Given Dan Andrews' gold standard incompetence in contact tracing Melbourne has yet again been plunged into a hard lockdown.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/victorias-incompetence-could-not-be-more-stark/news-story/f718c83ecb87b939c977f02c539c7698

"Contact tracing is a perfect test of state capacity. It is time-sensitive, requires data sharing and cross-agency coordination, rapid training and substantial community trust and knowledge. Success means the avoidance of lockdowns: a telltale sign of state failure is shutting down businesses and severely restricting freedoms because you cannot prevent a disease outbreak.

Victoria’s contact tracing system used pens, paper and fax machines. It was too slow: contacts waited up to nearly two weeks to be notified about potential exposure. The tracing was operated centrally, in contrast to NSW or South Korea, which use decentralised local area health districts with expansive local knowledge. The result is striking: between June and October last year, only 3 per cent of NSW cases had an unknown origin, compared with 22 per cent in Victoria.

Hotel quarantine and contact tracing is just the tip of the iceberg of Victoria’s lacklustre governance. During a lockdown, for instance, Victoria required the manual printing and hand signing of forms for work travel permits.

By contrast, in NSW citizens could use Service NSW to apply for a digital border crossing permit. Officials worked overnight to ensure the system was in place in time. This was possible only because of a longer-term investment in state capacity by the NSW government. Service NSW was established in 2013 to improve customer service using modern technology. It brought together dispersed functions, thousands of phone numbers and hundreds of websites into a one-stop-shop accessible online, by phone or at more than 100 retail fronts. It was an entirely new agency whose leadership and frontline largely came from private sector customer service roles."

Obviously Hotel quarantine does not work when incompetent bureaucrats & governments are organising it. Perhaps it can't work at all as the buildings are not designed to isolate the air in each individual room.
Sure it is a great way of helping the hotels not go broke, but is it acceptable to the rest of the community.

It really is time to stop the incoming flights, until it is proven that we have a quarantine system that protects the community from infection. Surely it is better to have business & the community operating as normal, rather than bleed for those who chose to leave the country for any reason.

It only takes a quick glance at the UK, where incoming flights have continued to fuel their pandemic to see how dangerous incoming from overseas is to the general population.

Perhaps if we were to do a real test of the now many antivirals showing promise of successfully treating Covid 19 infections, we may be able to return to a normal world. If we can reduce it's kill rate to no more than average flu, sanity may return, if we can ween the ratbags like Dan Andrews off his love affair with controlling millions at the merest brain wave.

Well, average voters/citizens combined with incompetent Bureaudroids will invariably cause severe societal problems !

People who keep doing the same thing over and over, even though it doesn't work, are often described as being insane. The description certainly applies to Andrews. Cowardice is a good description for all members of his government who are letting him get away with it; and as for the opposition, well, WTF are they hiding.

2021 is looking to be worse than 2020, as some of us predicted. There is no end in sight for the China virus, and despite that, the usual suspects are champing at the bit to rev up the climate-change reign of terror, despite the fact that the climate is still refusing to bend to their will.

Now would be a good time to dump federalism and just have one bunch of pricks to deal with.

We should never stop talking about the lunacy inflicted on us, but it is looking more and more like a lost cause. We have been too complacent and lazy for too long. The return to feudalism did not have to be inevitable, but it sure as hell looks like it is now.

China virus
ttbn,
I'm more inclined to call it TJV (travel Junkies Virus) ! After all, without them it couldn't have spread.

ttbn says, "Now would be a good time to dump federalism and just have one bunch of pricks to deal with."

One would think that the Victorian situation clearly demonstrates the benefits of having multiple state governments that are individually responsible for their own territory.

We up here in Queensland have handled the virus quite well compared to Victoria. All we've had is a six week lock-down and one Brisbane wide 3 day lock-down. Indeed, all of the country besides Vic, (ie. WA, SA, Tas, Qld the territories and on a lesser scale NSW), has handled the virus better than just about anywhere in the whole world.

