Remember when Australia was considered a success story when it kept its Covid-19 cases under control and was creating a bubble with New Zealand?
Then they had a small surge due to travelers not maintaining the required quarantine upon entering the country. This story involved poorly trained security guards (some recruited via What’s App) in Melbourne failing to enforce the 14 day quarantine of travelers coming into the country from overseas. Some guards even had trysts with the quarantined guests. (This is now the subject of public hearings)
Now Australia is struggling to keep Covid cases under control.
They have nearly 800 cases that they have not been able to trace to a source of infection.
It is these “mystery” cases that is prompting the state of Victoria, home to its second largest city Melbourne, to declare a state of disaster and impose harsh stage four lockdown.
"Even just one case by itself is a concern," Professor Senanayake said. "So 700-odd is a real problem because it means there is a source of infection out there who is potentially, unknowingly infecting others as we speak."
The higher the number of community cases, the less likely contact tracing was
feasible, he said.
“But even if contact tracing is failing, you would hope these restrictions will mitigate that risk somewhat because even though you can’t find the cases, they are not
moving around as much and infecting others."
This may force the country to re-evaluate who they consider to be essential workers as well. Hint: It’s mainly women who educate and care for children, stock store shelves and provide healthcare. The country is also taking a closer look at abattoirs, or slaughterhouses as we know them. These are considered essential work places. (And hire low paid immigrants just like other places in the world).
Staggering shifts, strict social distancing, scaling back workforces, frequent deep cleaning and reducing the mixing of staff in shared environment or during meal breaks was critical in high-risk industries if they were to remain open, he said.
Many of those infected in this wave are younger.
The new wave of infections is mainly among the young. This helps explain why deaths have not climbed as fast as infections. But the danger is of more vulnerable folks being exposed.
And more young people battling myocarditis like baseball players and doctors in their 20s and 30s. It is unclear if these individuals may deal with the after effects of Covid-19 short term or long term.
Melbourne is the fastest growing city in Australia and is the home of many immigrant communities. Earlier localized lockdowns were enacted in high rise public housing residences that house poor immigrants. Some of these earlier lockdowns created tensions as these lockdowns were enacted swiftly without notice and poor communication, leaving residents lacking food and medication needed for such a lockdown.
This latest lockdown is more widespread covering all of Melbourne.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced a state of disaster that will see a curfew imposed on Melbourne for six weeks meaning residents must remain at home between 8pm and 5am
As part of a suite of tough new restrictions Melburnians will not be allowed to travel more than 5km once a day to do their shopping (further if their nearest supermarket is more than 5km away). Only one person per household will be allowed to make the trip and only once a day;
Considering that here in Maryland, we have been told to limit our grocery shopping to once every two weeks if possible earlier this year, the once a day frequency seems pretty lax to me.
Students across Victoria will return to remote learning on Wednesday, with tighter exemptions for children of essential workers than the government imposed last lockdown;
Other states in Australia have seen their cases rise as well. New South Wales (NSW) and its largest city, Sydney, have been battling hotspots, many connected to restaurant dining and pubs as well as funerals. Where last year, they were battling devastating wildfires, this year, Covid-19 is the new crisis they face.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is urging face masks be worn on public transport and in supermarkets as the state reported another 12 new coronavirus cases on Sunday. She said NSW had entered a "very critical stage".
Contact tracing of cases in a third state, Queensland, have shown many of these cases linked to visits to Sydney and Melbourne, demonstrating how easily travelers can spread the virus.
Queensland's latest case of COVID-19 flew on a Jetstar flight from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast while infectious, sparking a public health alert for fellow passengers. The man returned from overseas and was allowed to then board the domestic flight because he is a consulate staffer.
Masks are being urged, but Australia, too has dealt with instances of people refusing to wear masks and causing a fuss when asked to wear one. Though it is in no way to the level seen in the US.
There has been an element of the culture wars about Australia’s debate about how to suppress Covid-19, although nowhere near the absurdity and partisanship we have seen in the United States. But it was there again on Sunday, with the Australian newspaper’s economics editor, Adam Creighton, fulminating on Twitter that the “shameful” new measures meant an “effective dictatorship [was] declared”.
I doubt most Victorians will agree, although these are going to be a long six weeks. And it is true that the powers are extraordinary. The “state of disaster” gives police more authority to enforce restrictions and gives the minister for emergency services, Lisa Neville, powers to direct and coordinate the activities of all government agencies and allocate resources as she considers necessary or desirable.
Those of you who watched this season’s Bosch, will be familiar with the sovereign citizen movement, which apparently isn’t just a TV plot device. This movement started in the US and is ending up — thanks to the internet — in Australia.
Viral footage of people defying restrictions on borders, large gatherings and, in Victoria, the use of face masks, have increasingly peppered Australian news as the Covid-19 pandemic stretches into its eighth month.
This past week a woman who refused to wear a face mask in a Bunnings hardware store in Melbourne became the latest fodder for the news cycle after she described herself as “a living woman” to a bemused employee. A few days earlier, footage of a woman reading from a script as she asked an officer “have I disturbed the peace today?” while refusing to answer questions at a border stop in Victoria also made headlines.
Footage of these encounters and others like them share a similar characteristic: in them, the people challenging police appear to be reading from the same script, a pdf file that has been shared widely across various Facebook groups loosely affiliated with the so-called “sovereign citizen” conspiracy movement.
Described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the US as an extremist group, the sovereign citizen movement is a haphazard collection of pseudo-legal beliefs broadly coalesced around the notion that modern government is illegitimate.
“Sovereign citizens believe that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don’t think they should have to pay taxes,” the SPLC says.
When the US loses it battle with coronavirus, so does the rest of the world. In spite of travel restrictions, this virus is still crossing the globe and being spread by people who do not manage to take it seriously enough.
Australia is seeing its second wave, larger than its first. See the Guardian’s stat tracker. The question is are they doing enough to keep this one under control? We shall see. But as one article suggests control will be difficult with the combination of this pesky virus and humans, being human.
Until an effective vaccine is found, or the pandemic burns itself out, the virus will always look for a way to sneak in—and covid-19 carriers for a way to sneak out.