COVID & AFL 2021

[Diamond_Jim 12,592]

3 minutes ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Is not that game at Kardinia park/GMHBA anyway?

 

you're right

for some reason I thought it was Docklands but now I think about it ...it was probably a Dogs supporter thinking they might get it moved

A draw would be nice

[Wrecker46 2,986]

42 minutes ago, binman said:

Pure comedy gold.

Please tell me this is satire.

I have read alot of your posts and know you are better than this. Which part do you disagree with?

[Wrecker46 2,986]

1 hour ago, Diamond_Jim said:

when we all look back at these border restrictions and wonder how we got to such a situation I wonder what will stand out as the silliest.

Seems to me that that the SA response to visiting footballers is way up there as a single instance. Mind you the masks while driving which I think was WA was also close.

I'm fast giving up on any form of reason or nuance being used in this area.

I liked what Dr Allen Cheng said in his press press conference when asked about outdoor community transmitions.

During lockdown 2 there could have been an outdoor transmitions but it also could have occured at an outdoor wedding where patrons used the same indoor toilets. What are the odds?

Victorians still need to wear masks outdoors though

[binman 43,051]

2 minutes ago, Wrecker46 said:

I have read alot of your posts and know you are better than this. Which part do you disagree with?

Well, there is only one part that is possible to agree or disagree with:

• When you say the NSW government were "lucky" because of the geographical location of the outbreak, you are putting blinkers on. The NSW government take in the majority of overseas travellers in their quarantine for the rest of the country. Victoria take in a minor share and still keep going into lockdown. There is no luck about it.

And obviously i disagree with this, given you are rebutting my argument. That said i do agree NSW have taken more than their fair share of the quarantine burden.

To agree or disagree with rest of your post would confer some measure of credibility to comments that are simply ludicrous conspiracy wonk. I mean Harold Holt?

In any case, let's agree to disagree on this topic Wrecker. Life's too short to get into back and forths where there is little chance of either of us being persuaded of the other position. Let's stick to the footy.

[Wrecker46 2,986]

3 minutes ago, binman said:

Well, there is only one part that is possible to agree or disagree with:

• When you say the NSW government were "lucky" because of the geographical location of the outbreak, you are putting blinkers on. The NSW government take in the majority of overseas travellers in their quarantine for the rest of the country. Victoria take in a minor share and still keep going into lockdown. There is no luck about it.

And obviously i disagree with this, given you are rebutting my argument. That said i do agree NSW have taken more than their fair share of the quarantine burden.

To agree or disagree with rest of your post would confer some measure of credibility to comments that are simply ludicrous conspiracy wonk. I mean Harold Holt?

In any case, let's agree to disagree on this topic Wrecker. Life's too short to get into back and forths where there is little chance of either of us being persuaded of the other position. Let's stick to the footy

The Harold Halt  comparison was in jest because he went missing and there were all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Dan Andrews has gone missing and there are lots of conspiracy theories going around.

 

[Nairobi_Demon 335]

5 hours ago, binman said:

The first lockdown in Melbourne was related to a pretty big stuff up in the hotels, but you are  right the quarantine hotel programs around the country have been amazing in terms of the statistically very small numbers of cases that have escaped. Particularly given how ill suited the buildings are for the job. 

That said it is concerning there are no national standards yet and it seems insane how long it took governments to take aerosol transmission seriously. 

I should have been clearer. I meant the overall quarantine program strategy, which is the responsibility of the federal government, has been a joke, not the individual programs.

Again it is related to choosing to go down the suppression/elimination road.  Once the feds, with the full support of every state government (and the majority of Australians i suspect) decided elimination was the strategy then using hotel quarantine as the key plank of the quarantine strategy was clearly a bad decsion.

The problem is, is hat as you say it is impossible for the hotels to be 100% full proof. The are not fit for purpose.

Which would be fine if we had not decided on an suppression/elimination strategy.

If we had decided on say a containment strategy (like the UK, the states and pretty much all of Europe) that focused on stopping the numbers overwhelming health systems, there would always be community transmission and cases circulating in the population. So the occasional leak from a hotel would be of little consequence. 

But in a zero covid environment where there are no cases and no community transmission even one case that escapes a hotel can have disastrous consequences.  Pretty much every lockdown that ash occurred in Australia has been related to breaches from hotels.

Think of the economic impact of even a 3 day lockdown, let alone a 2 week or six months one. Lockdowns have cost the Australian economy hundreds of billions of dollars. 

It was evident from the very beginning Howard Springs type facilities they have belatedly agreed to start building were what was required given the decision to go down the suppression/elimination road. Perhaps not as the only option, but certainly the major one.   

And the feds should have taken control of that process. Leaving aside the fact quarantine is their responsibility, they have access to crown land, army engineers and enough resources.

