Dan Andrews today confirmed that Victoria is ahead of schedule, and restrictions will soon be eased. Despite everything, we’re almost there.

Right now, in struggling, embattled (and battered) Victoria, things are, finally, looking a bit brighter and more encouraging. Two months ago, the daily media briefings by Premier Andrews brought more tragic gloom and doom. Some days, 600 and 700 new cases and more than 20 deaths.

One of my favourite old sayings is: ‘Beware the light at the end of the tunnel. It might be an express train coming the other way.’ Another one, especially in politics, is: ‘If you are being run out of town, pretend it is a parade and you are leading it.’

One day recently, there were no reported deaths, new cases were in their twenties and less than a hundred COVID patients remain in hospital. Only a few on ventilators. Importantly, elective surgery is returning. We are getting there. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Hurrah. Premier @DanielAndrewsMP has just confirmed for the first time that the next easing of restrictions on Sunday will go further than the original road map. Victoria doing better than modelling predicted. @7NewsMelbourne

— Laurel Irving (@laurelirving7) September 23, 2020

A recent opinion poll showed 70% of Victorians, living under real sufferance, approved the way Andrews has been handling all this. With some reservations, so do I.

The hotel quarantine fiasco was a disgrace. Shocking malfeasance. Victoria’s Ruby Princess. It largely forced us into another lockdown and curfew. Watching all those high-ranking, decision-making honchos suffering convenient memory loss at the judicial inquiry made me think of Hogan’s Heroes. Were all the witnesses watching reruns of Fawlty Towers during lockdown?

Many of them emulated Manuel during the Dragonfly betting scandal episode. ‘I know nothing!’ Who actually did approve rejecting the PM’s repeated email offers of defence personnel to help out? Who signed off on it? Surely, such a decision must have reached the Premier.

Andrews, doggedly and repeatedly, has told his daily media marathons that ADF support was never sought nor offered – even though the paper trail says otherwise.

What we do know, although nobody, not even the premier, will own up to it, is that the ever so worthy and socially committed Labor government hired an indigenous security firm out of Sydney with only 70-80 employees when 1700 were needed. The firm was not on an approved list and, once hired, went and reportedly hired their inexperienced extras from the internet. Eff up written all over it.

Also on The Big Smoke

• Don’t blame COVID-19 for the aged care crisis

There was a second Andrews snafu when an ethnic group’s defiance of the lockdown and curfew rules, the breaching of household numbers and the 5 kilometre rule, did not result in fines.

I said at the time: “Premier Andrews and Chief Health Officer Sutton have blown it. When they decided to exclude some ethnic groups from fines – for breaching the 5km limit and household numbers – I could almost hear a collective thought echo across a locked-down Melbourne: ‘Well, stuff it. I’ve followed the rules for months.’ So, in parks across sunny Melbourne at the weekend, we had thousands of people not just doing their one-hour legal exercise, but spending the afternoon defiantly picnicking. And cops on horses jogged right by.”

Two more ministers have failed to explain who made the decision to use private security guards in hotel quarantine. https://t.co/5zYfOfohG3 @SharnelleVella #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/Gh3HJz82Pb

— 7NEWS Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) September 23, 2020

The obvious question here is: If we are, supposedly, ‘all in this together’ (as the premier and the PM keep reminding us) how can you fine an old lady for sitting on a park bench but not a bunch of cronies having a good old time? It smacked of the kid gloves handling of the BLM protest. If we are all in this together then we are all in this together. And selfish breachers must pay the price.

To be fair, Andrews and his cautious team have dramatically driven the numbers down. Look at France and the UK, where they re-opened too early. And I really fear that NSW may still catch a deadly new wave. Victoria is on the way out of this. I fear for the economy but, as I have said – in the health versus the economy debate – if we don’t conquer this medical problem we will have no economy.

Also on The Big Smoke

• We’re politicising the biggest health emergency in a century

Sadly, some family businesses that have been around for decades, for generations, will not re-open. Some jobs are lost forever. Some style of jobs will change forever. I don’t know what ‘COVID normal’ will look like. In a couple of months, I just hope I can travel and hug somebody for Christmas.

Not too much to wish for when, in Victoria, we have been through so much, so much deprivation and hardship. Again: mask up, stay strong. We shall get through this.

The post Victoria, despite everything – we’re almost through this appeared first on The Big Smoke.

Justified as an unprecedented bill for an unprecedented time, legal experts are railing against a bill that will greatly expand the powers of the Victorian government.

As Victorian COVID case numbers show a steady decline, and there’s hope on the horizon that lockdowns may ease, Victoria is planning to introduce legislation that would allow the detention of anyone who fails to self-isolate if they have tested positive for COVID-19, or have been in close contact with someone with the virus coronavirus.

There’s widespread concern that the bill would impact human rights by allowing citizens to be placed in arbitrary detention.

The Victorian Bar Association has written to the Andrews government asking it to reconsider the legislation which would hand power to Health Department-appointed authorised officers to detain anyone they “reasonably believe” may negligently spread the virus.

