10 ms·

Melbourne resident here. We're feeling pretty relieved to be getting these results and excited to be tentatively emerging from nearly four months of fairly str

Melbourne resident here. We're feeling pretty relieved to be getting these results and excited to be tentatively emerging from nearly four months of fairly strict lockdown. Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. At the same time, there's much debate and political ruckus about the merits of the lockdown - i.e., the economic and human costs, vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. There's also the ongoing attack on our state government from political opponents and parts of the media, over the fact that the virus was suppressed here back in May, as it was in the rest of Australia, but then started spreading rapidly again in June, when poorly-trained security guards acquired the virus while working in quarantine hotels, then took it back to their families and communities, with the outbreak then tearing through aged care homes and leading to a total of 800+ fatalities. What isn't being talked about here, but has been mentioned by another commenter in this thread, is weather. Melbourne is the only large/dense city in Australia that has quite cool winters, similar to the weather that prevailed in Northern Asia, Europe and the US in Feb-April, and that is returning to Western Europe now. As we now know, given the serious outbreaks that have happened in warmer regions, warm weather is not a strong enough factor to halt this virus altogether, but it does seem to have an influence, and it's striking to note the progression of this virus in Melbourne, relative to the weather. AMA!

Jedd 6y ago
> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in that category, but what we continue to find out about the way this disease can affect otherwise fit & healthy people, and with the unfortunate benefit of seeing what is happening in countries that aren't as committed to controlling this, indicates we've probably made the right decisions here.
- 0xy 6y ago
  Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young people (ostensibly to save old people, the primary victims of the virus). I think this is such a sickening calculation. We're enslaving our children to debt, depriving them of social lives (this can have permanent impacts), some of them commit suicide, some of them are denied treatment by government and die and they're not getting as much exercise and are also eating poorly. I'm really tired of seeing people gloss over the effects of lockdown, because lockdown is dangerous in itself. Is the virus or the lockdown more dangerous? Well, that remains to be seen. In Australia, an additional 4,000 - 7,000 suicides were projected beyond the norm as a result of lockdowns. [1] This is significantly higher than the death toll of the virus and is only a single datapoint. It doesn't include people skipping preventative appointments and dying as a result, or the long term effects of massive depression and obesity spikes. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
  - disdain_stain 6y ago
    where did you get the 4,000-7,000 figure? There were 3,048 suicides in Australia in 2018[1]. Data from the Victorian coroner shows that there's been roughly the same number of suicides in the state this year up to August 27 as last year(466 this year vs. 468 last year)[2]. [1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-and-intentional-self-harm https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Don't take this the wrong way, but did you read your own source? It literally proves my point. >"We still think we're going to see, over the course of a 12-month period … and then subsequent years, in the order of 30 per cent increase [in] suicide rates," he said. 30% of 3,048 is 914. 5 years of that is 4,572 additional suicides. I got the 5 years data point from the Australian Medical Association. [1] [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
olalonde 6y ago
How strict was the lockdown in practice? What were the rules?
- viraptor 6y ago
  Check the lockdown steps here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-06/coronavirus-explainer-melbourne-roadmap-easing-restrictions/12634506 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-06/coronavirus-explainer... When the roadmap was published the first step of lockdown relaxing was: > Residents will need to stay within 5 kilometres of their homes and will still only be able to leave home for shopping, exercise, care-giving purposes or permitted work. > The city's night curfew starts at 9:00pm rather than 8:00pm, and residents can exercise for up to two hours a day, up from one hour. Pretty strict, but I think the clear steps and threshold being announced were a brilliant approach.
- L-four 6y ago
  Can only leave house for work, 1 person per house for food or other necessities 1 once per day, 1 hour exercise max 5km from home, must work from home is possible, can't leave Metro area without valid reason and must wear a musk in public. It changes every week or so depending on the cases. We'll be able to meet with the relatives hopefully after the 9th if everything goes well.
- rswail 6y ago
  The initial rules when we went into "Stage 4" lockdown were: * Essential industries (food, health care, logistics) were working, some, like abbatoirs, with reduced capacity * Retail food sales (supermarkets/butchers/bakers etc) open. Cafes/restaurants for take-out or delivery only. * Other retail closed except for online or click&collect contact free. * Night curfew 8pm - 5am, relaxed later to 9pm. * Maximum 5km radius from home unless for work/medical care. * Only 4 reasons to leave home: essential work, medical care, one person shopping once/day, one hour of exercise. * Masks whenever in public (not just inside). Over time, some things got slowly relaxed. The curfew was changed when we got to the start of daylight savings. The radius was relaxed from 5km to 25km. A "singles" or "intimate partner" bubble was established, that allowed people to have one other person outside their household. Then two households were allowed to meet outside the home, but still masked. At the same time, the government support included $150 if you were being tested and had to quarantine until the results (usually 24h). Then if you were positive or were a close contact and had no sick leave, then there were payments of $1500 for the 14 day isolation/quarantine period. The Federal government introduced Jobkeeper, which was a subsidy of $1500/fortnight for businesses to maintain employment, and Jobseeker was an extended unemployment payment.
apexalpha 6y ago
Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. Congrats on getting to the magic 0! I know it can seem weird that Europe didn't lock down over the summer, but here we mostly use Health care capacity, not active cases, as the most important number. Being a relatively small island [0] on a remote corner of this planet makes the case for going to the 0 cases a viable one. Going into a 4 month lockdown in Europe would be useless, since it would just pop up again since we don't have a few international airports as only places where you can enter. So we're going into lockdown in Europe to prevent swamping our hospitals, and will resume life when it's okay again. And probably will keep going back and forth until a vaccine. [0](in terms of population)
