COVID-19: Discussion of Impact šŸ˜·

Iā€™ve found in Melbourne that those first few weeks after lockdown everyone was strict and asking you to do it but now most places I go seem to just have a barcode on the menu or table and donā€™t even check or ask. Actually I donā€™t think that Iā€™ve ever been checked o. Melbourne that itā€™s actually been done. I guess some places are doing it better than others but SA seems more consistent and the SA app makes it easier too for consistency.

I guess we are visiting different places :man_shrugging:

1 Like

Yeah the SA app is so easy. You donā€™t even need the app either and itā€™s just as easy. I found it an inconvenience when I visited Sydney but here itā€™s just so much easier:

1 Like

Gladys has just announced the fireworks will go ahead but sheā€™s cancelling the essential workers from watching it on the foreshore. She will think of another way to thank them in the new year.

This should make both side happy now. Still fireworks but no spectators.

There is an Australia Day concert still planned on the forecourt of Sydney Opera House on January 26.

The essential workers can be invited to the concert, meaning no tickets will be sold to the public.

Iā€™ve got one - restoring their payrises. And then some. :wink:

1 Like

i have got a question and it involves this :

Man who escaped quarantine should have stayed: Victorian Health Minister

A man who escaped his quarantine hotel in Melbourne over the weekend should unequivocally have been in quarantine, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley says, despite the manā€™s protests.

John-Lee Berridge, 24, was arrested after police detained him in front of the Holiday Inn hotel on Sunday afternoon and he is facing fines up to $19,000.

He argued that although he had been in New South Wales for 9 months, he was a Victorian resident with a Victorian driverā€™s licence

now my question is: what is the unofficial rule of being a said resident of being a state. and how long have they got to they change their residency to that state? if I can recall in QLD its either 3 moths or 6months before you have to change

**and is the health minister rights in saying that after 9 months being in NSW heā€™s now an NSW person despite still having a VIC licence and saying heā€™s still a VIC reident **

Australia is ahead of schedule with its domestic production and importation plans for the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca coronavirus vaccine. However, the federal Health Minister Greg Hunt says the rollout will stil start in March.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

So why is the rest of the world rolling out vaccinations now but we have to wait another three months?

It sounds to me like he was living in NSW. By law he should have changed his driverā€™s licence to a NSW licence within three months.

1 Like

It probably will. Greg mentioned last week that March is and will remain the official date but he didnā€™t want to say itā€™s coming soon so when it does come before March they can say they over promised and delivered earlier than scheduled.

1 Like

When you compare Australia to the rest of the world, weā€™ve done exceptionally well and even if we have to wait a few months to get the vaccine, we are thankfully in a good position where we have the time to wait compared to other places like Europe and America where itā€™s running rife with hundreds of new cases a day. Weā€™re still in low double digits at the moment. If an outbreak was to go bad, then the bringing forward of the vaccine wouldnā€™t be a bad idea but we can thankfully function until the vaccine becomes available.

3 Likes

Not sure about everyone else, but Iā€™d vastly prefer to see the vaccines go through all the usual approval processes and be fine rather than things being rushed to market which could result in problems.

Yes, I get it. We all want the pandemic to be over ASAP. But at the same time, itā€™s also kind of important that organisations like the TGA donā€™t do anything which could potentially undermine the trust Australians have in them.

5 Likes

Because we bet everything on the wrong horse - and have a stockpile of a vaccine that they donā€™t even know the correct dosage level for, and that hasnā€™t been approved anywhere in the world?

We have some of the other ones in the pipeline, but weā€™re well back in the queue.

2 Likes

If we can keep cases low and maintain the timing for vaccine delivery, its a delay that we can likely live with - realistically, the delay in approval will be short in comparison to the delay in getting everyone vaccinated. Iā€™m more concerned that theyā€™ve outsourced (and likely with minimal oversight) the logistics & tracking to ticket-clipping companies like Accenture and PwC because we appear to have an incapable Government to do it in house

This article suggests that the emergency approval that the UK has awarded the vaccine may be a little hasty (well according to Europe)

We backed four candidates (one of which has been withdrawn), but appear to be favouring to Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine. It cant be unexpected that there are issues and some unknowns - years of R&D that normally would go into the development of these vaccines has been compressed into months, if not weeks.

We were never going to be towards the front of any queue with exception of any vaccination that we developed within Australia - securing the ability to undertake production of the Oxford/AZ vaccine locally will help longer term, as it will reduce our need to rely on overseas production

3 Likes

Nine Melbourne aired a look back on a year that was in Victoria.

5 Likes
2 Likes

Seven Melbourne had a similar report.

1 Like

60 consecutive days of no new local cases in Victoria.

Active cases have dropped by 4 from yesterday.

4 Likes

The Rosstat statistics agency said that the number of deaths from all causes recorded between January and November had risen by 229,700 compared to the previous year.

ā€œMore than 81 per cent of this increase in mortality over this period is due to COVID,ā€ said Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova, meaning that over 186,000 Russians have died from COVID-19.

1 Like