A separate letter from a group of retired judges and leading QCs has also been sent to the Victorian Premier warning him against the emergency measures which they say would result in “unprecedented, excessive powers.”

Under the proposed legislation (which has passed its third reading in the government-controlled lower house last week and will now be sent to the Legislative Council – Ed), the Victorian government could also enlist protective services officers and WorkSafe inspectors to enforce public health directions which extends one-off changes made in April for another six months.

And of course, there is a major concern that the law could be applied to the ‘conspiracy theorists’ who refuse to self-isolate, or homeless people who don’t have the capacity to self-isolate. And if caught, they would be detained in places where they could be monitored, such as designated hotels, for the period reasonably necessary to eliminate or reduce a serious risk to public health. The authorised officers can also restrict movement, search premises without a warrant and give other directions that are deemed necessary to protect public health.

A letter from a group of retired judges and leading QCs has also been sent to the Victorian Premier warning him against the emergency measures which they say would result in “unprecedented, excessive powers.”

The Government argues the Omnibus – Emergency Measures Bill strengthens the state’s pandemic response. Both the State’s Attorney-General Jill Hennessy and the Health Minister are in favour of the legislation.

However, as the legal experts point out:  ‘Unconstrained and undefined subjective powers naturally invite the tendency to exercise them to the fullest, and in breach of human rights.’

And a rather concerning blow for democracy and freedom.

They are calling for changes to the legislation to ensure human rights protections, including that cases of people who have been detained to be reviewed by the Chief Health Officer within 24 hours of their incarceration, and for the Government to narrow the scope of those who can be appointed to enforce public health rules.

Recently the government extended the state of emergency and state of disaster for another four weeks, ending at 11.59 pm on October 11, having previously passed a law to allow it to continue declaring four-week emergency declarations for another six months.

The Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Bill passed through the government-controlled lower house on Friday but it faces opposition in the upper house. It’s understood that the Liberals and Nationals are fiercely opposed to the bill, and the Greens oppose some of its components.

The Bill also extends by six months one-off pandemic-related changes made in April, including the ability to make procedural changes by government regulation rather than legislation.

Victoria has both a state of emergency and a state of disaster in place. The state of disaster grants additional powers to the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Lisa Neville, to control and restrict entry, movement within and departure from a disaster area – in this case, the whole state – and to direct government agencies and allocate resources to enforce these restrictions.

Since August, metropolitan Melbourne has been in lockdown and under curfew, and many of the residents were hoping that with COVID case numbers in decline, they could soon be getting on with their lives, but if the extreme Omnibus legislation passes as a measure to ‘cope with’ the ongoing pandemic, it’s likely their freedom will be heavily impacted for some time to come.

The post The Omnibus Bill: Victoria’s plan to detain those who fail to self-isolate appeared first on The Big Smoke.

Melbourne’s COVID-19 roadmap is ‘ahead of schedule’, as the nation now looks toward October 19, and the end of lockdown.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced an end to the curfew and a COVID-safe return to work for 127,000 Melburnians, as restrictions ease at 11.59pm Sunday night. He has also flagged a provisional early lifting of many other aspects of the lockdown on October 19.

The downward trend in new COVID-19 cases has been better than expected, with the crucial 14-day moving average of daily new cases reaching 22.1. This is good news for Victorians, prompting Andrews to move metropolitan Melbourne to the second step of the state’s roadmap to COVID-normal.

According to the roadmap, today’s announcement was contingent on the 14-day rolling average being below 30-50 cases. The 50-case mark was passed on September 17, and the lower bound of 30 cases was reached a week later, on September 24.

covid19data.com.au

Rather than easing restrictions when the criterion for new cases was met, the government had also, unnecessarily, set a date for moving to the second step: September 28.

Before today’s announcement, the better-than-expected decline in case numbers, coupled with the reduction in the number of “mystery” cases with an unknown source, had led Andrews to flag the possibility of easing restrictions faster than the provisional dates in the roadmap.

This is indeed what he has announced, with the next step potentially moving forward from October 26 to October 19. The government will now rely predominantly on epidemiological thresholds rather than dates. But Andrews added it is necessary to monitor the effects of today’s announcement for a further three weeks.

Andrews and his advisors had to keep in mind the ultimate goal of reaching zero active cases. Lifting restrictions too soon would jeopardise that.

The main changes are cautious ones, and still consistent with the zero target. The key changes are shown below.

One of the most welcome changes will be the abolition of the curfew. It had no real evidence base, given the other restrictions in place, and it became a policy orphan with no one owning up to recommending it.

The other major change is to formalise the return of on-site schooling. The research evidence on schools is complex, with different countries adopting very different rules about whether children can attend. But evidence suggests transmission risk is lower for kids under ten, so primary school return is welcome.

The return of VCE and VCAL students is presumably based on the assumption older teenagers should be able to follow physical distancing guidelines.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Melbourne farewells curfew as the end of lockdown nears appeared first on The Big Smoke.

While the residents of Melbourne eagerly look toward October’s easing of restrictions, our modelling suggests Victoria meeting the target is unlikely.

