Quote:
Originally Posted by Trevor 57
Something that most be people forget to mention is that NSW has NOT had a 2nd wave so comparing Vic to NSW is like comparing apples to oranges. To me NSW proved their worth with the Ruby Princess debacle, they not only managed to infect NSW but most of the country as well. Probably the real start to the pandemic
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The 'blame game' serves very little purpose in this context. The virus was inevitably coming here and it would be illogical to think otherwise. Yes, the Ruby Princess issues helped spread it around the country perhaps a little faster than it otherwise might have but that first wave only produced a little over 7,000 cases and 100 deaths - bad enough but nothing compared to the latter outbreak in Victoria which has produced slightly more than 20,0000 cases and close to 800 deaths.
It's unseasonably cool in Victoria at the moment so we need to be cautious even as things start to open up again because even though contact tracing has dramatically improved, the Chadstone outbreak showed just how far (and fast) a single infection point can spread.
On the plus side, as long as things don't get wildly out of hand, we should be able to manage 'smaller' outbreaks with localised measures rather than the broad measures that have been used to date. Maybe. I'd like to see masks stay for the medium term (or return next winter at least) and hopefully some of the habits we've developed (social distancing in public, hand hygiene etc.) will continue and slow down the next outbreak.
If we don't at least learn something from the experience in Europe at the moment then we may well be experiencing the same next winter.