Corona virus, Port and the AFL. Part 2.

[Lawnchair Larry]

They will absolutely get exploited by the farmers and labour companies lol

You pay $2.50 for a punnet of strawberries, you can rest assured someone along the chain is being ripped off.

 

[jdeezy]

75% of the Japanese population either do not want the Olympics in 2021 or they want the Games postponed.

Olympics’ epic snub in Tokyo survey

Amid alarming new cases of infection and concerns of a possible second coronavirus wave hitting Tokyo, fewer than one in four people in Japan want the Olympics to take place in 2021.

www.news.com.au

I am not sure how they will hold a fully functional Olympics complete with crowds in July. The Japanese will need to turn things around big time in the six months they have left. They will need to get at least 70,000,000 people fully vaccinated by July to have any chance of crowds. Even then there is the question of international travel and the risk posed by fly in athletes. Unless things change Australian athletes face two months quarantine prior to the games and two weeks upon return to Australia. Athletes may also need to be isolated in the Games Village and that would be a nightmare to enforce.

This from IOC President thoms Bach had this to say...
Last week, Bach said the games could offer a “unique” opportunity to be “the first worldwide gathering after coronavirus,” which of course, hinges on the assumption that the pandemic will have been contained by July 2021.

Yeah right, the virus will be contained world wide by July.

If it can't go ahead this year, surely the IOC will just scrap it and wait out for 2024, right? Or are there too many other factors at play to scrap it entirely?

And if it does just get deleted from the calendar, is it likely Japan would host the 2024 and the Paris and LA ones would be pushed back in line, or would they remain as is (you'd have to assume Tokyo would then hold the 2036 games, in that case, wouldn't you? Otherwise all that infrastructure goes to waste).

 

[MaxPowa]

International tennis players and their entourages to be staying rather close to home and training at/next to my gym. Given the fact that high profile athletes always follow the covid rules () looking forward to bumping into Djokovic at the Welly and being forced into 14 days of iso .

Will be attempting to go back to WA again soon, hopefully I make it past the Perth airport this time...

 

[pastmyprimus]

Andy Murray has tested positive.

 

[Capital Power]

A 110-strong international film crew in Canberra yesterday filming a car chase for some new "blockbuster". Different rules for some, obviously.

The weird thing is that it was reported that the streets themselves will be CGI'd out of the final cut, so they could have filmed it anywhere, without risk to the local covid-free population.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

Andy Murray has tested positive.

He tested positive to being an annoying pommy campaigner years ago. What’s he tested positive to this time?

 

[Capital Power]

He tested positive to being an annoying pommy campaigner years ago. What’s he tested positive to this time?

Isn't he a Scottish pom?

 

[Eddie Dingle]

Isn't he a Scottish pom?

Yes. The worst kind.

 

[pastmyprimus]

He tested positive to being an annoying pommy campaigner years ago. What’s he tested positive to this time?

To his 100% record in losing Aussie open finals.

 

[raptalia]

Andy Murray has tested positive.

and Andy is still coming to Australia. Foreign national, past his best, no hope of winning and COVID positive yet he is allowed into the country.

 

[Holden Hillbilly]

According to The Australian the Victorian government is preparing to submit plans to national cabinet on February 5 to boost its number of overseas arrivals and create a separate entry quota for international students. With Australia recording zero new locally-acquired cases yesterday, Dan Andrews announced that masks will no longer be compulsory in offices and more workers can return from next Monday. As The Age notes, Andrews also reiterated that Brisbane and Sydney remain “red zones”, even as the state prepares for the arrival of 1200 Australian Open tennis players and their entourages. Additionally, the Defence Department reportedly told the Victorian government at the beginning of the pandemic that military bases would not be suitable for quarantine sites. Other Australian COVID-19 news today includes: An Adelaide couple returning from Cairns and attempting to avoid the NSW hard border spent two days in the outback with no food or water after their car got bogged in sand (The Guardian) A key scientist behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine Andrew Pollard has warned that pausing the planned rollout in Australia over herd immunity concerns could cost lives if we are hit by another wave of infections (The Sydney Morning Herald) Annastacia Palaszczuk announced she would bring a proposal to use mining camps for quarantine sites to national cabinet on January 22 (ABC). PS: In Australian Open news, ABC reports Andy Murray is in doubt after testing positive to COVID-19, women’s world number 16 Madison Keys has pulled out after also testing positive, and Tennys Sandgren has boarded a flight to Melbourne despite a having a second positive test for COVID-19 on Monday. COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria released a statement after he was cleared for travel to Australia saying the evidence in Sandgren’s case “suggested he had recovered from a previous COVID-19 infection and is still shedding viral particles”.

 

[Capital Power]

Just wondering how many stranded Australians we could have brought back on the charter flights for tennis players and their support teams?

EDIT: just seen the above post. 1,200. Sheesh

 

[raptalia]

Mark McGowan making noises about using Christmas Island to house returning Australians. Up in Queensland they want to use mining camps to house fly ins. It appears that the move to get quarantine out of populated areas is gaining momentum and pressure is being applied to the Federal Government by some of the Labor Premiers.

 

[Capital Power]

Mark McGowan making noises about using Christmas Island to house returning Australians. Up in Queensland they want to use mining camps to house fly ins. It appears that the move to get quarantine out of populated areas is gaining momentum and pressure is being applied to the Federal Government by some of the Labor Premiers.

