Government pandemic handling continues in disarray as Blue Mountains tourism goes to the wall
Following the predictable Christmas 2021 social gatherings and subsequent New Year’s Eve partying, the number of the China SARS Corona Virus 2019* cases in the Blue Mountains in early January 2022 has now snowballed to more than 600 cases, up from almost none in late 2019.
Nationally, it’s worse.
Why so? Government policy, and government has no solutions to support local tourism in the Blue Mountains, nor indeed tourism throughout Australia.
As a consequence of Australian Government’s abject failure in abandoning quarantine to keep the Chinese contagion from entering our nation, the virus is being allowed to spread rife. The states and territories with little if any experience in handling pandemics, have tried to step up to control the spread of the contagion by working things out as they go. But it’s not their role. The responsibility rests with the Australian Government.
[*NOTE: The SARS Coronavirus of 2019 was rebranded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as ‘COVID-19’ on 11th February 2020. COVID-19 is an abbreviation for ‘coronavirus disease detected from 2019’. The name was chosen to avoid stigmatizing the virus’s origins in terms of populations, geography, or animal associations (i.e. Wuhan bat meat). SARS stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus Mark 2. The SARS Mark 1 outbreak originated in Foshan municipality, Guangdong Province, China, in November 2002.]
The Carrington Hotel forced to close its doors during another pandemic lockdown [10th May 2021 to 11 October 2021]
Reliant upon an arbitrary 80% vaccination rate for the population, each state and territory government has deemed the death risk of coronavorus infection to be tolerable – notably except WA and NT which have the highest populations of most vulnerable Aboriginal peoples. Their respective low virus case numbers are to be commended.
Whilst, in New South Wales post-Premier Berejiklian, the Perrottet state government has suddenly adopted a free-for-all stance across New South Wales, so down-playing the medical advice previously accepted as gospel. No lockdowns, no mandatory mask donning, and the government’s definition of being a ‘close contact’ has been extended to a minimum of 4 hours of coughing and spluttering from someone you don’t know.
They’ve just given up and its because they’re running out of money.
Nationally the situation has escalated exponentially since. This bar chart shows the newly confirmed COVID-19 cases by notification received date from January 1 through to today.
Government has given up on pandemic containment. It is now running out of money.
Predictably, China SARS virus case numbers were going to skyrocket. So, no wonder the infected case numbers are becoming exponential from what was naught. Check the latest China SARS Corona Virus 2019 official statistics below as reported for the entire state of New South Wales by the state government yesterday, and read the fine print clauses.
The cause is the backflip in Australian government quarantine policy for handling the China Virus pandemic, and the policy backflips are being passed down to state level to handle what has amounted to as a national quarantine abject failure since December 2019.
Despite this foreign virus lingering and not showing any sign of going away, government financial compensation to Australian’s adversely impacted by the Australian government’s nationwide quarantine failure, arbitrarily dried up in November 2021, just like that.
China SARS Corona Virus 2019 testing sites across NSW were put under pressure over the Christmas-new year period. This was predicatable because, Australian families were instructed by government to get virus tested and cleared before visiting family and friends over the Christmas/New Year festive season.
So conscientiously most did just that.
NSW Government outsourced virus testing to SydPath, which has repeatedly failed to cope with the demand, as many staff take COVID-sickies over the Christmas period – “..sorry boss I can’t come in, I think I have a virus.” [SydPath is owned by St Vincent’s Health Australia operating under the stewardship of not-for-profit organisation Mary Aikenhead Ministries.]
But government-PR failed the implementation to adequately cater for the anticipated high volumes.
Back in the Blue Mountains the virus testing station at Summerhayes Park in Winmalee temporarily closed on Monday, January 3. It was one of 16 drive-through testing site closures announced by private pathology company, Australian Clinical Labs (outsourced by government), due to overwhelming demand, stating:
“These closures have been necessary due to the significant increase in testing volumes across the state. Many of these sites will progressively reopen from Tuesday 4th January.”
What a fat lot of use waiting until 4th January for virus testing would be? It would be long after everyone has socially gathered over the festive season! Government has lost the plot in its privileged taxpayer funded bubble – most public servants are on holiday leave and unavailable, hence the system is under-resourced, and government exposed as incompetent to manage this health crisis.
So as a consequence, there were 602 China SARS Coronavirus cases reported in the Blue Mountains on 2nd January 2022, with the highest number in the Blaxland/Warrimoo/Mt Riverview area at 147. Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill said the actual number would be “much higher”.
Mayor Greenhill:
“This is because it is near impossible to get a PCR (long queuing) test and RAT (rapid antigen test quick) test are hard to come by, with (RAT) price gouging now an emerging issue. Council has called on the government to increase booster facilities in the Blue Mountains but this has not happened.
Both federal and (NSW) state governments have lost control and are making it up as they go along.
What really angers me is the way both governments blame the community. Only recently the mantra was ‘if in doubt get tested’. Now the government blames the community for the collapse of the testing process because they say too many are getting tested.”
