As of yesterday July 15th 2021 at 11:59 pm a snap five-day lockdown was ordered in Melbourne. This comes just as we were almost getting used to “normal” life; just a few days ago there were wild celebrations in little Italy (Lygon Street), as Italy …
won the Euro2020 (in 2021) cup. By the way, Italy won the trophy following a 1:1 draw and a penalty shoot-out. For those that don’t know, a penalty shoot-out in football (soccer), is analogous to twenty-twenty cricket; might as well toss a coin to decide the winner! I even walked down the street without a mask and watched Black Widow twice last weekend at the Cinema!!!
This current lockdown is linked to the Sydney cluster, which has caused enormous disruption in that state. All these are associated with the highly transmissible delta variant. The delta variant is causing havoc not only in Australia but also in other countries notable the Netherland in Europe and Indonesia in Southeast Asia. Troubles are also re-surfacing in the US where cases have doubled in the past three weeks and the delta variant is accounting for ~60% of new COVID-19 cases.
In Australia, we are still lagging in vaccination rates; ~9.1% of the population is fully vaccinated. In Indonesia that number is ~5.5% fully vaccinated, and in the Netherlands 38.8%. The data emerging from the US where ~48.5% of the population is fully vaccinated, is pretty clear. People presenting with severe COVID-19 and require hospitalization are those that are not vaccinated. This highlights the urgency to vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible!
In the meantime there was some drama with a cruise ship in Singapore; about 3000 were stuck on-board in isolation confined in cabins after one passenger tested positive for COVID-19! Honestly, the SARSCoV-2 virus loves travelling on cruise ships and planes so, I’m pretty sure people can relax on non-essential travel while the pandemic is ongoing!
Also… rich people are self-appointing themselves as “astronauts”! I feel for people “real astronauts” that have to work like b***s to get their accreditations and never get to go to space. In all honesty, the Virgin Galactic spaceflight was a remarkable achievement – it was must watch YouTube. My favourite part was when RB was clapping upon landing! It was great to see – it’s weird that people clap when an aircraft lands – that’s what it’s supposed to do! Anyway, our next rich friend is scheduled to launch in a couple of days, and we’ll how that goes; exciting.
For us – Lockdown 5.0! Take-away coffee and stuff like that…
Until next time …