Blog Day 382 - Wednesday 14 April 2021

After a couple of dreary days it is a beautiful Melbourne autumn day today, nice and sunny and about 21 degrees.  

I just had a phone call from a gentleman from the sub continent telling me that he was calling from the Telstra Technical Department and that my internet is going to be disconnected this afternoon due to unspecified security issues.  As you could imaging this conversation didn't go much further.

Today I went for a walk up and down Centre Rd in Bentleigh East and yesterday I walked along Centre Rd in Bentleigh.  Both shopping centres appear to be busy and with very few vacant commercial properties.  Even when shops and cafes have closed and are empty they appear to be taken up very quickly by new businesses.  Also interesting is the number of businesses that have positions vacant signs in their windows.  The cafes and take away food shops appear to be eager to employ people at the moment.  

Southland is a similar story.  There has been a number of retail and food outlets closed but they are not empty for long.  So it would appear there are some people out there looking for a business opportunity.

It has just been reported that Mohinder Singh the truck driver who ran into and killed the four police officers on the Eastern Freeway has been sentenced to 22 years gaol with 18 years and 6 months to serve before he is eligible for parole.  Pity for him that he wasn't "Irish", if he was "Irish" he would have got two months in a youth detention centre with regular pizza and day release.

I see that there are some problems with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the US.  Out of 7 million doses of the J & J vaccine administered there has been 6 recorded cases of blood clotting and 1 death as a result of the blood clotting.  This is a single dose vaccine but it isn't on the list of vaccines to be used in Australia.  However if it is not going to be continued to be used in the US that will put pressure on the other vaccine suppliers which could affect the supply of vaccine to Australia.

The Federal government is reconvening the national cabinet in an attempt to work through the issues with the roll out of the vaccines.  The rollout of the vaccine has been plagued with problems including supply chain issues due to some EU countries withholding supplies of the vaccine to Australia, issues between the feds and states and of course concerns with the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clotting.  Let's hope that they can between them sort out some of the problems and get vaccination process ramped up.

All the same given the low number of infections in Australia, even with the low numbers of vaccinations we are continuing to do very well.  Lets hope that pride doesn't cometh before a fall.

In the last 24 hours 5 new cases were reported Australia wide, all ROTs.  Three in NSW and two in Qld.  No new cases reported in Victoria and we have now gone 47 days without a local infection.

Australia wide there are 138 active cases of which 133 are ROTs.  Victoria has 3 active cases, all ROTs; NSW 56 active cases of which 55 are ROTs and Qld 51 active cases of which 47 are ROTs.

To date Australia wide there has been 1,247,813 doses of vaccine administered.  This includes the doses administered by the Federal and state governments and those administered by GPs.

Worldwide the new infection and death figures are rolling along with no great movement up or down over a period of time.  In the last 24 hours there were 454,000 new infections reported worldwide and 8,407 deaths.

It is a similar story in the US with large fluctuations of the daily figures but with the figures remaining constant over a period of say a week.  After achieving some really good results a while go the daily infection figures appear to be stagnating.  In the last 24 hours the US reported 69,500 new infections and 455 deaths.  

The UK figures have bounced back up with 3,700 new infections reported in the last 24 hours and 15 deaths.  Lets hope that this is a reporting or recording glitch and not as a result of the poms celebrating their new found freedom from lockdown.

Brazil and Turkey are rolling along with new infections being reported in the 10s of thousands every day.  

France reported 8,500 new infections in the last 24 hours and 385 deaths.  In the 24 hours prior to that France reported 118,000 new infections and 696 deaths.  Apart from appearing as though the virus is still out of control it is hard to make any sense of these figures.

Now for some figures that we can make sense of.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – April 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
01/04	29,323	17	11	20,484	0	0	163		1	1
02/04	29,335	8	7	20,484	0	0	159	147	1	1
03/04	29,341	6	5	20,484	0	0	151	143	1	1
04/04	29,348	7	7	20,484	0	0	143		1	1
05/04	29,357	9	9	20,484	0	0	149		1	1
06/04	29,363	7	7	20,484	0	0	148	129	1	1
07/04	29,377	12	12	20,484	0	0	147	128	1	1
08/04	29,385	6	6	20,484	0	0	140		0	0
09/04	29,388	3	3	20,484	0	0	131	113	0	0
10/04	29,396	6	6	20,485	1	1	132	115	1	1
11/04	29,402	6	6	20,485	0	0	122	106	1	1
12/04	29,419	13	13	20,487	2	2	130	117	3	3
13/04	29,437	18	18	20,487	0	0	142	137	3	3
14/04	29,442	5	5	20,487	0	0	138	133	3	3
15/04

Date	World Infection	Daily Increase	World Deaths	Daily Increase
01/04/21	128,822,013	683,042	2,815,151	12,262
02/04/21	129,524,770	711,626	2,827,020	11,861
03/04/21	130,235,782	628,853	2,837,694	10,189
04/04/21	130,768,885	533,103	2,846,114	8,420
05/04/21	131,217,283	448,398	2,852,494	6,380
06/04/21	131,714,949	394,108	2,860,077	7,105
07/04/21	132,418,417	605,501	2,872,438	11,801
08/04/21	132,975,564	684,346	2,886,571	14,825
09/04/21	133,810,021	707,258	2,901,088	13,825
10/04/21	134,544,377	601,764	2,914,575	12,681
11/04/21	135,201,665	511,007	2,926,952	11,567
12/04/21	135,876,628	521,465	2,935,445	7,653
13/04/21	136,500,047	454,145	2,944,756	8,407
14/04/21

	US & UK Daily New Infections & Death Numbers
Date	US New Infections	US Daily Deaths	UK New Infections	UK Daily Deaths
01/04/21	66,173	1,042	4,115	43
02/04/21	78,445	1,048	4,565	51
03/04/21	69,822	967	3,422	52
04/04/21	62,154	676	3,424	10
05/04/21	34,282	222	2,405	10
06/04/21	78,279	596	2,831	28
07/04/21	61,958	835	2,404	20
08/04/21	74,628	2,563	2,797	45
09/04/21	79,254	974	3,124	53
10/04/21	81,801	942	(4,787)	60
11/04/21	65,914	708	2,713	40
12/04/21	46,016	283	1,730	7
13/04/21	69,486	455	3,686	15
14/04/21