COVID

Here I am happily sitting here, some 150 kilometres away from Melbin in Sictoria. I am five minutes drive from four supermarkets and three grog shops. It is 15 minutes drive to my Mate's big shed/workshop where some days we work on rebuilding the factory and fitting out the workshop and other days, restoring our vehicles. The place is a de facto Men's Shed as well, so friends call in from time to time.

As Mae West said "Come up and see us some time"

We and our Wives wear masks every time we go out. Of the two couples, our ages range from 65 to 75.

The people refusing to wear masks and refusing to stay in their neighbourhood are the "entitled" generation that have been taught all their lives that they have the right to do what they like, when they like, and where they like with no regard for others.

Ruby Gladys's closing of the border is a major debacle. She blocked off towns that don't have shopping facilities from their neighbour just over the river which has the supermarkets and shopping centres. She considered locations where there may once have been a hall or railway stations 'towns' and didn't consider people might travel 30 minutes to an hour to go to work. Several businesses in Moama have been forced to close as the majority of their workforce came from outside their declared border zone and while the clubs can open over 80% of their business is gone. The Moama RSL was on skeleton staff and still serving more staff meals than customers on their usually busy nights.

The border zone has been 50km wide, 2km wide, town based, part town based all in the 2 weeks, Today you can get to the border (with the appropriate permit) and be allowed to cross for a particular reason but tomorrow with the same permit and reason you can't. Echuca businesses, particularly food businesses such as Pizza shops and pubs have stopped delivering over the border as they can't guarantee the delivery drivers can get there.

Also Coles don't do delivery and all Woolworths deliveries come out of the Moama store not the Echuca one and they have stopped grocery deliveries to Echuca as their delivery drivers got turned back trying to take the van back to NSW.
She also managed to totally block in one NSW community because the only way in or out is a road that enters Victoria and she bollarded the bridge shut as it didn't carry enough traffic to open. This community has no shops, medical facilities etc relying on travelling to the Victorian town that as one small general store for milk/bread etc and travel to Echuca or Shepparton for their weekly shop. Even now if people from that community go to do their weekly shopping they are meant to self isolate for a fortnight when they get home as they have travelled to far into another community

Also the rules as to who can do what has changed 10 times in 14 days with restrictions easing, tightening, changing (the latest is you can only travel from Vic to NSW if you are an essential worker and you are not allowed to stop for fuel, food etc and when you are back home you are meant to isolate from everyone, including your own family until your next shift. It doesn't really work with school age or younger kids, when both partners work in NSW (as you can't buy food in NSW and can't go out to buy it in Victoria and there's no delivery service currently running. One person got Woolworths to deliver to their work and was given a fine by NSW police as they headed to the border for being in NSW for a reason not on the permit. They intend to fight it but expect to have to travel to Wagga to do so. The NSW local member has taken it up.|

Yet while we do this we still get people being booked when they come out of Melbourne, some get turned around before they get through town, others at the border and if they are not nice about it the NSW police give them a fine and turn them around then when they get back across the bridge the Victorian Police happen to be waiting! There was one couple get turned around and fined both sides here then went up to Barham to try their luck where the same thing happened. The local news article didn't say where they were heading but it would have become an expensive trip!

The line has to be drawn somewhere. No matter where it is there will be somebody impacted. I am sure people living in Albury do not want the fence put north of town forcing them into the disaster area and cutting them off from the rest of their own state.

This whole sorry drama in Victoria is a self-inflicted wound. Hundreds of infected or exposed people found not to be at home on isolation checks, endless examples of crowd scenes, mostly by younger people but not all.

Ruby Gladys was handed a disaster and got on top of it. Dangerous Dan just let it get away. Victoria does not have a monopoly on idiots but the interstate idiots are getting a free run because there is a much smaller risk. We are on a knife edge nationally and all we have is to cordon off outbreaks whether they be in particular suburbs like Sydney and Brisbane or a whole state out of control like Victoria.

