Victoria’s COVID cases surge, NSW’s plummet

By in Australian Economy

| 78 comments

Victoria has recorded another 2179 locally acquired COVID cases – the second highest daily tally on record – alongside six deaths:

By contrast, NSW has recorded only 399 new locally acquired cases and four deaths:

The next chart plots the divergence in daily cases across both states:

Active cases have also diverged massively:

Victoria’s positive test rate hit a record high 2.947%, according to COVIDBaseAU:

Victoria’s Reff also remains slightly above 1.0 at 1.04, suggesting that cases will continue to slowly rise:

By contrast, NSW’s Reff remained stable at only 0.77:

The data speaks for itself.

Unconventional Economist
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Comments

  1. Labrynth

    Based on overseas and here Covid seems to follow the weather. Cold miserable Melbourne vs warming summer Sydney.

    • steve

      Singapore, Indonesia and India suggest weather is not an overwhelming factor, although I’m sure warmer weather helps somewhat.

      This has been one very weird disease. Every theme has glaring exceptions

      • BoomToBustMEMBER

        that because the socialist (Dan) is fudging the numbers to achieve a desired outcome. The Vic labor party is as corrupt as they come.

      • dodgy as

        It’s interesting to see how the same disease seems to behave differently in different environments.
        It is definitely not as simple as Hot(Summer)=Good , Cold(winter) = Bad
        So what is the critical variable, maybe it’s just local people and the behaviour of locals at different times of the year.
        Sydney Spring time is a time to open up and get outdoors. Melbourne spring time is still more for indoor activities
        I used to live in Taiwan and in truth it never really gets cold there but you wouldn’t know this from the behaviour of the locals. If the temperature drops below 20C they all rug up refuse to come outside, I thought it was great weather both in winter and summer, I’d go mountain climbing year round, but not with the locals for them it was definitely a season thing.
        I kind of wonder if our social reaction (adaption) to the weather is the missing link to understanding this virus spread equation.

      • Ee Zed Eff Kaye Ay

        Singapore, Indonesia and India are densely populated. That would be a key factor for their viral spread.

      • David

        It’s all about the UV levels, UV kills the virus and boosts your vitamin D levels. This is why Qld has been able to control delta better, they have high UV levels all year round.

      • steve

        Population pyramid and demographics of a country play a role also. If you have a small % over 80, Covid is much less of an issue.

  2. Swampy

    Has anyone tried the Vaccination Certificate link to Service NSW app? I followed the instructions precisely and it doesn’t work.

    What a schemozzle.

      • Swampy

        No browser need, but thanks.
        Medicare Express on iOS – share.
        Service NSW on iOS. Where is it? Tried a test QR check in…
        There’s no Service NSW app update for the integration…so, I’m puzzled.

    • yogiman

      I did it successfully, but I tried to help my mother with it and was not successful. They ask for crazy information like bank account details, the doctor you visited most recently or the postcode where you filled your last prescription, and it often fails because their records are inaccurate or incomplete. You can call them on the phone and they will sort it out somehow.

    • The Claw

      If someone you know is able to get it working, would it be OK to just to share a screenshot as an alternative to the app?

    • BB_AUMEMBER

      Is there a reason you would bother with the NSW or VIC ones? I had access to the medicare/mygov one about 20 minutes after the second jab, sits in my phone wallet.

      • Swampy

        yeah have done that.
        It’s just easier and quicker – QR scan in ServiceNSW app, shows check in and vax status, no schlepping around to open Wallet or Files.

    • Ronin8317MEMBER

      I just got mine to work through the Medicare Express App. At the page showing the digital certificate, I clicked on the the share certificate with other application link and went from there.

    • Reus's large MEMBER

      You do know that the ABC is just the government propaganda division, I would pretty much ignore anything they publish.

      • M

        Well said. I see they’ve moved on to publicly pressuring the next minority group. They didn’t stop and reflect for a split second on any contemporaneous causes in the sad story of this respected elder who suffered a heart attack 5 days after being their poster boy for Indigenous vaccination:

        Sep 10 2021 Queensland’s Indigenous communities push back against vaccine hesitancy | ABC News
        Sep 16 2021 Shockwaves felt through South Burnett following sudden death of ‘much loved’ Cherbourg elder Uncle Bevan Costello

      • DodgydamoMEMBER

        I took the abc article as a quiet admission that the heart of Melbourne’s COVID problems is the Lebanese/Arab community who remain anti vax despite making up 12 of 13 in the ICU (in the quoted instance) but some (as per replies above) see this as an opportunity to keep pushing anti-vax lies? Crikey if you can’t be arsed protecting yourself and your loved ones with worlds best available preventative medical treatment I guess you must know a lot more than all those clever doctors and scientist types

        • The Claw

          worlds best available preventative medical treatment

          The TGA just banned it. That leaves us with risking the horse version, or these rushed RNA experiments.

