Blog Day 533 - Thursday 16 Sept 2021 - Day 42 of Covid Lockdown V6.0 Extended

At last our little country is getting all growd up, we're getting a nuclear submarine or maybe even two.  

Seriously, in a surprise overnight announcement the Federal government announced that we are dumping the contract with the French to build a dozen or so conventional powered submarines to be replaced with eight nuclear powered submarines of US design to be built on conjunction with the US and the UK.

It has been emphasised that the new subs will be nuclear powered and not armed with nuclear weapons.

I was interested as to why the French submarine design was initially chosen given their one and only naval victory was when they sunk the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour a few years ago.  Apologies to my many French readers for this comment.

The project cost will exceed the $90 billion dollar cost of the existing deal with the French and the first boats won't come off the slipway until 2036 or 2038.  Understandably the Froggies are a little miffed at losing the contract and I reckon the Chinese are going to be really irritated.

The Greens and some of the Labor opposition will be turning themselves inside out over this.  

Greens leader Adam Bandt claimed the “dangerous” move puts “floating Chernobyls in the heart of Australia’s cities”.

Not one to resort to hyperbole or exaggeration is our Adam.

I daresay we can expect to hear a lot more from the left along those lines.  Paul Keating has also put in his two bits in opposition to the project, but he would say that wouldn't he.

I found this photo of a French submarine, I am not sure why even the French would put a big bullseye on the front of their boats, seems to be asking for trouble to me.

Back to more mundane matters, six weeks of this short sharp circuit breaker lockdown, well that has gone well hasn't it !

Because we have been good little Victorians the premier in his absolute wisdom has deemed it fit to allow us to travel 10km from home from 11.59pm Friday night, except of course we can't go anywhere at 11.59pm of a night time, cause there is a bloody curfew!

He will also allow us to socialise outdoors in groups of 5 if all 5 are vaccinated or in groups of 2 if unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.   Gee, I couldn't imagine anybody finding a loophole in these rules.

In the last 24 hours Victoria recorded 514 new covid infections, of these 317 (62%) are from Melbourne's northern suburbs and 124 (24%) are from the Western suburbs.  It is no coincidence that these suburbs also have the highest levels of non vaccination in the state.  Victoria received the results of 62,000 tests in the last 24 hours.

The NSW figures seem to have plateaued reporting 1,351 new infections in the last 24 hours from the results of 129,000 tests.  Unfortunately NSW reported 12 deaths in the same period.

Australia wide 69.2% of the eligible population have received their 1st dose of the vaccine and 43.9% have received both doses.  In Victoria 68.5% of the eligible population have received one dose and 41.9% two doses.

Internationally the figures are still hard to draw any conclusions from. For example in the last three days the USA reported 144,000; 262,000 and 34,000 new daily infections and 1,819; 2,136 and 279 daily death figures. Make some sense from those if you will.

The UK daily figures seem to be more consistent running at between 25,000 and 30,000 new infections every day although the daily death figures are ranging between 50 and 150. Does this mean that the UK virus suppression program is working?

Corona Virus Daily Stats – 16 September 2021 – Day 42 of Covid Lockdown V6.0 Extended

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Aus 1st Dose Vacc	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	NSW Increase	*Aus Active Infection	NSW Active Infection	Vic Active Infection	Aus 2nd Dose Vacc
01/09
02/09	56,564	1,482		22,361	176	1,288	21,481	20,148	1,029
03/09	58,288	1,660		22,570	209	1,433	22,767	21,296	1,180
04/09
05/09	61,619	1,686		22,942	183	1,487	25,590	23,903	1,417
06/09
07/09	64,641	1,487		23,433	246	1,222	28,131	26,082	1,786
08/09
09/09
10/09
11/09
12/09	73,625	1,669	66.9%	25,136	392	1,262	19,206	15,798	3,112	41.9%
13/09
14/09	76,901	1,605	68.5%	26,036	445	1,136	18,553	14,460	3,799	43.2%
15/09
16/09	80,400	1,883	69.2%	26,942	514	1,351	18,956	14,299	4,370	43.9%
17/09