Indeed...this is becoming madness. We need to stop all incoming arrivals ASAP until we have a purpose built system.

How many transmission cases have occurred at the Howard Springs facility? Maybe there's something to it..

This just in: Person who works daily with potential Covid cases gets Covid.

Who cares? Deal with it NSW style and get on with it.

Which still involved restrictions, lockdowns, isolation and testing requirements which affects confidence for travel.

Hate to sound like a broken record but the person wouldn’t be travelling all over the city after work if they weren’t in a city......

- Targeted, rational, pragmatic lockdowns.
- Rational, proportional, pragmatic restrictions.
- Contact traced isolation, risk based isolation.
- Outstanding community response to testing requested from leaders, not hysterical premiers.
- Confidence dented by hysterical, politically motivated, non-leaders.

100%. You can’t shut the world down for one case.
1000 people in the Australian Open bubble in isolation due to one worker case. They clearly wouldn’t have all come into contact within them... probably not even 1%.

Oh yes you can brutha. Hysterical, non-proportionate rot.

All of those targeted, rational, proportionate measures are great until other states shut their borders. Which leaves us in the same quagmire of endless shutdowns and vanishing travel demand.

Absolutely all of the human and economic disaster of the past year is a direct result of wishful, magical thinking on the part of our governments. Time to restrict international quarantine to dedicated facilities.

Dannyboy: Maths wasn't your strong subject at school was it?

You can shut down now for one discovered case for perhaps 14 days, or,

You can ignore that one case for the next two weeks and then shut the whole State down for three to six months while we try to deal with the hundreds of cases that one case has spawned.


Your choice.

Fixed it. It got out in Victoria in a big way. It's got out in NSW, Qld and WA as well. The only rational response out of all of the HQ outbreaks was from Gladys with the targeted lockdown of the Insular Peninsula while keeping the rest of the city (and borders) open. Granted she took about 9 months too long to mandate masks on transport and the like, but that is a preventative measure to guard against an outbreak, not a response to one.

There comes a point where someone has to call time on goings-on.

Doing the same thing, over and over, and expecting a different result is madness. Note that, so far as I'm aware, neither NSW Health, Qld Health or the mob in WA can positively tell you how it got out of HQ! And it looks like it might be the same in Mexico as well.

If they don't know how it spread in "quarantine" then how can they stop it in the future? And that being the case, if they are not assured they can prevent it in the future, any ongoing HQ is a pointless exercise so long as you have trigger-happy politicians playing God with their borders and the Australian people - because when it does get out again, as it most certainly will, there goes the border, there goes travel, weddings, funerals and jobs.

The simple, though politically incorrect & unpalatable answer, to me seems to be an immediate halt on all international passenger arrivals. Yes, we will still need HQ for the aircrew on freighters, but that is a tiny percentage of that required now, and their time here in quarantine is maybe 10% of that of passengers, with consequent lower interaction with the hotel staff & guards, etc.

A factor which prompted a different health response between states was the NSW Northern Beaches outbreak was not of the new more transmissible mutation, whereas the WA and Qld ones were.

With the new mutation obviously defeating previous quarantine protocols new measures will have to be looked at.

Interesting timing in Vic- seems to have taken debate on extension of state of emergency off the table

If only there was a vaccine for this virus.....

We have all worked our butts off to we pretty much had eradicate the virus, but the leak in the international arrivals causing the WA cases. DA of Vic however has purposely trucked in 1500 internationals for the tennis causing the latest. When does it stop

​​​​​​

...available now, in sufficient quantity, and with enough time to have an effect. Even with all of that though, international arrivals will still leak virus out of quarantine facilities and the unvaccinated will still be at risk. The only way forward is a wider air gap between the arrivals and the public.

I must be imagining that europe and the USA are vaccinating at immense rates currently. They must be magicking up all their stock.
US alone has administered over 30,000,000 shots to our..... 0
but yes, it’ was absolutely impossible to hasten the process.
We announced we wouldn’t approve the vaccines until feb and the drug makers allocated stock accordingly.

Well said! Plenty of cases IN Howard Springs but none that I’ve heard jumping to the workers. HS is always going to get cases due to the nature of where the flights are coming from.

Alas it seems to work.

Ramp up HS to maximum capacity!!!

Again...here we are five days after his positive test (Saturday night) and still no more cases. Try a rough cost benefit analysis on closing all businesses, closing schools, stopping FIFO shift changes and preventing people leaving Perth to holiday around the state. Imagine a rough number. Now weigh that against one security guard who at most had contact with 189 people. 138 of which have tested negative so far. Mind boggling over reaction. Is that an election I see over there...

But you can't put a price on everyones safety.............

Interestingly they locked up his housemates in quarantine (not in their own home) yet they hadn't tested positive but McGowan was absolutely sure that they will test positive in the near future. Here we are five days later and still nothing anywhere, let alone his close contacts.

What is becoming evident is that at times the UK strain is insanely infectious, but most of the other time it would appear not to be.

ie. Local and internationally, people have repeatedly picked it up in Q with no face to face contact, yet have not (to date) spread it widely themselves in society, despite being in a position of being able to do so..

AUNZ are probably in a unique position to monitor this as the outbreaks here as so isolated that the pathways of transmission are able to be determined.

Any chance of false positives?? I don't really understand the ins and outs of the covid testing, however it seems strange that someone can get a highly contagious strain remotely but not be able to spread it to their close contacts.

WA has just shut its borders to Victoria again. You can come but will require to Q for 14 days, was not clear if you will need permission to come to WA.

SOPS

Just for clarification, WA haven’t shut the border again, they are just not moving to the very low risk category that was scheduled to happen tonight. So all stays as is for now.

