A Year Later

[aggienaut]

   A year ago today Australia entered coronavirus lockdown. At that time there had been 2,136 confirmed cases, people had only just begun to wear masks, and the grocery stores were surreal places with big gaps on the shelves where pasta and flour had been, mostly empty produce sections, and of course a completely empty toilet paper section. None of us had any idea how long it would last but if we were to venture a guess I'm pretty sure we would have all wildly under-estimated.
   Melbourne enacted the "ring of steel" quarantine that was one of the longest and most stringest lockdowns in the world. And as a result of these measures, we haven't had widespread community transmission in about five months now, and life is pretty much back to normal without even much vaccination (I think the doctors have been vaccinated but I haven't heard a thing about general public getting vaccinated at all). Masks are still common but there are very few instances when it's still required (public transit maybe?).

   In the United States vaccination is going forward as fast as possible, with, I believe, most older people vaccinated and my teacher friends are all getting vaccinated these days. Community spread in the US still seems to be pervasive.

   And in Venezuela, official news is sketchy, but they are once again on a very strict lockdown, Cristina seems to practically live at the hospital working 6 days a week, she's received her first vaccination dose (the Russian one) but not yet the second, and she reports some doctors havent' even been vaccinated yet. In a hospital where pre-corona they seemed to lose a patient once a month and Cristina would be pretty bummed about it, they lost 22 patients to coronavirus this past weekend alone.

Comments

[crazy-mich.livejournal.com]

I am so jealous of Australia and New Zealand right now. Here in Canada, things are a mess. Vaccinations are slow going and our numbers are rising quite dramatically again. I'm really freaked out.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

How are things going now? Here vaccinations have advanced more rapidly lately. The latest thing is we seem to have a "ping-demic" where as more people come down with covid and places they've been recently get listed as "exposure sites" all of us become more likely to get "pinged" as having been at an exposuer site and thus having to self isolate and get tested. I thus far have never had to have a covid test and I'd quite like to see if I can make it through all this without having anything shoved up my nose...

[crazy-mich.livejournal.com]

Things are not so bad here now. Canada as a whole has fared pretty well, all things considered. In Ontario, we are at 80% 12+ fully vaccinated. While the number of vaccinations have slowed, a lot of sectors are pushing mandatory vaccinations which has pushed some hesitant people to get one. There's also been a vaccine passport in the works, and since September 22nd unvaxxed people are not allowed inside restaurants, gyms, or movie theatres. Of course there's a lot of unhappy people and they have been protesting in front of HOSPITALS of all places, and have been making it difficult for healthcare workers and people seeking help to get inside. Fucking losers. If you want to protest, then do it elsewhere.

There are a couple of provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan (or it might be Manitoba) — that are struggling right now. The premiere in Alberta basically declared covid over in the summer and opened up everything, removed mask mandates, stopped contact tracing and a bunch of other stupid stuff, and now they are completely overrun. They had more cases in September than they have at any other point in this pandemic. They have had to send patients to other provinces because their hospitals are basically on the brink of collapse. We don't call Alberta 'The Texas of Canada' for nothing.

Glad to hear things are doing better where you are in terms of vaccinations. Hopefully you guys can get the spread under control soon! The nose swab isn't the worst...but hopefully you can avoid it. :)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Here cases are going up and up, I think the government has kind of just decided to make it an all out sprint to the finish, vaccinations versus infections :-/

[crazy-mich.livejournal.com]

Well here's hoping the vaccinations start ramping up soon!