17 weeks down, this project has covered almost a third of a year. This means that in Melbourne we have had stage 3 restrictions or higher for more than a third of a year. You can understand why many people are tired, especially with uncertainty with employment and not being able to be close to loved ones.

This week in Melbourne has been better and the trend is heading in the right direction. The new cases finally dipped below 100 for one day and have hovered around totals not far over 100 for multiple days. The new case numbers from Monday 24th August to Sunday 30th August were; 104, 134, 144, 106, 108, 81 and 114.

The deaths have been high and is to be expected based on the new case numbers a couple of weeks ago. The deaths for the week were 109 in Victoria.

The other states have things in control with NSW and Queensland keeping close watch on a couple of outbreaks. For a comparison of interest, in the last week Victoria had 306 (784) new cases with an unknown source (new cases), New South Wales had 6 (55) and Queensland 0 (16). The cases with an unknown source, otherwise known as community transmission, will be revised down for Victoria as the authorities get on top of their contract tracing. There would still be a very high number of community transmissions and this is a number that will have to reduce to virtually 0 before we can return to a COVID-safe sense of freedom in daily activities.

After four weeks of stage 4 restrictions including a nightly curfew and restrictions on proximity from home, there is civil unrest growing. The state premier Daniel Andrews has sought to extend the state of emergency in Victoria by 12 months as the maximum period of 6 months is about to expire. This has been considered a step to far by most. There are people looking to organise a protest about these lock downs, the premise being if it was OK for 10,000 people to protest BLM then we can have 10,000 people protest these restrictions. There have also been protests within the rules. In Dandenong, it was organised that everyone take their one hour permitted walk at the same time so as to flood the streets with people.

Winter hasn’t let go of us yet and there has been some wild weather in Melbourne during the week. Sadly 3 people died including a 5 year old child from storms that came through Melbourne on Thursday night. The storms also caused water supply to be contaminated for initially 88 suburbs and has now increased to 104 suburbs. Who had water contamination on their bingo card for 2020?

Who knows what next week will bring, the way 2020 is going, maybe alien invasion? Although they might take a quick look at Earth right now and go, “No Thanks!”