aquascoot wrote on Feb 13^th, 2021 at 2:18pm:

Covid is back and Bobby is on his back cursing the day.

Dan has to go.

Victoria's hotel quarantine program left out of key taskforce on infection control for frontline workers

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has also declared Victoria "cannot be trusted" to manage hotel quarantine until it is fully restructured after Victoria was this week forced into a third lockdown due to a cluster at the Holiday Inn hotel quarantine site at Melbourne Airport.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-13/hotel-quarantine-not-on-infection-control...

Come on guys. Show some care during a pandemic.

This is a serious situation.
It is entirely reasonable to be highly anxious about it all.
At some stages last year I was travelling badly.

Good luck all.

aquascoot wrote on Feb 13^th, 2021 at 1:40pm:


Covid will be "grumbling along in the community like the flu" when enough people have been vaccinated and 'herd immunity' is achieved. Which will probably be several years from now. And, even that might not be successful considering the quick mutations this virus is apparently capable of.

Until then, everything possible needs to be done to keep the virus from spreading. The alternative is for Australia to end up like the US or the UK with thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands dead.

And, as far as eradication is concerned - the virus was eradicated here in Australia until we started letting all of these "returned travellers" into the country and attempting to quarantine them in inner city hotels which were never designed for quarantine purposes right in the middle of the major population centres (dumb idea of the century award right there).

And, let's not forget that there wouldn't have been any need to eradicate the virus at all if it hadn't been allowed to enter the country in the first place with the first infected arrival from Wuhan just over a year ago.

Seems there's a LOT of angry people in Victoria right now and there's a growing 'chorus of voices' demanding something be done about all of these overseas arrivals bringing the virus here and the inadequate hotel quarantine system that's supposed to keep us all safe.

Some of these voices want overseas arrivals restricted to compassionate cases only for now but I'm sure that Scotty from Marketing won't go for that, of course. And, Scotty still thinks the hotel quarantine system is OK which shows just how out of touch with reality he is these days.

(Anyone else feel like we're going around in circles here?)

aqua,

I didn't say anything about goods and essential services being cut. And, the less said about sporting events the better (the protest marches in Melbourne ending up at Rod Laver Arena on Friday night would tell you what a lot of us feel about sport right now).

Foreign students and tourists will just have to wait unfortunately until a sufficient number of people are vaccinated and the virus is considered "under control".

The main gripe people are increasingly having (especially in Victoria and especially since the latest lockdown) is with all of these expats who are suddenly lining up in their tens of thousands to come back to what they obviously see is the 'safe haven' of Australia from wherever they've been happily living overseas until now. Until Covid hit.

Why is it that we were told last August or September that there were about 25,000 of these "expats" wanting to come back to Australia and about 6,000 a week were being allowed back so, by anyone's reckoning they should have all returned well before Christmas?

So, why are we now hearing that there are still about 40,000 "expats" desperate to come to Australia? The leading theory (apart from more and more "expats" joining the list as the virus goes out of control in many countries overseas) is that a lot of the places in the 6,000 a week that are returning are taken by big businessmen, assorted rich people, sports stars, celebrities, politicians and their families and their armies of "hanger ons" who can freely travel to and from Australia because of their 'exempt' status (which is total BS).

The fact that airlines are also charging business class fares to bring people back to Australia doesn't help the 'little people' either.

And, as has been mentioned many times already - its about time for Scott Morrison and the Federal government to get off their @sses and build purpose built quarantine facilities with appropriate medical assistance provided for those who may need it while in quarantine.

Failing that (the word failure seems to be associated with ScoMo a lot the past 12 months) then the Christmas Island facilities are still available and could be even expanded to accomodate more people if needed.

I will say this very slowly.

We....have....a....global....pandemic....and....we....cannot....have.....thousan
ds....of....potentially....infected....people....flying....in....every....week..
..and....then....try....to....quarantine....them....in....city....hotels....righ
t....in....the....middle....of....major....population....centres.

This....is....a....recipe....for....disaster....as....the....recent....outbreaks
....in....several....States....has....shown.

Capisce? (That's American pseudo-Italian slang for “understand?” by the way). 

As long as international passengers arrive in a major city there will always be outbreaks.

How about we send them to Christmas island and make use of the refugee camp site there for two weeks then if they test negative they are free to go to the mainland.