Melburnians are addicted to the Victorian health department’s daily tweet of the state’s new COVID-19 cases. This figure contributes to the all-important rolling 14-day average, which alongside the number of mystery cases, tells us whether we’re on target for the next phase of reopening.

How likely is it we’ll get to the target of an average of no more than five new daily cases by October 19 and fewer than five mystery cases — the triggers for the next stage of restrictions to be lifted?

Our regular modelling updates contribute to the assessment of epidemic trends in Australia. This work suggests the chance of achieving the target is 50% or less.

In the words of Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, it’s looking like a “line ball” decision.

Why aren’t the numbers going down?

Daily case reports have dramatically decreased from the hundreds seen only weeks ago. However, now numbers are low, any minor fluctuations are highly visible. We’re still seeing small outbreaks that seed chains of transmission, contributing to this day-by-day variation.

The recent outbreak linked to the Butcher Club at Chadstone shopping centre is a prime example, with workers transporting the virus back home across Melbourne and into regional Victoria. Essential work is a valid reason to leave home and travel beyond 5 kilometres, facilitating long-range spread. The potential for further outbreaks like this remains.

Then there are the cases in “stubborn” settings such as aged care. We have seen the potential for outbreaks in these environments, which are essentially residential settings housing large numbers of people at risk of severe outcomes.

While there have been major efforts to reduce introduction and spread of infection in these environments, rumbling chains of infection spread have proven difficult to stamp out.

At the moment, the vast majority of cases are linked, and related to spread in occupational and residential settings.

So what happens if we’re still at an average of ten cases by mid-October? By late October? Into November? Are the measures that would remain in place proportionate to these numbers, and is there good evidence those measures are needed to prevent a third wave?

It’s clear Melbourne cannot stay in lockdown indefinitely. Lockdowns are an emergency brake on widespread community transmission.

How can we safely free up society and the economy without dashing all the efforts of the past months?

Super-spreaders are who we should be focusing on

The biggest challenge for containing COVID-19 is the potential for super-spreading events. Many infected people do not spread the virus. But some, the super-spreaders, infect many others. Those newly infected people then return to their own homes, schools or workplaces, each with the potential to seed new infections.

So rapid identification of super-spreading events is key. This is achieved by working backwards whenever we identify a new case — a concept known as “back tracing”.

Where resources are limited, they’re best applied to investigating where a known infection came from (as that “parent” source was clearly contagious) and following up on their close contacts as quickly as possible.

At our current low case numbers, we can also focus on who the newly identified person (the “child”, who may or may not be contagious) has subsequently been in contact with.

We also need to minimise the chance of these super-spreading events from happening in the first place. We can do this by limiting the number of people who mix together in workplaces and social situations.

Keep to your bubble

It’s also useful to distinguish between mixing with known and unknown people. It’s clear SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads very effectively in households, where we understandably let our guard down.

Limiting our social contacts to known, repeated people or small groups or “bubbles” reduces the overall risk and makes contact tracing easier in the event of an infection. Meeting up in outdoor settings further reduces those risks.

But socialising in public places, like restaurants, provides opportunities for mixing with unknown people. That’s why COVID-safe operating practices to limit group sizes in restaurants and cafes and minimise between-group interactions are so important. And of course there are outdoor dining options if the Melbourne weather chooses to be kind.

Hong Kong managed its “second wave” very effectively without lockdowns by reducing mass gatherings, promoting remote working and learning, introducing seating restrictions in restaurants and closing bars. All these measures were explicitly focused on reducing super-spreading risk.

Individual behaviours still matter

No matter where we are or who we’re with, we can all reduce our individual risk of catching or spreading SARS-CoV-2. Whether or not we are staying “at home” is arguably a lot less important than how we behave when we leave.

Despite poor choices by some, Victorians’ compliance with personal behaviours to reduce infection spread are the highest in Australia and holding steady over time, helping keep the potential for transmission down.

What happens after October 19?

Thanks to early, proactive responses to COVID-19, Australia is in the fortunate position of having achieved near-elimination.

However, it is inevitable SARS-CoV-2 infections will continue to be imported, particularly as we look to reconnect with the wider world.

As a global community, we will be living with and adapting to this virus and its impacts for years to come. We need a view beyond the next fortnight to find sustainable ways to live, work and respond.

Lockdowns have served us well. Australia has avoided catastrophe. But it is not lockdown or bust. We have other alternatives.

Jodie McVernon, Professor and Director of Doherty Epidemiology, University of Melbourne and James McCaw, Professor in Mathematical Biology, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post The chances of Melbourne easing further restrictions is under 50% appeared first on The Big Smoke.

As Melbourne enters another lockdown, many are freely expressing their opinion about it. But that should come with a caveat.

As Victoria enters another lockdown, another thread is also emerging: if you don’t live in Melbourne and haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, you can’t actually understand what we’ve been through.

COVID has affected all Australians, but these last few months have been different for us.

Research on collective trauma and community recovery after disaster and upheaval tells us this is common in groups that have faced terrible or challenging experiences together.

