1 minute ago, bing181 said:

Er ... children can (and do) transmit to their families, parents, grandparents etc. etc. As I posted above, I know someone in her forties who's currently looking at being unable to work for the rest of her life due to the long-term effects of Covid picked up from a child.

I said child to child. I didn’t say child to adult. This is exactly why I want to vaccinate teachers. Because the risk in adults is so much greater. 

1 minute ago, Jaded said:

Sorry I should clarify that we’ve been in more lockdowns than any country with such low numbers of cases. 

You have such low number of cases because of the lockdowns. Chickens and eggs.

1 minute ago, bing181 said:

You have such low number of cases because of the lockdowns. Chickens and eggs.

Every other state has managed to control low numbers without prolonged lockdowns and excessive restrictions. 
We had one case today already in isolation. Yet on Friday I can’t go further than 25km from my house and I can’t see my parents or have someone come to my house. We have gone over the top and we are damaging lives and livelihoods in the process. 

51 minutes ago, Jaded said:

My friend is a teacher and 30 weeks pregnant. She doesn’t want to work during an outbreak because she’s 34 so can’t get vaccinated and doesn’t want the risk of catching Covid. She’s not alone. 
Why aren’t we prioritizing teachers to get vaccinated so we can stop constantly shutting down schools? We know child to child transmission is minimal and kids rarely get very sick. So why not vaccinate school teachers and staff and never have to shut schools again, apart from the rare occasion where we have an outbreak at a school and then we can isolate that particular school community. 
Thinking is just too hard for our governments. 

I don't think they are really worried about the teachers - it's all the parents mingling/hanging around during drop off/pick up time especially primary schools.

1 hour ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

One of the press asked Sutton today and he answered the question without answering the question.

Maybe he aspires to one day get into politics. ?

Merlino, acting premier, was asked about games being played in Melb again and his answer was “possibly in the coming weeks,” which is effectively the same as not answering the question. 

34 minutes ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

Maybe he aspires to one day get into politics. ?

Merlino, acting premier, was asked about games being played in Melb again and his answer was “possibly in the coming weeks,” which is effectively the same as not answering the question. 

This guy is a coverup merchant and closet alarmist 

Why play games

2 hours ago, bing181 said:

Er ... children can (and do) transmit to their families, parents, grandparents etc. etc. As I posted above, I know someone in her forties who's currently looking at being unable to work for the rest of her life due to the long-term effects of Covid picked up from a child.

Newer variants are becoming more transmissable in children which is what you would expect evolution to do. It'll figure out how to the transmit outside soon enough too. 

2 hours ago, Jaded said:

I said child to child. I didn’t say child to adult. This is exactly why I want to vaccinate teachers. Because the risk in adults is so much greater. 

Citation required on spread from children to other age groups

Understandably melancholy abounds during this wretched pandemic. Some find strength in inspirational quotes. I find it in song lyrics. This is a line from a song called “Do you realise??” by The Flaming Lips...

...the sun doesn’t go down. It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round.

And yes, there’s two question marks in the song title because Flaming Lips. ?

Just announced...

masks outside for another week in Metro Melbourne

the fun continues

Going to be a long winter

1 hour ago, Diamond_Jim said:

Just announced...

masks outside for another week in Metro Melbourne

the fun continues

Going to be a long winter

who's going outside in this [censored] weather?

 

 

I just watched today's press conference. They don't know what variant the latest 4 cases have but will continue to ease the restrictions (good). A week ago the Delta strain was so bad they had to extend the 7 day circuit breaker.

These clowns just make it up as they go along.

 

3 minutes ago, Wrecker46 said:

I just watched today's press conference. They don't know what variant the latest 4 cases have but will continue to ease the restrictions (good). A week ago the Delta strain was so bad they had to extend the 7 day circuit breaker.

These clowns just make it up as they go along.

 

I'll play the devil's advocate. If you were one of the Government decision makers, which risk would you rather take? Be criticised from every direction for keeping Melburnians in lockdown but with case numbers of Covid kept low? Or praised for releasing the shackles but subsequently criticised should Covid case numbers rapidly increase?

35 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

I'll play the devil's advocate. If you were one of the Government decision makers, which risk would you rather take? Be criticised from every direction for keeping Melburnians in lockdown but with case numbers of Covid kept low? Or praised for releasing the shackles but subsequently criticised should Covid case numbers rapidly increase?

That's what they are paid to do La Dee

Another view If you want the road toll to be zero then just stop people driving ban them completely

This lot have for some reason decided on a policy  eradication of Covid  without fully examing the costs.

