I was not sure how long it would take for me to get my tests. I had in the past gotten tested first thing in the morning and received a result twelve hours later late in the morning via text but testing numbers were much higher currently.
As it was, at 4:01pm I received a text from Queensland Health advising “Your test for COVID-19 from 02/04/2021 was NEGATIVE.”
I was never really expecting anything else but it was a relief of course.
To me you didn’t wear a mask to protect yourself – you wore it to protect others.
You didn’t get tested because you were paranoid of getting the virus but of passing it on to others.
You didn’t isolate out of fear for your safety but out of concern for the safety of others.
That is why I got tested and that is why I was not going to see anyone over the Easter weekend.
The negative result though did give Karen freedom to go out if she needed to as per health guidelines.
There were no new commmunity cases reported the morning of Good Friday.
April 04
Easter Sunday I was very fortunate, my parents drove over from the other side of town and delivered Karen and I hotboxes of the family Easter lunch. I expected it to be left outside our place but my Dad walked it to our door. We met both wearing masks and I took the box off him.
It was very kind and very delicious.
Hotboxes. Copyright Lloyd Marken.
The resulting meal. Copyright Lloyd Marken.
In the news there was talk of the new Brazilian strain which was taking off in places as far away as Canada.
The median age of patients The strain was up to 150 per cent more infectious than the original COVID as opposed to the U.K. strain was up to 70 per cent more infectious.
Here was an earlier report from Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the 23rd of January.
April 06
Tuesday I worked from home, during the day I called the Prince Charles Hospital and was assured that the Fever Clinic would be open when I left after work that night.
So you can imagine my surprise when I arrived to this.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
It was now just after 5pm as I scrambled for another nearby site after work to get tested. If the Prince Charles had correctly informed me that they would be closed then I would have made other arrangements.
I fortunately found a nearby Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology at my local medical centre that was closing at 6pm.
I arrived to a nearly closed centre just in time and the nurse kindly performed the test for me and someone else it appeared.
I received a slightly different text from SNP than the one Queensland Health sends.
At 2:37pm the next day advising ” RESULT: COVID-19 virus NOT DETECTED.”
Outside after the test. Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
In the news Tuesday night there was talk a new TransTasman Bubble that had long been touted by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Now it was happening.
I wondered given our recent snap lockdowns what the upside was for New Zealand and while it was not being discussed openly I had to imagine there had to be an economic factor here.
Either way this would be good news for many on both sides of the Tasman sea and one that caused anxiety for others but it was happening either way.
On the 6th of April, 2021 the World Health Organisation reported there had been 131,531,981 confirmed cases globally with a daily increase of 453,834.
There had been 2,859,469 deaths worldwide with a daily increase of 6,819.
In New Zealand there had been 2,168 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 17. There had been 26 deaths.
In Papua New Guinea there had been 7,406 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 368. There had been 67 deaths with a daily increase of six.
In Australia there had been 29,357 confirmed cases with a daily increase of nine. There had been 909 deaths.
In Ireland there had been 238,466 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 318. There had been 4,718 deaths. Their recent surge over Christmas well over for now.
In Canada there had been 1,008,106 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 6,448. Just the day before the country had reached more than 1 million cases with 1,001,658. There had been 23,075 deaths with a daily increase of 25.
In the United Kingdom there had been 4,356,334 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 2237. There had been 126,862 deaths with a daily increase of 26.
In India there had been 12,686,049 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 96,982! There had been 165,547 with a daily increase of 446.
In Brazil there had been 12,984,956 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 31,359. There had been 331433 deaths with a daily increase of 1,240. As mentioned in a previous post, on March 27th the country had reported their highest number of new daily cases with 100,158. The country recorded its highest daily number of deaths on the 10th of April with 4,249.
In the United States of America30,413,124 with a daily increase of 41,108. There had been 551,769 deaths with a daily increase of 378.
I was back at work, able to go back out in the community, having been able to get tested.
In a few weeks I would a meal with my family having missed them at Easter and even earlier catch up with friends.
Other people had a much worse Easter and no such lovely events in the weeks ahead. I am very lucky.