If you’re in Melbourne, there are many ways to help yourself and those near you as we emerge from this gruelling period. If you’re outside Melbourne, you can and should support your Melbourne mates — but there are a few things to avoid.

Was Melbourne lockdown really a case of collective trauma?

Collective trauma events are not just disasters; they also have community-wide effects, and challenge people’s understanding of the way the world works.

Collective trauma events are typically thought of as tragedies such as the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014, the Christchurch Mosque shootings in 2019 or the events at Dream World in 2016. But I’d argue the strain of the last months in Melbourne has been experienced as a type of collective trauma event.

This view is informed by my research into disaster recovery, my work as a senior practitioner at Australian Red Cross, workplace seminars I have conducted during the pandemic, and my own experience living in Melbourne through this.

Collective trauma can have direct and indirect impacts. In the pandemic, direct impacts might be bereavement, the effect on your health, employment, education and access to services. Indirect impacts can be much harder to get your head around. They include changes to your worldview, your relationships, and how you see yourself.

Collective trauma can have direct and indirect impacts. In the pandemic, direct impacts might be bereavement, the effect on your health, employment, education and access to services. Indirect impacts can be much harder to get your head around.

For example, in pre-pandemic times you may have been in a very equal relationship where domestic duties were evenly shared — but in lockdown, maybe one partner shouldered a bigger burden of childcare and housework, or was under more pressure at work. These stressors can throw the relationship out of whack and have a long term impact.

People who lived alone during lockdown may have watched their relationships change and might wonder if things can go back to how they were.

In the first wave, there was a sense of “if we just batten down the hatches and get on with it, we will get through this.”

In the second wave, people in Victoria were confronted with a realisation that much in life is outside our control and recovery may not be linear. Instead of thinking “we just need to get through this part and then we’ll get back to how things were”, there was an unsettling day-to-day challenge of thinking, “What if this keeps happening? What if we can’t stop it? What if this changes the way I thought the world worked?”

So you had this disconnect where people outside Victoria kept saying “You’ll get through this! Once you’re on the other side things will be normal!” but, for many of us, those well-meaning cheers of encouragement didn’t line up with our actual experience.

Of course, people in other parts of the country who have been shaken in similar ways, and the restrictions Melburnians have experienced recently are faced by some people all the time. But in Melbourne, the relentlessness has been difficult to escape.

Getting support from others who lived it

We know from research that if a community has been through a challenging experience together — whether that’s bushfire, flood or some local horrific event — getting support from others who experienced it is crucial.

In my work with the Red Cross, we try to encourage people to connect with others after disasters. Just coming together to talk about what happened gives people the opportunity to feel a sense of hope, to normalise their experience and to be able to talk in a “shorthand” with others who will understand, because they went through it too. It’s a relief.

But all the things we’d normally suggest in the early stages of disaster are systemically dismantled by COVID. People have tried to stay connected online but it’s not the same. It’s tiring. It’s been harder to draw on normal points of support, which is crucial to recovery.

If you’re in Melbourne, recognise that we’ve all been through something huge and exhausting. Everyone is going to be in a different place. Try and be as patient and kind as you can with yourself and the people around you.

Also on The Big Smoke

• We need to talk about the coverage of Victoria’s lockdown
• In lockdown, time has no meaning
• The unmanageable Qarens of Melbourne

The research on collective trauma tells us if you haven’t been through the event, you’ll never quite understand. That doesn’t mean people outside Melbourne haven’t had their own experience, or can’t help.

Think about any upsetting personal experience you’ve had, such as miscarriage, divorce or the death of a parent. When someone who hasn’t experienced that specific trauma says “I know how you feel”, you might have felt misunderstood and even resentful or rageful.

You might think, “Not only do I need to explain myself and my feelings to this person — which in itself is exhausting and upsetting — I also have to find the energy to explain why what they said was wrong, even though I know they meant well”.

So over the next few weeks and months, don’t say “I know exactly how you feel” to your Melbourne friends and family. Unless you actually have been through the same thing in another setting, you don’t know how they feel. This experience was very specific.

Instead, ask “What has this been like for you?” and listen to what the person is saying. Say, “That sounds difficult. Tell me why, because I haven’t been in that situation”.

Staying open and empathetic

Research in this field talks a lot about the five mass trauma intervention principles, which are about promoting: a sense of safety, a sense of calm, a sense of self-efficacy and community efficacy (belief in one’s community or one’s own ability to do something well), connectedness and hope.

The lovely thing about these principles is they can be applied in many situations, whether that’s holding a press conference, consoling a friend or socialising with colleagues.

Good leaders promote these five things in times of crisis.

When we talk to each other as friends, try to keep those five principles in mind. Be open and empathetic in your listening.

Don’t be scared to talk to each other about how you’re feeling, and don’t be scared to ask your Melbourne friends about what happened.

But recognise that if you haven’t been through it, a good place to start could be “I can’t imagine what that was like. How can I help?”