But ask yourself this: What would have happened if we had just one Government and by misfortune that government is as incompetent as the current Vic one?
Answer:the WHOLE COUNTRY would be stuffed not just one state.

--

On a different track he also says: "The return to feudalism did not have to be inevitable, but it sure as hell looks like it is now."
Well obviously he has no idea what the historical implementation of "feudalism" was if he's referring to feudalism of the middle ages of Western Europe.

Queensland have handled the virus quite well compared to Victoria.
thinkabit,
If you made more effort to live up to your name ;-) you'd find that Qld would have fared far worse if they had the same Demographic as Victoria !

Hey Individual,
Is that a vote of support FOR multiculturalism, or against?
What do you think the immigrants in Melbourne don't move up here along with the existing people of Melbourne moving up here?

Me personally, I officially got sick of COVID about a month or 2 back.
Now I just think the whole things stupid.

You know who I blame for the continuation of all this bs?
- People in planes and suits -
Those morons that stand up in suits going blah, blah, blah;
They're the exact ones who happily be on the next flight out.

People catching planes holding the entire rest of the country ransom.

I don't care if you're some politician, business leader, diplomat, returning traveler etc.
- International travel should be banned -

- Victoria closed due to a nebuliser -

Its beyond a bloody joke.

STOP INTERNATIONAL PASSENGER FLIGHTS

Good call Armchair Critic- stop international travel to Australia.

STOP INTERNATIONAL PASSENGER FLIGHTS
Armchair Critic,
Yep and, stop bringing in those indisciplined who can't live without having at least five members of their 19 member families no more than two feet away at all times !

Andrews' deflection of the level of quarantine failure in Victoriaon on the basis of some 'considerably' greater infectiousness of the UK strain is unsupported by evidence, or experience in other states. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/.../06dda22125ccc8cc11da...

You advocating stranded Australians rot in their predicament are un-Australian. We look after our mates, I thought.

The abject fear behind your views is based on the knee-jerk, trigger-finger reactions of leaders like Andrews. Locking you down while scaring your pants off about the 'mutant' deadly strain's infectious velocity is mere deflection of the shortcomings of protective systems in place.

With continually evolving strains and vaccines lifting us from 99% survival rates with out them to 99.5% rates with them, we need to gain perpective and start looking at the end game. Time for pollies to stop scaring our pants off about a virus 'deadly' to the very few per thousand population that succumb to it, and will continue to do after the population is vaccinated, like 'flu.

Suppression, not elimination, is the way forward and doesn't involve cutting our countrymen overseas adrift. Our forebears would turn in their graves at our gutlessness if we let Andrews deflect what's really happening here with his 'velocity' assertion.

Shadow,
I'm glad you now concur with my point that it's capable government, not small government, which is needed for efficiency.

"It would have been a busy week at the excuse desk of Dan Andrews’ Department of Premier and Cabinet as its staff searched for something strong enough to immunise the boss from a new outbreak of bureaucratic ineptitude.

Their task was made harder by an unfortunate outburst of hubris on Tuesday when the Victorian Premier appeared at a news conference sans masque, as they like to say on the Paris end of Collins St. He boasted of Victoria’s “gold-standard” hotel quarantine system, even as early cases of the Holiday Inn outbreak were under investigation.

By Friday the mask was back as Andrews revealed some selected facts about breaches in the protocol in a dowdy airport hotel to justify plunging the entire state back into lockdown hell or. as the Premier prefers it, “a short, sharp circuit breaker”.

Andrews should have abided by Aldous Huxley’s precept: “Several excuses are always less convincing than one.” Instead, he and his Chief Health Officer blamed a sick man who had recklessly applied lifesaving medication to himself by means of a nebuliser."

Aidan,

I think that you will agree that it is a competent government that is needed not big government.

