Lots of my Facebook friends in Smelbourne seem to have finally cracked today.  Many a long rant happening...

NSW can do so well with contact tracing (so too QLD and when we needed to do it, SA) because NSW is currently trending about 70 cases PER WEEK.

While Victoria maintains more than that PER DAY contact tracing by any method is pretty much impossible. One contact missed in a day is maybe 15 contacts (plus their contacts) the next day.

That Victoria can still see numbers over 100 per day even now suggests that there are still way too many Victorians not doing the right thing - and is most certainly nothing to be happy, weirdly or otherwise, about.

Stop blaming Victorians for living like normal humans.

Besides...a great deal of the transmission is happening in settings that can't be locked down...maybe if we want to get back to zero cases (for some reason) we should shrink wrap the hospitals and aged care centers and lock all of the patients, workers and residents inside, because that is going to be more effective than limiting outside time to 1 hour and making people wear masks outside.

You people have become so transfixed on transmission numbers that you can't see the bigger picture.

"Gotta get to zero...we can only get back to normal with zero cases...gotta be like NZ, cause NZ always does things right!"

The rest of the first world outside Australia and NZ no longer cares about transmission and pivoted to management. Australia is stuck in a March-April mindset.

I posted the following on this thread 4 days ago. Since then, I've read a lot of comment ranging from discontent to bitching, and I'm still waiting for an answer to:

"For all of the tremendous amount of criticism of Andrews, I am still waiting to read any positive ideas about how his detractors would have acted. To those detractors, you also have the inestimable aid of hindsight; the critic's 20/20 vision.

Nobody denies that there have been mistakes, and some bad ones, but it seems that all of the "Sack Andrews" chant is predicated on the belief that someone else could have done better. Bearing in mind that this is an event unique in living memory, who is the person and what would he/she have done?"

Perhaps I should have written, " a positive plan of action", instead of asking for positive ideas.

I posted the following on this thread 4 days ago. Since then, I've read a lot of comment ranging from discontent to bitching, and I'm still waiting for an answer to:

"For all of the tremendous amount of criticism of Andrews, I am still waiting to read any positive ideas about how his detractors would have acted. To those detractors, you also have the inestimable aid of hindsight; the critic's 20/20 vision.

Nobody denies that there have been mistakes, and some bad ones, but it seems that all of the "Sack Andrews" chant is predicated on the belief that someone else could have done better. Bearing in mind that this is an event unique in living memory, who is the person and what would he/she have done?"

Perhaps I should have written, " a positive plan of action", instead of asking for positive ideas.

Fair enough to ask that question. Yes hindsight helps, but we also have the European experience to draw upon. Here is what my plan would have been and its not too different from my thinking 6 weeks ago:

• Banning of aged care workers working at multiple facilities should have happened MONTHS earlier. We know from the EU experience that aged care workers working in multiple facilities was one of the main causes for the spread of the virus from home-to-home. This same thing played out exactly the same months before elsewhere.
• Aged care workers to NOT be allowed to have jobs outside of aged care for the length of the pandemic: for many aged care workers their aged care work is a casual side job alongside their other permanent part time job.
• Seriously consider aged care workers being confined, when possible, to live on-site.
• If not possible, aged care workers and their families should live in mandatory isolation. I believe Germany adopted this approach.
• Hospital staff would also have to do the above, no exceptions...loads of empty apartments for them that the Government could rent.
• Create an accelerated nursing program for the newly unemployed youth...loads of young people that could help manage any surge in cases...now they are sitting around doing nothing unemployed.
• NO admittance of nursing home residence to hospitals...they must be treated in the nursing home...not allowed to spread the virus into the hospitals.
• Make sure these people have all of the services they need...and bribe them with significant sums of money to stay the course for their sacrifices...which are significant...but less costly than a complete lockdown for everyone.
• Providing surge ICU capacity much earlier. It turns out that few countries have actually exhausted their ICU capacity, but just in case it would provide better treatment options with the higher number of expected cases (and yes there would be more).
• $1 million lump sum payment to me for my consulting services on this matter.

