Blog Day 340 - Wednesday 03 March 2021

I've got a tip for any of my many readers who maybe collecting Woolworths rewards points and converting them to Qantas Frequent Flyer points.

I used to shop weekly and spend about $100 per week on groceries; meat etc.  Woolies often have promotions where if you spend say more than $150 you get 2,000 bonus points which converts to 1,000 QFF points.  So, these days I wait for the a promotion to come along, I shop less often but spend more per shop.  I now shop around every fortnight and easily exceed the $150 target and lo and behold I get my points and spend no more than I normally would.  I do sometimes have to pop into the local IGA an pick up bits and pieces between big shops at Woolies.

Pretty clever eh?

3.15pm and the AG Christian Porter is giving a media conference advising that he is the person in the Federal cabinet that has been accused of rape in 1988.  He is denying the allegation.

The Federal government has announced that the emergency international border closure has been extended to June this and could possibly be in place for all of 2021.  The critics of this policy have all come out bleating about the 40,000 good ol Aussies still stuck overseas and how more should be done to get them home.  I wonder where this magical figure of 40,000 comes from, it seems to me that no matter how many Aussies make it home this figure always remains around the 40,000 mark.  

As you can see from the table above, 651,000 travellers have arrived in Australia since 13/03/2020 of which 462,000 were Australian citizens and permanent residents.  Not a bad effort I reckon given the circumstances and the processing necessary on their arrival in Australia.

Victoria has recorded five days of zero local and ROT infections.  Australia wide there were 6 new infections, all in NSW and all of them ROTs.

Victoria received the results of 18,800 tests in the last 24 hours, NSW 17,000 and Qld 7,800.  It is good to see that even pretty much no community transmissions the testing numbers are still reasonably high.

Currently Australia wide there are 72 active cases, 64 of which are ROTs.  Victoria has 8 active cases, all community transmissions from the Holiday Inn cluster and all in quarantine, NSW has 43 active cases all ROTs, Qld has 13 active cases also all ROTs.

Victoria is still lagging in the vaccination stakes with 1,656 vaccinations in the last 24 hours bringing the Victorian total vaccinations to 6,676.  In the same period NSW has completed 14,600 vaccinations.  I do hope the premier isn't going to tell us that we have the gold standard world's best vaccination process in this state.  I will put money on it that the Victorian public service is having lots of meetings and forming politically correct committees to get this process under way.

There are currently 23 Australians in hospital with the virus and one of these is in ICU in NSW.

Worldwide there were 288,000 new infections reported in the last 24 hours.  There were nearly 9,000 deaths reported in the same period.  This continues the downward trend in both of these categories.

In the 24 hours of 02/03 the US reported 57,400 new infections and 1,431 deaths.  The UK reported 5,500 new infections and 104 deaths for the same period.  This continues a moderate downward trend for the US and a strong downward trend for the UK in both new infections and deaths.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – March 2021 – Covid Normal (for the time being)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus ROTs Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Vic ROTS Increase	*Aus Active Infection	*Aus ROTs	Vic Active Infection	Vic ROTs
01/03	28,978	8	8	20,481	0	0	71	61	11	1
02/03	28,986	9	9	20,481	0	0	72	63	10	1
03/03	28,992	6	6	20,481	0	0	72	64	8	0
04/03

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/03/21	114,686,978	321,386	2,543,285	6,582
02/03/21	114,993,503	306,525	2,550,245	6,960
03/03/21	115,281,061	287,558	2,559,210	8,965
04/03/21

	US & UK Daily New Infections & Death Numbers
Date	US New Infections	US Daily Deaths	UK New Infections	UK Daily Deaths
01/03/21	51,204	1,097	6,055	144
02/03/21	57,439	1,431	5,462	104
03/03/21

Covid Normal Reminders;

Remember: not to look for naked ladies in every ink blot; to collect your Frequent Flyer points, you might be able to use them one day.