They are the ones finding the balance of risk and I personally dont believe they are finding the right balance.

Eventually in time we will all have a dose of Covid or its variant and we will have to learn to live with it and accept some risk just like we do for every thing else in life.

I received an email from the club today trying to up sell me to a higher membership for " when we return to the G" . I don't blame them for trying as there was the promise of a GF ticket involved. I wonder how many will jump at the chance with no guarantee that the GF will be at the G?  

3 minutes ago, old dee said:

I received an email from the club today trying to up sell me to a higher membership for " when we return to the G" . I don't blame them for trying as there was the promise of a GF ticket involved. I wonder how many will jump at the chance with no guarantee that the GF will be at the G?  

I love the implied optimism in this post. Your only concern is that the Grand Final might not be at the MCG. You don't seem at all concerned that Melbourne might not make it. Good for you!

5 minutes ago, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

I love the implied optimism in this post. Your only concern is that the Grand Final might not be at the MCG. You don't seem at all concerned that Melbourne might not make it. Good for you!

For the sake of the email discussion you have to assume the Dees will be there or what is the purpose of the email? Well I guess you get a reserved seat at normal games. But when , how many are allowed in and how many games will it be? Lots of imponderables there. For me  it is do I want to make a large donation to the club? They no doubt need it after the  disasters of the last two weeks financially. 

14 minutes ago, old dee said:

I received an email from the club today trying to up sell me to a higher membership for " when we return to the G" . I don't blame them for trying as there was the promise of a GF ticket involved. I wonder how many will jump at the chance with no guarantee that the GF will be at the G?  

Want to hope the GF isn't played in Perth and old mate McGowan doesn't let us in.

Just now, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Want to hope the GF isn't played in Perth and old mate McGowan doesn't let us in.

Him not letting us in is about the only thing you can guarantee in 2021. 

On 6/8/2021 at 3:32 PM, La Dee-vina Comedia said:

It's an interesting article, but I don't understand this sentence:

"AFL Executive General Manager Inclusion & Social Policy Tanya Hosch said she was pleased to see an average television audience of 7.75 million people across Australia tune in to the broadcasts of the 2021 Toyota AFL Sir Doug Nicholls Round."

What does an "average television audience of 7.75 million people" mean? Whatever it means, I'm very doubtful that the number (whatever it's measuring) was 7.75 million people. That's about one-third of the total population of Australia. Maybe she didn't mean "average" and meant cumulative audiences?

I suspect it's the total ( cumulative) audience for the Sir Doug Nicholls Round for all games. 

21 hours ago, Jaded said:

Every other state has managed to control low numbers without prolonged lockdowns and excessive restrictions. 
 

Not wanting to single you out jaded, but is a widely held view that, in my opinion does not hold up to scrutiny. 

The Northern beaches stated with a single transmission and very soon the much vaunted NSW contract tracing team were not able to keep up and lockdown was called for only days after the first case.

By the end of the outbreak 151 cases were linked to the cluster and the lockdown had lasted 3 weeks. This despite it being relatively small population, a population that does not move around greater Sydney much, minimal exposure sites and a contained location with natural boundaries.

And that lockdown happened over the XMAS period so businesses were smashed and families separated. 

As anyone who knows that part of Sydney, the NSW government was extremely lucky the outbreak was in the Northern beaches, not say the west of Sydney (which is geographically very similar to Melbourne). Our equivalent might have been an out break on the Morning Peninsula, which could be isolated in a matter of hours if needed. 

Our current outbreak (which largely came from leak from a SA hotel) is almost exactly the same in number, yet we are out of lockdown in two weeks. And we have huge population, hundreds of exposure sites, a highly transient population in terms of movement around the city and basically no natural boundaries.

Really, by any measure Victoria's contract tracing and related responses (eg exposure sites) has been extraordinary in this current outbreak. 

It is worth noting that we had the Black Rock cluster that was related the Northern beaches outbreak and we only had a brief lockdown. WA had a lockdown as did SA, after very low numbers. The one in WA cost the dockers and eagles millions. 

People made fun of the restrictions SA put on the pies and cats going into their state, were amazed at the hard lock down WA applied, shocked in the hard line Qld have taken this time to travel from Victoria etc et. That is all examples of very risk averse state governments 

The NZ government has had a couple of snap lockdowns after very low numbers

And the bleating from the Liberal party in Victoria is completely hollow, becuase they would have made exactly the same decision to lockdown if in government. 