No one is adhering to the 23 hours a day inside rule. It is completely unenforceable. Between 5AM and 8PM its basically no different than Stage 3, except loads of small businesses where the virus was never spreading are shut for some reason.

'er indoors went out on Saturday to do the weekly shop. Drove to the supermarket and waited in line to get in. Did the shopping and then queued for 25 minutes for a checkout (I kid you not, she was messaging me the whole time, it was an eternity).

Then drove home via the Royal Nut Company (highly recommended) for nuts, chickpeas and my dried apricot fix.

The trip was all conducted within the 5km radius of her home and took well over an hour to complete.

The 1 hr rule is just dumb and is impossible to adhere to for many people.

What happened to the Hotel for Heroes program? That was supposed to protect front line staff and stop the spread. Is it still going or was it another Jenny Mikakos/DHHS stuff up.



I think that moderate to seriously ill Aged Care patients should be put into hospital. After all we did stop most elective surgery and supply huge numbers of ICU beds over the earlier months of the pandemic.  In our region we had a large private hospital shut down to normal clientele to be available for COVID patients. That facility was grossly underutilized; Why?



Keeping seriously ill patients in Aged Care allows the whole situation to be politicized. Deadpan Dan always seems to sneer when he calls the numbers of deaths related to aged care as he can lay the blame onto the Feds. Party politics at its worst.Those facilities aren’t designed to control pandemics. State run hospitals should shoulder the load as they are designed to do.



As for a plan for the future, continuation of the lockdown is not the answer. We can’t lock people away until there is a vaccine as it could be years before a cure is available. The more frustrated people become, the more we will see lawbreakers emerge. Our heartless state leaders have no idea of what's happening in the real world.



Contact tracing, masks, and ICU/ventilators are the only tools we have in reality. We had the situation under control only a few months ago so our approach was working then.



The 11 patients and staff in our Aunt’s nursing home that tested positive to COVID- 19 are well on the road to a full recovery. I haven’t heard of a headline stating “AGED CARE TRIUMPH. ELDERLY RESIDENTS AND STAFF BEAT THE BUG”.



We are very unlikely to get many positive headlines in Victoria, the State of Fear.

Is it COVID-19 so much more able to sneak up on one in the dark between 2000 and 0500 the next morning?

Is it COVID-19 so much more able to sneak up on one in the dark between 2000 and 0500 the next morning?

Not if you're at home, but much more likely if you're out and about. The curfew is the heavy-handed method of trying to stop dinners, parties, booze-ups et al.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, this is a good one, there is a claim going around that the CDC in the U.S "readjusted" their deaths from well over 180,000 to just 9,000 odd, this hasn't stopped the conspiracy people from getting in a muck lather, this webpage breaks it down for you - https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/no-the-cdc-did-not-quietly-adjust-u-s-coronavirus-deaths-from-153504-to-9210/

…………………………………………….

The trip was all conducted within the 5km radius of her home and took well over an hour to complete.

The 1 hr rule is just dumb and is impossible to adhere to for many people.

The one hour only applies to exercise, and only in the Stage 4 area, metropolitan Melbourne.

From the Department of Health and Human Services website:

Exercise Section:
If you live in metropolitan Melbourne:

• Exercise is limited to a maximum of one hour, once per day and no more than five kilometres from your home.
• You can exercise with one other person. This can be a person you live with or a friend or family member.

Shopping Section:

• For the purposes of shopping, you can only travel up to 5km from your home. You should stay as close to your home as possible, for example shopping at the nearest supermarket. For some people the nearest essential goods and services will be more than 5km away. In this situation you may travel beyond 5km to the nearest provider.
• Only one person per household can leave home to get necessary goods and services. They can leave once a day (this means you can’t do multiple shopping trips).

https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/stage-4-restrictions-covid-19

…………………………………………….

The trip was all conducted within the 5km radius of her home and took well over an hour to complete.

The 1 hr rule is just dumb and is impossible to adhere to for many people.

The one hour only applies to exercise, and only in the Stage 4 area, metropolitan Melbourne.

