It has been over six weeks since I last posted.  I lot has happened since then.

Move to Noosa

On the personal front, I have moved from New Farm in Brisbane to the Noosa Lakes Resort in Tewantin.

I really enjoyed being in New Farm, but I decided that it would be better to be close to the beach for the summer.  I started looking for places at the end of September.  I first started looking for places in Noosa and surrounding areas.  They were a reasonable number of places on offer, however, the landlords were asking for leases for at least six months or longer.

One place I applied for in Alexandria Headland was really good.  However, I was one of eighteen applicants and the landlord was asking for a 12-month lease.

I was finally able to secure this place in the Noosa Lakes Resort with a three month lease with monthly extensions.  The place is quite good.  It has three pools and is  close to the Noosa Marina and the Tewantin town shopping centre.

Successful Lockdowns in Victoria

In my previous post I mentioned that there had been an outbreak of the coronavirus in Victoria due to failing in the hotel quarantine system. This lead to need for very strict lockdowns to be applied in both Melbourne and surrounding areas for over two months.

Towards the end of July, the daily number of new cases in Melbourne was approaching 700.  This was close to what happening in the UK. 

As I post his piece, Victoria has experienced the greatest number of cases and suffered the greatest number of deaths of all the States. In fact, Victoria accounts for 20,356 out of 28171 cases and 820 out 908 deaths across Australia.

Melbourne has now experienced over 40 days with zero ‘local’ daily cases and zero deaths. The lockdowns in Victoria clearly worked.

In past week, the UK has recorded 174,128 new coronavirus case and has suffered 3,054Covid-19 related deaths. Wide parts of the UK are under various degrees of lockdown including the complete closure of pubs and restaurants and orders to stay indoors.  

Christmas has effectively been cancelled in the UK.

Vaccine Success

The latest big news globally regarding the coronavirus has been the announcement of a successful vaccine.  There are many vaccines in development.  The leading vaccine has been developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and a German biotech company.  This vaccine passed its stage three trials successfully and was approved for use by the UK health officials last week. 

The first vaccines have already been administered to people in the UK.  They have started with people in highest risk category.  Those are people over the age of 80 and health professionals who are potentially exposed to the virus.  The next category are those people over the age of 70 with underlying health problems.  Overall, there are 10 categories of priority.

On Friday, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration announced that it had also approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine.

It would appear that the reason that the UK and the USA have been very keen to roll out the use of a vaccine is that the coronavirus is essentially out of control in both countries. As of today, there have been over 16 million cases in the USA and the death toll is approaching 300 thousand.  In the UK, the case tally is over 1.8 million and the death toll is 60 thousand.

To put those numbers into perspective, adjusting for population differences, the U.S.  case tally is 44 times worse Australia’s and its death toll is 25 times worse.  The UK’s case tally is 25 times worse and its death toll is 27 times worse than Australia’s.  Clearly, risks of not bringing the spread of the virus under control in both the U.S.  and the UK is far higher than it is in Australia.

Australian Elections

There have been a number of elections since my last post.  One of these elections was held in Queensland.  The handling of the coronavirus emerged as a key election issue.  The Queensland government was one of the first State governments to impose restrictions on movements across its borders.  These were designed to prevent the coronavirus spreading from states like Victoria and New South Wales which were experiencing significant case numbers.

The LNP opposition party in Queensland was strongly opposed to the imposition of these border restrictions.  The opposition leader called for the easing of the restrictions on a daily basis.  She was supported in these calls by a number of Federal politicians including the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and the Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton.

As it turned out, the people of Queensland clearly believed that the imposition of border restrictions was the right thing to do and they returned the Labor government with an increased majority.

There was also an election in the ACT.  This election was won by the incumbent Labor government.  However, it would appear that this was due to the rank incompetence of the Liberal Party opposition rather than anything to do with the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.

The US Presidential Election

Of course, the most significant recent election has been the U.S.  Presidential election.

In previous posts I have talked about Donald Trump’s extraordinary incompetence in handling the coronavirus crisis.  This incompetence continued throughout the election campaign.  One of the curious strategies that Trump tried to employ during the campaign was to suggest that the coronavirus crisis was in the past.  This was notwithstanding the fact that throughout the campaign numbers of coronavirus cases and Covid-19 deaths continued to steadily increase.

I will probably post a separate piece on the U.S.  Presidential election.  At this point, I make the observation that the coronavirus crisis was an issue in the election.  However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that it may not have been the issue decided the election.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the campaign was the attitudes of the Republican supporters with respect to the coronavirus crisis and Trump’s handling of it.  A significant number of Trump supporters were of the view that the coronavirus is hoax.  Another group thought that it is probably real, but its significance had been grossly overstated.  Overall, the majority of Republican voters took the view that Trump and his administration had managed the coronavirus crisis reasonably well.

Nevertheless, the outcome of the presidential election has been positive.  As of the 20^th of January 2021, Donald Trump will cease to be the President of the United States of America.