rtritudr

You can't lock down care homes by just stopping visitors, you have to keep all the staff members onsite too. This does work as one care home did exactly that at the height of the pandemic in France and there were zero cases and deaths at that particular home. The staff members volunteered in that case. Also in that case they only had to stay in the care home for a few weeks because the whole country locked down at the same time. How much are we paying these age home workers and would they really volunteer to stay away from their own families for potentially months at a time?

143 visas are allowed in as it's a permanent visa. It's only temporary ones like 870 that are not allowed to enter.

Nothing I'm afraid. The genomic data shows that the cluster was introduced in the middle of May, probably from Bangladesh. It didn't get into NSW until late June/early July. The Queensland cluster is clearly distinct from NSW and probably originated directly from Victoria. Based on epidemiological data we know that the first case was connected to hotel quarantine. As to whether the BLM protest had any effect on the growth of this cluster there is simply no information here.

You can have a look at the data yourself: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/oceania The Victorian outbreak is the orange cluster at the top of the graph.

According to the Murdoch media that is.

Hmm, a poll commissioned by the Liberal Party reported by the Murdoch Herald Sun.

Many East Asian countries are taking exactly the same approach as ANZ on borders, e.g., China, Japan and South Korea. All have mandatory quarantine policies (not at home except in certain circumstances) in place for overseas arrivals. The lock-down aspect is exceptional in the East Asian context (only China had that) but when ANZ first instituted the lock-down back in March it was the norm in both Europe and North America. It's only the resumption of the lock-down in June (AUS) and August (NZ) that has made them unique. The only example of such a second lock-down that I can think of is China. However, the ANZ approach does not rely on the availability of a vaccine at all. Only reopening borders would require that. Australia has been quite consistent in stating that (since March at least) the borders will not reopen for the foreseeable future. In fact even if a vaccine were available it may still not be possible to remove quarantine because you'll always have immunocompromised people in the community who cannot be vaccinated.

There are lots of MVNOs (virtual resellers) that use the Telstra network so they'll offer exactly the same coverage as Telstra but at a decent price. I'm currently using ALDImobile which is on the Telstra network and they're not too bad.