Yep a sensational effort. Well done Big V!
But let's never go back to where we were in August.
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Tigers of Old
- Start date
But let's never go back to where we were in August.
The ship issue can be a problem as indicated by the problems we've had in WA but they are certainly not insurmountable.
Interesting article in the paper this morning.
"In one case, it took 1800 calls and emails from Australian officials to fill 175 seats on a specially organised flight, according to the Courier Mail. The committee heard not enough notice, work obligations and health were some of the reasons Australians have had to turn down the offer."
Can understand if you're too crook to travel but if you're allegedly desperate to get back then ........
I wonder if the cost was a factor as well.
I was overseas when things kicked off in March and had a flight scheduled to come home a few days after they put the word out.
I looked at changing to an earlier flight and found the cost had increased by just under 10 times the cost of the original flight I had booked. I could understand people having trouble managing that.
Not sure that's the case with the Qantas flights now been arranged out of Germany and France. I heard on ABC radio this morning that they will cost about $2K which is not unreasonable in the circumstances. But the travellers need to get themselves to the airport in Germany or France which may pose problems for some.
This was one of the special repat flights that goes at about $2k.
Just looking at the rules for travel into France.
Member States of the European Union, Andorra, Australia, the Holy See, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, Rwanda, San Marino, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Kingdom can enter metropolitan France without any COVID-19 restrictions!!!
Looks like there's virtually no restrictions on travel between EU countries although I'd guess there's limited flights/trains etc.
No borders within the EU not looking like such a good idea any more.
If only the oz Gov was paying for a plane to fly around Europe, with staff on board, for 1 passenger......
I heard today the one international leader, in a country terribly affected by Covid, was encouraging big gatherings to happen during a significant national holiday. I didn't catch all the details, but surely no one would be so stupid, and surely if the leader was that stupid, no voters would be dumb enough to vote for such a person.
Close, however, it's actually called a creeping assumption.
So eveyone travelling in the US for Thanksgiving voted for Trump? Didn't realise the yanks were that divided. But collectively they are so far behind I don't know if it will matter what they Do or don't do this weekend.
funnier thimgs have happened.......Churchill wins WW2 and gets voted out, Rudd and Gillard saved us from the GFC and got shown the door.
Infected man in SA breaches quarantine (paywalled)
An infected man has breached quarantine in Adelaide, leading to ever more urgent calls for residents to get tested.
The man in his 30s visited the Intensive English Language Institute at Flinders University Sturt Campus, with South Australia’s chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier saying it was “critical” people responded to the cluster update.
Professor Spurrier told reporters on Sunday afternoon the breach had created a “significant risk” to the state’s containment of the deadly virus and desperately wanted the new message spread far and wide.
Anyone who attended the campus and three retail venues across the city at a specific time period is being urged to seek a test and immediately quarantine.
These sites include:
– Flinders University Sturt Campus Nov 13 – Nov 28
– Big W Brickworks 22 Nov 12:15-12:50pm
– Foodland Norwood 22 Nov 1:20-2:00pm
– Kmart Kurralta Park 22 Nov 2:45-3:10pm
“When I spoke yesterday, my initial understanding was that the case was in quarantine and certainly they were considered a casual contact at the Intensive English Language Institute,” Prof Spurrier said on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, they did not spend the whole time in quarantine and at one point were out and about on a day and I need to let people know of some places of concern.
“We want you to get tested immediately even if you have no symptoms.”
An infected man has breached quarantine in Adelaide, leading to ever more urgent calls for residents to get tested.
The man in his 30s visited the Intensive English Language Institute at Flinders University Sturt Campus, with South Australia’s chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier saying it was “critical” people responded to the cluster update.
Professor Spurrier told reporters on Sunday afternoon the breach had created a “significant risk” to the state’s containment of the deadly virus and desperately wanted the new message spread far and wide.
Anyone who attended the campus and three retail venues across the city at a specific time period is being urged to seek a test and immediately quarantine.