From the Department of Health and Human Services website:

Exercise Section:
If you live in metropolitan Melbourne:

• Exercise is limited to a maximum of one hour, once per day and no more than five kilometres from your home.
• You can exercise with one other person. This can be a person you live with or a friend or family member.

Shopping Section:

• For the purposes of shopping, you can only travel up to 5km from your home. You should stay as close to your home as possible, for example shopping at the nearest supermarket. For some people the nearest essential goods and services will be more than 5km away. In this situation you may travel beyond 5km to the nearest provider.
• Only one person per household can leave home to get necessary goods and services. They can leave once a day (this means you can’t do multiple shopping trips).

https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/stage-4-restrictions-covid-19

Well said.

What I'm finding anecdotally is that the people 'confused' by the rules are the ones generally opposed to this 'oppression'. They don't like the rules and will therefore invent issues with them.

Go and exercise for an hour. Simple.

Go to the supermarket, buy what you need to and go home again. Simple.

Go to work and go home again. Simple.

Go to the doctors if you need to and go home again. Simple.

Go and give care if you have that responsibility and go home again. Simple.

What's the problem?

What’s the problem?”

Anecdotally, I am finding it’s an IQ failing to reach triple digits that is the main problem.

NSW can do so well with contact tracing (so too QLD and when we needed to do it, SA) because NSW is currently trending about 70 cases PER WEEK.

While Victoria maintains more than that PER DAY contact tracing by any method is pretty much impossible. One contact missed in a day is maybe 15 contacts (plus their contacts) the next day.

That Victoria can still see numbers over 100 per day even now suggests that there are still way too many Victorians not doing the right thing - and is most certainly nothing to be happy, weirdly or otherwise, about.

Stop blaming Victorians for living like normal humans.

Besides...a great deal of the transmission is happening in settings that can't be locked down...maybe if we want to get back to zero cases (for some reason) we should shrink wrap the hospitals and aged care centers and lock all of the patients, workers and residents inside, because that is going to be more effective than limiting outside time to 1 hour and making people wear masks outside.

You people have become so transfixed on transmission numbers that you can't see the bigger picture.

"Gotta get to zero...we can only get back to normal with zero cases...gotta be like NZ, cause NZ always does things right!"

The rest of the first world outside Australia and NZ no longer cares about transmission and pivoted to management. Australia is stuck in a March-April mindset.

Stop blaming Victorians for living like normal humans? Really? You would have the rest of us congratulate them on their skills in getting their state to the brink of shut down? Where other states have had to ship them meats and food because they cannot safely produce/process their own.

You have a fundamental lack of knowledge in what Australia is trying to achieve, ‘zero cases’ is not the goal, zero community transmissions is the goal, everywhere east of the diseastern seaboard achieved it, NSW and QLD were pretty close, for the main part they would have been even closer if Victoria did their job.

If Victoria correctly quarantined their arriving people, as every other state (I think even NSW post Ruby Princess) have done Victoria wouldn’t have needed to revisit stage three, and certainly not gone to stage 4 - which for the record, I think will remain after 13/9.

When there is zero cases of community transmission and you correctly isolate incoming people there is no virus to worry about, EVERYTHING can happen, and if a case does escape, quick catching of it, isolation of the infected and containment of the virus will mean that EVERYTHING can still happen to EVERYONE outside that traceable event in the community.

The ‘reason’ most ‘first world’ (do you know that’s not a ‘thing’ anymore, right?) countries have ‘pivoted’ to management is because without looking them up, I would wager that no other country is in a position to even consider zero community transmission right now. Rather like Victoria, they’re not in a position right now to contemplate zero community transmission, which is why they’ve ‘pivoted’ to managing (via lockdown in case you’ve missed it) the virus down to a point where they can aim for traceability and hence end at zero community transmission.  BTW, it’s not only Australia and NZ, Japan and Canada’s current community transmission rate is down in the background noise too.

AND if you think the USA is a first world country (it’s a pre requisite of the definition), the UK and much of Europe, are managing the virus well then you actually need to do some reading on how woeful the USA and UK in particular are, but also Spain, France and probably Italy (again) are doing - none of them are great.

