Blog Day 146 - Monday 17 August 2020

As part of my preparation for the weekly Shrine volunteer zoom meeting and fillum discussion I have watched the documentary "The Battle of Long Tan".   This was a battle fought by the Australians in Vietnam in 1966 and has sort of become the Vietnam war's Gallipoli or Kokoda.  The battle was fought in harrowing conditions by the Australians, with the support of NZ artillery, against a vastly stronger North Vietnamese force.  Eighteen Australians were killed and 24 wounded.  

I found the documentary interesting although a lot of it was first hand observations by the men who were there that although highly descriptive of the fighting on an individual basis didn't add to or provide a lot of information about the "bigger picture" stuff of the battle.  The discussion tomorrow will be interesting.

My solar eclipse joke the other day was remarkably well received, so well received in fact that I am thinking of making the "dad" joke a regular weekly feature.  As you could imagine I have a heap of them and some of you may have heard one or two of them before.

I think that the lady in the bakery is trying to "come onto me", she told me today that I remind her of her cousin and as she said, "he is a very handsome man although a little taller than me".  I might have to step up my bread consumption.

Now to the important stuff, the corona virus figures.  Although marginally higher than yesterday's figure the daily reported figure of 282 new infections is still good news.  Interestingly some of the medical people are saying that we should be seeing a bigger drop in the daily numbers by now.  At least it isn't going up.  On the other hand we reported 25 new deaths in the last 24 hours, this is the largest number of deaths in a 24 hour period reported so far.  One of these was a male in his 60's, 4 women and 3 men in their 70's, 6 women and 4 men in their 80's and 3 women and 3 men in their 90's.  Twenty two of the twenty five were from the aged care sector.  There are 657 Victorians in hospital with this thing, 44 in intensive care and of these 32 are in respirators.

World wide the figures are showing daily ups and downs but no pattern emerging to provide any sign of a meaningful reduction of daily new infections or deaths.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Stage 4 Lockdown – Day 15

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
02/08	17,920	685	11,557	671	208	123	366	385	44	38
03/08	18,318	444	11,937	429	221	136	408	416	46	35
04/08	18,728	451	12,335	439	232	147	439	456	43	38
05/08	19,444	740	13,035	725	247	162	483	538	44	42
06/08	19,890	483	13,469	471	255	170	566		51
07/08	20,270	461	13,867	450	266	181	600	607	52	41
08/08	20,697	475	14,283	466	278	193	632	636	51	44
09/08	21,084	412	14,659	394	295	210	659	634	53	43
10/08	21,397	337	14,957	322	314	229	657	640	51	47
11/08	21,713	353	15,251	331	332	247	664	650	54	47
12/08	22,127	428	15,646	410	352	267	673	662	51	43
13/08	22,417	290	15,924	278	361	275	685	664	51	37
14/08		387	16,234	372	372	289		659		41
15/08	23,035	312	16,517	303	379	293	680	661	47	41
16/08	23,287	284	16,764	279	396	309	680	662	47	40
17/08	23,576	289	17,046	282	421	334	680	657	47	44
18/08

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
13/08	20,794,831	273,187	752,372	6,454
14/08	21,080,357	285,526	753,467	1,095
15/08	21,343,945	263,588	763,119	9,652
16/08	21,604,192	260,247	768,739	5,620
17/08	21,824,805	220,613	773,032	4,293
18/08

And now the State of Disaster remembers;

Remember: to stay indoors between 8.00pm and 5.00am, stay safe & stay strong, respect the 5km limits, don't try & get a haircut, drink your coffee at home, don't dither at the supermarket checkout, don't get Jim's Mowing in to cut your grass, get some virus approved exercise, shop at Harvey Norman for good service, be honest, if in doubt wear a mask and a face shield, remember the fallen, get plenty of sleep, laugh at my jokes and be kind.