        • Reus's large MEMBER

          So where in the article do they go into details about any co-morbidities or how healthy those in ICU are, or any kind of balanced reporting. Nope nothing anywhere, it is just more fear mongering.

          Yes covid is real, I am not antivax growing up where I did you would be dead if you did not get vaxed. I am anti hysteria and anti follow the “science” when the science is just politics. Like the “science” that the virus is zoonotic despite no link ever being found from bat to human and yet the lab in whuhan was doing gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses to make them transmissible to humans and patients zero was working in that lab.

          Don’t believe the BS from the MSM there is mountains of data out there that shows the effectiveness of other treatments as well as the fact that the risk of dying is way lower than first reported in the US 100 million people have had covid with 700k deaths which is 0.7% death rate at a average death age of 85 where the average life expectancy in the US is 80.

          • LSWCHPMEMBER

            “Follow the science” actually means “follow the the advice of the messenger”. The divergence between actual science and the mostly self-serving messages being spouted these days is astounding.

            The science says vaccinate kids? No, the science says that’s a stupid idea. The messengers say vaccinate kids, because they work for Pfizer who see a large and as yet untapped market where they c a n trouser major coin.

        • M

          Sure Damo, “anti-vax lies”. The negatively charged vaccine particles and the spike proteins have been shown to promote thrombosis, the cause of heart attacks. According to you and the ABC it’s a pure coincidence that this bloke died within 5 days of a medical intervention. If a doctor tried to cover a death up after an operation they’d be hauled before the medical board, but with the vaccines there’s no questions asked. And people wonder why memes like “Covid vaccines, the world’s leading cause of coincidences” are gaining traction, and faith in MSM and authorities like Fauci and Sutton is so low.

          • Robert

            And how does the vaccine compare to the infection?
            You know that one that causes myocarditis in 60%. Puts 15% in hospital, and leaves 2% of people crippled with long covid. And considering the brain involvement we are likely to see an epidemic of early onset dementia like the Spanish flu caused. The fact that it’s mostly elderly and the infirm that die is just an inconsequential aspect of this viruses impact on the productive part of society. If this virus killed children then you would have an angry mob of parents hunting down antivaxers like vermin. That’s self interest for you.

          • joe green

            Is that the one that most people don’t even know they have, and doctors can’t tell they have, without having a test done.

          • M

            >And how does the vaccine compare to the infection?
            Robert what’s the attack rate of the virus? Latest data from the UK is that 8,317,439 people have tested positive at least once, of a total population of 67,081,000. Not even 1 in 8 despite ‘wild’ spread. That 12.5% over more than a year is substantially lower than that of the vaccine, which is 100% risk of two doses of spike protein plus any boosters. Risks and benefits should be up to individuals to discuss with their doctors and decide what is best, not mandated by the drug companies and their lobbyist shills planted throughout the regulatory apparatus.
            >If this virus killed children then you would have an angry mob of parents hunting down antivaxers like vermin.
            There will be rare cases, just like with influenza. But let’s be honest, the climate of debate is degrading to the point where dehumanisation and threats are happening every day. The equation of dissent against vaccination with domestic terrorism and far right extremism. Just yesterday I heard someone openly say, without a trace of jest, that if a person hadn’t been vaccinated by now then they deserved to have their arm cut off. It’s mass hysteria. Fear is the mind killer.

          • Reus's large MEMBER

            “Fear is the mind killer.” never has a more true statement been said, the mis-information and fear propagated about this virus is insane.

            Let’s get some facts out in the open, according to US data, around 0.7% of people who got whuflu died from it, with an average age of 85……..That means that over 100 million people did not die in spite of having had it.

            If you are vaxed you can still get and transmit whuflu, with the same or higher viral load than the un-vaxed. You can still die if you are vaxed but the chances are very low.

            People younger than 20 are dying in greater numbers from the vaccines than they are from whuflu.

      • Robert

        Let’s get some facts out in the open, according to US data, around 0.7% of people who got whuflu died from it, with an average age of 85

        What do you mean by average age is 85?

