Blog Day 508 - Sunday 22 August 2021 - Day 17 of Covid Lockdown V6.0

Beautiful springlike day in Melbourne today.  This is unfortunate cause the nice weather encourages and brings out the lockdown rule breakers, rule benders and the loophole Larries and Lorraines. 

You want and example? I will give you an example.

This morning I went to the chemist in Centre Rd Bentleigh to get a prescription filled.  Whilst I was waiting I went for a walk along Centre Rd, wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing where necessary.  As we know the cafes can sell take away food and drinks.  I am sure that the thinking behind this is that once you receive your take away food and drink, you take the friggin food and drink away!

 But what seems to be the go now is that you wait in the outdoor area at the cafe where the outdoor tables and chairs used to be and when you get your take away food and drink you drop your mask and stand there with your mates, your partner, various strangers and eat and drink there - no mask and no social distancing, I am sure that is not the intention of the take away rules!

Don't get me started on the people wandering around with either no mask, mask under the chin or mask under the nose.  

Given what the majority of the law abiding folk are putting up with at the moment this is a bit like Muhammed Ali's left leg "neither right nor fair".  

Now for the anti vaxers and vaccination hesitant amongst us (and I know that doesn't include any of my dear readers as I know that my dear readers are smarter than that).  There was an interesting article in The Age last week about the state of Mississippi's ongoing disaster with the covid virus.  Mississippi reported over 4,000 cases last Wednesday and 7,800 the previous Monday for a seven day average of 3,526.

They have 1,700 Mississippians in hospital with 467 folk in ICU.  They are erecting field hospitals in parking lots.

Now anti vaxers read this, about 36% of Mississippians are fully vaccinated, which is the second worst vaccination rate in the US above only Alabama.  However 89% of hospitalisations and 86% of deaths in Mississippi were of unvaccinated people.  

Mississippi has a population of just under 3 million people, which means that by population it is smaller than Melbourne.  So far in the pandemic they have experienced 7,991 deaths from 406,000 infections.

So, by way of comparison, in the entire pandemic Victoria has reported 21,000 infections compared to Mississippi's 406,000 and Victoria has recorded 820 deaths compared to Mississippi's nearly 8,000.

I am sure that there are other issues at play here including socio/economic circumstances but I think that these figures are a timely reminder of what can go wrong and what happens when it goes wrong.

One good thing has come out of reviewing this article, I now know how to spell Mississippi!

Very quick update on today's figures locally; Victoria has reported another 66 new cases in the last 24 hours, NSW 830 new cases and three more deaths and ACT has reported 19 new cases.

Further facts and figures over the next couple of days.