New South Wales recorded 163 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24-hour reporting period, well up from yesterday’s record of 136. It takes a week or two before the effects of increased lockdown restrictions make themselves felt in lowering case numbers, but this is starting to look depressingly like they’re not working. The state and federal governments are scrambling trying to get this under control before it spirals into a complete disaster, ruining the year and a half of good work we’ve done in keeping the virus at bay in Australia. This is the scariest and most dangerous period in this country so far. And the mood of people is really starting to reflect it.
There was a fairly large protest in the heart of Sydney today, by people unhappy with the current lockdown restrictions. I knew about it from looking at some news reports during the day, but it wasn’t until I saw video coverage on the evening news on TV that I realised just how terrible it was. It turned into close to a full-on riot, with people throwing dangerous objects at police. There was an image of a man striking a police horse in the face. 57 people have been arrested and charged, and police are analysing video and interviewing people trying to track down more offenders so they can be charged as well. Story here.
And this in the middle of a time when people should be staying away from other people. It’s feared this event may end up spreading the Delta COVID variant to hundreds, if not thousands more people. I’m just absolutely sickened by what has happened here in my city today.
Trying to not think about it too much, I spent much of today collaborating with friends solving puzzles in the Galactic Puzzle Hunt, which began this morning our time. We’ve solved four of the puzzles so far, and have made substantial progress on a few others. They’re good puzzles, well constructed, but gosh some of them are difficult.
I’m about to go offline for the evening and just switch off, watching a movie…
New content today:
I hope your riot police are fully vaccinated. To have these drongos endanger the health of these public servants would be even worse than “just” having them tie up hospital resources with totally avoidable disease cases.
(Did I use “drongo” correctly?)
Yes, an exemplary use of “drongo”. 🙂
It occurs to me, as a veteran of New York’s terrifying outbreak, to mention a couple of tips.
Knotting the cord of a mask can increase filtration efficiency for the wearer by an order of magnitude:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTAZDsNBe0
Mask fitters can give a disposable mask nearly the effectiveness of an N95 (without obstructing breathing):
https://making.engr.wisc.edu/mask-fitter/
There are other types of mask fitter out there, of course.