Update from Melbs - let's keep this short and sweet

 The new school year began on the first of February. We were all back to school in person, and students only needed to have a mask available to wear on public transport to and from school, and for assemblies (which is no small thing - Australian schools LOVE assemblies). For three days. Kids were happy, I was happy, dog was miserable.

On day 3 there was a small outbreak of Covid in an outer suburb at a quarantine hotel. Directives came down to wear masks when indoors. For eight days. Victorians started wearing their masks again. No fuss, just got on with it. Ruth's face eczema flared up from the masks. My hand eczema flared up from all the sanitizing. We were still happy, but itchy. Dog was still miserable.

On day 10, today, the outbreak grew from three cases to nine cases to something like 17 cases in 24 hours. This is what we in my business call 'exponential growth'. Side note: I am shocked that not one of my International Baccalaureate students thought about modelling Covid growth as their internal assessment topic. But I digress. Apparently this growth is a result of the nasty variant of Covid that y'all Americans and Europeans have been passing around. Some returning Australian brought it back with them, and while using a nebulizer in their quarantine hotel room, got some Covid into the air handling system of the hotel, which spread the virus to hotel workers, who then spread it to the community at large.

As of midnight tonight, Victoria is back in stage 4 lockdown. 5 km radius of travel, only leave your house to exercise (2 hrs/day max), to buy food or essentials, to do essential work, or for medical care. For five days. That means a weekend of sitting tight, plus three days of work-from-home or school-from-home. These five days of no movement will allow contact tracers to catch up. They fell behind because this variant is so highly contagious that by the time they identified a sick person, that person had already spread it to their close contacts.

We're hoping this truly will be just a five-day lockdown. This sort of lockdown worked very well in Queensland, and very well in Western Australia. Now it's our turn. And it's not all bad. The dog will be thrilled to have us all home again, and truth be told, I'm not altogether upset that I won't have a chance to drive from Nunawading to St Kilda to Greensborough all in one morning for two baseball games on Sunday.

I have three library books and a new litre of carpet shampoo. My lockdown weekend is planned.

That's all the news from here. Hoping I will be able to turn this blog back into a travel diary soon. Shabbat shalom xx