The problem is that as a country we have decided to implement an elimination strategy. Not a suppression strategy, an elimination strategy. I'm amazed Andrews and co have not pointed this out previously, but finally Sutton did so on Tuesday

As Sutton said, we can't 'grumble along with one or two cases a day' and live the life we have been living (full pubs, everyone back in the office, 50k at the footy, packed trains. Because the numbers would eventually explode. As they have in Taiwan, a country that is also taking an elimination strategy.

In that scenario eventually restrictions have to come into place that as Bing points out has been a feature of much of the world whilst we go about our covid free lives.

There is not one example in the world of a country that has been able to effectively implement a suppression strategy. We have called our strategy suppression but that is bollocks. Arguably there is no such thing as it eventually gets away from health authorities.  The only two real strategies are elimination or stem the tide/minimise the impact. 

Even if they are not pure lockdown like we had last year (which in an case lots of countries have had of course), if there are enough restrictions it doesn't look much different. 

We can't have our cake and eat it too. Enjoy the benefits of no covid in our community and put up with the risk of lockdowns. Or accept living with covid and risk not living covid free (eg masks everywhere, all the time, no live sport etc etc).

We have collectively chosen the former. And so have to accept lockdown are likely to occur.

Of course the big problem is that it is dead obvious that a key plank of the elimination strategy should have been a war time like focus on national vaccination program with a super ambitious goal to say to vaccinate 80% of the population by Easter, or 1 July 2021 or some such. Call a national holiday to celebrate, once achieved.

Which of course would have been hard, but not having covid in the community and all the testing infrastructure in place gave us a huge opportunity other countries haven't.

Yesterday Seattle became the first major city in America to fully vaccinate 70% of residents 12 and up against COVID-19.

Fully vaccinate - so two shots for everyone over the age of 12. Seattle is not much smaller than Melbourne for Pete's sake!

I'll save my anger for the federal government. 

12 minutes ago, binman said:

Not wanting to single you out jaded, but is a widely held view that, in my opinion does not hold up to scrutiny. 

The Northern beaches stated with a single transmission and very soon the much vaunted NSW contract tracing team were not able to keep up and lockdown was called for only days after the first case.

By the end of the outbreak 151 cases were linked to the cluster and the lockdown had lasted 3 weeks. This despite it being relatively small population, a population that does not move around greater Sydney much, minimal exposure sites and a contained location with natural boundaries.

And that lockdown happened over the XMAS period so businesses were smashed and families separated. 

As anyone who knows that part of Sydney, the NSW government was extremely lucky the outbreak was in the Northern beaches, not say the west of Sydney (which is geographically very similar to Melbourne). Our equivalent might have been an out break on the Morning Peninsula, which could be isolated in a matter of hours if needed. 

Our current outbreak (which largely came from leak from a SA hotel) is almost exactly the same in number, yet we are out of lockdown in two weeks. And we have huge population, hundreds of exposure sites, a highly transient population in terms of movement around the city and basically no natural boundaries.

Really, by any measure Victoria's contract tracing and related responses (eg exposure sites) has been extraordinary in this current outbreak. 

It is worth noting that we had the Black Rock cluster that was related the Northern beaches outbreak and we only had a brief lockdown. WA had a lockdown as did SA, after very low numbers. The one in WA cost the dockers and eagles millions. 

People made fun of the restrictions SA put on the pies and cats going into their state, were amazed at the hard lock down WA applied, shocked in the hard line Qld have taken this time to travel from Victoria etc et. That is all examples of very risk averse state governments 

The NZ government has had a couple of snap lockdowns after very low numbers

And the bleating from the Liberal party in Victoria is completely hollow, becuase they would have made exactly the same decision to lockdown if in government. 

The problem is that as a country we have decided to implement an elimination strategy. Not a suppression strategy, an elimination strategy. I'm amazed Andrews and co have not pointed this out previously, but finally Sutton did so on Tuesday

As Sutton said, we can't 'grumble along with one or two cases a day' and live the life we have been living (full pubs, everyone back in the office, 50k at the footy, packed trains. Because the numbers would eventually explode. As they have in Taiwan, a country that is also taking an elimination strategy.

In that scenario eventually restrictions have to come into place that as Bing points out has been a feature of much of the world whilst we go about our covid free lives.

There is not one example in the world of a country that has been able to effectively implement a suppression strategy. We have called our strategy suppression but that is bollocks. Arguably there is no such thing as it eventually gets away from health authorities.  The only two real strategies are elimination or stem the tide/minimise the impact. 

Even if they are not pure lockdown like we had last year (which in an case lots of countries have had of course), if there are enough restrictions it doesn't look much different. 

We can't have our cake and eat it too. Enjoy the benefits of no covid in our community and put up with the risk of lockdowns. Or accept living with covid and risk not living covid free (eg masks everywhere, all the time, no live sport etc etc).