Well said.

What I'm finding anecdotally is that the people 'confused' by the rules are the ones generally opposed to this 'oppression'. They don't like the rules and will therefore invent issues with them.

Go and exercise for an hour. Simple.

Go to the supermarket, buy what you need to and go home again. Simple.

Go to work and go home again. Simple.

Go to the doctors if you need to and go home again. Simple.

Go and give care if you have that responsibility and go home again. Simple.

What's the problem?

If it is so simple then why are so many people confused by it? Just take a look at the ABC live blog if you want a few thousand examples.

Taking the example I sighted my GF is not opposed to the rules at all. What she is though is a crazily overworked education professional who doesn't have the time nor the inclination after a 10+ hour day of being online to go and research the interwebs for the latest rule changes in Melbourne.

She thought the rule was leaving home for an hour for shopping. I didn't know any different because I am under stage 3 not 4.

Thank you to kitchgp for a great explanation. No thanks to others for thoroughly unhelpful additions.

I thought that shopping was limited to one hour/day, too.

...
You have a fundamental lack of knowledge in what Australia is trying to achieve, ‘zero cases’ is not the goal, zero community transmissions is the goal, everywhere east of the diseastern seaboard achieved it, NSW and QLD were pretty close, for the main part they would have been even closer if Victoria did their job.
...

That's not true, Dictator Dan said only the other day that they were considering keeping Stage Four in place until a vaccine becomes available. So zero 'community transmissions' isn't the goal - complete elimination of the virus is.

Unlike most of the other ‘great’ communist leaders, reading Chairman Dan’s manifesto is not high on my list of desirable activities; hence I have to ask for a link to that Don. Stage four until a vaccine is available seems a bit far fetched to me. I don’t think he said that, if he did, I don’t believe he meant that.

I see you said ‘considering’ I think if that is true it will be a consideration that they abandon.

I thought that shopping was limited to one hour/day, too.

Cleary you are 'confused', opposed to this 'oppression', don't like the rules and therefore inventing issues with them

Stop blaming Victorians for living like normal humans? Really? You would have the rest of us congratulate them on their skills in getting their state to the brink of shut down? Where other states have had to ship them meats and food because they cannot safely produce/process their own.

Do you think all 5 million Melbournians and all of regional Victoria are to blame for the outbreak? Do you think that if the outbreak happened in NSW or Queensland that the citizenry would have behaved any differently than Victorians under a renewed Stage 3 lock-down? My guess is that NSW and Queensland citizens would have been just as apathetic.

Why are you so confident that this outbreak is the fault of the nature of Victorians?

It might be convenient to just scapegoat a whole bunch of people arbitrarily, I would prefer to look for targeted, data-led solutions.

You have a fundamental lack of knowledge in what Australia is trying to achieve, ‘zero cases’ is not the goal, zero community transmissions is the goal, everywhere east of the diseastern seaboard achieved it, NSW and QLD were pretty close, for the main part they would have been even closer if Victoria did their job. If Victoria correctly quarantined their arriving people, as every other state (I think even NSW post Ruby Princess) have done Victoria wouldn’t have needed to revisit stage three, and certainly not gone to stage 4 - which for the record, I think will remain after 13/9. When there is zero cases of community transmission and you correctly isolate incoming people there is no virus to worry about, EVERYTHING can happen, and if a case does escape, quick catching of it, isolation of the infected and containment of the virus will mean that EVERYTHING can still happen to EVERYONE outside that traceable event in the community.

You must have a short memory, because what Australia is trying to achieve has changed. There was never a goal of zero transmissions, it was initially about flattening the curve to prevent ICUs from overflowing. But with the successes in other states and New Zealand and the saftey-at-all-costs brigade winning the fear campaign the target has slowly changed to zero community transmissions...and in some states effectively elimination.

The only reason we have so many state border closures now is because those states are in fact actually pursuing a total elimination strategy. This same strategy in Victoria will will take months of lockdown to achieve.

The ‘reason’ most ‘first world’ (do you know that’s not a ‘thing’ anymore, right?)

If you say so.

