December 22
While state border closures affected many Christmas plans, the majority of the Northern Beaches and Greater Sydney were more interested on what their fates would be in their own home town. Given the case numbers I would have probably gone with a wider lockdown. Look in the video below at the two minute mark where they note where all the venues contract tracing had covered.
Testing was through the roof.
44,000 Sydneysiders got tested in 24 hours alone.
Well done Sydney!
December 23
Wednesday.
With eight new confirmed cases in the region and now 97 linked to Avalon cluster.
The day had come when Sydney learned how it would spend Christmas.
For the 250,000 residents of the northern beaches who had been in lockdown since Saturday they were advised restrictions were going to be split into the north and south of the region itself. For those north of the Narrabeen Bridge you were still in lockdown.
Everything would be looked at again on the 27th of December, the day after Boxing Day.
Residents of Greater Sydney could have 10 adults and an unlimited amount of children over Christmas.
On December 24th, Christmas Eve, 2020 the World Health Organisation reported there had been 78,442,765 confirmed cases of COVID with a daily increase of 674,228 across the world.
There had been 1,727,847 deaths globally with a daily increase of 13,310.
In Australia there had been 28,238 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 19. There had been 908 deaths.
In Canada there had been 521,509 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 6,195. The second largest country in the world had reached over half a million confirmed cases just three days earlier with 501,594 on the 21st of December.
On December 24th there had been 14,425 Canadian deaths with a daily increase of 93.
In the United Kingdom there had been 2,149,555 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 39,237. There had been 69,051 deaths with a daily increase of 744.
In India there had been 10,123,778 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 24,712. There had been 146,756 deaths with a daily increase of 312.
In the United States of America there had been 18,090,260 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 195,151. There had been 320,180 with a daily increase of 3,148.
-Lloyd Marken
New South Premier Gladys Berejiklian put in place restrictions for the Greater Sydney area in the wake of locking down the Northern Beaches where there were now 68 cases linked to that cluster with 30 new inflections overnight.
The new restrictions for Sydney, the Central Coast and the Blue Mountains were to start at midnight and run until midnight Wednesday.
They included only having 10 visitors around to your place.
It appeared Premier Berejiklian was hedging her bets, giving herself until the last minute to completely cancel Christmas or to grant a reprieve if the numbers didn’t rise.
She ran the risk of snookering herself though, if the numbers present and the medical advice is to retain or increase restrictions it would be a tough sell. If the measures were effective but there was a stalemate she was leaving it until the last minute to give the bad news. For some pundits her compromised approach probably meant she’d made the right call, for others it might she’d failed to commit.
Time would tell.
In full candour I looked at all the listed places where contract tracing was occurring and just thought it’s out there, they need to lock it down.
But it wasn’t my Christmas being ruined was it.
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant warned, “If we end up seeing greater seeding events outside the Northern Beaches, that would be of concern. If we see an increase in unlinked cases and, particularly, a spread outside the Northern Beaches, that is of concern to me.”
On the 20th of December the World Health Organisation reported in Australia there had been 28,128 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 34.
There had been 908 deaths.
P.S. I wrote up a draft of this post but the whole thing got lost so I had to do another draft.
Premier Berejiklian also announced there would be new rules for international airline crew from next tuesday. Instead of self-isolating at home they would not stay in two police operated hotels. Lack of compliance had led to the change, at least one airline worker had gone out breaching quarantine.
New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard said 2,000 to 3,000 airline crew arrived in the state alone each week.
In Queensland there were only eleven active cases in the state as 3,274 tests were carried out in a 24 hour period.
With Sydney’s Northern Beaches declared a COVID-19 hotspot, anyone who had entered Queensland since the 11th of December must get tested and self-isolate for 14 days.
That was the idea anyway.
It seemed a lot of people were changing plans to get into the state before 1am on Saturday and I don’t think it was to self-isolate.
I guess this raises all kinds of questions about the effectiveness and the side effects of such actions particularly at Christmas time when so many families were attempting to reunite.
I guess my default is always to play it safe, I had a friend coming up from Sydney who was not from the northern beaches but none the less changed her flights and came up a little earlier as she saw what was developing on the news that week.
And I caught up with her over the Christmas period.
Western Austalia had just opened back up to the rest of the country.
Anybody who had arrived between 11DEC2020 and 17DEC2020 were told to get tested for COVID-19 and self-isolate until they get a negative result. Like I had earlier in the week in Queensland. They would not be required to self for 14 days it was decided for the time being.
The Western Australian President of the Australian Medical Association Andrew Miller backed the government’s play.