        I see 700k US deaths from covid up to October 5 , of which 193k 85 or older, so 28%. With 185k deaths between 75 and 84, that makes median age at death just slightly above 75.
        I also see 44.7 million cases, so 700k/44,700k gives 1.5% death rate.

        https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/

  4. nyleta

    Cases etc. kicking back up in the UK, ……….signs that the US will plateau shortly as well

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

    The schoolkids have been infecting their parents for a while now, but it is starting to get to their grandparents now so deaths will rise

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1448688542750760965

    Here is the problem with tolerating high case counts……..new branch of Delta taking off in the UK

    https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1448705627136667649

    • FUDINTHENUDMEMBER

      Excellent chat on coronacast this morning with evolutionary biologist Eddie Holmes who first shared the original genome for Sars-cov2 on where we’ve been and where he thinks we’re headed.

    • GarethMEMBER

      Deaths are still way down from their peaks, dont see what the issue is? Vaccinations are working and virus is cycling through mutations….status normal so far.

      Cases…who cares? Everyone is going to get it multiple times due to mutations, get used to it. Kids catch it but are fine…stop following the doom merchants or you’ll get the yips like H&H.

      You should be more worried about the pre-existing health conditions listed in the same deaths by age link below.

      https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/deaths#deaths-by-age

      • Robert

        Vaccination reduces covid to the level of seasonal flu. Oldies will still die and the hospitals will be stressed in winter but life as normal. Thank God the federal government doesn’t care about people or we would get protected to death.

        • Robert

          Vaccination reduces covid to the level of seasonal flu.

          We’ll see – the UK is estimated to have on average between 10k and 25k flu deaths per annum. They’ve had 10k covid deaths in the roughly 3 months since vaccinating their population and re-opening and flu season hasn’t started yet.

    • Labrynth

      Yes, if there was any attempt to seperate those who died with* Covid vs those who died of* Covid the results would make the pants wetters froth at the mouth as liberals did when Trump won the 2016 election.

      When you look at the health.gov.au link for Covid Deaths in Australia in a hidden drop down box, the inclusion of a someone with COVID that died goes into the stats unless they are crushed in a car accident. If you have Covid its probable so get lumped into the stats.

      As per the COVID-19 national guidelines, a COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID19 (e.g. trauma).

      • kiwikarynMEMBER

        Its made worse by the fact that people who didnt even have Covid were included in Covid deaths. If you died in a rest home that had a Covid outbreak, then you were automatically categorised as a “probable Covid case” and recorded as an official Covid death. No autopsies were ever performed on anyone.

        • steve

          Strange, but true.

          We very often don’t know exactly why someone dies. Especially an old person in residential aged care. No one really cares that much either. The test is “probable cause”, which is pretty subjective. Most relatives don’t care exactly whether is was a stroke or heart attack or pulmonary embolus. They don’t want an autpsy to find out (fair enough). The Coroner is not interested so long as it is “natural cause.”

          As a result, death certificate data is notoriously inaccurate.
          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5692167/
          https://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/archive/SO17p26.shtml
          Could be 50% – that’s in places concerned enough to check.

          NY has a much higher rate of influenza on death certificates than rest of USA. Why? Just because.

          Thats why we mostly look at all cause mortality eg EuroMOMO. We can at least count deaths, even if we can’t count causes.

          Bottom line
          If you are in a RACF and die and doctor does not know whey and there are Covid cases in that RACF, you can be pretty sure C19 is going on the certificate as “probable.”
          Similarly, if you had tested positive to Covid, it will end up on your certificate – whether or not it killed you.

          Two California counties have tried to unscramble this egg (from or with Covid), and reduced their 2020 Covid deaths by 25%

          • LSWCHPMEMBER

            Thanks Steve. I really appreciate your measured and informed contributions to this discussion. It beats the hell out of being called a plague rat who should be killed, as I have recently in this forum because I’m not on-board with the mRNA Vax tech.

  7. Jevons ghostMEMBER

    There is a company with headquarters in Collins St Melbourne that manufactures an innovative therapy shown to improve survival of patients in ICU and suffering from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID). Not yet freely available in the USA due to FDA vacillation, but being used in a therapeutic environment in Japan. However, with nearly 200 patients with ARDS in Victorian ICUs it baffles me as to why the Victorian health authorities have not approached the manufacturers to arrange the use of allogeneic stem cells for the treatment of COVID-associated ARDS under compassionate use arrangements or in an observational clinical trial. Read more about it here. (https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/mesoblast-covid-therapy-trial/)

