I am not sure if it is like this in the rest of the world, but it is still crazy times in Australia.
State against state, mate against mate. WA has locked out us folks ‘from the east’ for some time as they have had no cases and so don’t want us anywhere near them. Truth be told, they are like the Basque region of Oz, if they could put up a big wall or form their own country they so would. Covid just gave them a genuine excuse to kick us all out. SA has been shut for some time too I think, but as Daniel Andrews said, who would want to holiday in SA ha ha. Not true I like SA! QLD has had it’s borders shut for some time, decided to open them half way through the NSW July school holidays resulting in long queues as people nicked off for a holiday. QLDers now worrying that their infection rates will spoke. Just when this was going on, VIC suddenly has a huge spike in cases. Was it due to the security guards sleeping with the folks in hotel quarantine? Large groups of people getting together for religious celebrations? Those pesky overseas travellers returning all who seem to have brought back a case of Coronavirus as a souvenir? Who knows. QLD promptly shut it’s borders to VIC. One guy tried to cross the border into QLD in a mate’s car boot, only to have the cops open it at the border check and say ‘hello buddy’. And of course refuse them entry and give them a 4K fine. A bus load of Victorians also got fined for trying to sneak into QLD. A guy from Vic rode his motorbike to QLD to get tyres for his Harley Davidson lied to get a pass to get into QLD and then boasted about it on Facebook – then got fined. We had to go to QLD for a funeral, you had to print the passes out then leave them on the windscreen the whole time.
It was two massive housing commission blocks in Victoria were the first to go back down into lockdown. This was followed soon after by most of Melbourne going back into lockdown for 6 weeks.
I feel very sorry for all the restaurants and bars who were open just a few weeks before being shut down again – after restocking fridges etc. So many of these restaurants won’t survive.
This whole thing did to some fabulous memes though:
It also made a mess for the poor folks living on the borders – people in Albury / Wodonga who are used to easily going back and forth finding they are having to sit in long queues for border crossings.
It has also become compulsory for people in Melbourne to wear a mask. Even though the rest of the world has been wearing masks for awhile, Australia hasn’t really embraced it. Mostly as we had medical people standing up on TV and saying there was no benefit to wearing a mask as protection to protect you for others, you only need to wear it if you have a cough. The rhetoric has changed now though, it is compulsory if you you go out in public in Melbourne, and in NSW it is recommended if you are somewhere where you can’t socially distance, like using public transport. Masks sold out in Melbourne pretty fast, and there is a lot of confusion around what sort of masks work and how you can leave them on for. Not to mention the price gouging.
Most of the masks being sold are disposable. apparently after awhile your breath makes it moist and so the mask stops working, you really should be replacing it regularly. But I bet lots of people in Melbourne just put the same one on when they leave the house to avoid the $200 fine even though it is doing nothing for them.
Some people are refusing to wear a mask too.
We were all doing so well.
But from the graphs below it looks like Victoria at least is in the dreaded second wave.
So Victoria is in a bit of a mess:
Here in Sydney we thought the worst of it was over. We all started going out again and doing stuff and eating out. But then a Melbourne guy sparked a cluster in the Sydney’s south west. Which then spread pretty quickly.
Now we are all starting to get a bit nervous again in Sydney and thinking maybe the same thing will happen here in a week or two. Obviously the rest of Australia thinks the same, even Newcastle doesn’t want a bar of us.
So let’s see if our restaurants all shut down and we need to wear masks in public too. Of course it doesn’t help when idiots do things like hold a house party of 60 people in an air bnb in Sydney.
And it doesn’t help that people won’t follow the rules.
Of course this is playing havoc with the economy.
But the government, who has certainly not been shy in handing out money, is extending the jobkeeper scheme past September, but a more nuanced version of it.
The worry now is that people are getting too complacent and not doing all of the social distancing they should be doing. So lots of reminders popping up.