Kate Brady, Research Fellow – Community Resilience, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Unless you experienced Melbourne’s lockdown, we don’t need your opinion appeared first on The Big Smoke.

Richard Pusey, the Porsche driver who filmed the aftermath of a crash that killed four police officers, has been found guilty in a Melbourne court.

Richard Pusey, the mortgage broker who recorded dying police officers before fleeing a crash has been sentenced to 10 months gaol.

Victoria Police officers stopped Pusey after doing 140km/h on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway in his Porsche 911 in April of last year. After returning a positive drug test, the police on the scene moved to impound the vehicle, before a refrigerated truck hit the group as they stood in the emergency lane of the freeway, killing all four officers involved.

Senior Constables Lynette Taylor and Kevin King, and Constables Glen Humphris and Josh Prestney, died.

In the clip (which has since been accepted by the court as Pusey talking to himself, not mocking the officers), he said “…oh he’s smashed. Look at that. Look at that. Lucky I went and had a piss,” he said while zooming in on Constable Humphris wedged between the truck and Porsche.

Later, Pusey added: “You cunts, I guess I’ll be getting a fucking Uber home, huh.”

He also zoomed on a damaged unmarked police car, saying “that is fucking justice, absolutely amazing”.

Judge Trevor Wraight said Pusey’s conduct at the scene was “heartless, cruel and disgraceful”, as well as “callous and reprehensible”.

“Your conduct only added to the shock and grief the families and wider community had to endure,” the judge also said.

After the crash, the media discovered Pusey’s YouTube channel, which features him racing around local racetracks, and his profile on TripAdvisor, which was littered with Porsche references, writing in November of 2018 that “…when I’m not racing my Porsche or chasing the Sky Bus for its free Wi-Fi, I like to get up and dance.”

Pusey also admitted to speeding offences and possessing MDMA, as well as testing positive for cannabis. In handing out the judgement, Judge Wraight noted that the media coverage of the event meant that “the public has demonised” Pusey. He remains in police custody.

Conversely, Mohinder Singh, the truck driver who caused the deaths of the four police officers was earlier this month jailed for a maximum of 22 years, citing sleep deprivation as a primary factor.

The post “Callous and reprehensible”: Porsche driver jailed for filming crash aftermath appeared first on The Big Smoke.

As someone who experienced more than a hundred days of lockdown, I find the BBQ-related odyssey of Sydney’s latest COVID case hard to fathom. 

As someone who has endured 100+ days of lockdown in the southern capital, it always amazes me just how active those new ‘cases’ are who have their activities mentioned online and in the news, for the purpose of contact tracing. It’s very useful information, granted, but it’s been baffling, puzzling these past 12 months to see just how active some people are. Perhaps it’s a symptom of COVID? Once the thing is inside you, it goes to work on your lungs and then somehow compels you to visit seventeen different shops and bars.

Case in point: in NSW there is a new locally acquired COVID case making the news, which is of (standard) concern, and hopefully contact tracing will be swift and no further spread will occur. If it does, the responsibility will be allocated to ‘luck’ and ‘chance’ thanks to The Woman Who Saved Australia; if it was in a Labor state, it’d be the premier’s fault, and the words ‘bungled’ and ‘disastrous’ would be used in relation to hotel quarantine.

But this one’s in NSW. And old mate who has tested positive had himself a bit of a busy weekend.

This is the list of venues associated with the new case in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Anyone there at those times has to immediately get tested and isolate pic.twitter.com/BEznosMrKe

— Naaman Zhou (@naamanzhou) May 5, 2021

A fan of grilled meats it would seem, this man in his 50s has made a journey over the two days of last weekend from Silverwater, to Annandale, Casula, Mascot, and then Bondi Junction. Why? Because he was in the market for a new BBQ. 

He’s started on Saturday at Joe’s Barbecues and Heating. Rather than let his fingers do the walking, he drives to Tucker Barbecues in Silverwater. Henceforth to Barbecues Galore in Annandale, then the same brand in Casula, before refueling at the BP in Mascot. The next day, one presumes because the Casula store had the appliance he was seeking, he heads off to Bondi Junction’s Oxford Street ‘Meat Store’ on Sunday (when I lived in Sydney, “Oxford Street Meat Store” had an entirely different meaning).

He’s traversed roughly 100kms in a weekend. 

For what it’s worth, when the second lockdown in Melbourne lifted last November, I walked 1500m to my local, but couldn’t get in a cheeky pint because I hadn’t booked. So…I went home. Spared any potential contact tracers a mess of work, there.

Anyhow, it’s eye-opening to see the lengths some will go to for the right kind of barbie; just to see what I guess “busy people” do with their days off. All this amid a week the PM has pronounced ‘Beef Week’, promising more money to help increase biosecurity management. Additionally, here in the Garden State, supposed Opposition leader Michael O’Brien has done his daily yelling into the void, telling one local council via a sparsely-attended press conference, that they can pry his BBQ tongs from his “cold dead hands”, because of their plans to phase out public gas BBQs.