Sorry Dan, it's not the 'velocity': http://tinyurl.com/yokbdkzp

How possibly not to deal with Covid: http://youtu.be/LoJ0m4GlGV4

Shadow,
Of course I agree.
But it is small government ideology that threatens competence.

Shadow Minister: There's no doubt that there have been problems managing covid, and we can all see, by hindsight, what should have been done, especially in Victoria. But I wonder if any of us complaining would have done any better, if we had been in charge. When it comes to making decisions and managing human behaviour in uncertain but fast moving circumstances, there will always be stuff-ups.

You wrote that the NSW permit system was better than the Victorian. Service NSW is a reasonably good centralised system, although I still can't get the QR code app to work properly on my smartphone (once it logged me out at any earlier time than my login)! I am not the only one. Most businesses here (rural NSW) will log you in on their system, but I have noticed in the local supermarket many people are just ignoring the requirement and the staff are not enforcing it. Making things too complicated and dependent on having the latest technology, and being comfortable in using it, can be counter-productive.

I live in NSW, in the NSW-Vic border zone, and need to cross the border regularly for medical treatment, shopping etc. When NSW closed the border, we had to apply on line every two weeks for a permit (automatic as a border zone resident), download and print, or save on the phone, then show this at the border check-points. I have a stack of these which I plan to deposit in the local historical society collection! When Victoria closed the border, all we had to do was show our drivers license as proof of border zone residence. Much simpler.

Cossomby,

The point is that every other state has done better than Victoria. NSW who is handling the majority of incoming passengers has caught and stopped the infection without the need for drastic action that Victoria has taken.

Victoria has the highest death rate, the greatest infection rate and the highest drop in GDP.
That the incompetent Dan hasn't been lynched is a testament to his BS artistry.

Aiden,

In the vast majority of cases privatising businesses that are not public goods improves the competence of government.

Shadow,
>In the vast majority of cases privatising businesses that are not public goods improves the competence of government.
What evidence do you have for that?
I'd expect evidence (for and against) to be scant, as most governments have long ago privatised everything they don't consider to be public goods (as well as many things they do).

I can see how privatising such businesses may improve the management of such businesses, and hence how a more competent government would be more likely to do so. But I can't see how doing so could actually make a government more competent.

http://tinyurl.com/4ptbvw9l
What a deflecting tosser. It'll be ready in time for the next pandemic. His motives, true colours and incompetence are really coming thru'. In the meantime pretty much all stranded Aussies overseas are in various stages of compassionate need.

From the most recent stats since 29 Mar 2020 http://tinyurl.com/3lg9dxgz

- 3% of HQ arrivals into VIC have COVID (slightly higher than Aust average and NSW at 2.4%)
- notably VIC, QLD and SA taking far less HQ arrivals (per head of population) than NT, NSW and WA
- VIC performing notably worse on Local Infections per HQ arrival (0.54) or HQ infection (18.14)

In summary;
- VIC isn’t carrying their weight of HQ arrivals (thankfully)
- VIC can’t contain COVID in HQ like all other states (18 versus all others less than 1)

and.....with the very, very recent mandating of PCR tests pre-flight the chance of a returnee carrying Covid are even lower, but don't let that figure in, it would destroy the hysterical narrative."The deadly mutant killer strain ate my homework!"

482,500 deaths in the US up to today. Half a million by Sunday.

But let's forget that, let's sink the boot into Andrews. Eight hundred deaths ! In one state ! How could that be ?!

Hopefully, no-one will roll that rock away from your cave entrance, Luciferase, you'll be safe.

Here's my bet: that there will never be such a thing as 'herd immunity'. 99 % vaccinated (and still carrying), with only that 1 % to go, eternally free of the virus ? No, I don't think so.

Joe

Aidan,

A prime example would be when Victoria privatised its power generation. The result was that Victoria earned $bns from the sale of the assets, the assets were then run far more efficiently, lowering the price of electricity to Victorians and paying tax on the profits.

