Melbourne’s COVID-19 infections explode

By in Australian Economy

| 140 comments

Melbourne’s COVID-19 infections have turned into an outright epidemic, with another 288 new infections recorded:

Victoria now accounts for 97.5% of active cases:

Take a look at the next chart:

A public health disaster is unfolding in Melbourne.

Leith van Onselen
Latest posts by Leith van Onselen (see all)

Comments

        • ram

          In the 80’s at primary school in yr 4 there was this kid called Justin he once did a crap out of a tree into a creek, he got the nickname log. True storey no sht.

          • PeterMEMBER

            LOL.

            When I was at uni, a guy in my halls of residence urinated in a friends Walldrobe. He didn’t say a thing. Two days later, he walked into the guys room and threw this frozen “log” at the ceiling, it shattered and sprinkled its fairy dust all over the guy’s room. Oddly, he never used anyone’s wardrobe as a convenience again…

          • Iron HorseMEMBER

            In the 90’s my wife was on a state hockey trip to WA and a few of us fellows went along to support the team. One night their physio got smashed and mistook the hallway cupboard bi-fold doors for the toilet. Being kind hearted chaps the next day we got a small cardboard box, went to the beach and filled it with sand, wrote her name on it and put her new ‘litter tray’ in the cupboard….

          • Scab Quarantine Security

            Those BLM protests were a sick joke.

            How many people are going to die now because tens of thousands of fools wanted to protest the accidental death of a criminal on the other side of the planet.

          • John John

            Yep. The PC brigade literally allowing stupidity because it aligns with ideology.

            Either shut things down properly, or don’t shut down at all. None of this half-assed crap.

          • ZevombatMEMBER

            Other states had the protests too and haven’t had the outbreak. The protests were outdoors, out of routine and perceived as risky so more people wore masks and tried to distance. On the other hand everyday activities like school, shops, seeing family and using lifts don’t feel as risky (especially after lots of messages about it being just a flu or a hoax etc)

          • AngryMan

            I have not seen any evidence bthat the protest march contributed to this second wave. Let’s not lose sight of the real culprits. The stupid uber security guards the company and the fools in quarantine who spread it out into the community and the government for ever allowing people who refused covid tests to leave quarantine.

          • Lord Winchester EntwhistleMEMBER

            Is there evidence the BLM are a source?

            It’s very easy to let your ideology get on the way of facts of course.

          • DivyaMEMBER

            Let us not lose sight of the real original culprits. This is the CCPs fault. Start there when u want to blame anyone for wuflu.

            CCP for not being able to mind a wet market, CCP muppets wanting the gates to still be open, scummo for handing out pamphlets at the airport for 3 weeks, and still insisting on bringing people back into country and then, vic gov for the security guard botch up… it took all of them.

          • bolstroodMEMBER

            And a very warm welcome to the Far out racists in our midst.
            Especially the non members CC, SQS and JJ

    • Robert

      Nah, the infection rate will slow once it runs out of housing commission tenants. Once again our wise politicians have helped out real Aussies by ensuring they don’t get access to dangerous enclosed spaces known as public housing.

      • Peter Code

        Yeah except there’s still plenty of people hosting parties of 20+ people like the one in Dandenong the cops busted last night. Seems to be a common few areas where people don’t give a flap about anyone but them…

    • FUDINTHENUDMEMBER

      People everywhere in angelsea, Surf Coast today. Not locals. Young, old, whatever. No one gives a hoot. This whole thing is out of the bag. Plenty Ozzie’s gonna meet their maker. Property crash is the least of our problemz.

      • Popcod

        Yeah I know. This is the real deal this time. I’ve been stood down for a second time today but at least I’m already in the system and the payments haven’t stopped. I’m so glad I’ve been wearing a mask and I’ve done my bit to normalise wearing it. I think the poop is finally hitting the fan. Good luck everyone

        • Mining BoganMEMBER

          Kids I know need the money but are happy the council leisure centre is closed again. Procedures were strict but there was always that nagging doubt.

          I only trained in outdoor sessions. Going indoors felt a bit too squirrelly.

          • Popcod

            You’re smart not to exercise indoors. There’s no way I’d ever exercise inside a gym again given they’ve been identified overseas as being responsible for some super spreader events. I felt ok working with a mask in our pool areas, mainly because they’re so large (10 lane 50m pool) and i know our air system doesn’t recalculate air (one use and it’s done). But if we ever get to more than 20 people using a pool at a time, I want to be working open shifts when we’re pretty quiet. Having said that in a week or two I’m going to have to start seriously looking into a long term work change. I need to be able to work from home.

          • Lord Winchester EntwhistleMEMBER

            Still have a very large stock of masks sequestered away

            Adding to it at present

        • darklydrawlMEMBER

          Yes, I recall your earlier posts about taking some flack at work for wearing a mask. I hope you get some belated apologies from those who were sniggering. Good luck with Jobkeeper mkII. Hope it all works out for you.

  6. Scab Quarantine Security

    Only a matter of time before it takes off in NSW now given the number of people that have crossed into the state.