These sites include:
– Flinders University Sturt Campus Nov 13 – Nov 28
– Big W Brickworks 22 Nov 12:15-12:50pm
– Foodland Norwood 22 Nov 1:20-2:00pm
– Kmart Kurralta Park 22 Nov 2:45-3:10pm
“When I spoke yesterday, my initial understanding was that the case was in quarantine and certainly they were considered a casual contact at the Intensive English Language Institute,” Prof Spurrier said on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, they did not spend the whole time in quarantine and at one point were out and about on a day and I need to let people know of some places of concern.
“We want you to get tested immediately even if you have no symptoms.”
Signs Sweden has lost faith with COVID expert Anders Tegnell as deaths rise
Richard OrangeThe Age
November 29, 2020
The high-profile epidemiologist who led Sweden's no-lockdown strategy in the spring appears to be being sidelined by the government after his prediction that greater immunity would mean a lighter second wave proved badly wrong.
Anders Tegnell's biweekly press conference was on Thursday pushed into the shade by an overlapping press conference fronted by Stefan Lofven, Sweden's Prime Minister, where scenarios prepared by the Public Health Agency were announced.
"There's certainly a split, and I'm pretty sure that many in the government have rather lost faith in the Public Health Agency," said Nicholas Aylott, an associate politics professor at Stockholm's Södertörn University.
"By some counts, we've now got exactly the same level of spread of the virus that we had in the spring, and that's about as clear a refutation of Tegnell's strategy as you could wish for."
Dr Tegnell had always insisted that his Public Health Agency had never pursued a herd immunity strategy, but he repeatedly suggested in the summer that his counterparts in Norway, Finland and Denmark would face a tougher task over the winter because of lower levels of immunity in their populations.
This month, though, the number of deaths in Sweden had again begun to soar above that of its Nordic neighbours, with 630 deaths registered as a result of COVID-19. That was about 10 times the per capita death rate as Norway where just 30 COVID-19 deaths were registered between Oct 28 and November 25.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control expects Sweden to next month surpass the peak death rates it suffered in April, with between 100 and 140 people projected to die of the virus each day.
Ewa Stenberg, a political commentator for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, said the agency's failure to predict the severity of the second wave had damaged its standing.
"There is criticism against the Public Health Agency in the government because of that, and because of their lack of stringency in their advice to people," she said.
Shaken by the worsening situation, Sweden's government has started to itself take the initiative, imposing a ban on alcohol sales after 10pm and reducing the maximum allowed public gathering to eight people, a measure Lofven described as having "no equivalent in modern times".
"In the spring, there was a proposal first from the Public Health Agency, but in these latest decisions, the government has made a proposal, and then they have asked for the Public Health Agency to respond," Stenberg said.
Both Tegnell and Lofven have denied that there has been a breakdown in trust. "All rumours about a rift between the government and the agency are completely false. We have a continuous very strong dialogue and a strong level of trust between us," Tegnell said on Thursday.
His comments were echoed by Lofven in an interview with Sweden's Expressen newspaper. "There is no rift whatsoever. I imagine there sometimes might be a temptation in the media to portray conflicts. But here there is none," he said.
Sweden's newspapers, however, have been reporting the growing friction.
"The split grows: how Tegnell lost his veto," read the headline of the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper's Sunday feature.
An article in Expressen depicted growing pessimism within the government, with one anonymous civil servant telling a journalist they feared the pandemic would grind on for years, creating a "new normal".
Yes, seems like the Sweden experiment is coming to an end. Still, their rates are worse than other Nordic countries but still not the worst in Europe.
We really need these effective vaccines rolled out ASAP
I would think the vaccines are still a while off, the reported results are pretty early results and who knows how long any immunity lasts for.
Just have to keep vigilant on this, likely until well after vaccines are available.
DS
Just have to keep vigilant on this, likely until well after vaccines are available.
DS