Since the 11th of December over 5,000 people had arrived from New South Wales. On Thursday, 2,000 of them rocked up to get tested at the COVID Fever Clinics forming long queues. Some didn’t get tested before closing time.
McGowan’s hope was that the government and people of New South Wales could learn from the outbreaks in Victoria and South Australia and get on top of things early.
Earlier in the week a leaked tape came to light of superstar Tom Cruise cracking the shits with some crew members on the set of Mission Impossible VII for not following COIVD protocols.
I’ve been a gopher on a film set and had some people act like some absolute pigs talking trash to me and others beneath them when they weren’t even that high up the totem pole. I heard many more horror stories and far worse.
Nobody likes being yelled at and it represents nothing but a loss of control and a lack of professionalism.
On the other hand, when people are working under pressure and others repeatedly don’t follow instructions and flout rules expect certain workplaces to have consequences.
But the moment felt oddly cathartic for many who had lost their jobs and would be more than happy to follow the rules on the film set and even more so for people who lost a lot more because people had been flouting COVID rules.
That’s certainly how it rang for me but I also think about the human factor. The capacity to make mistakes and how a leader losing their temper rarely is the best way to handle it. Then also I sometimes think it gets to the point where it is the only way to handle it?
Who knows where this was.
I wondered how many times these peoples hadn’t followed the rules.
Five crew members quit the set following the leak.
The production had been one of the most major Hollywood productions to shut down during the first COVID wave in Italy.
Following resumption in Italy, 12 people got COVID in October causing further delays. Production got back on track and moved to the UK.
Back in Australia, testing in New South Wales had brought 23 new cases overnight bringing the Northern Beaches cluster total to 50 down south.
The Northern Beaches were going into lockdown from 5pm until midnight on Wednesday. Residents could only leave for work, exercise, shopping or compassionate reasons.
Sydney’s northern beaches will lock down from 5pm on Saturday until midnight on Wednesday – people can’t leave their houses except for work, exercise, shopping or compassionate reasons.
From 1am Saturday morning, anybody entering Queensland from Queensland’s northern suburbs had to go into 14 day quarantine.
The hope that Australia would be open and free to celebrate Christmas together was quickly fading. The virus didn’t care what day it was on the calendar.
On the 19th of December the World Health Organisation reported there had been 75,170,679 confirmed cases globally with a daily increase of 712,982.
There had been 1,671,995 deaths worldwide with a daily increase of 13,586.
In Australia there had been 28,094 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 22. There had been 908 deaths.
In Canada there had been 488,638 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 7,008. There had been 13,916 deaths with a daily increase of 117.
In the United Kingdom there had been 1,977,171 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 28,507. There had been 66,541 deaths with a daily increase of 489.
The next day with 27,052 new daily cases the small island nation would breach 2 million confirmed cases with 2,004,223.
On the 19th of December, India reached more than 10 million cases.
There had been 10,004,599 confirmed cases with a daily increase 25,152. There had been 145,136 deaths with a daily increase of 347.
In the United States of America there had been 16,912,564 confirmed cases with a daily increase of 229,915. There had been 308,403 deaths with a daily increase of 3,443.
06APR2020 America has a record daily increase of 33,510.
11APR2020 – New record – 35,386.
26APR2020 – New Record – 38,509
27JUN2020 – New Record – 40,526
28JUN2020 – New Record – 44,458
29JUN2020 – New Record – 44,580
03JUL2020 – New Record – 54,271
06JUL2020 – New Record – 57,186
10JUL2020 – New Record – 64,630
12JUL2020 – New Record – 66,281
17JUL2020 – New Record – 67,165
18JUL2020 – New Record – 71,484.
19JUL2020 – New Record – 74,354
25OCT2020 – New Record – 82,630
31OCT2020 – New Record – 89,048.
01NOV2020 – New Record – 99,356.
06NOV2020 – New Record – 106,050.
07NOV2020 – New Record – 116,780.
08NOV2020 – New Record – 131,821.
12NOV2020 – New Record – 133,935
13NOV2020 – New Record – 142,076.
14NOV2020 – New Record – 193,734
04DEC2020 – New Record – 195,769.
05DEC2020- New Record – 218,671.
11DEC2020 – New Record – 230,852.
13DEC2020 – New Record – 243,209.
On the 20th of December there was a new record of daily new confirmed cases in the United States of America.
402,270.
A daily increase of 172,355 from the previous day’s count.
Bringing the total number of confirmed cases the United States of America had seen to 17,314,834.