Following a National Cabinet Meeting the Prime Minister was advising he was trying to get the states to agree to having their borders open by Christmas. To manage travel around the country there was discussion around “hot spots” and how to define them so as to identify when and what to shut down. Only Western Australia with its Premier riding high in the polls had declined. However that didn’t mean some of the other states were varying in their conditions to going ahead with such a plan.
Economic pain aside, the virus didn’t care if it was Christmas and so setting a deadline around that and not where we were with the virus seemed ill advised at best.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in ongoing talks with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in setting up a travel bubble with that country to aid both their economies with tourism dollars. Given New Zealand’s hyge success in containing the virus this seemed like it posed more risk for them than for us.
Yet remarkably the same principle didn’t seem to apply to state borders in some media commentary.
While it was stupefying that some couldn’t handle a trip to Port Macquarie or Dubbo instead of the Gold Coast or that people couldn’t consider a trip to Hervey Bay over Byron Bay or Ballarat over Adelaide or Gumeracha over Mildura or Fremantle over Darwin or Alice Springs over Bali or Cairns over Sydney. It took me six years to get to Newcastle for a long weekend trip and I survived for example.
I would point out that jobs were lost all around with this slowdown in international tourism.
Job loss led to debt, domestic violence, family breakdown, poverty and suicide. All from the type of people we rely upon to give us our holidays, that keep towns afloat, that build communities. That’s why where we could we needed to reach out and support each other.
After the National Cabinet Meeting on Friday, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian called on the Queensland Premier to show compassion in her remarks to border closures.
The remarks did bring to mind recent events like one pregnant mother in Northern New South Wales choosing to seek treatment in Sydney rather than continue through the bureaucracy to get into Queensland. She had subsequently lost one of her twins.
These words had impact, they referenced lives lost not just inconvenienced. They failed to acknowledge the proposal to move the border closures into New South Wales which the Queensland Premier had suggested and the New South Wales Premier had rejected but they did hold to account the idea that things could be done better particularly by the Queensland government to support the people of Northern New South Wales who they share close ties to.
For Premier Berejikian despite the subsequent waves that had occurred in New South Wales and break-out clusters around the country not to mention the devastating second and third waves seen around the world she saw no reason not to have the country opened up again.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Premier Gladys Berejiklian can certainly hold their heads high for their consistency. The PM has consistently not wanted to have schools close nor borders. Not just for the education of our children but also because of the economic impact. When New South Wales closed its borders to Victoria months after other states had at the initial height of the pandemic, the New South Wales Premier looked genuinely sad.
As popular as border closures have been politically they do cause enormous pain to the economy and when we say that we mean business and when we say that we mean people. Not international corporations who still have people buy online, not mining companies who still have their ships of steel or oil or coal or whatever sailing across oceans. Not banks who are advertising low interest rates but still collecting debt and still having customers deposit their doll cheque as much as one from an employer. No we’re talking about people who get hired when somebody builds or renovates a house, or takes a trip down the road and buys a meal or ticket with their disposable income. Those people are as flesh and blood as any life we are trying to save from a pandemic and right now they’re under the kind of pressure that could sink them for good.
The acknowledgement and concern for these people will stand Berejiklian and Morrison in good stead in the months ahead. Looking at the reports coming out of Newmarch will stand Palaszczuk in just a good a stead on the border closures.
Coincidentally the Queensland Premier referenced such circumstances in her press briefing on the same day.
But where the majority lies can change in an instant as the fear of the virus switches to despair over the economy and the support offered by the Federal government will have an impact on how people are dealing with the economic impact of State border closures.
What I saw though was a concerted push in the media and other governments to bring pressure for the Queensland government to end its current policies despite the fact that they were popular. I smelt bullshit, I smelt coercion from big money and I admired my Premier for holding firm.
Throughout the week the narrative was now around instances where border control had gone wrong, predominantly the mother who had tragically lost a twin.
Treasurer Josh Frydenburg had weighed in on Wednesday on the television program A Current Affair.
Which was fair enough, these were heartbreaking stories that did make you wonder if we could do things better around the borders maybe even open them up. As heartbreaking as any one of the stories of deaths in nursing home and people being unable to see their parents in their last days and the complete lack of dignity those last days had for them.
Restrictions whether you like them or not having saving far more lives than they are taking.