I think, despite the confusion of changing rules (it is after all a changing scene where an area can be COVID free one day and suddenly a hotspot the next) and my natural feeling of being unimpressed with politicians, they have all done amazingly well with the exception of Dan who seems to be playing catch-up all the time.

The two women, on opposite sides of the political fence in Qld and NSW have done good. NT went hard and early with WA - first class. SA and ACT have been OK and even Tasmania after an initial hopeless shambles have got on top of the problem. Morrison who runs a Federal Government with almost no health responsibilities has shown leadership by bringing the state leaders together while trying to meet the real disaster in all this, saving the economy - I can see Albo grinding his teeth as he has to admit he supports the government's action.

The bottom line it is up to us. If we do not improve our awareness and change our ways. If we do not look to the greater good and not display our selfishness and ignorance it is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Lang

And of course BLM had nothing to do with any of this.
I think bagging the rest of Victoria with Melbourne is a little harsh.
You will probably find there will be a lot more cases in every capital city but of course that's right no one is doing any major testing elsewhere.
Gladys got her fingers in her ears and doesn't want to know.

I think you will find there is major testing going on in NSW and Qld around the hotspots. After those two bimbos lied their way back into the state from Victoria while infected Qld did 13,000 in 4 days in the areas they had been. I understand NSW is way above that daily figure but fighting to keep the Sydney hot spots contained. The Qld border crossings are doing hundreds a day.

Of course due to the nature of the disease having little or no symptoms in many cases, increased testing will show more out there. I think the real test is the over 70 age group deaths and the retirement homes are the canary cages for the community.



Lang

Come on fellas, it's easy to blame the Polies, but I would think they have more reliable info available to them, than us out in the wide brown land and are acting on "Best info" to make decisions, not like us experts who form opinions on what we hear.

The situation changes daily, if not hourly. We just have to hope that the selfish idiots start to get the message and take things as seriously as the situation demands.

Testing at the borders is not testing in the centre of the cities like Melbourne is, There would be thousands of carriers that could/ would be already throughout each state by now.

The Fed. govco is ultimately responsible as far as I'm concerned that they landed people on the mainland and didn't isolate them as they said they would on Christmas Island.
If you were OS and didn't return when you were told to do tough, Christmas Is. 40 days. Instead they trusted state govs to quarantine in Hotels ?? WTF were they thinking. You can not trust people to do the right thing, its been proven time and time again. The later fly ins couldn't be trusted to return when told do to so, so why would you allow them to self isolate.
They even grabbed a consulate doing the wrong thing.
BTW the bimbos were from QLD and went to Melb.

roKWiz wrote: The Fed. govco is ultimately responsible as far as I'm concerned

I have to disagree

We the people are the biggest problem here, most dont take it seriously
We (the public) are so busy trying to blame some one that we fail to even see us the public are to blame
We ignore advice, we some how think we are above this all

Shame on us and our stupidity

We really need to pull our heads out of our bums and accept blame for our own stupidity

We were warned and we are still ignoring advice

When was the last time and of us said to someone "he you, what you are doing is wrong, what you are doing is irresponsible"

I doubt any of us have, we dont want to rock the boat, we dont want a confrontation

We reap what we sow


At least we dont live in America I read on the Mack truck forum that a large group of members believe its a conspiracy to get rid of Trump

I checked today, 158,000 people have died in the US already, over 4 million infected and still people carry on with rubbish

Madness, shear madness

I'm glad I live in Australia

rant over

Paul

NSW does heaps of testing, with folks in the Sydney hotspots queuing for hours. to get tested. Even in the regions where there is no known infections there are drive in tests happening. Where NSW really scores has been in the tracing, so for example if you were at xyx mall on 25th April between 2 an 3pm get your self tested. If you were at a certain pub or restaurant you will get a phone call and if you don't answer a knock on the door.