“You can take my barbecue tongs out of my cold dead hands,” Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien says of the City of Yarra’s plans to phase out gas. pic.twitter.com/dyvxVtrhC5

— Benita Kolovos 🐯 (@benitakolovos) May 4, 2021

Related: Michael O’Brien has a job approval rating of 15%.

Here endeth the day’s lesson in the high steaks of Australian Politics, circa 2021.

The post The truly cooked voyage of Sydney’s latest COVID case appeared first on The Big Smoke.

Despite another cluster emerging in Melbourne, our immunisation centres remain empty. It truly boggles the mind.

Say you’re on a country road, and your car breaks down. You call roadside assist, and a dude in a truck comes by, pops the bonnet, and declares you need a new spark plug. You’d get one, right? You’d have no reason not to, because you’re not a mechanic.

Just to be on the safe side, you call a second mobile mechanic. And, sure enough, he pinpoints the spark plug issue. But, so you can tell people you’ve “done your own research”, you keep calling. And you do this another 96 times. The same answer (“spark plug”) comes to you each time, until the last call, which you make not to a mechanic, but to a part-time online life coach, who tells you that spark plugs are never the answer. What your car needs, is a carrot. Why? Because one time, one person put a spark plug in their engine, and their tyres went flat.

Do you take the advice of the carrot enthusiast? Or do you go with the spark plug option?

Get vaccinated, for the love of all things holy.

It is immeasurably frustrating to see the vision of vacant, desolate immunisation hubs – in Melbourne of all places. Given what we all went through last year, given what standard of vaccine administration is going on in other parts of the world, and given how comparatively low our COVID fatality rate was compared to, say, India, the US, or the UK, it’s beyond belief that we’re at a point in our modern history where a vaccine has been made available, is available for a select few of the public, and yet, is not being taken up.

It beggars belief.

It is bewildering to realise that we, as a nation, have seemingly done the hard part easy, and now are doing the easy part hard. We all have arms, all we need to do is put the vaccine into them. And it’s not happening.

Yesterday, after a case of COVID found its way out of South Australia hotel quarantine and into the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the city is, once again, facing restrictions. No lockdown measures yet, but mask-wearing and limits on people visiting homes. Again, this ‘debate’, such as it is, is being polarised on ideological grounds. Screeching rhesus monkeys on the Right are blaming the Andrews government, because of tradition, one presumes. On the Left, one can do little but look at where responsibility lies for quarantine (the federal government) and border protection (the federal government), as well as the vaccine rollout itself (the federal government – sing along, you know the lyrics by now).

VIC COVID cases
🦠 5 new cases o/night
🦠 1 positive this am
🦠 Total 15 in cluster
🦠 New cases at Port Melb office@7NewsMelbourne

— Jodi Lee (@jodilee_7) May 25, 2021

Laura Jayes from Sky News mentioned in a (since-deleted) tweet over the weekend that the painfully misinformed ‘vaccine hesitancy’ that’s apparently sweeping through the over-50 set is playing directly into the re-election game of the Morrison government. The apparent lack of interest in obtaining the erroneously inferior-branded Astra-Zeneca vaccine works out nicely for the architects of such a pathetically botched vaccine program. Play up the hesitancy thing, that way they can redirect their failures through a compliant media to drum up the notions of (statistically insignificant) blood clot fears, drowning out any accurate mention of their having fucked up the program from day one.

Jayes’ tweet was completely reasonable and well thought through, so of course she deleted it. She works for Murdoch, after all.

That anyone would take the advice of some idiot Gold Coast ‘holistic hairdresser’, or ‘wellness blogger’ or attention-seeking contrarian dipshit on Facebook than the entire medical establishment, preventing us from enduring the third wave is beyond understanding.

I cannot be vaccinated yet, because I was born in the mid-1970s of all things. If I could get a shot of the A-Z vaccine, I would. In a heartbeat. Inject into my eyeball for all I care. Because I’m rational, not beholden to baseless nonsense.

The incidence of serious blood clots from:

The Contraceptive Pill: 0.6%

The AZ vaccine: 0.00017%

How much time did you spend wracking your brain about the first one?

I really hope that the media are proportionate in their reporting.

— Keir Shiels (@keirshiels) April 7, 2021

See that? The odds of a blood clot from the A-Z is one in 500,000. The odds of dying in a car crash? 1 in 107.

You are 4,673 times more likely to die on the way to the vaccine hub than dying from the vaccine itself. I don’t see “NoVaxxFreeThinker@BillGatesIsaPedo” catching the bus, do you?.

It’s a Tuesday as this piece is being written, and Australia, who the Prime Minister said would be “first in the queue” when it came to the vaccine, is trailing behind Kazakhstan in terms of how efficiently the population is being inoculated. We’re 101st on the global rankings.

China’s delivering 20 million vaccine doses per day, and we’re again talking about applying restrictions, potential closures, third waves, and having closed international borders until mid-2022. Political wonks are saying that this is Morrison reading the electoral fortunes of WA and Queensland and promising ‘Fortress Australia’ as a strategy to get reelection for himself. Maddening.