- chaosite 6y ago
  Trying to manage healthcare capacity only causes that capacity to be met. And while mainland Europe is not a "relatively small Island", the UK surely is...
- yorwba 6y ago
  Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). Not in continental Europe, not without involving the military.
cletus 6y ago
Australian here and I recently came back from spending months in Perth (where there hasn’t been a case of community spread since April). You mention weather here but, having followed the news, is clear that the primary factor in Melbourne’s outbreak was breaches in quarantine, so much so that there was a government investigation into it. Weather seemed to have very little to do with it. There’s really no comparison with Melbourne winters and those in most of North America or Europe either. Melbourne climate is pretty mild all things considered. You seem to be pinning this on poorly trained and paid security guards but there’s credible evidence that there were incidents on security having relationships with those in quarantine (and the responsibility for that falls on both parties). Plus the quarantine didn’t seem to be that strict. People leaving to go out shopping, that sort of thing. Again those in quarantine should also know better.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  I don't really have a dog in the fight, but it's uncontroversial that basic quarantine breaches were what seeded the the June-October outbreak in Melbourne. Stories of "security having relationships with those in quarantine" make for titillating clickbait articles, but so far little more than rumour has been reported. We'll see what the inquiry report says, but any poor practices in quarantine would have been sufficient to seed the outbreak, whether or not there was any intimate contact. But then it was also poor contact tracing/outbreak management and aged care management that exacerbated things after that. So these things are always multi-faceted. I've been paying close attention to the weather factor since the epidemic spread beyond China in Feb/March. It was notable that the places that had the biggest outbreaks then (Milan, Qom, NYC, London, Madrid, as well as Wuhan itself) had similar weather in those months to what Melbourne has in winter - cool but not freezing, and not too rainy or humid. When I saw that, I immediately felt Melbourne could be more at risk of a serious outbreak than other Australian cities - all of which have either warmer winters and/or lower population density (EDIT: and also more sunlight in some cases, influencing Vitamin D). Of course, if quarantine was better managed it could have been prevented. But I also find it hard to believe that there was not a single serious lapse in any of the hotels in any of the other cities that were running quarantine. When weather is raised, people are quick to point out the warmer regions that have had major outbreaks, like India and Brazil. What these places also have his highly dense populations with many people living/working in close quarters, which obviously also facilitates spread. Nutrition/health may also be a major contributor. As another commenter has pointed out, research has found Victorians to have higher rates of Vitamin D deficiency in winter compared to other states, so weather can play a role in different ways. Clearly this is a highly complex illness with multiple factors that combine in different ways to influence the outcome.
h0l0cube 6y ago
> What isn't being talked about here ... is vitamin D, HNs favorite topic: > Rates of deficiency were shown to be lower in summer (14%) and higher in winter (36%). There was little variation between the states and territories in summer, when deficiency levels were low across the country; ranging from 6% in Queensland to 19% in New South Wales. A divide was apparent in winter, with rates of vitamin D deficiency particularly high for those living in Victoria and ACT, where nearly one in every two people (49%) were vitamin D deficient in winter, compared with only 16% and 13% respectively in summer. In comparison, vitamin D deficiency remained relatively low in winter for those in Queensland and the Northern Territory.[10] Differences were also seen across each state or territory - vitamin D deficiency was more common among those living in major cities (27%) compared with those living in inner regional (16%), outer regional (13%) and remote areas (9%).[10] https://wiki.cancer.org.au/skincancerstats/Vitamin_D#Vitamin_D_deficiency_in_Australia https://wiki.cancer.org.au/skincancerstats/Vitamin_D#Vitamin... (For non-Australians, Melbourne is the capital city of the state of Victoria.)
- hnick 6y ago
  As someone in Sydney I was wondering about that connection. Cases are subsiding as we come into Spring, in Sydney and Melbourne both.
  - h0l0cube 6y ago
    I've spent a lot of time in Melbourne, and it's winters are characterised by almost constant heavy cloud cover. That mixed with greater latitude makes natural vitamin synthesis by UV a real problem. There is also a large hole in the ozone around the southern hemisphere, so maybe that allows a little more UV through on less cloudy days.
TheBlight 6y ago
I don't understand. Is the plan to keep covid out of the country forever? That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at this point. Will there be a lockdown every time there's new infections?
- jonsno56 6y ago
  Fun fact! If there are only a handful of cases the lockdowns don’t have to last that long. And vaccines can keep COVID out of a country forever
  - TheBlight 6y ago
    We'll see I guess but I'm extremely skeptical.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      I mean, it appears to be working in New Zealand. Island countries with relatively small populations seem like the places where this approach is feasible.
      - dingaling 6y ago
        NZ is keeping coronavirus out by shutting-down the tourist industry that constitutes 10% of employment and 6% of GDP So it's a race between economic damage and global vaccination.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  It's a good question. The political leaders at both state and federal levels are banking on an effective/safe vaccine being widely available in the next 12 months. If that doesn't eventuate, I don't know what the Plan B is.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  I would assume until a vaccine that at least helps slow the spread or until the virus has mutated enough it's less of an impact. Or at least an bet at one of those 2 occurring.
umvi 6y ago
If you emerge from lockdown, won't that result in increase of rate of cases?
- ywhjaknskkkw 6y ago
  Yes. The lockdowns just delay the inevitable at a tremendous cost.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  The idea is that now the virus has been suppressed (they are doing sewage analysis to confirm whether the virus has gone away), they can control new cases with well-managed quarantine of returning travellers, and outbreak management. NZ and the rest of Australia has done this successfully since about May.
  - umvi 6y ago
    I suppose that would work for island nations. Not sure how it would work if you can just drive over the border, as is the case with EU and USA

