Thread: Covid Mk ll

Originally Posted by incisor

seeing lots of it up here in QLD ..... people getting lazy, not using the check in apps etc etc

there will be a price to be paid if they open the place up too quick...

On that basis I reckon laziness has been there since Day 1. Have noticed folk at WW for just one joint. They don't Sanitise on arrival, they don't use the supplied wipes on the trollies, they don't go to the counter area & ask for the sign in book & they don't flash their cameras.


You can just about see the thought bubble above their bonce "It won't happen to me so that's alright".

I was having a think about "lockdown fatigue" and comparing this time round with the 2020 lockdown in NSW. Back then:

There was no available vaccine
Australia was in the position where the best path forward was to eliminate covid and the lockdowns were working.
Everywhere else overseas was in a far worse position than us with tens or hundreds of thousands dead.

This time round:
Vaccinations are widely seen as the way out and as others have mentioned if you are double vaccinated you probably don't care as much
Everywhere (the US, UK and Canada) overseas is opening up with concerts, sporting events and dining mostly unrestricted.
Most people don't care about the widely reported issues with unvaccinated people dying in the south of the US
Lockdowns are clearly only slowing the spread, not controlling it, so there is little reward on a personal level for doing the right thing when lockdowns are likely to last for a couple of months yet.

Note that this view is from someone sitting in NSW where Covid zero is no longer possible.

Regards,
Tote

Originally Posted by incisor

one of the biggest pushes of the stock worming drug in the US of A died the other day from complications of taking too much or it..

Most likely his supporters will still state, 'But he didn't get Covid, so it must work'!

Aug 17 - one case Lock down level 4 nationwide
Aug 18 - 10 cases
Aug 19 - 11 ...
Aug 20 - 11
Aug 21 - 21
Aug 22 - 21
Aug 23 - 35
Aug 24 - 41
Aug 25 - 62
Aug 26 - 68
Aug 27 - 70
Aug 28 - 82
Aug 29 - 83
Aug 30 - 53
Aug 31 - 49
Sept 1 - 75 Lock down level 3 for NZ from Auckland South
Sept 2 - 49

Numbers from Latest updates | Unite against COVID-19

I hope it continues the downward trend here. R0 value has been less than 1 the last three days. Seeing Victoria giving up scared the **** out of me to be honest. I thought if any Aussie state can do it, Victoria could beat it back. Seeing the turn-around made me reassess our personal preparedness and vulnerabilities here for a similar situation in NZ if Delta starts beating our systems. I know we will eventually have to live with it once our vaccine rate is sufficient here but the suddenness of the situation turning in Victoria was sadly eye-opening.

Our vaccine rates here are percentage of eligible population: First dose - 56% and second dose is 29%. A few weeks back the govt announced the duration between doses here would be changed from three weeks to six weeks in order to get the numbers of first doses increased. We only use Pfizer here.

Unlike the Aust. system, our decision makers have not nominated a set percentage to open but rather have stated it depends on the situation at the time.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

And here is another wild theory or two for why the past methods no longer work with the highly contagious Delta strain….

Vaccinated people with mild symptoms may not even bother to get tested and could be passing it on to un-vaccinated people - hence we see more mystery cases.

A lot of people seem to be waiting a long time before they get tested as well - we see this in the number of cases active in the community.

I have also noticed more middle aged people in my area no longer wearing masks when they go walking - my guess is they are vaccinated and/or no longer care.

Plus the roads are as busy as ever - lots of authorised workers out here in the western suburbs.

I check the exposure sites most days - there's been a heap of exposure sites in my neighbourhood. I've noticed lately that some of the new exposure sites were for a week or more ago, so either:

1. the contact tracers are wildly behind; or

2. people aren't getting tested or being picked up until well after they're infectious; or

3. people are remembering extra places they went to.

We have a family tracking app and I've just switched on the premium version so we can check if we were at any of the local exposure sites in the last month.

Edit: just noticed that our tram stop was listed today - for a tram trip on the 20th of August. Which is 13 days ago, so pretty useless to tell us now.

Edit: actually, on the 19th as well, so a full fortnight ago. So that's a full infection cycle before we were notified.

Edit, Edit: it's also evident - from multiple, whole-day, entries at specific places (like my local Coles) that there's a lot of people going to work whilst infectious.

Originally Posted by 4bee

On that basis I reckon laziness has been there since Day 1. Have noticed folk at WW for just one joint. They don't Sanitise on arrival, they don't use the supplied wipes on the trollies, they don't go to the counter area & ask for the sign in book & they don't flash their cameras.

You can just about see the thought bubble above their bonce "It won't happen to me so that's alright".

I'm less diligent about my hands now because in contrast to last year we now know that surfaces are less important as a vector than aerosols - but I do wash them when I get home. And I always sign in and I always wear a mask.

Originally Posted by windsock

I hope it continues the downward trend here. R0 value has been less than 1 the last three days. Seeing Victoria giving up scared the **** out of me to be honest.

I hope NZ can beat it. I think the key indicator of success is seeing the unlinked cases coming down a long with those infectious in the community. So hopefully they can link the 28 under investigation today to known cases.

The thing is, no one here is giving up. I think you said the same thing about NSW giving up earlier on. I believe what you are seeing is governments facing the reality of the situation and being forced to consider the unthinkable.

Large cities that still need to function at some level to keep civil society running will always have a massive number of essential workers being very mobile. Where we had 3 to 4 days to catch up with close contacts before they became infectious with the original variant, we now only have 24 hours or so with delta. Throw in the "Ef you I'm all right Jack" and the "COVID hoax" folk along with some unfavourable social conditions and you have a scenario that's nigh on impossible to control.

As a matter of curiosity, I did some crude comparisons between NSW and VIC and it looks like they are tracking pretty similarly. VIC is just a month behind NSW which plays out better for them with the timing of the vaccination roll out which should help keep a lid on it really escalating there. NSW struggled with keeping the numbers down for about a month before seeing it start to take off around 4/7 at 16 cases and reaching the same as todays number for VIC on 27/7 - NSW testing for those two days was 45K and 84K. Taking a look at the lead up to todays number for VIC from the point they had the single "zero" day, 4/8 had 0 cases from 22K tests and today 176 from 51K tests. NSW had 85 under investigation and VIC 96. So really, very similar for the two states based on a very crude method of comparison despite the different approaches to lock down.

I hope that VIC can increase testing rates perhaps by doing something similar to NSW with the mandatory testing to help catch some of those hidden chains of transmission. That's really the key to finding it. Though, I think it might be too late for them.

Testing is also important (obviously) for the "no COVID" states as the rates of testing are very low ... it's a chicken and the egg thing. Low testing yields no/low numbers (and high confidence/complacency), if something takes hold with low testing it has a chance to get away before it's discovered. I'm cautiously optimistic that that won't happen and vaccination will win the race.

Let's go ANZ!

TL;DR: This variant is a bugger so, if you can't knock it on the head in the 1st couple of weeks of an outbreak you're done!

The time line on our experience that I detailed above is quite telling. The original Canberra infections occurred around the weekend starting 7/8 with SWMBOs work becoming a primary contact site from Monday 9/8. We found out that she was a primary contact on Thursday 12/8. That's three days that she was "active in the community" with no idea that she had been at an exposure site. This is under the best possible conditions with minimal contact tracing load in the ACT as the outbreak had just started. Had she actually been exposed on the Monday it is likely that the remainder of our family would have been infected by Wednesday along with work colleagues etc. That is why the contact tracing is only denting the curve, not flattening it as it has done previously with earlier variants.

Regards,
Tote