We have collectively chosen the former. And so have to accept lockdown are likely to occur.

Of course the big problem is that it is dead obvious that a key plank of the elimination strategy should have been a war time like focus on national vaccination program with a super ambitious goal to say to vaccinate 80% of the population by Easter, or 1 July 2021 or some such. Call a national holiday to celebrate, once achieved.

Which of course would have been hard, but not having covid in the community and all the testing infrastructure in place gave us a huge opportunity other countries haven't.

Yesterday Seattle became the first major city in America to fully vaccinate 70% of residents 12 and up against COVID-19.

Fully vaccinate - so two shots for everyone over the age of 12. Seattle is not much smaller than Melbourne for Pete's sake!

I'll save my anger for the federal government. 

Binman stick to your footy strategy posts where you are insightful 

1 hour ago, binman said:

Not wanting to single you out jaded, but is a widely held view that, in my opinion does not hold up to scrutiny. 

The Northern beaches stated with a single transmission and very soon the much vaunted NSW contract tracing team were not able to keep up and lockdown was called for only days after the first case.

By the end of the outbreak 151 cases were linked to the cluster and the lockdown had lasted 3 weeks. This despite it being relatively small population, a population that does not move around greater Sydney much, minimal exposure sites and a contained location with natural boundaries.

And that lockdown happened over the XMAS period so businesses were smashed and families separated. 

As anyone who knows that part of Sydney, the NSW government was extremely lucky the outbreak was in the Northern beaches, not say the west of Sydney (which is geographically very similar to Melbourne). Our equivalent might have been an out break on the Morning Peninsula, which could be isolated in a matter of hours if needed. 

Our current outbreak (which largely came from leak from a SA hotel) is almost exactly the same in number, yet we are out of lockdown in two weeks. And we have huge population, hundreds of exposure sites, a highly transient population in terms of movement around the city and basically no natural boundaries.

Really, by any measure Victoria's contract tracing and related responses (eg exposure sites) has been extraordinary in this current outbreak. 

It is worth noting that we had the Black Rock cluster that was related the Northern beaches outbreak and we only had a brief lockdown. WA had a lockdown as did SA, after very low numbers. The one in WA cost the dockers and eagles millions. 

People made fun of the restrictions SA put on the pies and cats going into their state, were amazed at the hard lock down WA applied, shocked in the hard line Qld have taken this time to travel from Victoria etc et. That is all examples of very risk averse state governments 

The NZ government has had a couple of snap lockdowns after very low numbers

And the bleating from the Liberal party in Victoria is completely hollow, becuase they would have made exactly the same decision to lockdown if in government. 

The problem is that as a country we have decided to implement an elimination strategy. Not a suppression strategy, an elimination strategy. I'm amazed Andrews and co have not pointed this out previously, but finally Sutton did so on Tuesday

As Sutton said, we can't 'grumble along with one or two cases a day' and live the life we have been living (full pubs, everyone back in the office, 50k at the footy, packed trains. Because the numbers would eventually explode. As they have in Taiwan, a country that is also taking an elimination strategy.

In that scenario eventually restrictions have to come into place that as Bing points out has been a feature of much of the world whilst we go about our covid free lives.

There is not one example in the world of a country that has been able to effectively implement a suppression strategy. We have called our strategy suppression but that is bollocks. Arguably there is no such thing as it eventually gets away from health authorities.  The only two real strategies are elimination or stem the tide/minimise the impact. 

Even if they are not pure lockdown like we had last year (which in an case lots of countries have had of course), if there are enough restrictions it doesn't look much different. 

We can't have our cake and eat it too. Enjoy the benefits of no covid in our community and put up with the risk of lockdowns. Or accept living with covid and risk not living covid free (eg masks everywhere, all the time, no live sport etc etc).

We have collectively chosen the former. And so have to accept lockdown are likely to occur.

Of course the big problem is that it is dead obvious that a key plank of the elimination strategy should have been a war time like focus on national vaccination program with a super ambitious goal to say to vaccinate 80% of the population by Easter, or 1 July 2021 or some such. Call a national holiday to celebrate, once achieved.

Which of course would have been hard, but not having covid in the community and all the testing infrastructure in place gave us a huge opportunity other countries haven't.

Yesterday Seattle became the first major city in America to fully vaccinate 70% of residents 12 and up against COVID-19.

Fully vaccinate - so two shots for everyone over the age of 12. Seattle is not much smaller than Melbourne for Pete's sake!

I'll save my anger for the federal government. 

You have vote binman.