Jedd 6y ago

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in that category, but what we continue to find out about the way this disease can affect otherwise fit & healthy people, and with the unfortunate benefit of seeing what is happening in countries that aren't as committed to controlling this, indicates we've probably made the right decisions here.

0xy 6y ago
Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young people (ostensibly to save old people, the primary victims of the virus). I think this is such a sickening calculation. We're enslaving our children to debt, depriving them of social lives (this can have permanent impacts), some of them commit suicide, some of them are denied treatment by government and die and they're not getting as much exercise and are also eating poorly. I'm really tired of seeing people gloss over the effects of lockdown, because lockdown is dangerous in itself. Is the virus or the lockdown more dangerous? Well, that remains to be seen. In Australia, an additional 4,000 - 7,000 suicides were projected beyond the norm as a result of lockdowns. [1] This is significantly higher than the death toll of the virus and is only a single datapoint. It doesn't include people skipping preventative appointments and dying as a result, or the long term effects of massive depression and obesity spikes. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
- disdain_stain 6y ago
  where did you get the 4,000-7,000 figure? There were 3,048 suicides in Australia in 2018[1]. Data from the Victorian coroner shows that there's been roughly the same number of suicides in the state this year up to August 27 as last year(466 this year vs. 468 last year)[2]. [1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-and-intentional-self-harm https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Don't take this the wrong way, but did you read your own source? It literally proves my point. >"We still think we're going to see, over the course of a 12-month period … and then subsequent years, in the order of 30 per cent increase [in] suicide rates," he said. 30% of 3,048 is 914. 5 years of that is 4,572 additional suicides. I got the 5 years data point from the Australian Medical Association. [1] [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...

olalonde 6y ago

How strict was the lockdown in practice? What were the rules?

