And the funny thing is, even with thousands (at least soon to be) of cases, life here is still pretty much normal. Not "lockdown like conditions" as MM and his cronies (and memebers of this forum) liked to tell us. Even MM acknowledged last night the their were other "consequences" of the closed border. It's now time to move on. Many Labor Backbenchers will lose their seats in the next election as the Libs who voted Labor to "reward" MM will all flow back, and we can return to a functioning democracy in WA. Hooray!

No, the irony is that some people don't understand that it made little sense to keep the border closed once Covid got in and case numbers started increasing, which is precisely why the border has now been reopened.

Maybe that's because WA now has one of the highest vaccination rates in Australia, and because of the restrictions and changes to close contact definitions, isolation rules, etc that were introduced as soon as case numbers started to increase? Other states didn't do that until well after case numbers exploded, by which time it was all a bit late. The whole point of McGowan's approach is to slow the spread and prevent a repeat of the situation that occurred in NSW and Victoria as case numbers peaked. Time will tell, but so far it seems to be working. Omicron first entered WA in early January and it's taken two months for cases to start rapidly increasing. Compare that to NSW, where cases exploded within several weeks.

I certainly look forward to more balance within WA's parliament, but I somehow doubt that "all" the seats will flow back to the LNP by the next election. The Libs in particular were decimated and it will take years for them to rebuild their brand in WA. As things stand, they are a basket case and their few elected representatives utterly ineffective at getting any kind of message across.

Now it is just the utter stupidity of the level 2 restrictions that WA has to deal with. 30,000 allowed to go to Optus stadium, but grandad can’t go watch kids play community sport at local oval. 150 limit for pubs, the Camfield equates that to one person per 23sqm. 10 people max in your backyard for a bbq. Year 3 kids in masks despite worldwide evidence that masks for young kids are useless, they constantly fiddle with them and don’t wear them properly. If you are unvaxxed, even an unvaxxed West Australian, the only way you can come to WA is via internationally.

if this is all based on the CHO’s health advice, then it’s time WA got a new CHO, the guy is nuts.

It's remarkable the difference between a hysterical, fear mongering, non practicing medical doctor, puppet of the politician, Jeannette Young (QLD) to the CHO now, Dr John Gerrard, practicing and qualified. Apparently he's able to interpret 'the science' in a practical and sensible way. There'll be no governorship for him!

Perhaps try reading the CHO's advice, before throwing brickbats?
TRANSITION TO LEVEL 2 PUBLIC HEALTH AND SOCIAL MEASURES

Thanks Buzz, that's helpful.
What was the date of WA's first day of this outbreak?

Reading the health advice doesn’t change the inconsistencies the community see in the new rules. You may disagree with everything everybody else says Buzz, but that doesn’t make you right. The community are rightly asking questions about the insanity of the inconsistencies. I won’t continue with the politics I earlier mentioned, but I disagree with you.

The index case was a returned traveller from Tasmania who, as I recall, entered WA on 2 January. The first local transmission occurred less than a week later.

Disagree with me about what, in particular? I didn't say there weren't inconsistencies in the restrictions and even McGowan has admitted as much.

So we are approximately 55 days then.
If I understand the modelling correctly, shouldn't we be at 400 hospitalisations under the most optimistic scenario with Level 2 restrictions in place early enough?

Possibly, but the most optimistic scenario also shows peak hospitalisations about 55 days from '0' and we're clearly nowhere near the peak. It's not entirely clear what '0' actually represents; is it the day of the first local transmission, or something else?

In any case, the accuracy of the modelling obviously depends on a lot of assumptions that might not eventuate. The Dept of Health's Omicron modelling (https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2...odelling_0.pdf) also states the following:

You'd want to hope their hospital system can handle it, because to an outsider, it sure as hell looks like they've got problems as it is!

I don't think any graph I've seen since this whole thing kicked off explains his absolute terror of Covid in WA as well as this one does...And remember - this is without a Covid impact on the WA health system...He must be such a proud State Daddy, overseeing a near 20-fold increase in ambulance ramping since he took office.:yuk:
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....12352604e8.jpg

The claim that ambulance ramping has increased "near 20-fold" is somewhat misleading, given the large variation in the data from month-to-month. The highest monthly ramping figure is certainly about 20 times the lowest figure, but that 'high score' only occurred once. That said, ambulance ramping has significantly increased since early 2017. The WA Liberal Party analysed the ramping data using the total annual ramping hours. On that basis, ramping increased from a total of 9819 hours in 2017, to 52,435 hours in 2021; over a five-fold increase. https://www.waliberal.org.au/state-n...ouble-in-2021/

Day 56 of the Omicron scarient , cases hospitalised dropped by 1 to a grand total of 21.
A total of 2,137 new infections recorded. No ICU admissions, no further fatalities.
Hospitals not in meltdown yet.

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/...10-p5a3hd.html

18000+ cases in WA, just 80 in hospital, none on ventilators. None of this is fascinating except that 50% of those in hospital are unvaccinated.

That is fascinating and differs from other states in terms of vax and unvax ratios

They are forecasting the peak in cases within the next week, hospitalisations peak a week or ten days later.
Just seems nothing like watching what happened in the East in recent times.
It's been a very hot summer, record breaking actually.
Lot's of folks here suspect that may be playing a part in the low overall numbers.

Could it be that unvaccinated even with mild symptoms are being hospitalised out of precaution due to their vaccination status?

No, they're being hospitalised because they are seriously ill and need that level of care. Less than two per cent of WA's population is unvaccinated, yet that cohort accounts for around half the hospital admissions to date.