Thanks for that.. 👍👍

Based on reports from the UK and elsewhere, that was a perfectly reasonable assumption.
What would not have been reasonable was to presume the opposite.

That they have not tested positive (so far) simply points to the behaviour of the virus being perverse.

Yes indeed. I will wear a stab proof vest and body armour when crossing the road tomorrow.

I am pretty sure you have your tongue in cheek there. Everything has a price, everything.

Todays latest numbers...From here...https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-...h-day/13121834

And evidence wasn't yours obviously.

So everything you constantly mouth off about regarding risk doesn't apply here? Your blind fear is pathetic, it's embarrassing.

The clown in WA is making an absolute fool of himself, meanwhile, your hero in Melbourne appears to have taken a leaf out of Glady's book. If he locks down Melbourne again his hero status will disappear quick smart, apart from the fact that his blatant hypocrisy, choosing money over public health with the tennis, but he didn't months ago. Then again, with people like you panicking the way you are, I'd lock you up as well.

So many contradictions from your heroes, must be confusing for you?

Well clearly it's not our choice.

If they're getting a genome match I don't think that there could be a false positive (unless the two were side by side in the lab....)

Yes cant argue with that scenario,again no arguing the initial hotel quarantine stuff up here in vic but right now the govt are dammed if they do & dammed if they dont.
Heard a political points scoring statement from the vic opp leader stating Andrews took too long to make his announcement last night,maybe just maybe he still had facts/data coming in.
Theres always people who think they can do better(& maybe they can) but whether u like him or not i believe andrews is doing his utmost right now to stop any spread.
Hes not perfect by any means but for f sake,to those who think they can do better & put politics before fact,just look at what other countries are going through right now,its not a free world anywhere & relatively speaking the alternative is not great.

Was Morrison 'trigger-happy' to shut down travel to NZ over just 1 case?

He shut down travel from NZ; travel to NZ has never been quarantine-free at the choice of NZ Govt.

Andrews won't go to shutdown on this outbreak as shutting down will mean he has no choice but to admit the tennis was a mistake and he would have to cancel it.

Fiona Patten said no more blank cheque - 12hrs later outbreak

I wish chairman DA would put as much effort into Australians getting back to work as he is for the AO international players.

And yet the QLD one yielded only one or two additional cases- all close contacts already in isolation with the patient zero- despite the original HQ worker travelling on public transport for a few days whilst infectious.

So far the ‘highly transmissible’ case in Perth who travelled all over the city has yielded precisely zero additional cases. Sure it may be another few days before a case or two emerge but it appears that

You’d like to think so because the current system of locking down cities for a week at a time for a single case isn’t going to cut the mustard going forward. Interesting to note too that from Friday Perth transitions to virtually their previous protocols. This means a crew arriving from NSW on Saturday is still required to isolate (for up to 14 days but probably only a week until the end of the 28 day cycle) because of the status that WA still has NSW in. This is despite the fact WA had a case roaming the community less than a fortnight ago. It’s complete BS.

Exactly Keg, there is no consistency or overall logic but our leaders have the cheek to say that they are following medical advice, as they all do something different.

I'm reminded of a joke I read somewhere maaany years ago.

A bloke goes to a party with his Doctor wife and gets talking to the other quacks. He casually mentions he's got a pain in the chest occasionally.
The cardiac specialist says "It could be angina which can lead to a heart attack, you'd better come and see me next week!"
The Orthopaedic specialist says "It could be anything from a cracked rib to a spinal injury, you'd better come and see me next week as well!"
The Oncologist says "It could be cancer or a tumour, you'd better come and see me next week, too!"
His wife overhears the conversation and casually says "It's just heartburn, the silly bugger knows what causes it, but won't stop eating spicy food, no matter how much I tell him not too! A glass of Gaviscon and he's right as rain!

The problem with blindly following what a CHO describes as "Medical advice" is it is just that. Medical advice. It does not consider the broader socio-economic consequences of that advice! And that is where the Premiers need to have the cojones to say "the medical advice says <This> but the consequences of following that advice will lead to <That> so we're going to compromise and do <This> instead". In a similar vein Scone Airport recently tried to implement an 8-foot-high, barb-wire-topped fence between the airport and residential properties adjoining the airport, based on the recommendations of a "wildlife expert". The Council's own data showed there was less than 1 roo on the airport per month. Several residents argued against the proposal in the Council meeting, that the proposal was bollocks and Council agreed, overruling the recommendations in the "expert report" and going with a 5-foot fence. The point being, just because someone is an "expert" at something doesn't make them right! Experts built the Titanic, a lone amateur (reportedly) built the ark.....

Anyway, if the Politicians (and CHO's) were "sooooo concerned" with preventing fatalities, they would immediately ban tobacco products, a proven cause of many thousands of Australian deaths every single year! But will they? Pfft! Not a chance. Why? Because 5000+ deaths from smoking is socially acceptable. 1000+ deaths in motor accidents is socially acceptable for the convenience of the motor car - yet we blindly accept lockdowns & border closures on "medical advice" when the health system is capable of handling the expected case load should we not do any of those things.

So why is COVID different to the previous norms?

The answer is simple. The numbers in Australia are low because of the restrictions being implemented around the country. The goal is to avoid the situations playing out in the USA and UK.

Maybe the ‘highly transmissible' is not applicable in hot weather.

A very good point. I am sure that there are others left wondering right now how you can have a person infected with the B117 variant, living in close contact with three others and who went on what can only be described as a comprehensive jaunt around a good portion of the Perth metropolitan area over a period of several days and did not pass the contagion on to another single person.
As I said yesterday. This is perverse.