Little Goffy

Forgive me if I've already mentioned - one little slice of hope for a genuine end to the variant cycle is a US Army medical research project that has actually been smouldering along for a very long time but suddenly found itself fully funded. Basically, they had previously been working on a very long term project for a comprehensive coronavirus-type vaccine, covering flu, various SARS, etc.. If anyone remembers the cheesy sci-fi movie The Core, there's a scene where a Dr Brasseldon(?) has been stuck out in the desert for 30 years or so, going a bit crazy working on his bizarre invention for tunneling into the earth. Suddenly it becomes crucial to saving the world from total disaster, so 'our heroes' turn up for a demonstration and ask him, "How much would it cost to have this thing operation in, say, three months?" "Uh... fifty... fifty billion dollars?" "Can we put it on card, we'll get flyer miles?" That's more or less what has happened to this obscure Army medical research team. Something that was an ongoing project that could have taken decades is now front and center and has just begun human clinical trials. IF it works, Covid can go in the bin and so can swine flu, bird flu and most of your damn sniffles too. Except for anti-vaxxers, of course. Glad they weren't around when we were killing smallpox.

At a population health level it is all about flattening the curve so that everyone who does get serious symptoms can actually get the necessary treatment. For a football club the key challenge will be similar, in that we definitely want to avoid having large numbers of players all unwell at the same time. Lots of testing, lots of segmenting of groups, precautionary isolation, all that. I expect finals will see some bubble formation as well, though hopefully with a little more family presence. We may even need to do some load management changes and dietary tweaking - there's a strange phenomenon where people maintaining super-intense training loads can actually have slightly suppressed immune systems because their body is shifting to maximise performance rather than the usual balance and 'risk management' rhythm. A known problem for marathon runners, tour de France and for many sports' pre-season training.

I wrote a bunch of speculations and then deleted them and wrote some more and deleted them, also. But I do want to thank you for giving me an excuse to look over our list and go, "ooooooooh nice".

You know the old cliche line from horror movies, "It is inside the building!" Aged Care. They've done everything they can to keep the virus out for as long as they can but when the choice is between not providing care at all or using staff who bring some risk of contact-spread, you just have to take the infection risk. Then once it is into your residents there's very little that can be done. It's not like there are hospitals with spare beds and staff to monitor them safely unless they are getting critical. Thanks to lockdowns we've had time to roll out vaccinations and improve treatments. The mortality even for the (vaccinated) elderly could be as low as 1%, provided the treatment is actually available. Unfortunately, right now all branches of health care are woefully understaffed and disrupted by daily waves of positive tests and close-contact isolations. If anyone still remembers 'flatten the curve'; that's the whole ball game now.

That is happening in some places that I know of (well, three specifically - two that I was turned away from and then the third put up their 'closed' signs shortly after I got there). They were, however, relying a bit on the honour system because random people were definitely adding themselves to the end of the queue after those signs went up. What was really noticable was that the testing location we were able to get tested at only had two staff, and they were covering all testing and then all prep of test paperwork to then be picked up by courier. At least they were getting to alternate between sitting in the office and standing outside in the marquee, but I couldn't help but think that one extra person could have made the whole thing twice as fast. It blows my mind that ALL state governments are being stingy on the staffing at so many of these critical bottlenecks. It doesn't add up but that's what you get from silo/bucket budget planning.

Yes, but what country are you actually from? It's the 'Loons and the Phlegms. The latter got the name because their language sounds similar to Dutch. I actually have a friend who grew up/still has roots right on the edge of Flemish and French language zones, and went so schools in each zone at different times in her education. She speaks English like a native because both language zones taught English as a second language instead of the other Belgian language! :D

I wonder if the guy who went to Perth was there? But, seriously, best of health to all.

I think Nibbler, McDonald and Pickett completing our B&F Top Ten is also quite fitting. They are there because of their contribution to the overall result rather than individually stellar season. Most of our B&F are there because of their teamwork commitment, I'm sure, but it is harder to tell that is the reason when the individual players are also mind-meltingly brilliant!

Wow that's a lot of kids doing well in a premiership team. Also, nice reminder of how well Salem started the season before tapering a bit in the '3rd quarter'. He sure knew when to put on his best game, though!

Our cake doesn't need icing. Certainly not patchy icing!

Similar thoughts to Wrecker here; If you've got a 25 year-old with 100 games under their belt, you'll probably get another 5 years and 100 games out of them. But an 18 year old is maybe a 1/3rd chance of giving you even 100 games at all. A team that is older on average is just a team that has managed to collect more AFL-level players over recent years. Put another way - it matters that Josh Kennedy is old because he's Josh Kennedy. Nathan Ablett is also pretty old now but you wouldn't be concerned about the impact on your list if he retired! And as always with all statistics, you've got to break it into the segments if you're going to get any real value out of it. In this case, you really have to know about the bulges at the ends - if you've got too many kids that will cause problems even if they are talented. If you've got too many 'genuinely older' players you've got risks to endurance, injuries, and retirement suddenly blowing a hole in your team.

Have fun everyone! It's a wet and coolish day up here in Sydney so I'll be wearing the scarf. Please post photos here - it will be great to have the memento on Demonland. In fact, should we start a thread specifically for posting event photos?

Could be a record-breaking get-well-card handed around at the 'G.

Bring back the bugler.

At this stage I'm willing to believe that the Saints are where you'll find the personality problem.