  9. Jevons ghostMEMBER

    Once upon a time-not so long ago, one’s word was supposedly one’s bond. So think how simple and relatively non-stressful things would become in this COVID era if one were merely expected to answer “immunised”, ”partially immunised” or “not immunised” in response to a question posed by a person with some sort of authority over you regarding your SARS-CoV-2 immunisation status. Your unfettered and unpenalised choice as to whether you refuse to answer, offer up the facts or chose to lie. After all, my current understanding – which may be incorrect – is that once you have had two shots of one or other of the currently available “vaccines,” then if infected you are more likely to harbour a greater load of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in your upper respiratory tract then you would be if you have not been immunised. And yet you would be most unlikely to become seriously ill or die from the infection. So it seems to me that an infected but immunised person exposes a non-immunised but non-infected contact to a greater risk of serious illness than an infected but non-immunised individual poses to any immunised but non-infected contact. So if a non-infected but immunised individual exposed to the virus carried by an infected non-immunised person is most unlikely to become seriously ill if infection results from the contact, why not simply let the un-immunised take some responsibility for any adverse personal consequences that result from their inaction? Certainly encourage people to continue to follow sensible social distancing guidelines for the time being, and even more so in the 2022 flu season. Maybe even continue the shop-entry QR checking for a while longer if you must, but lets give the inane, devisive and authoritarian locking-out (as opposed to lock-down) stuff a miss.

    • blacktwin997MEMBER

      Spot on, we used to be a high trust society. Sadly this has been eroded by both bad behaviour from the powers that be as well as large scale import from low-trust societies.

    • joe green

      qr codes and contact tracing will be completely unmanageable if we just open up again. Keeping them around is mere theatre to keep the punters thinking something has been done. It was failing under the load while we were locked down hard.

      • Jevons ghostMEMBER

        Agree, but after all we have become a revoltingly shambolic Society of The Spectacle, so why not continue on with the shamble(s)?

  10. Tassie TomMEMBER

    It will be interesting to see what happens to the numbers in NSW now that they’re opening up. If they increase by 10 times or less (4000 cases per day), probably acceptable, and similar to the UK’s 40,000/day with a touch under 10 times the population of NSW. If they increase by 100 times (40,000 cases per day), probably unacceptable.

    All of Australia is watching, because it’s going to happen to us too eventually.

    • Robert

      Deaths and hospitalisations probably more important. At 4000 cases per day you’re probably looking at between 20 and 40 deaths per day on average, so anything up to 80 is possible for a single day count ( and over many days you’ll have all the plausible extremes at both low and high ends of scale).

      So far not seeing anyone preparing the punters for those sorts of death numbers.

      • Tassie TomMEMBER

        Agreed Robert, although the UK is getting 120 deaths per day from 40,000 cases, which would scale down to 12 deaths per day.

        There are two things about the UK though. Firstly it is likely that their 40,000 cases per day is only a fraction of the number of true infections. Is the true number 80,000 or 200,000? If it is 200,000 then 120 deaths per day is less than 0.1% mortality. But on the flip side, how many undetected cases are there in NSW? Does 400 new diagnoses per day represent 500 new infections or 2000 new infections?

        On the other hand, the UK has had some pretty big waves before their population got vaccinated and the most recent Delta wave happened. These previous waves would have 1) killed off a lot of the vulnerable people who now will not die in this Delta wave because they’re already dead, and 2) infected and hence immunised a lot of their population, providing a degree of herd immunity in addition to their vaccination program.

        Both of these factors do not apply to NSW as they have not had a wave before that has infected a significant proportion of their population, which would logically suggest that the same number of cases in NSW would cause more deaths, and that the same degree of vaccination immunity in NSW would lead to a rise in numbers when in the UK it would lead to stability.

        “Not seeing anyone preparing the punters for those sorts of death numbers” – NSW is about to prepare the rest of the Australian punters.

        • Robert

          Just a small point – the UK haven’t averaged 40k deaths per day in any 7 day period since the re-open. Highest was 38k, around 35k more typical. When they were at those case numbers, they were getting averaging a tad over 140 deaths per day.

          One other point – with recorded cases in the UK already equivalent to 12.5% of the population, if there’s an 80% undercount, as implied by 200,000 cases per day, then 75% of population has already had it. Yet there is not much slow down in new cases or even new deaths (both are currently heading up). So either natural immunity doesn’t last or the undercount isn’t massive, maybe both.

          • Tassie TomMEMBER

            …. OR 75% having had it hence having a lot of immunity PLUS population vaccination does NOT provide enough herd immunity in a free society for cases to decline. ie, a natural “R” number of 10 or 15 might have been brought down to 1.2. In which case NSW is in trouble.

            PS: The 80% undercount implication would equal 62.5% of the UK population having had it.