Unfortunately your country is in a diabolical mess, politically, economically and from a public health perspective. Almost exclusively due to a pathetic lack of leadership from those elected to serve the people. The situation is so bad that mask wearing is less effective due to the overwhelming numbers of positive cases.
In my country, through largely but not exclusively effective leadership, at the start of this week there were 44 active cases, 29 people in hospital, nobody in intensive care, with community transmission at zero or near zero on most days. The cases we have are generally people returning home from overseas in strict quarantine.
There was one major outbreak in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria a city of almost 5 million that required a major lockdown and mandatory mask wearing for a few months.....they have been virus free now for nearly 40 days.
I fear that your country is now beyond such simple measures preventing your hospital systems being overrun.
Colin,
The reason Australia and New Zealand had success against COVID is because of strong leadership and the compliance of the citizens to follow the orders. If you had a significant portion of the population refusing to comply with the orders and a large segment of the media egging them on to break the rules, mocking masks, and calling the virus a "hoax" you'd be in a severe health crisis too.
These frauds over here pretend to be patriots and religious but their actions go against everything they claim they are. If the right wingers here followed the orders and wore masks we would have success just like New Zealand. Medical experts said if we all wore masks and locked down for 8 weeks we would significantly reduce the virus to where infections and death would be minimal to zero. We already could have accomplished that feat months ago but they refused to do so with each state having different or no requirements at all. Leadership starts at the top and we have a idiot who has no provided no leadership whatsoever. He blames others for his failures and we have a right wing media and a GOP joke of a party the enables and covers for him.
Hospitals are being maxed out which is why new lockdown orders are being enforced to help stop new hospitalizations from COVID-19 because there will be no place to put new patients. Don't forget about people requiring hospitalization for other ailments. There won't be any place to put them. Even with this disaster looming, right wingers are still protesting against lockdowns.
The problem is, these deranged people are in a cult being brainwashed by their cult leader, right wing media, and lunatic conspiracy theorists that are given a platform to spew their disinformation. They are the reason that COVID-19 is out of control and why we are worse off 9 months later than we were before. They refuse to do the simple measures that will stop the spread of the virus and then attack the measures for not working. It's insane and tragic what has happened to our country with this orange scumbag leading the way for them to destroy our country based on hate, fear, lies, and disinformation. Trump is killing his own supporters in their own communities and these morons still don't care. They say "they will die for him". Yeah, that is called a cult.