    It’s going to take off and they’ll just give up like Europe and the US. The population and government doesn’t have the will for a second round of lockdowns.

  8. Ronin8317MEMBER

    The increase suggest uncontained spreading via a superspreading event.

    In Wuhan, the “40,000 people meal” banquet at the China Lunar New Year was deem to be the culprit.

    https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049173/coronavirus-10-new-cases-confirmed-30-more-suspected-wuhan-after

    I wonder if we’ll eventually discover in Victoria the ‘superspreading’ event is the Black Lives Matter protest, which would be the ultimate irony if COVID-19 decimates the Aborigines community.

  9. Ortega

    The economic implications of this pandemic are only now starting to emerge. Globally, we’re on the cusp of a depression far worse than anything experienced in the last 200 years.

    Australia’s popping property bubble will be the least of its problems.

    An omnipotent being could not design a more sinister, targeted form of societal vandalism than this virus.

    It’s as if the Earth were saying to humanity, enough! Get off me!

    • doctorX

      An omnipotent being could not design a more sinister, targeted form of societal vandalism than this virus.

      Virus is not a problem in itself it’s the our fragile system and our response to it that is the cause of social vandalism.

      In fact, virus is like designed to solve in a nicest possible way some of the biggest problems humanity faces (overpopulation, inequality, resource depletion…). If world reacted differently we could have not only avoid social vandalism but make world a much better place for those 99.9% thare going to survive.

      • Chook

        It won’t fix overpopulation. We are 3 times the sustainable number of people.
        It won’t fix resource depletion -we utilize 7 times what the planet can sustain.
        These are ticking time bomb problems we will face over a period of time as it all slowly gets worse and worse. The bush fires, climate change, drought, famine pestilence and war… it’s all only going to get worse over the next century.
        The virus is just a taster of the problems to come.

    • drt15MEMBER

      I think that’s exactly what mother Earth has been saying. It’s not like we haven’t had innumerable warnings

      Maybe this will in a bizarre and very painful way take a bit of the heat (sic) out of global warming. Coz we were never going to do it on our own.

    • darklydrawlMEMBER

      Given the large number of Victorian holiday makers on the coast, plus the hundreds of international students / Melbournites that fled over the border before it closed, I would be very surprised if NSW avoids a second spike in cases.

      • doctorX

        it could only be a spike in imported cases like the one in March where large majority of cases were just imported. Almost 2/3 of all cases in NSW were imported so basically every infected person managed to infect around 0.5 of other people (im most of cases household members who they kissed and hugged repeatedly)

        there was really never epidemic in NSW, just some sick people arriving

  11. doctorX

    what people were expecting? that Australia will stay isolated forever?
    when environmental conditions are right (and that may to be the case in Melbourne atm) this novel coronavirus becomes airborne causing these large events (they call them super-spreaders) happen
    masks don’t help with airborne viruses, neither lockdowns .. virus can spread between houses if conditions are right
    many scientists believe that some airborne viruses in right conditions can even cross the oceans by sailing on the wind

    This said I’m still not sure that’s what’s happening in Melbourne, test yield is dropping
    % of positive tests results is dropping which means increase in numbers could be mostly driven by more testing (today they had 0.08% of tests returning positive) it was 0.3% just few days ago

    also WHO recommends to have so many tests so that positive results are in the range between 3 and 10%
    what we are doing is just wasting resources – at this stage when most of cases are locally acquired large number of tests cannot be used for any tracking and tracing but increasing the number misleads and makes things worse

  12. Al La

    Australia’s first wave is finally here.

    It had been largely contained and kept out of the community until this outsourced security balls up.

    I can’t see this being restricted to just Melbourne either.

    The NSW Victorian border was open right up until Tuesday.
    .

    • doctorX

      there was never a border between Naples and Milan yet Campania recorded 2.5% of deaths relative to Lombardy, Lazio (Rome) under 5% of deaths
      even now they are recording 100s of new cases in Lombardy and only handful in Naples

      simply the virus is not spreading equally in all locations – in some places basic reproduction number of the wirus is below 1 so virus is self-eradicating

      • Al La

        Italy is old Europe.

        No internal borders but culturally very different from North to South.

        The US comparison is probably better for Australia.

        The virus jumped state borders despite lockdowns and different climate zones.

        • doctorX

          yeah, those on south of Italy kiss and hug all the time and cannot even get rubbish out of Naples so they need military help every few months

          jey they have no corona while nice, clean and rich north got smashed

          • Al La

            People from Milan generally don’t visit Naples as it’s practically a different country. This is why infections didn’t spread uniformly from the urban North to the underdeveloped South.

            Lots of Melbournians visit Sydney and vice versa as there is no real cultural difference between Australians or a different accent for that matter.

          • doctorX

            There were enough cases (thousands) in Naples to start huge outbreak if conditions were right but they didn’t

    • Rowan McKenzie

      If we didn’t lockdown at all in Summer we would have had a mild series of cases, assisted by Vitamin D from Summer.