The ‘reason’ most ‘first world’ (do you know that’s not a ‘thing’ anymore, right?) countries have ‘pivoted’ to management is because without looking them up, I would wager that no other country is in a position to even consider zero community transmission right now. Rather like Victoria, they’re not in a position right now to contemplate zero community transmission, which is why they’ve ‘pivoted’ to managing (via lockdown in case you’ve missed it) the virus down to a point where they can aim for traceability and hence end at zero community transmission. BTW, it’s not only Australia and NZ, Japan and Canada’s current community transmission rate is down in the background noise too. AND if you think the USA is a first world country (it’s a pre requisite of the definition), the UK and much of Europe, are managing the virus well then you actually need to do some reading on how woeful the USA and UK in particular are, but also Spain, France and probably Italy (again) are doing - none of them are great.

You admit to not bothering to look things up and then tell me I need to read more. OK. I'd wager I am more across what is happening overseas than you are.

They absolutely have pivoted to management...but NOT with blanket lockdowns. Even at the height of the EU lockdowns only a few countries had Melbourne level restrictions and the lockdowns were lifted once the ICU overload threat had dissipated.

What the Europeans understand, that we don't here, is that community transmission isn't that much of a problem if its among the general population. Check the stats, they are available: infections in many places in the EU are now approaching March-April levels, but deaths are not, because they now have the infection control procedures in place in the places where they need to be.

And what do we find out about hospitals and aged-care in Victoria...Dan is pleading for more people in the community to get tested...yet they still haven't put in place daily testing of hospital and aged care staff...even after five weeks of Stage 4. Staff in high risk environments should be tested every single day with no more than 24 hour turn around in results

Forget blaming five million people 99% of whom are doing the right thing except for maybe staying outside for 1 hour 30 instead of 1 hour and going outside twice instead of once...none of which will make a difference. Maybe look at WHERE the virus is causing damage and address that, rather than chasing feel-good community transmission numbers.

Victorians are making the sacrifices and are doing what they are told. It's the leaders and the useless public servants who specialize in being incompetent who have failed.

Victorians are making the sacrifices and are doing what they are told. It's the leaders and the useless public servants who specialize in being incompetent who have failed.

Ain't that the truth.......

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-05/mistakes-in-shambolic-hotel-quarantine-program-laid-bare/12616682


And this one which is particularly galling to us regional Victorians who were hoping to keep the virus in Melbourne

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-06/covid-19-abattoir-outbreak-raises-questions-about-dhhs-response/12526816

Stop blaming Victorians for living like normal humans? Really? You would have the rest of us congratulate them on their skills in getting their state to the brink of shut down? Where other states have had to ship them meats and food because they cannot safely produce/process their own.

Do you think all 5 million Melbournians and all of regional Victoria are to blame for the outbreak? Do you think that if the outbreak happened in NSW or Queensland that the citizenry would have behaved any differently than Victorians under a renewed Stage 3 lock-down? My guess is that NSW and Queensland citizens would have been just as apathetic.

Why are you so confident that this outbreak is the fault of the nature of Victorians?

It might be convenient to just scapegoat a whole bunch of people arbitrarily, I would prefer to look for targeted, data-led solutions.

You have a fundamental lack of knowledge in what Australia is trying to achieve, ‘zero cases’ is not the goal, zero community transmissions is the goal, everywhere east of the diseastern seaboard achieved it, NSW and QLD were pretty close, for the main part they would have been even closer if Victoria did their job. If Victoria correctly quarantined their arriving people, as every other state (I think even NSW post Ruby Princess) have done Victoria wouldn’t have needed to revisit stage three, and certainly not gone to stage 4 - which for the record, I think will remain after 13/9. When there is zero cases of community transmission and you correctly isolate incoming people there is no virus to worry about, EVERYTHING can happen, and if a case does escape, quick catching of it, isolation of the infected and containment of the virus will mean that EVERYTHING can still happen to EVERYONE outside that traceable event in the community.

