Blog Day 406 - Saturday 8 May 2021

After a couple of abortive attempts I have finally made an appointment for my first AstraZeneca vaccination.  I have finally been able to book into Moorabbin hospital which strangely enough is in Bentleigh East within walking distance of home.  I am scheduled for the jab next Tuesday at 9.30am in the morning.  I sometimes may complain about things but I also like to give credit where credit is due.  The three people that I spoke to, in three phone calls, trying to make my appointment were incredibly polite and helpful and I would like to put that on record.

Not having had a look at any virus numbers over the last couple of weeks I will have bit of a look at what is happening in Australia and the world today.

One of my friends made a comment the other day that a couple of local infections in NSW causes newspaper headlines and talk of bursting bubbles and border closures and then you look at what is happening around the world and our virus issues seem to be insignificant, and of course we want to keep it that way.

Of course the big news has been the third wave outbreak in India and the subsequent closure of Australia's borders to Australian citizens and permanent residents of Indian descent attempting to come to Australia from India.  Of course the usual suspects on twitter are bleating about how this decision is racist and these people have right to come 'home' etc.  Whilst sympathising with the plight of these people stuck in India and I certainly wouldn't want to be caught there maybe the greater good of the Australian population is more important than the safety and comfort of a relatively small number of people stuck in India.

Oh, I did I mention that this stop on people from India coming to Australia is for only two weeks.

I daresay if Twitter had been around in 1942 the same self important twitterers, or their grandparents, would be complaining that stopping those nice Japanese chaps from visiting Australia was also racist.

Currently Australia wide there are 235 active cases of which 226 are ROTS; Victoria has 15 active cases, all ROTs; NSW has 129 active cases of which 126 are ROTS and Qld has 21 active cases all ROTs.

Australia wide there were 9 new infections reported in the last 24 hours, all ROTs.

NSW is the only state to have reported their testing numbers for the last 24 hours and they reported 22,153 test results.  I daresay that these numbers are up due to the virus scare on there at the moment.

Fortunately the death number Australia wide remain at 910 and has been that number for some time.  There are currently 39 Australians in hospital due to the virus with one in ICU.

Remember the figures for Australia while we look at the rest of the world.  The table below lists the countries that we have been keeping a bit of an eye on and records the most recent daily reported infection and deaths and the totals for both for the entire pandemic.

Of these countries the UK is the only one that has the virus under control.  The US figures whilst high are currently not increasing and possibly maybe decreasing slightly.  The rest of them still have significantly high figures with no sign of any improvement.

And people wonder why we want to keep our borders under control.