Blame the Andrews government all you want, but you’ll be about as accurate as blaming the Smurfs. It’s the Morrison Government’s fault here, clearly as corrupt as they are incompetent. If they had done this part – the easy part – well, or invested in purpose-built quarantine facilities (which they’ve had a year to do) this wouldn’t be a problem.

Or, a well-constructed advertising campaign to get the good word out. You know, marketing. If only there was someone in the executive who had a comparable background…

The post In Melbourne, we’d take another lockdown over immunisation appeared first on The Big Smoke.

Melbourne enforcing another lockdown has come far too late. It’s time we implement a lasting, official solution.

After another six cases were registered in Melbourne, the city’s lockdown was expanded for a further seven days. Now, into the fourth lockdown, the calls for standalone vaccination facilities have grown louder.

Victoria’s acting Premier James Merlino fronted the media today, plainly stating that his state needs an “alternative quarantine facility”, referencing the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs facility.

He said, “…nothing is holding up the construction of this facility. We have access to both sites and we are doing the planning and the design work in the $15 million that we put on the table, but I remind people that quarantine is a federal responsibility. Howard Springs is a federal facility. What we are saying is that we need an alternative to hotel quarantine.

“This outbreak that we are talking about and have been talking about for some time now originated from a hotel quarantine breach in South Australia.

“I think we are up to about 21 breaches of hotel quarantine right across our nation. And that is why we need an alternative quarantine facility. It is absolutely appropriate that it is a Commonwealth responsibility in terms of the funding of the construction and ultimate ownership.

“We are prepared, as long as it is related to covert response, we are prepared to operate and run the facility. It is on Commonwealth land and it should be constructed as soon as possible.”

Ultimately, governments around the world face the tough choice of being proactive or reactive during the pandemic. Being proactive to small spikes might be perceived as being heavy-handed, especially economically. Victoria, so far, has been more reactive than proactive — but the time has come to consider different approaches.

We know many people pick up the virus in their own homes from another family member, even if the infected individual isolates in one room. This is partially because indoor environments often have crowding and poor ventilation. It’s also quite difficult to practice good sanitation, cleaning high-touch surfaces properly with detergent or bleach.

The best option is to relocate an infected family member to reduce the risk of spread to the rest of the family. An option is to relocate them to hospitals or other suitable purpose-built health facilities. Victoria’s numbers will get worse unless infected individuals are relocated. This is a particular risk for crowded high-rise housing.

Victorians should also be wearing masks in all public places. Recent evidence suggests wearing masks reduces the risk of catching and spreading the virus. The World Health Organisation released updated guidelines on June 5 acknowledging masks can reduce transmission when physical distancing can’t be maintained or in places of high prevalence. Metropolitan Melbourne is now a place of high prevalence.

 

Ring-fencing didn’t work

Ring-fencing is an effective control method when the pattern of infection is not the same across regions. Recently, China lifted the lockdown of Wuhan and then ring-fenced hotspots to effectively repress a spike in case numbers.

Last year, hotspots in Melbourne were ring-fenced, which gave other regions with very low or zero cases a reprieve from unnecessary restrictions.

But we’ve since seen cases leaking out of these hotspots and rising rates of community transmission. This forced the government to apply a wider lockdown.

Further, ring-fencing is an effective control method when people’s needs — food, heating and internet access — are well looked after. If we get that wrong, we lose people’s collective goodwill and cooperation.

The “hard lockdown” of public housing towers in Melbourne’s north and northwest wasn’t done in a compassionate manner that meets people’s immediate needs, which erodes trust in the process.

It also lacks epidemiological sense. Forcing people into even closer quarters creates a pressure cooker environment where family outbreaks are even more likely.

A pandemic is a long-term project, so it’s essential trust is built and maintained over time. Building trust is an investment in resilience that enables our community to continue to respond well during this extended outbreak.

Victoria’s experience should be a lesson to governments everywhere that it’s crucial to act quickly and early when flareups occur. Don’t wait until the moment of crisis arrives.

It’s also time for the Victorian government to closely consider how to reduce transmission among families, and part of that may be housing infected people outside the home until they are well again.

 

 

 

 

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Scott Morrison took over the national vaccine program with one eye on the election. His fingerprints on one could cost him the other.

When the original timetable for Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout was announced it did two things.

One was that it set clear deadlines for the first and second jabs for the entire population, admirably giving priority to high-risk populations, and put Australia well on its way to full vaccine coverage before the end of 2021.

The other was that it telegraphed the Morrison government’s election strategy by ending with the final trench of vaccinees getting their second jab in October, which also just so happened to be the best time for Scott Morrison to hold an early federal election.

And it made sense: after all, why wouldn’t you call an election while able to reap the thanks of a grateful nation, optimistically glowing with promises of international travel and trade yet finally rendered safe from a devastating disease still wreaking havoc all over the world?

And why wouldn’t Morrison want voters to focus on how he saved them and their families from a horrible fate, rather than focussing on the rolling series of scandals (Watergate! Leppington Triangle purchase! Christian Porter! Brittany Higgins!) which have been the only other notable characteristic of his chaotic government?