viraptor 6y ago
Check the lockdown steps here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-06/coronavirus-explainer-melbourne-roadmap-easing-restrictions/12634506 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-06/coronavirus-explainer... When the roadmap was published the first step of lockdown relaxing was: > Residents will need to stay within 5 kilometres of their homes and will still only be able to leave home for shopping, exercise, care-giving purposes or permitted work. > The city's night curfew starts at 9:00pm rather than 8:00pm, and residents can exercise for up to two hours a day, up from one hour. Pretty strict, but I think the clear steps and threshold being announced were a brilliant approach.
L-four 6y ago
Can only leave house for work, 1 person per house for food or other necessities 1 once per day, 1 hour exercise max 5km from home, must work from home is possible, can't leave Metro area without valid reason and must wear a musk in public. It changes every week or so depending on the cases. We'll be able to meet with the relatives hopefully after the 9th if everything goes well.
rswail 6y ago
The initial rules when we went into "Stage 4" lockdown were: * Essential industries (food, health care, logistics) were working, some, like abbatoirs, with reduced capacity * Retail food sales (supermarkets/butchers/bakers etc) open. Cafes/restaurants for take-out or delivery only. * Other retail closed except for online or click&collect contact free. * Night curfew 8pm - 5am, relaxed later to 9pm. * Maximum 5km radius from home unless for work/medical care. * Only 4 reasons to leave home: essential work, medical care, one person shopping once/day, one hour of exercise. * Masks whenever in public (not just inside). Over time, some things got slowly relaxed. The curfew was changed when we got to the start of daylight savings. The radius was relaxed from 5km to 25km. A "singles" or "intimate partner" bubble was established, that allowed people to have one other person outside their household. Then two households were allowed to meet outside the home, but still masked. At the same time, the government support included $150 if you were being tested and had to quarantine until the results (usually 24h). Then if you were positive or were a close contact and had no sick leave, then there were payments of $1500 for the 14 day isolation/quarantine period. The Federal government introduced Jobkeeper, which was a subsidy of $1500/fortnight for businesses to maintain employment, and Jobseeker was an extended unemployment payment.

apexalpha 6y ago

Much is being made of the fact that back in August when Melbourne was reporting over 700 new cases on some days, UK and France were reporting similar new case numbers, yet we are now getting zeroes and those countries have out-of-control spread. Congrats on getting to the magic 0! I know it can seem weird that Europe didn't lock down over the summer, but here we mostly use Health care capacity, not active cases, as the most important number. Being a relatively small island [0] on a remote corner of this planet makes the case for going to the 0 cases a viable one. Going into a 4 month lockdown in Europe would be useless, since it would just pop up again since we don't have a few international airports as only places where you can enter. So we're going into lockdown in Europe to prevent swamping our hospitals, and will resume life when it's okay again. And probably will keep going back and forth until a vaccine. [0](in terms of population)

chaosite 6y ago
Trying to manage healthcare capacity only causes that capacity to be met. And while mainland Europe is not a "relatively small Island", the UK surely is...
yorwba 6y ago
Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). I don't know much about Australian geography, so I had to check on a map, but it looks like it's possible to travel from Melbourne to other parts of Australia over land. Apparently some measures were taken to prevent the virus from spreading along that route. Driving case counts down to zero isn't useless since any outbreaks that flare up again due to gaps in border security will be localized and can be kept in check with localized lockdowns instead of shutting down the whole country.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > Land borders can be closed except for a few checkpoints, which serve as the equivalent of international airports (and seaports, don't forget about those). Not in continental Europe, not without involving the military.

cletus 6y ago

Australian here and I recently came back from spending months in Perth (where there hasn’t been a case of community spread since April). You mention weather here but, having followed the news, is clear that the primary factor in Melbourne’s outbreak was breaches in quarantine, so much so that there was a government investigation into it. Weather seemed to have very little to do with it. There’s really no comparison with Melbourne winters and those in most of North America or Europe either. Melbourne climate is pretty mild all things considered. You seem to be pinning this on poorly trained and paid security guards but there’s credible evidence that there were incidents on security having relationships with those in quarantine (and the responsibility for that falls on both parties). Plus the quarantine didn’t seem to be that strict. People leaving to go out shopping, that sort of thing. Again those in quarantine should also know better.