You must have a short memory, because what Australia is trying to achieve has changed. There was never a goal of zero transmissions, it was initially about flattening the curve to prevent ICUs from overflowing. But with the successes in other states and New Zealand and the saftey-at-all-costs brigade winning the fear campaign the target has slowly changed to zero community transmissions...and in some states effectively elimination.

The only reason we have so many state border closures now is because those states are in fact actually pursuing a total elimination strategy. This same strategy in Victoria will will take months of lockdown to achieve.

The ‘reason’ most ‘first world’ (do you know that’s not a ‘thing’ anymore, right?)

If you say so.

The ‘reason’ most ‘first world’ (do you know that’s not a ‘thing’ anymore, right?) countries have ‘pivoted’ to management is because without looking them up, I would wager that no other country is in a position to even consider zero community transmission right now. Rather like Victoria, they’re not in a position right now to contemplate zero community transmission, which is why they’ve ‘pivoted’ to managing (via lockdown in case you’ve missed it) the virus down to a point where they can aim for traceability and hence end at zero community transmission. BTW, it’s not only Australia and NZ, Japan and Canada’s current community transmission rate is down in the background noise too. AND if you think the USA is a first world country (it’s a pre requisite of the definition), the UK and much of Europe, are managing the virus well then you actually need to do some reading on how woeful the USA and UK in particular are, but also Spain, France and probably Italy (again) are doing - none of them are great.

You admit to not bothering to look things up and then tell me I need to read more. OK. I'd wager I am more across what is happening overseas than you are.

They absolutely have pivoted to management...but NOT with blanket lockdowns. Even at the height of the EU lockdowns only a few countries had Melbourne level restrictions and the lockdowns were lifted once the ICU overload threat had dissipated.

What the Europeans understand, that we don't here, is that community transmission isn't that much of a problem if its among the general population. Check the stats, they are available: infections in many places in the EU are now approaching March-April levels, but deaths are not, because they now have the infection control procedures in place in the places where they need to be.

And what do we find out about hospitals and aged-care in Victoria...Dan is pleading for more people in the community to get tested...yet they still haven't put in place daily testing of hospital and aged care staff...even after five weeks of Stage 4. Staff in high risk environments should be tested every single day with no more than 24 hour turn around in results

Forget blaming five million people 99% of whom are doing the right thing except for maybe staying outside for 1 hour 30 instead of 1 hour and going outside twice instead of once...none of which will make a difference. Maybe look at WHERE the virus is causing damage and address that, rather than chasing feel-good community transmission numbers.

Victorians are making the sacrifices and are doing what they are told. It's the leaders and the useless public servants who specialize in being incompetent who have failed.

Please don't lump in us Newsouthwelshmen with that rabble please, tsk tsk....

Mr Lane, ‘Europe’ is quite a lot of countries, name the ones you are speaking of and I will look at their numbers.

I watch the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland because that is where I have friends/family. None of them are doing great, tell me which ones you think are.

Mr Lane, ‘Europe’ is quite a lot of countries, name the ones you are speaking of and I will look at their numbers.

I watch the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland because that is where I have friends/family. None of them are doing great, tell me which ones you think are.

Other than Spain, all you mentioned are pretty consistently under 20 deaths per day for about 3 months now. I would say that is pretty good.

France has even been recording 1000+ cases a day for over a month...almost 9000 the other day, but still fairly consistently below 20 deaths a day.

They only just made masks mandatory in Paris.

So you don’t know more about what’s happening in Europe than I do?

Here’s the rest of the story, per capita.

The smallest of those countries in population is Poland (and not even a ‘first world’ country), and by chance the one I am most familiar with, having three medical specialists and two other doctors in the family there.

6-7 times the population of Victoria, so if you think Victoria’s doing so well to have a similar daily death toll you need to be told that to do so well Victoria would need more like only 1.7 deaths per day.

Further, NSW exceeds Victoria’s population, if Victorians were handling this well then it would stand to reason that NSW would be looking worse, in fact NSW would be around about 1.5 the death rate of Victoria, instead we see Victoria at TEN TIMES the NSW death count, a whole order of magnitude in the wrong direction.

Keep trying, there are more ‘first world’ countries in Europe, you might find one eventually.