Blog Day 471 - Friday 17 July 2021 - Day 1 of Lockdown V 5.0

There you go, I take my eyes off the road for a moment and the world has gone to hell in a handbag!

NSW is in its second week of a slightly more relaxed version of a lockdown and Victoria has gone into a full blown 5 day lockdown, about the only thing that is missing from our lockdown is the night time curfew.

We are back to wearing masks both indoors and outdoors, only allowed to leave the house for one of five reasons, travel restricted to 5km from home, no visitors to the home (except for bonk buddies) and so on.

Queensland has just declared all of Victoria a red zone and anybody arriving in Qld from 1.00pm today will have to hotel quarantine for 14 days.

Earlier this week, before the lockdown was announced, I caught the train into the CBD and had lunch with a couple of friends.  The train from Caulfield to Flagstaff was nearly empty and nearly everybody was wearing a mask.  But sad to say the CBD was nearly empty as well (remember this is before the latest lockdown), the cafes and restaurants in Hardware Lane were all open and had their tables and chairs set up, but unfortunately had no customers.  There are lots of empty shopfronts and closed businesses and building works where nothing appeared to be happening.  There is lots of rubbish around and graffiti and the city looks tired and dirty.

In contrast to the suburbs the CBD appeared to be bereft of traffic.  

I was scheduled to receive my 2nd AZ vaccination on 3 August, however I have brought it forward to Saturday 17 July and instead of going to a hospital clinic I am getting the jab at the local medical clinic.  I am a little short of the recommend 12 week period but hopefully they will do me.  The difference in effectiveness between 10 weeks and 12 weeks is minimal I thought that I should get it done as soon as possible.

Now then, what is all the panic about.  In the 24 hours to midnight last night Victoria had reported 10 new locally acquired cases and one ROT.  Since then a further 6 local cases have been discovered.  Currently Victoria has 24 active locally acquired cases.  I think the issue here is that a number of these cases have been out and about in the community.  Currently there are more than 100 tier 1, 2 and 3 transmission sites known to the authorities including places like the MCG.  There are something like 6,500 close contacts of the infected parties who being contact traced and tested.  

And by the way, the Irish removalists who started all this are still not co-operating with the police and other authorities with details of their contacts and movements.

NSW has reported a further 97 new local infections in the last 24 hours.  This brings the total number of current local infections in NSW to 916.  Of the 97 new infections 75 of those people had been moving around the community whilst infected.  And we thought that Victoria had problems.

And to round things off I see that Japan had 3,200 new infections in the last 24 hours which is probably a record for them, dare I say an Olympic record.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – 16 July 2021 – Day 1 of Covid Lockdown V 5.0

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
01/07
02/07	30,684	40	6	20,715	3	3	378	102	32	23
03/07
04/07	30,753	19	2	20,714	1	1	421	88	23	16
05/07
06/07	30,829	26	7	20,718	2	2	474	91	25	18
07/07
08/07
09/07
10/07
11/07
12/07
13/07
14/07
15/07
16/07	31,626	110	2	20,748	11	1	1,067	103	36	12