And now for northern Tasmania…
Thankfully, some folks around here are already beginning to mask up without waiting to be told.
I may have visitors from Sydney over New Years; if I do, I’m gonna hold 'em in informal home quarantine here for a few days before they get to breathe on any of my neighbours.
Fortunately, that isn’t much of a hardship when you have a couple of acres by the river.
Unsurprisingly, my position is that the decision to abandon quarantine control was (a) fucking stupid to begin with, and (b) should very obviously be immediately reversed in light of the hyper-transmissible Omicron crisis. The modelling that supposedly justified it was based upon severely obsolete assumptions.
However, as both major Tasmanian parties are completely controlled by the business community, and because the incumbent government has enthusiastically committed itself to abandoning quarantine no matter what, we’re probably fucked.
Exeter is the next town south of Beaconsfield. It has the closest decent hardware store and a good bakery.
The exposure site is three doors down from the hardware store.
I would’ve been down there this week if they hadn’t screwed up and ordered the wrong filter cartridge for my water pump.
So, last week my son made an online appt. for his booster shot at Walgreens, but not the store near us. We were late, and there was a wait, and he ended up having left his vax-card at home. I successfully cajoled him out of being angry to the point of crying. We went back later, it was still a wait, but he was okay.
While I was there, I looked at test prices, and there was one that was $124.99, but there were two other types of tests that were $23.99. They were in smaller boxes than the other one, and I just visually scanned the prices and that they were C-19 tests, not the particulars of them.
Still inadequate, but better than the alternative.
No confirmed community transmission yet, but new cases coming off the airplanes every day.
—
BTW, this is the complete list of Covid testing sites in Northern Tasmania:
Ten cases in less than a week. All from inbound aircraft, and as vaccination is required for entry they’re probably all breakthrough cases, likely Omicron. All of 'em wandering around the community for a few days before being detected.
One over at Port Sorell, now:
There are basically zero healthcare resources in Tasmania outside of the cities, and minimally adequate facilities even within the cities.
This was all supposedly done to benefit the Tasmanian economy; we now have hundreds of people forced into isolation and Christmas celebration plans being cancelled across the state.
The reopening of the cruise ship industry was always homicidally stupid.
A friend just came back from a cruise across the Atlantic. She and 112 other people had food poisoning, but not COVID.
Why anyone would want to go on a cruise nowadays is beyond me.
How good are Tas govt Covid comms?
This good:
The Premier regularly gives Covid briefings on short notice. The only way to know they’re happening is to monitor Monte Bovill’s Twitter, and the only way to watch them is via Facebook.
Our local health department gives a great local update on COVID through r/Chattanooga. Yesterday they ran a special post on Omicron that I think is generally useful for what to do to protect yourself and your family.
