Masks Begin Appearing

[aggienaut]

   I left the house today, which is news these days. Mask policy is changing here in Victoria. Recall, a week ago I went to Melbourne and saw not a single mask; Friday I was in Geelong town and I saw my first two masks being worn by civilians. At this point masks are "strongly recommended" for everyone an will be mandatory in public in Melbourne starting tomorrow.

   First today I drove through the very small town of Winchelsea, and during my brief drive through I saw not a single mask on anyone, including, INCLUDING, about four middle aged persons pushing three very frail elderly people in wheelchairs. A situation where they cant maintain social distancing and the persons right in front of their mouths are extremely vulnerable ::facepalm::

   Later I had to drive into the slighly larger (population 11,000) town of Colac. Of people out and about on sidewalks I think only 1 out of 8 people was wearing a mask, but when I went into the grocery store it appeared 40-60% of the people in there were wearing masks, so clearly they are thinking to put them on if they go grocery shopping (and/or the people who are taking it seriously aren't out strolling the sidewalks).
   I feel like, when nearly no one is wearing masks (as was the case last week), one could possibly say someone is not wearing a mask because of peer pressure not to, they don't want to be the first one. Sure maybe. But when half the peopel are wearing masks, one really has to wonder about the people not wearing them.

   In important mask related news, Cristina finally has n95 masks! And a tyvek suit and goggles and face shield, ie, a full set of proper PPE!! (: (: (: (: (:


She also notes that she looks a bit like a chicken :X



   267 new cases last 24 hour count here. The outbreak in neighboring Colac I mentioned last entry is apparently 27 cases, the most of anywhere outside of Melbourne (and Geelong (pop 200,000), for example, only has 13). Currently 3,858 active cases in Australia (again, almost entirely in this state).

Comments

[kawanee.livejournal.com]

Here in Canada the majority of the cases have been in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, which makes sense because those are the provinces with the highest populations. In Nova Scotia, we currently have only 1 active case. Our province total is 1,067, with 63 deaths and 1,003 recovered cases. Most of the deaths occurred in a large long-term care facility in Halifax.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

The Australian state of NSW (the biggest state, which includes Sydney) was hit slightly harder than Victoria the first go around. I think South Australia and QLD were hit lightly and the far flung outback territories of Western Australia and Northern Territory were barely hit at all, with only 1 case having occured in the NT throughout this. I think Tasmania had afew. In this second surge there's no new cases occuring in most of those states, NSW has cases in the low dozens while we have hundreds a day here.