COVID Latest: Leaders At War Over Aged Care Catastrophe
[Back in business] 'inexcusable' Ruby Princess bungle; boat beats border ban.
Hello! It’s Saturday, August 15. Here is today’s ‘5+5: coronavirus edition’ — 5 things to know about COVID-19 today, + 5 non-corona things as well.
Yes it’s been a hot minute since I fired up the old 5+5. Sorry - I moved to Canberra and got a new job and things have been busy. Anyway, here we go, back in business, let’s make this happen.
As always, hit me up with thoughts, suggestions, ideas and tips for this newsletter. As the pandemic goes on, what do you want to know? Which info is useful, which info is too much/not helpful for you? Email me at joshbutler.journalist@protonmail.com, or DM me on Twitter at @joshbutler.
By the by, I’m now the political editor at The New Daily, in the federal parliamentary press gallery. You can read my new stuff here, and sign up for TND’s own excellent daily newsletter here.
Latest AU stats: as of 9pm Friday, Australia has 22,743 reported cases of COVID-19 (that’s +386 since the day before), with 13,345 reported as ‘recovered’, and 375 deaths, according to the latest federal Department of Health stats. More stats below.
5 CORONAVIRUS THINGS
Aged care blame game
Absolutely horrific stories keep emerging from Australia’s broken aged care system, with the already fractured sector now groaning under the weight of the COVID crisis. The blame game between VIC and federal leaders continues (more on that in a second), as Canberra tries to shift responsibility onto the state government for a system that the feds have sole responsibility for. The political rhetoric from federal ministers has recently shifted to saying that outbreaks in aged care were inevitable when community transmission of the virus got out of hand, as it has in Victoria. That has a ring of truth, of course, but the biggest issue at the moment isn’t really about who messed up - people just want the calamity fixed.
But horror stories keep coming. The Guardian reports a woman in an aged care home had ants crawling in her open wounds, with residents of a Melbourne home left without food and cleaning for nearly a whole day. In The Saturday Paper, revelations about why COVID-infected elderly weren’t moved to hospital quicker.
The aged care royal commission this week heard blistering claims the federal government was prone to “hubris” and “self-congratulation” after dealing with Sydney nursing home outbreaks in April, and despite claiming to have learned mistakes from Newmarch House and Dorothy Henderson Lodge, those very same fatal mistakes were made again in Melbourne in June and July.
“The sector is not properly prepared now,” Peter Rozen QC, counsel assisting the royal commission, bluntly said.
Leaders at war
This, then, feeds into the simmering and barely-concealed conflict between PM Scott Morrison and Daniel Andrews. No doubt, the two men have some level of blame to share for the catastrophe, and now part of the fight is about figuring out which one the history books lump the majority of shame with.
A bizarre back-and-forth battle over whether the Australian Defence Force was offered to help in Victoria’s hotel quarantine system has been unfolding all week (link). The feds say they offered. VIC says they didn’t. Only one of them can be right - it’s still not exactly clear which one that is. Ministers have been taking potshots at one another for weeks, but the VIC vs Canberra fight threatens to boil over.
Some interesting reading this weekend on this stuff - Katharine Murphy on the “barely disguised score-settling” (link), Dennis Atkins on the blame game (link), and George Megalogenis on how COVID “won't wait for our leaders to stop playing word games” (link).
Ruby Princess “inexcusable” errors
The long-awaited report into the Ruby Princess cruise ship, which was allowed to disembark sick passengers leading to Australia’s biggest single COVID cluster, has finally dropped (link). In it, another state vs federal blame game has been (at least officially) resolved, with NSW Health accused of “inexcusable” mistakes in how officials dealt with the ship. Previously, Border Force had been blamed by some for not blocking the disembarkation of passengers, but the report pinned much of the blame on state officials.
However, the special commission noted that it didn’t exactly get a lot of help and cooperation from federal authorities…
Boat tries to beat border ban
And staying on the topic of marine craft (albeit a much smaller one), four men have allegedly tried to “sneak” into Queensland from NSW on a boat, to skirt the state’s border closure (link). They’ve been fined, and will have to pay for their own hotel quarantine too.
Today’s stats:
The latest stats from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (as of 9.30am AEST Saturday) report 21,070,842 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide. There have been 7630,70 deaths.
The United States has 5,309,164 confirmed cases; Brazil is next on 3,226,443, then India (2,461,190). The U.S. has the most deaths (168,396), then Brazil(105,490) and Mexico third on 55,908.
In Australia, the latest federal stats (as of 9pm Friday) show 22,473 cases, 13,345 people recovered, and 375 deaths.
5 NON-CORONAVIRUS THINGS
Incredible fines have been meted out to Sydney’s Star Casino after children as young as 12 were found to be drinking and gambling in the establishment (link). Three fines totalling $90,000 have been slapped on the casino, after minors were found playing roulette and poker machines.
The federal government “rejected repeated requests to fund extra air support for fighting bushfires ahead of the last deadly season” by saying that resources were already stretched too thin, the ABC reported (link).
The Australian is still resisting criticism over a cartoon published Friday. You can see it below. The paper’s editor has asked his staff “to rally around the cartoonist Johannes Leak whose drawing of Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, has been denounced as racist”, The Guardian reports.
A complicated but incredibly important fight about the post office is taking over the United States. The US Postal Service (USPS) is being underfunded and services scaled back, at the same time as President Trump keeps claiming mail-in ballots would be subject to fraud in the November election. Essentially, Trump is attacking the postal service to boost his own election chances. The USPS is now warning that mailed-in ballots might not be counted in time. There is massive backlash (link) and this is a story that is going to be unbelievably important, as people resist going to the ballot box in person over COVID fears. Keep an eye on this one.
And just one final one on Trump - enjoy this king asking the President, to his face, “do you regret all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”
The reporter is S.V. Date, from HuffPost. He had this to add, after the footage went viral:
IMPORTANT EVERY DAY
Be hygienic; wash your hands properly, at least 30 seconds with soap and water, multiple times a day (here’s how you need to do it, plus a handy Dr Karl video tutorial); sneeze and cough into your elbows.
Listen to only official information from the World Health Organisation and legitimate health bodies — Don’t share dodgy stuff on Facebook. If it looks too good (or bad) to be true, it often is.
World Health Organisation latest statistics here; Australian government latest statistics here.
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Email me at joshbutler.journalist@protonmail.com for tips, ideas or just to chat. You can also find me on Twitter at @joshbutler; on Facebook; and Instagram.
Signing off — stay safe, be healthy, look after yourself and others.
Josh