Blog Day 321 - Thursday 11 February 2021

 What is the best thing about Switzerland?  I don't know, but the flag is a big plus.

I did my Shrine training this morning in preparation for easing back into things, not to be.  I just received an email asking me to do two school tours next Tuesday afternoon, which of course I will gladly attend to.  Probably a year nine TGW tour and a grade 5/6 general tour.  Oh, how I have missed the year 9 kiddies!  

It was a nice day the other day so I was out in my little backyard doing some gardening and I heard a high pitched buzzing noise above me and looking up I spotted a drone flying overhead.  So I rushed inside, put some clothes on and grabbed my camera.  The drone appeared to be flying in a distinct pattern and was flying around for a good half hour and at a fair height.

I think that flying a drone like this is probably illegal unless the operator has some sort of commercial licence.  I was wondering if it was employed by the local council looking for swimming pools or the like or just some sort of voyeur looking for naked sunbathers. It was flying too high for me to throw tennis balls at it. I keep a bucket of tennis balls handy for situations like this.

Anyway I got some photos, one of which is below, as you can see the camera underneath is pointing down, looking for something or.........someone!

Now onto the serious stuff, another two community transmission cases have been reported in Victoria, both associated with the Holiday Inn cluster, this takes to ten the number of infections relating to this cluster.  Both of the new cases are close associates, possibly family members of one of the infected Holiday Inn staff.

So far there doesn't appear to be any general community transmission as a result of the Holiday Inn infections.

Luckily the premier has been reminding us that Victoria's hotel quarantine is "gold class" otherwise the good citizens of the state would not have realised it.  Fortunately it appears that the contact tracing has got their act together and are getting onto these infections quickly and efficiently, so credit where credit is due.

I won't focus on the Australian figures today as I want to quickly look at the worldwide situation, so suffice to say that apart from Victoria's two new community infections the rest of the country is going along swimmingly.

Time has got away from me a bit so just quick summary of the worldwide position with a more detailed report in the next few days.  

Worldwide, although the figures are still scarily big, especially when you consider that we are panicking over 2 community transmissions and a cluster of 10 infections, they are generally heading in the right direction.

The number of new infections reported in the last week worldwide was just under 3 million compared to 3.5 million the week before and this continues a downward trend from 5 million a few weeks ago.  Worldwide there were 89,000 new deaths reported and this was down from 94,000 the week before and this also continues a downward trend.  As usual the downward death trend lags behind the new infection downward trend but at least they are both going in the right direction.

The two countries that we have been watching over the last few weeks, the USA and UK both appear to be demonstrating what appears to be sustainable downward trends over the last week.  

Last week the USA reported 759,000 infections in the last week compared to 994,the week prior and up to 1.7 million a few weeks before that.  Once again the death rates isn't declining as fast as the infection rate, but it is declining.  In the last week the US reported 21,800 deaths compared to 22,500 the week before, not big declines but heading the right direction.

The UK reported 113,000 new infections last week down from 157,000 the week before and down from 375,000 a few weeks ago.  The UK reported 5,500 deaths last week down from 7,400 the previous week and down from 8,600 a few weeks ago.

Of the other countries I have been monitoring only Mexico and Italy reported increases in infections for the week and in both cases the increases were minimal.  Mexico reported a reasonably significant increase in it's deaths for the week from 7,500 to 10,227 but their figures jump around a bit so we will see what they report next week.  Italy reported a small decrease in the number of death.

So finally worldwide the infection and death figures seem to showing some promise, lets hope it all continues that way.

I will post some tables over the next few days.  Sorry if my social and professional life is starting to get in the way of the blog.

Off to U3A tomorrow for my first face to face meeting of the Military & Maritime History Group since March last year.  How exciting I hear you say.