Today New South Wales reported 825 new COVID-19 cases in the previous 24 hours. This number by itself exceeded the previous record high number of cases recorded in the entire country for the entire pandemic so far. Add in a handful of other cases in other states, and it was easily the single worst day for Australia yet recorded. And there’s no sign of it slowing down, despite the introduction of further lockdown restrictions.
Parts of Sydney now have a night time curfew, although not the area where I live. Outdoor exercise is now limited to a maximum of one hour per day. And we now must wear masks at all times outdoors, except if doing vigorous exercise. Which means essentially that the only place I can not wear a mask is inside my own front door.
The Government’s message has changed over the past few days. It used to be trying to reduce the numbers of this outbreak, in an effort to get cases close to zero again. But now it’s turned to “keep things under control until November (when 80% of the population should, be vaccinated)”. It’s changed from “eliminate the virus” to “live with the virus”. It’s frustrating and sad to see this change of attitude in the government, after their abject failure to keep the delta strain under control when the outbreak began. Everyone dying now, and everyone who will die from the cases piling up every day, didn’t have to if the government had done their job properly 12 weeks ago.
New content today:
In my home state of Florida, there were 15,000 new cases yesterday, down from 25,000 a week ago. Also 8 deaths, down from 70.
I am not saying your government did a good job. I’m saying there are far, far worse governments out here in the rest of the world.
I’m very aware that most other countries have done a lot worse than Australia, both in terms of COVID numbers and the politics around it.
It’s just that I live here, so naturally it’s prominent in my mind, and we all thought we’d dodged the bullet, but now our government has dragged us right into the firing line.
Also, it’s possible that most other countries have the worst of the pandemic behind them. Whereas in Australia it’s now utterly crystal clear that the worse days of this pandemic are yet to come in the next few weeks.
“Eliminate the virus” was never, and will never, be an option. This isn’t polio or smallpox, which have no animal reservoirs. Many species of felines and primates can catch COVID-19, and minks have even been proven to transmit it to humans.
We can reach herd immunity through vaccination, but there will *always* be individual cases. There isn’t an endgame. Our only option is to wait until less-lethal mutation achieves prominence and it becomes just another common cold.
I didn’t mean forever. I meant eliminate the virus until Australia had a high vaccination rate. We were doing it for a long time. Then this new outbreak occurred in New South Wales and instead of squashing it like every other outbreak in Australia had been successfully done, the state government dawdled on the lockdown for 8 weeks and let it get out of control. We COULD have had low case numbers again now while we wait for vaccinations to get done, but now we have a disaster.
That’s fair enough. Do you know what happened that convinced the state government to act differently this time?
During the early lockdowns we had, the federal government provided income support for people not working. They didn’t do that this time, so the state government didn’t bring in as tough restrictions for several weeks, as people would have lost income.