If they had got on their bike in April last year, and ensured purpose built facilities were built in every state they would have been completed by end of 2021. And whilst there would likely to have still been some leakage, each lockdown prevented would pay for their construction 10 times over.

We would also be in a much better position to bring Australians home and increase international travel.

I have no doubt the decision to not did not take responsibility and leadership an implement an effective  federal quarantine strategy was in large part driven by wanting to shift and risk and blame to the states. 

This really is the crux of it for me: the lack of leadership and blame shifting. The federal government has avoided taking decisions and actions to get ahead of this pandemic, including investing in quarantine, advance purchasing of vaccines, proactive vaccination communication campaigns, investing in mRNA manufacturing capacity, etc. because it found itself in a political sweet spot where it could blame any outbreaks (downside risks) on states and avoid the optics of failing to achieve actions that would keep us ahead of this thing (the way vaccine targets are now being fudged is the exception that proves the point). Yes, there’s uncertainty with all those actions, but as Binman has clearly outlined the costs of lockdowns greatly outweigh the costs of  action. But clearly the federal government weighed up the political cost and benefits differently, and decided it was politically expedient to do little.  
 

It’s not how I’d want my football club run and I bet the Dees are where they are today because previous and current leaders took risks, set targets and were prepared to be held accountable for moving this club forward. 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Nairobi_Demon

[Youngwilliam 381]

Yay, more political talk in Demonland. ?

I'm mostly annoyed about how none of the governments are working together. It's all us vs them, nation wide.

Vic government have alot to answer for, I have family in NSW, I grew up in NSW and the difference I get just because I cross the Murray River is night and day. 4 times we have gone into lockdown, sick of Vic gov [censored] the bed every time there is a case. 

We could lock up suburbs only except it takes the government 2 weeks to realise they are in the wrong freaking suburb. 

Sydney locks up suburbs, they have faith in their tracking system. Vic gov locks up entire states. Mildura is 500km away but goes into lockdown!!!

Rant over.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Youngwilliam

[Wrecker46 2,986]

I'm pretty sure #positivelingers is trending better that #IstandbyDan at the moment

[Demonland 72,225]

 

[Wrecker46 2,986]

13 minutes ago, Demonland said:

 

Anybody got a virtual dart board? I wouldn't mind throwing my dart. 

[Bring-Back-Powell 14,850]

25 minutes ago, Demonland said:

 

Please be 26 June.

 

[Pates 9,660]

2 hours ago, Youngwilliam said:

Yay, more political talk in Demonland. ?

I'm mostly annoyed about how none of the governments are working together. It's all us vs them, nation wide.

Vic government have alot to answer for, I have family in NSW, I grew up in NSW and the difference I get just because I cross the Murray River is night and day. 4 times we have gone into lockdown, sick of Vic gov [censored] the bed every time there is a case. 

We could lock up suburbs only except it takes the government 2 weeks to realise they are in the wrong freaking suburb. 

Sydney locks up suburbs, they have faith in their tracking system. Vic gov locks up entire states. Mildura is 500km away but goes into lockdown!!!

Rant over.

 

Hard to argue with that, a much more intelligent system would be if there’s an outbreak in the Melbourne metro/suburbs area you put everyone on a 5km radius lockdown from within that area. Mildura is so far away, it’s hard to imagine there being connections if a localised lockdown is done quick enough. 

Watching from afar I’ve been proud of the efforts with Australia with COVID, but I’ve also been disappointed that in the year they’ve had they’ve haven’t A improved the systems they have in place, B the federal government hasn’t taken on more responsibility for those systems, and C the “us vs them” state to state still exists with very little viable cooperation. 

I’m coming back in July, I’m absolutely desperate to get to watch us play and I can’t fathom the idea that we get a crack at the premiership with it taking place anywhere but the G. 

[Macca 16,972]

Apparently we've had a quarantine leak (breach) every 11 days on average since November

The trouble is that when we get an outbreak it's discovered days later ... sometimes over a week later

And in that time a number of people from different areas have contracted the disease and have travelled all over Melbourne with the disease

Hot spots number in the 100's in a short period of time.  So the 5km radius lockdown is only workable if the outbreak is isolated

The quarantining of people has been stricter here than the rest of the world but if we're aiming at elimination, the whole practice has been shoddy

As stated at the top of this post, for all the trouble we've gone to,  it's still led to multiple lockdowns

28 days of quarantine would help (instead of 14 days) but the real issue is that we keep importing the disease (on a daily basis)

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Macca

[Wrecker46 2,986]

7 minutes ago, Macca said:

Apparently we've had a quarantine leak (breach) every 11 days on average since November

The trouble is that when we get an outbreak it's discovered days later ... sometimes over a week later

