Blog Day 180 - Friday 1st January 2021

Welcome to 2021 and goodbye to 2020.  

I was thinking of doing some sort of retrospective on the year just passed and thought "bugger it", I reckon that we have had enough of 2020.  Remember that this idea of new year/old year is an artificial contrivance with the date determined by a Roman Emperor some 2,000 years ago probably after consulting the entrails of a sacrificed goat or getting home from the coliseum after watching a few hundred Christians get eaten by lions. (Hence the expression when asked the score "Lions 5 - Christians Nil).

Just briefly though I think that we should take a moment to recognise the stoicism, patience, generosity, and in many cases the courage that most Australians showed in facing the challenges of the year, including not only the virus but also the bush fires early in the year.

I see that Brexit kicks in at 12.00pm midnight in Britain.  It will be interesting to see how that all works out.  Australians with dual British citizenship who were able to work in Europe under EU rules will now need to obtain European work visas, that maybe not that easy to come by.  

Due to the continuing spread of the virus albeit in small numbers the Victorian government announced some new rules yesterday afternoon to kick in pretty much straight away at 5.00pm in the afternoon.  Numbers of visitors to households were reduced from 30 to 15 and face masks became compulsory at all times indoors except in your own home.  Any Victorian in NSW had until 11.59 last night to get back into Victoria or face 14 day compulsory hotel quarantine.  This has led to massive traffic jams on the NSW/Vic border as people try to get back into the state.  People coming from places like Merimbula faced 6 hour delays at Cann River coming back across the border.

In the last 24 hours there were 13 new cases reported Australia wide.  Of these 5 were local transmissions in Victoria and 3 local transmissions in NSW.  All other cases were returned overseas travellers in hotel quarantine.  

Victoria received the results of 13,108 tests in the last 24 hours and NSW results of 32,010 tests.  It is good to see both states ramping up the testing regime, but apparently there has been incredibly long waits for testing in Victoria with some testing stations being overwhelmed and having to close down.

Currently Victoria has 18 active cases and NSW has 173 active cases.  Australia wide there are 230 active cases of which 56 are returned travellers.  (Remember Victoria's active cases include returned travellers, NSW doesn't).

Worldwide the figures continue to get worse.  The last two days recorded on an average of 724,000 new infections per day worldwide, exceeding any other daily figures to date.  There was an average of 14,000 deaths per day over the last 2 days, also very close to the highest death figures recorded per 24 hours.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Day 01 – New Year – Covid Normal (as much as possible)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
01/01	28,421	13	20,376	8	909	820	21	0	0	0
02/01
03/01
04/01
05/01

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/01	83,771,040	1,448,870	1,824,387	28,095
02/01
03/01
04/01

Covid Safe Summer Reminders;

Remember; stay safe and sober for the new year, I know I will be; no hugging and kissing strangers on new years eve!; don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things; as the captain of the Graf Spee said "you have to be bigger than anything faster and faster than anything bigger"; to wear your mask indoors (again).