I will start this post by saying many things. I am not a medical professional. I am not a scientist. I am not an expert. I am an individual who is able to read information from a number of sources, make inferences, and do something very important, which is lacking in the wider Australian community - read the entirety of an article, and practice reading between the lines.
This rambling applies to the Australian situation at present. At the time of writing this, Australia is just under 15,000 cases. In a nation of 23-27 million people, that's not an enormous amount of virus. I live in Adelaide, South Australia. Most Australians live in the coastal population centres, and the capitals of each state, which are convenient red dots on the map above.
The Australian Story
The Australian state governments introduced a lock down of sorts earlier in the year, with people only allowed to be outside for "essential" tasks - shopping, work, obtaining medical care, or exercise. Stores floors were peppered with stickers, some with one way aisles, all with "X" markers on the ground that would make a genuine pirate-ship captain blush as they attempted to shovel the loot from the Earth beneath their feet.
Australia was very different to every other nation on Earth in response to the virus. Anyone returning from overseas was thrown into a hotel for a fourteen day "quarantine period" (For a first hand account, please go and read @riverflows blog, and her many excellent accounts of her experience. Here's a starting point.
The majority of International Flights into Australia land in Melbourne or Sydney. As a result, these two cities had the most "returned" travellers in quarantine. Many more Australians remain abroad, unable to return due to the lack of flights, or local travel restrictions in the nations they may've found themselves in at the time the Australian Government all but closed the borders, severely reducing the number of inbound aircraft.
One of Australia's largest cities, Melbourne, is now subject to an enormous chain of outbreaks.
This is a graph of new daily cases. Australia's "lockdown" saw a sharp decline in cases, then a small number of cases. The majority of these were in hotels, within the "quarantine" of returned travellers. Then... well, a single case from a hotel got some community transmission out into the ... community. Then there's that big spike.
That spike that mirrors the first, but is mostly limited to a single state.
How did the community transmission get off the ground?
Security guards at these quarantine hotels didn't do their job properly, to the point of absolute criminal negligence. Accounts of one guard having sexual intercourse with a quarantined traveller, the communal use of cigarette lighters, and other transmission inducing activities.
This is blamed on the sub-contracting of the hotel quarantine to private security companies, who then had the job passed off to Corrections Victoria, (who run the prisons in the state) - and well, there's absolutely no scandals of prison guards engaging in sexual acts with detainees in that organisation is there?
The Current State of Affairs
Each and every state now has different rules on public gatherings, what businesses can operate, and what physical distancing measures need to be followed by individuals. I will only comment on South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria.
South Australia has not had any unknown community transmission of the virus throughout this pandemic period. Victoria never had it under control. New South Wales had several disasters of the virus spreading in aged care facilities.
Victoria is now in a lock down where people are obligated to wear masks when outside of their homes, and may only leave for one of four reasons: work (or education), essential supplies (groceries, or other goods), medical care, or exercise. There's been some spread of what, in the media was called the "Victorian strain" into some areas of New South Wales.
The "Victorian Strain"
I'm interrupting the flow of the above text to focus on this point, a phrase I heard in a press conference. The fact that what is referred to as a "Victorian strain" of the virus asks me the question that wasn't asked by reporters at the press conference. If this a "Victorian strain", how many strains of COVID-19 are out in the community being transmitted?
I'll leave that question unanswered, as I'm not a medical expert, and don't know enough about viruses. What I do know, from even the most basic of biological studies in high school, is that when a virus has infected millions of hosts, and its genetic code is made up of a long strand of RNA, it is incredibly likely that in the millions of hosts, and the millions of replications the virus has undergone inside each of those hosts, there's bound to be mutation and differing strains.
Back to the present
Victorian residents are all but excluded from travelling to other regions of Australia. South Australia has taken the liberty of saying, "even if you're a South Australian resident and you're in Victoria, bad luck. You won't be let back in past Tuesday next week." (Also, they'll have to undergo quarantine).
Meanwhile, as I write this, twenty thousand odd South Australians are at a sporting event at Adelaide Oval. Last night, a similar number were out at another sporting event.
They're "physically distanced", with every second seat empty in a stadium that holds 50,000 people, but of course, like all stadia, there's bottlenecks to entry and exit, toilet, food supply, and other facilities.
Last night, I was in the city doing some photographic work. The nightclub district (which I had to pass through to go from car-park to photographic venue) - saw a complete lack of any physical distancing between any people. I even saw a few alcohol-driven disputes between groups of individuals (some involving actual fighting)
So what happens next?
The overwhelming evidence is easy to analyse. If it takes one infected case to see five hundred per day, and a governmental system that sees the see-saw notion of lock down, not lock down, lock down, not lock down, the public, businesses, and people's finances will continue to lead to a precipitous cliff. Whether you're a proponent of a vaccine, or of herd immunity, or eradication - there's problems that every single government of the world is not dealing with currently - how will the healthcare system adapt to the consequences and long term co-morbidity that are spawned by a recovered COVID-19 patient?
We, as a human race, do not know what impacts or complications this virus will have on the bodies it is ravaging right now.
I don't know what to do. I don't want the responsibility of telling others what to do. What I do know I need to do is say some simple fucking things to everyone.
- This is not caused by 5G.
- Masks don't cause you harm
- Be prepared for the ongoing impacts of this short segment of history
Stay safe.
Images sourced from John Hopkins Corona Virus dashboard