And in that time a number of people from different areas have contracted the disease and have travelled all over Melbourne with the disease

Hot spots number in the 100's in a short period of time.  So the 5km radius lockdown is only workable if the outbreak is isolated

The quarantining of people has been stricter here than the rest of the world but if we're aiming at elimination, the whole practice has been shoddy

As stated at the top of this post, for all the trouble we've gone to,  it's still led to multiple lockdowns

28 days of quarantine would help (instead of 14 days) but the real issue is that we keep importing the disease (on a daily basis)

 

Melbourne is not unique in its hot spots. It's a world wide pandemic. Where Victoria is unique is we were doing contact tracing by fax machines at the beginning of the pandemic. India weren't even doing that.

There are reports of Victorian buerecrats printing documents off their server and scanning them back into their "system"

This would be a little less awkward if MIA Dan wasn't the health minister for 8 years before he became premier.

[Wrecker46 2,986]

Did anyone else watch the press conference with Merlino and Cheng during the week? Where they both said Dan Andrews would make a statement this week after he had spoken to his health team?

I wish him well. 

The jungle drums are beating though.

 

[Bring-Back-Powell 14,850]

Can we put all repatriation flights on hold until early October?

People being allowed into the country from Corona virus riddled countries are what’s going to cost us loyal VIC’s from possibly seeing our first live premiership at the MCG in our life times.

[old dee 23,792]

10 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Can we put all repatriation flights on hold until early October?

People being allowed into the country from Corona virus riddled countries are what’s going to cost us loyal VIC’s from possibly seeing our first live premiership at the MCG in our life times.

Don’t hold your breath BBP.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting in a political sense. The Gp is supposed to happening in October.

There needs to be a decision soon on how / if the circus will be allowed in town and what the rules will be.

No GF or GP will be a very big blow for Victoria. 

[Rab D Nesbitt 8,370]

Australia is supposed to have the strictest quarantine entry requirements of any country and the federal government are in charge of it. If this had been fixed at the source then there would have been little need for the states with their differing health laws to get involved. 

All countries have official entry requirements whether that be a visa, proof of an outbound ticket, enough money to cover your stay without working or a particular inoculation to give a few examples. All reputable airlines are super switched on about this because if they fly anyone into a country where they don't meet all of the rules then they have to fly them back to where they first boarded (at the airline's expense) and are fined around $US10k.  All the federal government needed to do when this all kicked off last February was to make it a mandatory requirement for anyone boarding a flight to Australia to enter 2 weeks of quarantine on arrival. Anyone that doesn't agree gets stopped at check in before they can board. Period. 

Again there should have been a remote facility constructed that could house all of the arrivals in one place that's relatively close to an airfield. It wouldn't be the Sofitel but if you want to get home that badly then you'll suck it up in order to spend the foreseeable future in our hermetically sealed country. Yes it would require key workers to spend periods of time away but they already do this at places like Uluru Resort, El Questro in the remote northwest of WA and even Mawson Base down in Antarctica so it's not like it's an alien concept. 

[Diamond_Jim 12,592]

32 minutes ago, old dee said:

Don’t hold your breath BBP.
The next few weeks are going to be interesting in a political sense. The Gp is supposed to happening in October.

There needs to be a decision soon on how / if the circus will be allowed in town and what the rules will be.

No GF or GP will be a very big blow for Victoria. 

Unfortunately the GP cannot happen.

F1 insists on at most a FIFO bubble and won't accept any form of pre event HQ.  Can't see Vic Govt allowing it. As usual with these things it seems that who blinks first is determined by the cancellation fee arrangements.

Lucky we don't have the Olympics.Japan is in an absolute no win position.

[Demonstone 22,579]

If Olympic boxers are enthusiastic about social distancing in the ring, they can knock themselves out.

[Rab D Nesbitt 8,370]

16 minutes ago, demonstone said:

If Olympic boxers are enthusiastic about social distancing in the ring, they can knock themselves out.

Is that what you call a punchline? 

[daisycutter 29,616]

2 hours ago, demonstone said:

If Olympic boxers are enthusiastic about social distancing in the ring, they can knock themselves out.

i think the olympic wrestlers will be hoping for a lock-down

[Rab D Nesbitt 8,370]

37 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

i think the olympic wrestlers will be hoping for a lock-down

Whereas the gymnasts are prepared to bend over backwards in their efforts and will be doing cartwheels if they go ahead. 

[daisycutter 29,616]

16 minutes ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

Whereas the gymnasts are prepared to bend over backwards in their efforts and will be doing cartwheels if they go ahead. 

assuming they don't slip up and get bar-red

[Demonstone 22,579]

Oh dear, what have I started here?

I think you all need to behave like pole vaulters and just get over it.