More than a week on from the Black Lives Matter protests, community transmission of COVID-19 is still a trickle, not a wave. But in South Asia and Latin America, cases continue to surge. And next year’s Oscars will be postponed, another sign that the disruption of the coronavirus will continue well into 2021 and beyond.
Community transmission returns
After more than two weeks without any locally-acquired cases in NSW, there have been two in the last three days.
Health authorities are trying to figure out how an Illawara man tested positive for COVID-19 through apparent community transmission. It’s another reminder that the virus is still circulating, albeit in low levels, in the community.
Meanwhile, a second protester who attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Melbourne tested positive. But that case is not linked to the previous case recorded last week, and according to Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton, was unlikely to have picked up or spread the infection while at the protest. More than a week on from the rallies, we’re yet to see anything resembling the apocalyptic outbreak many of its opponents argued might happen.
Are we entering a second wave?
But internationally, we might be entering a second wave, as cases continue to rise.
There have been 100,000 new cases worldwide every day for the past two weeks — the first 100,000 cases took over two months. Iran, which recorded over 100 new deaths on Sunday for the first time in two months, seems to be in the grip of a second wave.
A new outbreak has brought lockdown back to Beijing. Over the weekend, US states including Texas and Arizona have seen a sharp spike in new cases as much of the country continues to reopen.
Elsewhere, the worst still could be yet to come. In India, where the virus has continued to spread despite one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, researchers suggest the peak won’t be reached until November.
NSW economy takes a hit
NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet will today release a dire economic update which outlines how badly the pandemic has hit the state. The state’s economy is set to contract by 10% this financial year. Unemployment will jump from 6% to 7.75%. Perrottet was meant to be handing down the state’s budget today, instead he’s delivering some fairly bleak numbers.
Oscars in April
The Oscars are now the latest big international event set to be rescheduled by the coronavirus, with the 94th Academy Awards officially pushed back till April 25 next year.
With cinemas reopening in fits and starts around the world, release dates and shooting indefinitely paused, the Academy has extended the deadline to qualify for the awards to February 28, the date the ceremony was originally planned for. And the rest of the 2021 awards season is expected to follows suit, with the BAFTAs also announcing a move to April. It will be the first time in 20 years that the Oscars have been postponed — in 1981 they were delayed a day following an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.
This is still the US’ first wave. It’s just that the wave has broken in New York and New Jersey and other early-affected places; it’s still building up elsewhere. Have a look at Worldometers’ graph of cases in Texas for example.
Below the headline: “… last weekend’s protests still haven’t led to a sruge.” Bring back sub-editors!
They are persona non gratin here..sorry, I meant, granola.
We are still learning about the impact of this virus on humans and other species. The long term impact on humans etc will take time to determine. As such , it needs to be treated with an abundance of caution.
Hence we should minimise the opportunity for catching and passing the virus. We just do not know whether the results of catching the virus are going to be immediate or long term. So whilst there may be no immediate “wave” of infections resulting from mass gatherings, the results could well play out at some time in the future. We just do not know at this time.
For god’s sake, they have known in medical circles for months what it is and how it behaves and who it affects. It’s a tiddler of a thing, locking down whole nations is the most deranged thing in history and is not and was not based on any medical or scientific need.
Why so much catastrophising still, this virus is dying faster than we can write this, it reached .1% of the population this week with over 55% of that .1% already recovered and going about their lives and the supposedly terrible death toll has been exposed in most studies as a lie, most who died were already very old and very sick, with up to 4 co morbidities. In the UK less than 5% of the supposed deaths are from covid, same all over Europe and here we can’t really continue the lie that 70 people over 85, with 20 of them over 90, was a great death toll when most were already in nursing homes where life expectancy is 2 weeks to 6 months.
It’s a cold virus, they have always known that, the lock downs and hysteria are 100% political.
MarilynS,
What do you think their political agenda is if believe it is all hysteria?
Who knows, but Bill Gates is in the forefront of all of it. And no, I don’t think he started it but he and his rich mates stand to make trillions out of any rushed vaccine. Bill Gates funds Neil Ferguson’s unit at Oxford Imperial who did the ”model” claiming up to 5.6 billion people could be infected with 2.2 million deaths in the US, 540,000 in the UK, here the CMO Paul Kelly used those figures to state ” do the maths” 150,000 deaths here and 15 million infected.
That ”model” was disowned by the rest of Ferguson’s unit so he took it to WHO, where the head is not a doctor, nor is Ferguson but Gates is the second biggest donor with his rich mates waiting to make trillions.
The 60% of global population reached .1% this week but then was .04% again as more and more recover without ever being sick.
There are actual scandals the MSM are ignoring, like the US and UK took tens of thousands of older sick people OUT of hospitals and left them to die in ”care homes”, so did Canada and Sweden, and they are calling all deaths ”covid” even when covid had nothing to do with it. Indie media are documenting these scandals, the Guardian gives them one story then drops them, who knows what the political agenda is but I reckon right now the hysteria is about saving face for believing Ferguson.
To paraphrase Ted Bullpit, “Not the Oscars!”
Is there no First World problem safe from this plague?