Frankly I don't understand why it's taken so long, with so many outbreaks coming from a flawed CBD-based strategy. Didn't the very first group of quarantines stay on Christmas Island? I recall the ABC getting its knickers in a knot over the injustice.

I also still don't understand why we couldn't have used cruise ships for the same purpose.

 

[pastmyprimus]

and Andy is still coming to Australia. Foreign national, past his best, no hope of winning and COVID positive yet he is allowed into the country.

Another set of rules apply to the Aus open

 

[raptalia]

An Adelaide couple returning from Cairns and attempting to avoid the NSW hard border spent two days in the outback with no food or water after their car got bogged in sand (The Guardian)

They didn't have to quarantine if they had not been in Brisbane. The Jan 1 SA restrictions for Queensland read,

Travellers via car from the Low Community Transmission Zones are permitted to travel through NSW and QLD to enter South Australia providing they do not stop in Greater Sydney, Woolongong, Central Coast or Greater Brisbane areas. They must wear a face mask for the entirety of the time they come into contact with the public and cannot maintain physical distance during their journey and use the most direct route, only stopping for respite and essential purposes (such as fuel).

They could have come Cairns/ MacKay/ Baracaldine/ Bourke/ Broken Hill and stayed on the bitumen all the way. Then again the terminology is pretty loose. I heard a woman on the ABC complaining because she drove alone from Queensland and stayed overnight in a motel as she was tired. When she got to SA she was forced into quarantine because an overnight stay is not deemed respite. Had she slept in her car on the side of the road she would have been OK.

Either way the couple were pretty lucky as they broke just about every rule in the book.

 

[Duck Farmer]

Mark McGowan making noises about using Christmas Island to house returning Australians. Up in Queensland they want to use mining camps to house fly ins. It appears that the move to get quarantine out of populated areas is gaining momentum and pressure is being applied to the Federal Government by some of the Labor Premiers.

Plus these policies play well to the electorates of the most redneck and least socially progressive states.

 

[raptalia]

Plus these policies play well to the electorates of the most redneck and least socially progressive states.

It isn't just the Premiers, the experts are also calling for more Howard springs type facilities.

We need more 'Howards': NT has the answer to fighting COVID variant, experts say

With yet another COVID cluster linked to hotel quarantine and the threat of the highly infectious UK variant, experts are calling on the Government to urgently establish more purpose-built quarantine stations like the NT's Howard Springs facility.

www.abc.net.au

If Morrison wants to bring in returning Australians and tertiary students he will have to construct facilities like Howard Springs in each State. It will cost money but the UK COVID variant is a game changer. If UK COVID escapes into the suburbs of an Australian city the cost may be a lot more than the cost of replicating half a dozen Howard Springs facilities. These facilities do not have to be in remote areas, Howard Springs is only 25 km from Darwin and works well.

 

[PA88]

If people are in favour of using desert areas, mining areas, rural areas, the Springs, etc ... for quarantine then it should apply to the rich and famous i.e. tennis stars, movie stars ... but it won't.

 

[Grave Danger]

Mark McGowan making noises about using Christmas Island to house returning Australians. Up in Queensland they want to use mining camps to house fly ins. It appears that the move to get quarantine out of populated areas is gaining momentum and pressure is being applied to the Federal Government by some of the Labor Premiers.

Rottnest Island is much nearer, but the Quokkas just won't comply with the social distancing...

 

[Smithy7]

He tested positive to being an annoying pommy campaigner years ago. What’s he tested positive to this time?

He was born in Glasgow Scotland LOL so is not a pom even if he lives there

 

[malcheski]

He was born in Glasgow Scotland LOL so is not a pom even if he lives there

A Pom is someone from Britain, last I checked Scotland was in Britain

 

[philreich]

The world has just passed a grim milestone - 2 million dead from this campaigner of a virus. Hope I'm wrong, but that figure could easily double before this is over.

 

[chiwigi]

No backpackers and the locals do not want the work so SA will fly in workers from Vanuatu to pick the crops that will otherwise rot on the trees. Vanuatu has only had 1 case of COVID and the fly ins will do 14 days in quarantine so it seems a reasonable solution. I reckon once here these guys could get plenty of work around the country.

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www.adelaidenow.com.au

Of course the argument is if local workers were paid at the minimum wage growers would have more locals applying. On the other hand if that happens the consumer will have to be prepared to pay more for fruit and veg. This seems like a reasonable compromise provided the fly ins do not get exploited by labour hire companies etc.

Push to grant minimum wage rates to fruit pickers opposed by farmers

Unions want fruit pickers to be granted the minimum wage instead of according to how much produce they pick, but farmers and food producers say the change is unnecessary.

www.abc.net.au

Australia is not the only country facing a problem in getting crops picked. The UK, which uses thousands of pickers from Central Europe, and the US were both faced with labour shortages over the northern summer. In the UK Boris put money first, allowed thousands of pickers from Central Europe into the country then wondered where the sudden spike in COVID cases came from.

Flying people in because companies refuse to pay a fair wage is NOT a *kng reasonable compromise!

 

[Eddie Dingle]

He was born in Glasgow Scotland LOL so is not a pom even if he lives there

He's more of a pom than the ******* queen smiffy.