Blue Mountains Mayor Mark Greenhill in October 2021 criticised the state government for its ‘reopening NSW roadmap’. The mayor said the roadmap “continues to change without notice, creating angst and confusion in the community – particularly in relation to pools”. “Let me be clear. Council is operating within a framework that is set by the state government. This framework, at times, defies logic. It changes at a moment’s notice and administrators of public facilities, like council, are left to sort through the mess.”
The mayor’s current concerns were echoed by State Blue Mountains MP Trish Doyle who stated:
“Local residents cannot access testing clinics easily, await days for results, and have great difficulty securing RAT kits – often at highway robbery prices. Once again, I have called for clinics to be set up in the Mountains for booster shots. However, it would appear that this ‘let it rip’ Premier does not care for the health of the state’s people, the crisis faced by our hospitals and disregards both health science and workers,” she said.
Federal Macquarie MP Susan Templeman said the lack of access to PCR and rapid antigen tests over the Christmas/New Year break had caused anxiety and stress for many people.
Susan Templeman MP:
“I have had distressed messages from people who need test results in time for operations this week, and people living or close contacts with COVID-positive cases. The failure to prepare for this stage of the pandemic – which was completely predictable based on what we’ve seen overseas – is a failure of both the Morrison and Perrottet governments.”
The Labor MP said she called on the Morrison Government to outline a plan for rapid antigen testing months ago. “In early October I held an online forum with a globally renowned emergency response specialist and a local testing manufacturer to brief small business owners and workers on its use. That same month, I joined with Shadow Minister for NDIS and government services, Bill Shorten, to call for the government to provide disability service providers with access to rapid antigen testing for disability support workers.
“I have stated publicly that rapid antigen self-testing kits should be free so workers, businesses, aged care, disability services and families who need them can have another layer of protection – yet the only people who can access them at the moment are those who are lucky enough to be in the right place when supplies are delivered and have deep pockets to pay for them.”
Responding to the Labor criticisms of the vaccine booster rollout, a spokesperson for the Federal Department of Health said vaccinations across primary care sites continued throughout the Christmas and new year period.
Meanwhile in Victoria, short staffing at virus testing stations outsourced by the Andrews Victorian Government to Melbourne Pathology (owned by Sonic Healthcare in the US) decided to dump no fewer than 7000 tests due to short staffing.
Trust government?
“In the Blue Mountains LGA alone there are currently 22 primary care sites who are participating in the ‘COVID-19’ vaccine rollout program who are active and ready to administer vaccines as of this week,” the spokesperson said. “Enough vaccines will be delivered to vaccine sites to provide every eligible person their booster by January 14.”
The underlying reason for the policy of government lockdown easing is probably because both NSW and Federal governments are starting to run our of reserve taxpayer revenue funding to continue compensate Australians for letting the 2019 China SARS Virus in. And also, may be because there is a looming federal election in March 2022 and in NSW in March 2023. Yes, self-interest.
Yet, after two years of the China SARS Virus circulating, efficient virus testing by government of the public has remained poorly implemented. We term it ‘pandemic handling’ not ‘pandemic management’ and certainly not ‘quarantine leadership’. The contagion trend is almost certainly set to revert to mass socio-economic lockdowns again, once the public concern becomes sufficiently audible to the politicians in charge.
THE WHO’S ‘OMICRON’ VARIANT NAMING APPEASED CHINA’s XI XINGPING
The latest China Virus ‘variant’ out of China was first detected in the African country of Botswana (on the other side of the world) on 11th November 2021 from the testing of four visiting foreign diplomats of unnamed origins. (China perhaps?)
This precautionary coronavirus testing was performed by virologist Dr Sikhulile Moyo and his team at Botswana Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory (BHHRL) in Botswana’s capital city Gaborone. The virologists judged this variant as being considerably more contagious than the predominating variant from Mumbai that had been PC-dubbed ‘Delta’ by the World Health Organisation’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia.
The Botswana government apparently first reported this new SARS Corona Virus variant as a virus ‘variant of interest’ to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on or around 24th November 2021, warning that it carries 32 mutations, many of which suggest it is highly transmissible and vaccine-resistant, and has more alterations to its spike protein than any other SARS corona virus variant to date.
At the time, the WHO was due to brand the Botswana variant (B.1.1.529) of the China SARS Virus as ‘Nu‘ consistent with the WHO choosing to follow the naming consecutively through th3 Greek Alphabet. But then China warned the WHO that in Mandarin ‘Nu’ means female, and the next letter ‘Xi‘ is the surname of the current Chinese President Xi Xingping. So the WHO went PC to again appease China (the nation responsible for the virus outbreak in the first place Mark 1 and 2) and instead selected the next letter three along in the Greek Alphabet – ‘Omicron‘. WHO favourism or corruption?
By 15th December 2021, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that this omicron variant multiplies about 70 times faster inside human respiratory tract tissue than the WHO-branded ‘Delta’ variant does.
