Blog Day 42: Monday 04 May 2020

Big day today, drove 4km to the supermarket and back.  I also went for a walk along the Centre Road, Bentleigh shopping strip.  Lots of shops still closed but a few people hanging around the cafes and coffee shops that are open for take away.  Clair, I had a look in that funny little arcade on the other side of the railway line, the second hand bookshop was open, not that you would ever find anything in there.  The lady in there almost seemed a little offended when I asked if there was any rhyme or reason in the way the books were sort of displayed.

Woolies had toilet paper on sale today at half price, what a difference a couple of weeks makes.

I know that some of you look forward to a new episode in the occasional series of "What's in the pantry Graeme"?  Well, good news there might be a new posting in the series tomorrow, the sense of anticipation should brighten your dreary day in iso.

Weekly international virus stats as below;

Corona Virus International Stats as at 04/05/2020
Country	Population	Infected No	Infected %	Deaths No	Deaths %	Deaths Increase No	Deaths Increase %
Australia	25,000,000	6,822	0.0273	95	0.00038	12	14
New Zealand	5,000,000	1,487	0.0297	20	0.00040	1	5
USA	331,000,000	1,188,122	0.3589	69,598	0.02103	14,185	26
UK	68,000,000	186,599	0.2744	28,446	0.04183	7,714	37
Italy	60,000,000	210,717	0.3512	28,884	0.04814	2,240	8
France	65,000,000	168,693	0.2595	24,895	0.03830	2,037	9
Spain	47,000,000	247,122	0.5258	25,264	0.05375	2,074	9
Sweden	10,000,000	22,317	0.2232	2,679	0.02679	485	22

It looks like Italy, Spain and France have their deaths from the virus on the decline with increases from the previous week of 8% and 9%, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks with these countries relaxing their isolation rules a bit.  A big spike in the UK numbers can be partially accounted for in a decision to include deaths in nursing homes in their national figures.  I think that the UK is still maintaining strict iso.

The US figures in number of deaths at over 69,000 are staggering however in terms of % of population effected they are doing better than most apart from Australia and NZ.

Australia's increase in deaths of 14% appears to be high but it must be remembered that we are working off a very low base and this 14% increase translates into 12 deaths, not thousands like elsewhere.

The Swedish figures would still to be of concern despite WHO singing their praises for their handling of the pandemic.  I still think that the Swedish experiment hasn't worked. Given the size of the country, population spread and relative isolation Sweden should have figures similar to Australia or NZ


The increase in the Vic figures in the daily figures below is as a result of virus cluster developing in a meat processing works and hopefully it is an aberration and not the new norm, I daresay we will find out over the next couple of days. There is a whiff of a cover up or political interference in this particular scenario, time will tell.

Current Virus Day Stats: Day 119

Vic: 1,406 infected (+22 from previous day) - 18 deaths (increase 0)
Aus: 6,823 infected (+30 from previous day) - 96 deaths (increase 1)
Recovered: 5,849
World: 3,506,729