COVID-19: Discussion of Impact 😷

Pretty sure the UK has recorded a much higher death toll per capita that the US.

Do you know prevalence of Covid in the UK is now lower than February 2020 - 4 weeks before the pandemic was even known and UK went into lockdown?

Positive rate is 0.4 right now in UK. It’s estimated it was 13% in Feb 2020 - it’s 32 times safer out there right now.

It appears that one of those people who jumped the queue was ABC journalist Jane Norman. She effectively outed herself that she did it on Twitter:


Todays Victorian Covid-19 Update

There are many factors to this. The situation in India would undoubtedly be significantly worse than the numbers that are being reported. India is a developing country with a huge population - there is no way we are seeing the real scale of this in the numbers that are being released. The US and UK would have had much more accurate figures.

Secondly we are currently experiencing the highest COVID case numbers worldwide that we’ve had the entire pandemic. That exposes us to a huge risk - so if stopping flights from the country that has seen such a rapid increase to levels that we have not seen during the entire pandemic reduces that risk, then that is a fair call.

Not to mention that our own hotel quarantine system is seeing a huge increase in case numbers and this is mostly due to flights that are coming from India. We didn’t see this scale of cases in the last 6 months coming to Australia from the US and UK.

I actually think that our elite athletes getting the jabs is a good opportunity to promote vaccinations in a positive light to the wider public. If athletes getting them opens up the opportunity for them to travel, compete and for an international event to go ahead… then it might encourage some who are sitting on the fence to eventually get a vaccine. It’s a sign that eventually once vaccinated we can potentially get back to travel and some normality again.

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That is a good way of looking at it and not something I thought of before. I guess what annoys me the most is that people like Morrison and other government workers were able to get the Pfizer vaccine first - so it seemed like a class situation - and now there is limited supply of it. And giving to the athletes could just add to that class system.

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Anyone who is willing to get the vaccine should just go for it. We are vaccinating at such a slow pace and there is so much hesitancy even in the older populations to go and get the AZ jab - if you miss the boat you should have jumped on earlier. I’d roll up my sleeve tomorrow.

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Agree. Why are we rolling out the vaccine in phases? Shouldn’t anyone who want to be vaccinated get to do so?

I’m sick of waiting for this government and their ā€˜fastest’ rollout of the vaccine when they’ve botched it and we’re still stuck in 1B phase waiting for older people to be vaccinated before the rest of us.

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If people were jumping at the chance to do it in their respective phases then fair enough but they are not.

I live down the road from the Exhibition Building in Melbourne and they’re meant to have capacity to do thousands of vaccines a day yet there is no delay currently for walk-ins and most of the high volume vaccination centres in Victoria have only very minimal wait times - High-volume vaccination centres | Coronavirus Victoria

Just open it up for anyone and everyone who wants a vaccine to go get it sorted. The nervous nellies can go lock themselves up whilst the rest of us get on with life. We need to be ready to move with the rest of the world when they’re ready to open up because if not and at this current rate, Australia will be left behind.

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I guess that essential workers, over 70s and those with medical conditions still need to be prioritised for their second doses.

At least from Monday the roll out has been expanded to anyone over 50. That should hopefully see an uptick in the coming weeks. I guess then the reasoning is that all of us under 50 will need to wait for more doses of Pfizer to arrive. I still think though that the option should still be there to get Astrazeneca as long as we clearly understands the risks. I’d happily get it.

I would rather see them send some doses to the countries that desperately need it.

We are doing that too PNG as one example, but we can’t be leaving ourselves in the dark either despite our relative successes - as local production ramps up we will be able to distribute AZ to more countries.

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I think the world has accepted the ethics of nations prioritising their own populations until there is a surplus of vaccine, before looking to others.
The solution should be to make more vaccine faster, not to spread the existing stock thinner.

Then there is the dilemma, would trump-like leaders like bolsonaro deserve other nations vaccines’ when they do so little to help themselves?

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A deal with Fox at Avalon might not have sat well with many considering the close relationship Andrews and Fox apparently have. Any investigation into such deal would probably expose all sorts of things between those two.

And who oprates the Post Entry Quarantine facilities at Mickleham? That’s right the federal government because quarantine is a Commonwealth responsibility. Oh the irony.

Nah, just proving again it’s not got the international arrivals that Melbourne does.

thats only for cattlle

Mickleham is a growing area. There are a number of new housing estates being built around the Mickleham area. Wonder how those residents will feel if/when a Quarantine Facility is built.