And it all looked so good too! In September 2020 Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that Australia had “a place at the front of the queue” for vaccines, and doubled down in December by declaring that 2021 would see the back of the pandemic because “We expect that Australians will be fully vaccinated by the end of October.“

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Even so, the most baffling decision the federal government made was to decide to take full responsibility for the vaccine rollout themselves.

It’s easy to overlook how unprecedented this is. Literally every other vaccination program, from childhood immunisations to seasonal flu shots, the established pattern is that the federal government secures the supply of vaccine from the manufacturer and then distributes it to the states, who then circulate it through their health system.

And that makes sense. The states have the infrastructure to do that, from hospitals to public clinics to dealing with every GP practice. They have the up to date data on who is where and therefore know how many doses they’ll need. They have complete data on the practitioners that can administer said doses. They, in every sense, have got the goods.

Yet the federal government instead putting the various tranches of the vaccine rollout out to private tender instead of using the existing health departments.

At the very least, this dangerously slowed things down. Some tenders are still unfilled six months into the rollout. For example, as Rick Morton pointed out in his exhaustive piece in the Saturday Paper, the government quietly extended the tender for the “residential aged care providers” in mid-May, despite the 1a rollout supposedly going to have been completed by the end of that month.

That’s not to suggest that the government hasn’t signed up any private providers to do the job of state health departments, though. For example, Aspen Medical won a $1.2 billion contract to work in the Victorian aged care system last year – the same aged care system currently bracing for the return of COVID-19 cases to its vulnerable population.

And that John Howard-era federal Health Minister Dr Michael Wooldridge only just left his board position with Aspen and still works as a lobbyist for the company is probably immaterial, as is the thousands of dollars the company donated to the Liberal Party.

(Speaking of connections which are entirely irrelevant: the Morrison government’s vaccine rollout strategy itself had been put together last August by management consultants McKinsey & Company for $600k, who then got a bonus gig giving “professional advice on a business case for an onshore Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capability” for $2.2 million in December. Fun unrelated fact: September 2020 the new Federal Treasurer of the Liberal Party of Australia was announced: one Charlie Taylor, former senior partner with McKinsey & Company. What a fun coincidence!)

That the federal government and their expensive private partners weren’t across the state-specific data was made horribly clear in mid-May during a special hearing of the disability royal commission. It was revealed that not only had the vaccine rollout for disabled Australians been quietly shelved without any announcement while the government attempted to plug holes in its still-incomplete aged care rollout but that officials didn’t even know how many residents there were in disability care.

Even so, the results for some of our most at-risk citizens were truly pathetic – none more so than in South Australia, where the number of people vaccinated in disability care was confirmed to be six. Not six per cent, you understand: six individual people.

With the federal government evidently struggling to do the job they refused to farm out, the states are doing more on their own – such as setting up mass vaccination hubs. Even then they’re stymied by confusing and contradictory information about eligibility, access to vaccines and the growing threat of vaccine hesitancy – not helped, it has to be said, by members of the federal government themselves. And look, if Hunt and Morrison genuinely want people to get vaccinated as a matter of priority, you’d think they might quietly suggest that George Christensen might want to shut the fuck up.

And now Australia has gone from the front of the queue to being told over and over that it’s not a race. Targets for vaccination have been abandoned altogether, but current rates indicate that herd immunity won’t be achieved until sometime in 2022 or beyond – meaning international travel, easy trade and any sort of return to a form of post-pandemic normalcy is far over the horizon.

Even if this government is sincerely determined to turn things around, the mess of tenders and incomplete records of what’s actually been done to date means that the state health departments don’t even know right now what gaps there are that they need to fill.

And, of course, Melbourne is on lockdown as the virus makes a worrying return to aged care facilities and the still-unvaccinated residents therein. Melbourne’s lockdown has been extended by a week, forcing the government to kick in support for workers left without any income – and the piddling amounts they’re reluctantly allowing people to conditionally access are drawing unwelcome comparisons with Morrison’s indignant “I’d rather have profitable companies than non-profitable companies” defence of the likes of Harvey Norman banking the $22 million taxpayer gift they received from JobKeeper despite making $486 million in pandemic profits.

And even if this government is sincerely determined to turn things around, the mess of tenders and incomplete records of what’s actually been done to date means that the state health departments don’t even know right now what gaps there are that they need to fill.

All the while Morrison is also downplaying the dangers of the virus, insisting that “Resilience, strength, character, determination. That is what beats a virus, never fear.” That’s a significant change in language from a month ago, when he was slamming Australia’s borders shut to travel from India and threatening to jail Australian nationals who dared try to come home, lest this exact COVID-19 variant got loose in the community.

And also, not to be a pedant, but resilience and character and so on are nowhere near as good at beating a virus as are antibodies. You know, the sorts of things which people’s immune systems produce when given a successful vaccine.

So: is anyone still betting on an October election? Maybe Melbourne will at least be out of lockdown by then, right?

The post Is Melbourne locked down due to Morrison’s election strategy? appeared first on The Big Smoke.