The two major Australian cities are currently in lockdown; Sydney has been in lockdown for a few weeks now but cases continue to be above 200. In Melbourne, cases are relatively low, however, given the transmissibility of the delta variant, …
the Government correctly, announced a lockdown starting Thursday August 6th, 2021 for 7 days. The lockdown came one day after the state had recorded zero cases! However, at the first sign that there were some local community cases the lockdown came. Of course, some protests happened, and these are understandable – lockdown is not easy for many people… but it would probably be better to save the demonstrations for time where we are not in the midst for a global pandemic [i.e. later, when governments try to re-coup losses due to the pandemic – by making ordinary people pay for it could be a good time].
The delta variant is causing major problems around the world, particularly in South-East Asia where the pandemic was kept under control earlier. For example, Malaysia is now at around 20,000 cases per day, Indonesia peaked at about 50,000 new cases a couple of weeks ago, and in a surge was observed in Vietnam with a peak of over 8,000 new cases on August 4, 2021. In the US well over 100,000 new cases we reported per day, last week. Cases predominated in Southern states where vaccination rates are lagging – Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi. A return to face masks in parts of the country and vaccine mandates are being pushed; more on vaccine mandates another time. The virus has also returned to China and the original starting point – Wuhan – leading to COVID restrictions in that country.
In short, the “return” of COVID-19 highlights the extreme transmissibility of the delta variant – the R0 for the original strain of out Wuhan was about 2 (one infected person would infect ~2 people); the R0 for the delta strain is more similar to chickenpox and smallpox (~9). As the experts have said regarding a retune to face masks and vaccine mandates – “the science is the same but the virus has changed”and “the war has changed”.
The important point is that vaccines remain effective against infection (~50%), and people vaccinated have a 25x less chance of suffering severe COVID or being hospitalised; it is reported that >99.999% of people fully vaccinated do not die from a breakthrough infection.
So the lesson is pretty simple, vaccinate as soon as you have the opportunity!
Until next time …