Getting them right to avoid any death is the end goal but I had a sneaky feeling that’s not what this was about.
This was about getting those borders down to make some money and not the battling small business owner but the kind of money that donates to political parties and runs rag sheets and major television networks.
I don’t mean this as a conspiracy force and this is all conjecture.
What I’m talking about about is how media in cycles and how certain narratives get pushed, certain things get coverage and certain things fade to the background. Right now the story was about why Palaszczuk was keeping the border and if it was necessary and I’m saying yes she should keep it shut and yes it is necessary and yes all these stories were about changing that and I call bullshit and I’m not falling for it.
And next week the story would be different and maybe even support border closures and that is you have got to wonder about these things.
By the way plenty of celebrities have been allowed into New South Wales and other states for film and tv productions and other valuable trade activity as well as Queensland. The Australian Football League has never held its Grand Final outside Victoria in 124 years until now and you can bet your ass after this pandemic is over they will be fighting hard to have it back there forever again just like the National Rugby League grand final is held in Sydney and Joshy boy won’t be heard saying then that we’re Australians first and last then.
Of course that didn’t take into account that success over COVID allowed restrictions to lower faster and have greater economic freedom. The prosperity that had come for Queensland from hosting the AFL grand final, from having people travel to the Far North from the South East and vice versa for holidays while there was ring of steel around Melbourne and stage 3 restrictions in regional Victoria.
Of course the fact that boarding schools in Queensland had been to re-open so quickly was no cause for celebration, the education of our children weirdly was not of concern here. Minister Littleproud probably knew all too well how desperate farmers were for their boarding children to come home in their breaks and help, how much they were struggling, how difficult it was proving to find workers due to the lack of international students. That was true and was painful but what that had to do with a footy grand final that other states had bid to host seemed a convenient stretch.
But hey maybe that was just me.
For her part Queensland Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk was holding firm.
Which is not to say that New South Wales would always been more likely to end up with more cases due to its proximity as the business and cultural centre of the nation, nor that they have not been doing a good job of handling the virus as best they can nor that border closures will stop an outbreak occurring in Queensland and that we won’t need the support then of these states that require our support now.
Just to say that this virus is hard to mitigate and anything that you can do beat it you should and maybe just maybe when our political leaders they deserve our support. But where would the news story be in that? That was last week, we need a new angle this week.
And the story of a baby that maybe didn’t have to die is an important story, to tell and to hear and if it means we take a harder look at these border policies then good.
When I trained as a wardsman they took us into a room and they showed us a little box on a trolley. They told us about how it might be a job to collect a baby who had died and take it to the morgue. That little box got us all thinking and it broke our hearts.
I feel very grateful that I never had to push that box down that long corridor.
Seeing babies on life support in the intensive care nursery was enough to make your eyes glisten.
So that is what we’re talking about here but it’s not only what we’re talking about here.
Following this press coverage a new specialist care unit began to operate to help with border crossings due to health reasons. The unit consisted of eight people including doctors, paramedics, nurses and social workers. It was part of a larger ongoing team of 80 working on cross-border travel exemptions. In the week where these tragic individual instances were in the news, 900 New South Wales residents had received treatment in Queensland hospitals.
In a spot of good for boarding students the Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young also said the town of Moree in northern New South Wales could be added to the travel bubble allowing boarding students to return home for the school holidays.
The UK death toll that stood at 46,574 was the highest in Europe.
There was a push in some circles to get schools re-opened.
August 11
It was reported that the number of COVID-19 cases had surpassed 20,000,000 having reached more than 10 million only six week earlier on the 28th of June.
Five million of the cases were in the United States of America alone.
The U.S. was reporting its lowest number of new weekly cases at around 47,000.
There had been 733,900 deaths reported from COVID-19 world wide.
On Monday the Director-General of the World Health Organisation Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “Behind these statistics is a great deal of pain and suffering.”
“Every life lost matters. I know many of you are grieving and that this is a difficult moment for the world. But I want to be clear, there are green shoots of hope and no matter where a country, a region, a city or a town is – it’s never too late to turn the outbreak around,” Tedros said.