tomhoward 6y ago
I don't really have a dog in the fight, but it's uncontroversial that basic quarantine breaches were what seeded the the June-October outbreak in Melbourne. Stories of "security having relationships with those in quarantine" make for titillating clickbait articles, but so far little more than rumour has been reported. We'll see what the inquiry report says, but any poor practices in quarantine would have been sufficient to seed the outbreak, whether or not there was any intimate contact. But then it was also poor contact tracing/outbreak management and aged care management that exacerbated things after that. So these things are always multi-faceted. I've been paying close attention to the weather factor since the epidemic spread beyond China in Feb/March. It was notable that the places that had the biggest outbreaks then (Milan, Qom, NYC, London, Madrid, as well as Wuhan itself) had similar weather in those months to what Melbourne has in winter - cool but not freezing, and not too rainy or humid. When I saw that, I immediately felt Melbourne could be more at risk of a serious outbreak than other Australian cities - all of which have either warmer winters and/or lower population density (EDIT: and also more sunlight in some cases, influencing Vitamin D). Of course, if quarantine was better managed it could have been prevented. But I also find it hard to believe that there was not a single serious lapse in any of the hotels in any of the other cities that were running quarantine. When weather is raised, people are quick to point out the warmer regions that have had major outbreaks, like India and Brazil. What these places also have his highly dense populations with many people living/working in close quarters, which obviously also facilitates spread. Nutrition/health may also be a major contributor. As another commenter has pointed out, research has found Victorians to have higher rates of Vitamin D deficiency in winter compared to other states, so weather can play a role in different ways. Clearly this is a highly complex illness with multiple factors that combine in different ways to influence the outcome.

h0l0cube 6y ago

> What isn't being talked about here ... is vitamin D, HNs favorite topic: > Rates of deficiency were shown to be lower in summer (14%) and higher in winter (36%). There was little variation between the states and territories in summer, when deficiency levels were low across the country; ranging from 6% in Queensland to 19% in New South Wales. A divide was apparent in winter, with rates of vitamin D deficiency particularly high for those living in Victoria and ACT, where nearly one in every two people (49%) were vitamin D deficient in winter, compared with only 16% and 13% respectively in summer. In comparison, vitamin D deficiency remained relatively low in winter for those in Queensland and the Northern Territory.[10] Differences were also seen across each state or territory - vitamin D deficiency was more common among those living in major cities (27%) compared with those living in inner regional (16%), outer regional (13%) and remote areas (9%).[10] https://wiki.cancer.org.au/skincancerstats/Vitamin_D#Vitamin_D_deficiency_in_Australia https://wiki.cancer.org.au/skincancerstats/Vitamin_D#Vitamin... (For non-Australians, Melbourne is the capital city of the state of Victoria.)

hnick 6y ago
As someone in Sydney I was wondering about that connection. Cases are subsiding as we come into Spring, in Sydney and Melbourne both.
- h0l0cube 6y ago
  I've spent a lot of time in Melbourne, and it's winters are characterised by almost constant heavy cloud cover. That mixed with greater latitude makes natural vitamin synthesis by UV a real problem. There is also a large hole in the ozone around the southern hemisphere, so maybe that allows a little more UV through on less cloudy days.

TheBlight 6y ago

I don't understand. Is the plan to keep covid out of the country forever? That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense at this point. Will there be a lockdown every time there's new infections?

jonsno56 6y ago
Fun fact! If there are only a handful of cases the lockdowns don’t have to last that long. And vaccines can keep COVID out of a country forever
- TheBlight 6y ago
  We'll see I guess but I'm extremely skeptical.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    I mean, it appears to be working in New Zealand. Island countries with relatively small populations seem like the places where this approach is feasible.
    - dingaling 6y ago
      NZ is keeping coronavirus out by shutting-down the tourist industry that constitutes 10% of employment and 6% of GDP So it's a race between economic damage and global vaccination.
tomhoward 6y ago
It's a good question. The political leaders at both state and federal levels are banking on an effective/safe vaccine being widely available in the next 12 months. If that doesn't eventuate, I don't know what the Plan B is.
zamadatix 6y ago
I would assume until a vaccine that at least helps slow the spread or until the virus has mutated enough it's less of an impact. Or at least an bet at one of those 2 occurring.

umvi 6y ago

If you emerge from lockdown, won't that result in increase of rate of cases?

ywhjaknskkkw 6y ago
Yes. The lockdowns just delay the inevitable at a tremendous cost.
tomhoward 6y ago
The idea is that now the virus has been suppressed (they are doing sewage analysis to confirm whether the virus has gone away), they can control new cases with well-managed quarantine of returning travellers, and outbreak management. NZ and the rest of Australia has done this successfully since about May.
- umvi 6y ago
  I suppose that would work for island nations. Not sure how it would work if you can just drive over the border, as is the case with EU and USA