Blog Day 352 - Monday 15 March 2021

As Brian's mother said in "The Life of Brian", "he is not the messiah, he is just a naughty boy".  Likewise, I am not the messiah but I am also a naughty boy in that I have missed four days of this my very important blog.  Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, as life gets back to normal the demands on ones time is sometimes making it more difficult to get to the blog.  I am talking about six year old birthday parties, after birthday drinkies for the adults, airport pickups, regular shifts at the Shrine, U3A sessions, lunches, upcoming 40th birthday party (weekend), sitting exhausted on the couch and various social and non social activities.

But, all through this and knowing how my blog has helped my dear readers through the dark days of the pandemic I will continue with the blog to the best of my abilities and with the time available.  Bless you, everyone of you.

Although I have missed a few days, the wheels have not fallen of the corona virus pandemic in Australia, which is more than can be said for some other parts of the world.  After many days of no local infections in NSW and Queensland they have both reported one new local infection.  The Brisbane case is a doctor who treated some infected patients in quarantine in a hospital in Brisbane who consequently tested positive the day after.  The NSW case was a worker who had been working in two of the quarantine hotels  in Sydney.  Contact tracing is taking place on both of these cases, at this stage there hasn't been any declarations of hot spots in either state or talk of closing borders.

Somebody in our various levels of government must have recently read the story of the "Tortoise and the Hare" where the slow and steady tortoise wins the race against the speedy hare, cause we seem to be taking the tortoise's attitude with the roll out of the virus vaccine.  To date we have jabbed 164,000 of the good folk of this wide brown land accounting for .63% of the population.  Meanwhile Israel has vaccinated 109% of the population (not sure how that is possible but that is what it says), UK 37%, USA 32%.  France and Italy are both lagging behind at 11% and even Brazil has done 5% of it's long suffering people.

COUNTRY	VACC	DOSES	per 100k
Israel		9,257,019	108,663
Seychelles		88,106	89,904
UAE		6,516,723	66,695
UK		25,216,857	37,342
Maldives		198,206	37,327
Chile		6,581,943	34,730
Bahrain		534,625	32,579
USA		105,703,501	32,122
Malta		117,121	26,618
Australia		159,294	632
New Zealand		18,000	376
Worldwide		355,157,298	4,604

Is it coincidence that Brazil, France and Italy, amongst others, are experiencing blow outs in their infection and death figures.

Victoria has recorded 17 days with no new local infections of the virus, NSW was having a good run at 55 days with no local infections but unfortunately the this has come to a grinding halt with the infection of the security guard in Sydney.

In the last 24 hours there has been 14 new cases reported Australia wide with 13 of these ROTs.  Victoria reported another day of all the zeroes, but remember we are still not taking any ROTs in this state.  Although we are still paying for the ROT quarantine facilities to be available but with no ROTs coming into the state; go figure.

To date Australia wide we have vaccinated 164,000 people, or .6% of the population and this includes an estimated 40,000 jabs given by the Feds to people in nursing homes and the like.  In the last 24 hours Victoria vaccinated 606 people for a total of 31,800 and NSW 680 for a total of an estimated 37,500.

You are reading this right, we can manage to test over 30,000 people on a good day and yet we can only vaccinate 606.  Is there something wrong here or is this just the way it works?

In the last 24 hours Victoria received the results of 9,700 tests, NSW 8,200 and Qld 4,400.  Testing results seem to decline over the weekend and then ramp up again as the week moves along.

Australia wide there are 113 active cases, 112 of which are ROTs.  Victoria has 2 active cases, both infected airline crew members in quarantine.

Worldwide over the last four days there was an average of 451,000 new infections per day and 8,500 deaths.  Given the range of figures over the last week or so it is difficult to pick a trend but if I was hazarding a guess I would suggest that both the daily infections and deaths are trending slightly upwards.

The US and UK figures are continuing their downward trend.  The US reported 52,600 new infections in the 24 hours 14/03 and 1,700 deaths in the same period.  The rate of decline in the US appears to be flattening a bit but at least it is heading in the right direction.  The UK reported 5,600 new infections in the same 24 hour period and 122 deaths.  The UK appears to be maintaining a downward trend although this is slowing a bit also.

I had a quick look at the numbers for Brazil, France and Italy and they are all on the way back up again.  Brazil recorded 76,000 new infections in the last 24 hours and they are regularly and easily exceeding the US with the highest daily infection rates.

France and Italy reported 30,000 and 26,000 new infections respectively in the last 24 hours.  France is still a lockdown and Italy has reimposed a national lockdown.  I am not sure if this is an third wave for these countries or a continuation of a long drawn out second wave.

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	29,007	14	14	20,481	0	0	83	78	5	0
05/03	29,021	13	13	20,481	0	0	83	78	5	0
06/03	29,027	7	7	20,482	1	1	95	89	6	1
07/03	29,037	7	7	20,481	0	0	98	92	5	0
08/03	29,046	9	7	20,482	1	1	105	98	5	1
09/03	29,061	15	15	20,483	1	1	106	102	6	2
10/03	29,074	13	13	20,483	0	0	119	115	6	2
11/03	29,090	15	15	20,483	0	0	118	117	3	2
12/03	29,102	12	12	20,483	0	0	116		3	3
13/03	29,112	11	10	20,483	0	0	117		3	3
14/03	29,117	5	5	20,483	0	0	111		3	2
15/03	29,130	14	13	20,483	0	0	114	113	2	2

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	115,760,899	479,838	2,570,837	11,627
05/03/21	116,206,172	445,273	2,580,784	9,947
06/03/21	116,647,742	441,570	2,590,967	10,183
07/03/21	117,068,795	421,053	2,599,264	8,297
08/03/21	117,432,452	363,657	2,604,791	5,527
09/03/21	117,723,538	291,116	2,611,130	6,339
10/03/21	118,144,752	421,214	2,621,035	9,905
11/03/21	118,595,502	450,750	2,630,467	9,432
12/03/21
13/03/21
14/03/21
15/03/21	120,401,626	451,531	2,664,662	8,548

	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	56,758	1,924	6,411	343
04/03/21	65,909	2,360	6,420	487
05/03/21	65,447	1,775	6,644	242
06/03/21	66,786	1,758	6,024	236
07/03/21	57,596	1,485	6,118	159
08/03/21	40,903	669	5,260	82
09/03/21	50,237	719	4,823	65
10/03/21	55,909	1,891	5,869	231
11/03/21	57,939	1,554	6,021	190
12/03/21	62,404	1,557	6,835	181
13/03/21	61,204	1,769	6,684	176
14/03/21	52,642	1,701	5,617	122

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; don't burn your leaves in the gutter; don't air the family's dirty laundry in public; to be careful on wet & slippery staircases.