      Now we get the hard cases during Winter with no established immunity.

      The first lockdown was a mistake but it seems we havn’t learnt our lesson.

  15. Chairman MeowMEMBER

    Lol,lol,lol. China has the Covid under control with a fifty times larger population while Australia and USA can’t control it but its all “Chyna’s fault” our neo-liberal, rightwing cost-cutting governments can’t organise a simple quarantine 🙄

      • Chairman MeowMEMBER

        Its theoretically possible that if there had been Democrat, Labour and Labor national governments in power at the time of the Covid outbreak things 𝘮𝘢𝘺 have been different even in the face of Murdoch media dominance but equally as much may not have considering how neo-liberal they all are but the fact the Covid outbreak coincided with Republican, Tory and Coalition governments sure highlights in my opinion how callous, incompetent, willfully obtuse and downright evil they are

        • drt15MEMBER

          Nah, just self-centered, entitled psychopaths and narcissists isolated in their rarefied ivory towers and totally incapable of empathising with the hoy-pol-oy

    • DivyaMEMBER

      But CCP couldn’t regulate a single wet market that started the whole thing. So hardly a shining example of competence there…
      Oh but was that italy.. or spain.. or u.s. Which story does the CCP want the world to believe now?
      “Oh it’s us.. but not us, them.. no them.. no THEM.. nooooo!!! Dont have an independent investigation to find out where it came from!!”

        • DivyaMEMBER

          I am not. But it was the CCP who came out and shouted wet market in the first place. So the point is, when someone goes back on what they themselves have said at first, you have to question every subsequent thing also said. Otherwise, either stick to your original story or allow an independent investigation. But you know, CCP have gotten used to having it both ways for so long… bet they figured people will just dismiss them as a errant child. About time world reckognised child is old enough for juvie now and causing some real damage if left unchecked.

    • Montys Moll

      Exactly Close it down now…240,000 heading across the border in the next few days 😳🙈..its Crazy…now NSW will be riddled with covid..it will be lockdowns for all within 1.5 weeks 😖🤯

      • Lord Winchester EntwhistleMEMBER

        The LGAs adjoining the OOL border have not had a case in 12 weeks.

        If anything, all the Victorians currently parked at Ballina and all points in between may be a risk but only if they’ve arrived in say the last 14 days?

        Probably best to ring fence Sydney now and shut down all flights north from Sydney.

  18. RaglanParade

    Looking at the official Victorian DHHS data this evening by LGA and if the trendlines continue it’s going to present a huge challenge to the Dan Andrews – and his concept of a total “Greater Melbourne” lockdown.

    No new cases on the Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Ranges (incl. Dandenong Ranges), Cardinia, Frankston, Kingston LGA’s. No active cases in Mornington Peninsula, Cardinia, and Kingston too. Based on these numbers there appears to be no reason to continue the lockdown of these LGA’s for the full six weeks – if these trends continue.

    It should also be noted that after 3-4 weeks during the last lockdown selfish Melburnians felt entitled to go on ‘day trips’ down to the Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley – which is likely to happen again if they remain within the boundaries of “Greater Melbourne” in the long term – adding long term exposure risks to these communities.

    On the flip side – there are new cases emerging in Geelong (4 cases) and Bendigo (2 cases) which suggest that it could be spreading into Regional Victoria.

    Therefore – If I was in charge of Victoria – I would make the following changes to the lockdown restrictions:

    1. Geelong and Bendigo added to the list of lockdown LGA’s effective tomorrow night.

    2. Mornington Peninsula, Frankton, Kingston, Cardinia & Yarra Ranges remain on lockdown until the 26th of June – but additional roadblocks established to stop the rest of Melbourne travelling to these areas.

    Major arterial roads should be blocked into the Yarra Valley (at Chirnside Park) and into the Dandenong Ranges (Montrose, The Basin, Upper Ferntree Gully, Lysterfield).

    For Cardinia – the existing roadblock should be shifted from Longwarry to Beaconsfield, with a seperate roadblock on the old Princes Highway.

    For Frankston & Morninton Peninsula – all major arterial roads (Eastlink, Nepean Highway, Frankston-Dandenong Rd, Westernport Highway) should have roadblocks

    To protect the low numbers in Kingston & Bayside there should also be additional roadblocks in those areas as well.

    Existing roadblocks between Geelong & Melbourne, and Bendigo & Melbourne remain in place – because the last thing we want to see is any more transmission between these communities as well.

    This is where Dan Andrews needs to call in the ADF – at least 10,000 personnel to help with as many roadblocks as possible. There thousands of empty hire cars sitting at the airport (in addition to army vehicles) so there is no reason why large quantities of personnel cannot be deployed to stop the spread of the virus further.

    We need hard restrictions and more roadblocks to limit human movement – because it is evident that selfish, stupid, and brainless Victorians will not do the right thing on their own.

    We also need to protect those communities of Greater Melbourne that have none (or very limited) cases – so they can get on with their lives and the businesses of these areas are not destroyed without reason.

    Does anyone else agree?

    *rant over*

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