In Australia it was the greatest day of loss during the pandemic. Nineteen people had died in Victoria the day before and now the daily death toll was 21 with 410 new cases of COVID-10 in a single day. There had been 267 deaths in Victoria due to COVID-19.
New Zealand reported four new cases and went into lockdown.
I had noticed earlier in the week that one of my tyres was deflating a little faster than my other tyres. On Saturday I went to Bob Jane T-Mart and got the puncture repaired.
While Karen and I waited we walked over to a nearby park. There was a sense that things were returning to normal a little bit.
On the way home I decided I wanted a proper cake with icing. I went to a local cheesecake shop and returned with this.
A birthday cake for no one’s particular birthday except my tummy’s. Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Now Karen was not upset that I had purchased a large cake for just the two of us at some expense. She was however perplexed by one thing. Whose birthday was it?
And yes we managed to get through it before it went off.
That afternoon we skyped my Mum for Mother’s Day with the family assembling across the globe. I was very worried about the escalating numbers in the UK.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
Copyright Lloyd Marken.
10 May
Over the weekend I watched a great episode of Planet America which went into some detail around the welfare system in America and how many Americans were likely to get any assistance. It paints a picture of how desperate some Americans must feel to get back to work no matter the risk.
On Sunday I went to see my mother-in-law at her house. Each set of kids were visiting one at a time.
On the steps of Parliament House in Victoria hundreds of protestors gathered.
The purpose of the App was in the event somebody became a confirmed case it will help greatly in the efforts to do contract tracing and hopefully shut down a break-out cluster faster.
Most Australians have a great deal of their daily lives monitored by corporations on their phones through apps and websites. That said in 2016 the Australian Census was hacked.
By 06MAY2020 the Covid Safe App had been downloaded over 5 million times. The protesters were also protesting the lockdown laws that had been in place since March.
Earlier on Friday the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had advised he would make no announcements regarding the lowering of restrictions the state of emergency was lifted in Victoria on Monday.
On the 10th of May the World Health Organisation reported 3,925,818 confirmed cases globally with a daily increase of 63,117. The death toll was 274,488 with a daily increase of 8,528.
In New Zealand there were 1,144 with a daily increase of 2. The number of New Zealanders who had died of COVID-19 were 21.
In Australia the number of confirmed cases were 6,929 with a daily increase of 15. Australia had reached a death toll of 97 from COVID-19.
In Ireland there were 22,760 confirmed cases with a daily increase 219. The number of dead were 1,446 with a daily increase of 17.
In Canada there were 66,780 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 1,381. The number of dead were 4,628 with a daily increase of 157.
In India there were 62,939 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 3,277. The number of dead were 2,109 with a daily increase of 128. The country had been placed in lockdown for 21 days on the 26th of March when there only 649 confirmed cases. This had been extended on the 4th of May but despite these efforts the number of cases in India were climbing rapidly.
It was reported in China there were 84,430 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 14. The number of dead 4,643 deaths.
When you think about how many Chinese people have more likely died from this disease it makes me angry to type such a pathetic and clearly obvious lie as that figure.
My condolences to the families of all Chinese who did die from COVID-19 and to all the brave Chinese hospital staff who faced this disease first and any of who risked so much to try and get the word out about how serious this disease was.
The Chinese people have suffered bravely. Their country should honour their deaths. There is no shame in admitting how much they have endured as a nation and hopefully they have overcome the worst of it.
In Brazil there 145,328 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 10,222. The number of dead 9,897 with a daily increase of 751.
In Russia there were 209,688 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 11,012. There were 1,915 deaths with a daily increase of 88.
In the United Kingdom there were 215,264 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 3,896. The number of dead were 31,587 with a daily increase of 346.
In Italy there were 218,268 with a daily increase of 1,083. The number of dead were 30,395 with a daily increase of 194.
In Spain there were 223,578 with a daily increase of 721. The number of dead was 26,478 with a daily increase of 227.
In the United States of America there were 1,245,775 with a daily decrease of 99. The death toll in America reached 75,364 with a daily increase of 5,475. There were those in the country that desperately wanted to start re-opening but this seemed odd given the high numbers of cases and dead and while the rate of increase was slowing in the worst hit parts of America like New York it was steadily rising elsewhere.