Precautions, curfews and lockdowns may save lives, and better to go to them sooner rather than later.
Australia has in general managed pretty well, but there have been a few worrying developments lately, notably the discovery that several of the recent outbreaks have stemmed from people who caught the disease either while in hotel quarantine, or while working in a quarantine hotel. Because the ventilation in hotels is generally lousy, certainly not medical grade, with all the rooms on a floor often being attached to the same ventilation ducts. Cheaper that way. So the virus has both spread from infected to uninfected people housed on the same floor through the air conditioning, or from staff delivering food opening a door to a room and having air containing an ærosol of infectious material puff out into the corridor. And in one recent case, because of a guest using a nebuliser in their room for medical reasons. The nebuliser created an ærosol containing virus particles which drifted out of their room. Worrying.
Makes you feel a certain sympathy for those folk who resisted hotel quarantine, early on, because they considered that it raised the chances of the uninfected getting infected while quarantined. But there is nowhere near enough protective gear for all staff, and as the ventilation is not medical-grade this was inevitable sooner or later.
I am reminded of the early days of research into Lassa Fever, another disease which could spread both by contact and by ærosol. Fortunately somebody realised that the disease was in the ærosol of rat urine from the experimental lab rats infected with Lassa Fever before too much got vented from the air conditioning outlet of a CDC lab into the streets of New York.
I do hope that this gets sorted out soon. It was a mistake to put hotel quarantine in the hands of private security firms in the first place, would likely have worked better with medical and military personnel in charge of quarantine in the first place. But politics and profit......