Win, win, win.

Assets that directly compete with private companies should not be publicly owned and operated. The only way these government-owned companies make a profit is by forcing the purchase of their products. Queensland's power generation is a prime example.

There are virtually no examples where government-owned companies can survive without some form of subsidy when competing with private companies.

Public goods are schools, hospitals etc.

Loudmouth said- "Here's my bet: that there will never be such a thing as 'herd immunity'. 99 % vaccinated (and still carrying), with only that 1 % to go, eternally free of the virus ? No, I don't think so."

Answer- Just goes to show that rooms of monkeys can type symphonies. I tend to agree with Loudmouth on this one.

My understanding is Corona is an adaptive virus similar to AIDS- that's why AIDS is so hard to treat- to be fair I need to do more research on the rate of mutation of the Corona virus... Of course the government have a vested interest in keeping the population calm- and that showing that they're in control.

In Dan Andrews case he should have had rotating crack teams doing daily scenario based Corona drills in hazmat suits and stationed at key locations. I hope that the Victorian public act approapriately at the next election.

The US has the issues of ethnic, ideological, and political conflict in addition to Corona to deal with.

I still agree that we need to keep the economy running- the government has a coordination role here vs Keynes during the Great Depression.

Dear shadowminister,

You wrote:

“The result was that Victoria earned $bns from the sale of the assets, the assets were then run far more efficiently, lowering the price of electricity to Victorians and paying tax on the profits.”

No the result was the usual carpet baggers arrived and promptly set about maximising profits by running down the State's electricity assets to the point where they are are very large bushfire risk among other things. When they are done they will move on and once again the public with have to pay for the inevitable upgrades through government loans and higher State taxes.

“KEY FINDINGS Results of the consultation and data conclude that: There has been an increase in the number of fires caused by distribution assets in the State of Victoria since privatisation, particularly in the past five years. There has been an increase in the number of faults and failures from these assets. The current condition of assets is assessed as being poor to fair. The condition of assets is declining.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=fec4e312-b98b-4233-a715-dc8edb33513a

Come on SR you can't have it both ways. A while back you were telling us the fires were caused by global warming.

Which way do you want it old chap, which is the lie.

I'll give you one thing, you are definitely the most agile twister of the facts & truth I have ever seen.

Dear Hasbeen,

Well old chap the sums are simple for most people.

"The problem was clearly identified by the 2009 Black Saturday Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission. The Director of Energy Safe Victoria told the Commission it was “probably self-evident” that there was an increased chance of fires caused by electrical assets on days of extreme fire danger. The Bushfire Royal Commission found that on 7 February 2009, electrical faults caused five of the 11 major fires."

http://theconversation.com/hot-issue-bushfires-powerlines-and-climate-change-9383#:~:text=The%20Bushfire%20Royal%20Commission%20found,make%20a%20number%20of%20recommendations.&text=This%20requires%20approximately%20%24500%20million,controls%20on%20Victoria's%20electricity%20network.

2C rise in temperatures bring a 400% rise in extremely hot days. The last thing that is needed is for aging privatised energy assets to be substantially adding to that threat. Only the intellectually enfeebled can't grasp that basic point.

Another good bit of following the prescribed line there SR.

Please explain why the fires were all in the cooler damper parts of Oz, & not in the hot dry areas.

I'll help just a bit, it has to do with fuel load.

SR,

Once again you are tilting at windmills.

Firstly, I mentioned the sale of the power generation, not the networks which were sold separately so my example remains untouched.

Secondly, the overhead line distribution that is a fire risk in high winds was built and sold as such to the network company with no requirement or allowance to upgrade the networks to lower risk transmission systems. Also, many of the fires were not started by the OH lines.

Thirdly, much of the damage to property was due to left whinge interference in stopping back burning and people creating fire breaks around their houses.

Thanks SR. Your lack of answer says it all.