directly to the Victorian government COVID-19 inquiry about the risk of transmission between guests.
Christine Joan Cocks says in a submission that she “was in quarantine in Rydges on Swanston from 12 April to 27 April, 2020” after returning from Uruguay.
“Issues of cleanliness concerned my husband and I,” she said. “We are both healthcare workers. The carpet was dirty. Quite a few in our cohort asked for a vacuum cleaner.
“ Of concern to us was how the vacuum cleaner was transferred from room to room.
“I do not think it was cleaned between transfers. A fair percentage of our cohort had tested COVID positive.”
She said guests were not expected to remove mattress toppers when stripping their own linen, upon leaving the hotel.
“We cannot believe this. How disgusting. What a great way to spread a virus. We double-bagged all waste within our room, but it was collected like that from our door. The first bag should have been put into the second bag held by a PPE-protected staff member, to ensure the outside of that bag was not contaminated.”
She also witnessed eight staff coming for their shift in just two cars. “I think it is unfair to just point a finger at the security staff at the hotel because, to us, the most likely weakness was how potential contaminants were managed by the hotel,” she said.
“Quarantine should only be managed by people well-trained in handling of contaminants.”
Public hearings of the inquiry begin on Thursday.
Topics to be examined include the nature of COVID-19; infection control; epidemiology and contact tracing; and genomic testing. The report is due on September 23, after the Victorian lockdown ends.
-
@antipodean wow
-
Updates from Victoria:
Exercising?
People who are isolating at home can no longer leave their property to exercise. Everyone else can use their one hour of exercise as normal.
Stiff shit if you can't get your exercise done within 5km and an hour. Otherwise people will die.
Childcare?
Dan Andrews will discuss childcare with the Prime Minister "It's not so much about whether it's a yes or no [in relation to childcare being open]," Mr Andrews said. "It's about trying to work out what will be the impact be. How many kids will be going to childcare? How many childcare workers will need to move around the community? How much movement will that add? How much will that undermine our general push to have as little movement as possible? "We'll get the clarity as quickly as we possibly can. We'll inform people and we'll try and make it as simple and as easy to understand as we possibly can."
Why do you need childcare if everyone has to stay at home ffs? Why should the country pay for your incompetence? Tax your own State.
Work permits?
Permit to be issued for workers who have to work past the 8:00pm curfew Mr Andrews said a permit would be issued for those who need to be out after 8:00pm from tomorrow. "It's a piece of paper. Your employer fills it out. They sign it. You sign it. You carry it with you and then you're able to demonstrate so there's not a sense of anxiety or a sense of having to tell your story 17 times. "If you're pulled up by police, you can simply provide that piece of paper and then you would be waved on to go about your business."
No loophole there. No sirree.
Coronavirus - Australia