Blog Day 524 - Tuesday 07 Sept 2021 - Day 33 of Covid Lockdown V6.0 (Extended) 

Nearly up to week five of this lockdown and it has been about nine weeks since I had a haircut, talk about the wild man of Borneo, who knows it may become a fashion and de rigeur for the in crowd, particularly given my role as an influencer amongst my many readers and followers.

On the political front we have a new leader of the state opposition, or I should say the resurrection of a previous leader of the state opposition back to the post.  Matthew Guy has ousted Michael O'Brien in a party room coup that has come as no surprise to anybody.  O'Brien has been struggling to cut through the premier's iron fisted control of the state.  Given the premier's control of information flow via his media department, his lack of consultation and that parliament hasn't been sitting it would be difficult for any opposition leader to make any impact.  Although I don't think that O'Brien did anything wrong we wasn't really the man to take on the premier.  I don't know that Guy will do any better but at the moment the Liberals have nothing to lose.

In more big news today, Melbourne's big ferris wheel has finally stopped turning, probably permanently.   The term ferris wheel is a registered trade mark so we actually have to call the departed Melbourne Star an observation wheel.  I was one of the few people that actually travelled on the original wheel prior to it being closed for three or four years due to cracking in its structure.  I should have kept the tickets, could be a collector's item one day.

This wheel had lots of issues apart from getting off to a shaky start and I am surprised it lasted as long as it did.  First of all it is located in Docklands, enough said.  The other issue was the scene from the wheel, on Melbourne's wheel you spent 40 minutes or so looking across the scenic shipping container parks and the Costco car park, hardly the City of London, the houses of parliament and the Thames river, all visible from the London wheel, and even that got boring after a while.

Talking about London, it would be nice to go back there one day, but that certainly isn't looking likely in the near to distant future.

In the last 24 hours Victoria recorded 246 new locally acquired cases of which 90 are linked to known clusters and 156 are still under investigation.  For some reason the premier has stopped telling us why we aren't being told how many of these cases were in circulation in the community while infectious. There are 1,786 active cases in Victoria and 110 are in hospital with 30 in ICU and 14 on ventilators.

The NSW new infection figures are fluctuating a bit but with no definite downward trend.  They recorded 1,222 new infection in the last 24 hours bringing to 26,000 the number of active infections in the state.  NSW recorded 8 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Victoria received the results of 44,000 tests in the last 24 hours and NSW 101,000.

Nationally 38.4% of the eligible population are fully vaccinated and 63.2% have received their 1st injection.  In Victoria the figures are 37.8% and 60.8% respectively.

Worldwide, as at 6/9 222,649,092 people have been infected with the virus with 368,305 new infections reported in the previous 24 hour period.  To 6/9 there has been 4,567,116 deaths reported due to the virus with 5,972 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.

It would appear that the daily infections and death figures worldwide have stabilised a little although it is hard to tell given the wide variance in the daily reported figures.

Corona Virus Daily Stats – 07 September 2021 – Day 33 of Covid Lockdown V6.0 Extended

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus ROTs Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	NSW Increase	*Aus Active Infection	NSW Active Infection	Vic Active Infection	Vic ROT
01/09
02/09	56,564	1,482	3	22,361	176	1,288	21,481	20,148	1,029
03/09	58,288	1,660	2	22,570	209	1,433	22,767	21,296	1,180
04/09
05/09	61,619	1,686	2	22,942	183	1,487	25,590	23,903	1,417
06/09
07/09	64,641	1,487	2	23,433	246	1,222	28,131	26,082	1,786
08/09