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Drove past one of the affected unit blocks on our way back, massive police presence. How long before the BLM protestors descend upon them?
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/photo-of-viral-hulksized-bat-leaves-people-horrified/news-story/eb217e6cbaec1ca38a62ad9aa9ae10da Gary's off to the Philippines for bat soup
I actually think bats are gorgeous critters - before Hendra virus you could interact with them up close at the Rescue Centre in Kuranda.
Meh, tell that to the people with Mad Cow Disease... just recently heard of someone locally dying a nasty death from that, caught in the UK many years ago.
Geeezus..NSW Health Department.......AGAIN! Blaming Jetstar when they should have been in control..IMO. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-08/nsw-coronavirus-breach-as-passengers-from-melbourne-not-screened/12433286
the media takes every opportunity to talk up the increases in cases, but says nothing about deaths. That tells you where the facts are. Surely this is the chart that's more relevant. All the panic about daily infections, but only 2 deaths, a man "in his 60's" and another "in his 90's". We are not told what comorbidities the 60 year old had, in fact I can't find any reporting anywhere on comobordity rates, yet the DoH Epidemiology Report says clearly "Severe or fatal outcomes tend to occur in the elderly or those with comorbid conditions." Roughly 1600 people die in hospitals every month in Vic. Think about that. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Daniel Andrews is fighting for his political life. If only he’d been better at fighting for the lives of Victorians. The Victorian Premier’s bungling of the coronavirus strategy has been more than matched by his arrogance as he dodges the blame. Take the way he blamed Victorians — not himself or his clown-shoes government — for letting the virus escape, panicking him into locking down all Melbourne. “I think there’s been some complacency,” he said sternly. “I think every Victorian knows at least one other person who perhaps hasn’t been following the rules as much as they should have.” On Wednesday, Andrews doubled down with the finger wagging: “When you see someone not doing the right thing, you have to call it out.” Yes! I will. YOU, Premier, were complacent in not making sure to shut the main gate on this infection. YOU were complacent when you hired amateurs — private security guards — and not trained professionals such as the police, army or prison guards, to watch over returned travellers in your quarantine hotels. YOU were complacent in not picking up — or acting upon — the gossip that some of your guards were plainly not up to the job, not maintaining social distancing and even, it’s claimed, sleeping with the very people they were meant to keep isolated. YOU were complacent in letting 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters know they would not be fined if they broke the social distancing rules, sending a message that your rules were political and unnecessary. YOU were complacent in not making absolutely sure the guards who did get infected actually stayed in quarantine themselves and didn’t go out or hold parties at home. Don’t accuse me of complacency on that score, Premier. For months I’ve said quarantine should be much tougher, even if you had to put a policeman outside the door of every sick person. But Andrews’ arrogance goes beyond refusing to apologise for his mistakes. He even refuses to explain exactly what went wrong. Reporters have asked him: whose idiotic idea was it to hire those private security guards? Why did you refuse to use the army? What exactly did those guards do to spread the virus? To all this and more, Andrews uses one of the oldest tricks in the political book to avoid telling us what went wrong. “For those other matters, they are the subject of a judicial inquiry,” the Premier said loftily on Wednesday. He can’t possibly comment until that inquiry. Rubbish. Andrews has many of the answers in his head right now. He just chooses not to tell what he knows. But we are where we are. What next? Having accused Andrews of complacency, it may seem inconsistent to also accuse him of panic. But all Premiers must ask themselves: is shutting down an entire city really the way to fight each new outbreak of this virus, which will be with us for at least two years — or longer, if no vaccine is found? At least Andrews has learned from some mistakes he made the last time he imposed stage three restrictions. This time his bans apply only to Melbourne and the Mitchell shire, on the city’s northern boundary. The rest of the state, almost virus free, has been spared. He’s also scrapped some of the plainly crazy bans of the first time on golf, fishing, surfing and tennis. But why close businesses such as restaurants which could guarantee safe service with social distancing? Context, please. This virus has killed just 22 Victorians — most very old, some already dying of cancer. More than 10 times more people have died each flu season without anyone calling for bans. And more than 175 Victorians have killed themselves so far this year. How many from the stress caused by these bans? Yes, there has been a big spike in new infections — a record 191 on Tuesday, 134 on Wednesday. But some of that is explained by the massive increase in tests. Testing 30,000 Victorians a day will turn up more people with a virus that many wouldn’t even know they had. True, there’s also been an increase in the number of people in intensive care, confirming the virus has spread. But the nine now in intensive care are still half the number of patients Victoria’s ICU units had in April. So are doctors getting better at keeping the sick alive? How I wish we could have a serious debate on these issues, with all facts on the table. But don’t expect that from desperate Dan Andrews. ANDREW BOLT