mike carey

There was an interesting set of numbers presented by the ABC's stats guru yesterday on hospital admissions here. It's not authoritative analysis, but it provides some clues. There has been a huge surge in case numbers in NSW and Victoria over the last fortnight, but the percentage of cases ending up in hospital, while raw numbers have risen sharply, has dropped significantly. At the end of October, 10% of cases in NSW were ending up in hospital, now it's 1%. In Victoria, it has only dropped to 1.5%, but like NSW the total number of cases going to hospital has increased. In Victoria there has continued to be 6-8 deaths a day, while in NSW it's typically been one or two. One difference between the two states is that in NSW at least 80% of all cases are now Omicron, but the proportion in Victoria is much more skewed to Delta. It's not unreasonable to conclude that both the higher death rate and higher hospitalisation rate in Victoria can be attributed to a higher proportion of Delta. The NSW figures show that almost all of the hospitalised cases that have ended up in an ICU have been Delta patients, as have almost all of the deaths. There has been one case of a triple vaxed patient with Omicron dying, but he was a man in his eighties with co-morbidities, so it may be the case that he died with the disease rather than from it (of course it's difficult to be certain that Covid wasn't just the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, rather than its presence being unrelated to his death). That last parenthetic point is a hint at a complication in the analysis of Covid trends in the future. People will be admitted to hospitals after heart attacks or traffic accidents who will be tested and found to have asymptomatic Covid. They need to be tested because even without symptoms, an undetected Covid case presents an infection risk, but their inclusion in the statistics adds a wrinkle to the analytical process. The numbers here appear to confirm that Omicron is resulting in fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths per case, but also that the sheer numbers of cases could result in increased stress on the hospital system. I'm not eligible for my third jab for another 10 days, and while I'll avoid unnecessary contact with other people, I'm becoming more confident in venturing out when I need to, and that might even include a trip to Sydney with an, ahem, liaison while I'm there.

Same sort of deal, although people will sometimes have tomato sauce on meat in a sandwich. First time I had a chicken salad sandwich in the US it caught me by surprise. I had failed to notice the difference in the name and expected a chicken and salad sandwich. Here that's chicken with some lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sliced beetroot, grated carrot, onion, or some combination of those ingredients. We also typically only call it a sandwich if it is between two slices of bread. If a bread roll is used, it would be called a ham and cheese roll (or whatever filling was being used). The wider US usage of 'sandwich' is used occasionally now that US-style fast food chains sell a variety of breakfast 'sandwiches'. The term hadn't been used when the only variety in Maccas was on English muffins. (They haven't included their biscuit 'sandwiches' on their Australian menus, perhaps fearing that people's minds would explode at the thought of egg and bacon between two biscuits (i.e. cookies).)

In a way that could be seen as confusing, that can also be called tomato sauce in Australia, although it can also be named by its use (so pasta sauce or pizza sauce) rather than by its main ingredient. Although apparently confusing, it rarely is. You can tell from the context whether they mean the condiment or the vegetable variety. You will also see bottled passata in shops here.

Kecap* and mayo is a shorthand recipe for a seafood sauce. The two together would be good in a chicken sandwich. For me sliced roast chicken (or shredded) without any sort of sauce or addition makes a good chicken sandwich. I've been doing that with my left over chicken from Christmas dinner, today with slices of tomato. *'Kecap' is the Malay word that the Brits and Americans appropriated for what in Australia is called tomato sauce. Before you ask, yes it is pronounced the same as 'ketchup' (c is a ch sound in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia). Before spelling reform the Dutch derived version was ketjap.

It's not hard to imagine that in the controlled environment of their porn shoots they will go bare back but would decline to do so with Joe Public. There is a difference between 'I don't bareback' and 'I don't bareback with clients'.

Oops, sorry, I'll back off, I can never read the room. 😉

For reasons I cannot fathom, when I read this I thought 'South Park', only for a moment, but I thought it!

Being a non-parent, I can afford to feel absolutely no guilt in laughing at this most excellent tweet: 'My parents have gone home so now apparently I have to look after their grandchild????'

And that includes almost all flights from Australia, and the last time I took one of those shorter flights (across the Ditch), I ignored the 'eight hours' part and applied the rule anyway.

You expect us to believe a shaggy dog story like that one??

Yes, I noticed it and had noticed it in several threads around the time the forum transitioned to the new software, and it appeared to have been a glitch associated with the transition.

Especially apposite on this Christmas afternoon: Dad's Xmas Belly joke - 8/10: When Mum caught Dad standing on the bathroom scales, sucking in his stomach, she laughed, “Ha! That’s not going to help!” Dad replied, “Sure it does, it’s the only way I can see the numbers.” And combining two themes of this Christmas season: Why can’t a symptom of Omicron be the inability to gain weight after eating 9 lbs of Christmas ham?

The scenic backdrop to all three cities would do that, irrespective of the cityscapes.

Important to remember that the first number is pre-vaccine and pre-Delta, so there is a variety of reasons for the difference. Knowing the variant breakdown for yesterday's hospitalisations would be interesting but would not reveal very much. Having the same figures for six weeks ago to compare with yesterday's would be far more revealing. Comparing those six-week-old numbers with last years' would provide a useful way-point in the progression of hospitalisation over the year.

I'm not particularly avoiding hiring, but rather avoiding travel to any city where I might hire (no one excites he here in Canberra), Sydney being the obvious one, but also not going to Melbourne. I need a test to go to Brisbane or Adelaide and am not inclined to do that, in part because testing queues are insane. Not sure how I'd feel if I were in one of those cities, but would probably do it. Not a decision I actually have to make.

Thank you Maria, that is the intervention we all needed.

So someone asked the Australian Electoral Commission a silly (in the best way) question on Twitter. They replied, and it was priceless. https://twitter.com/swearyanthony/status/1473539654003527689?s=20

Lol yes, possibly. When I read it I thought you were being a bit harsh on him. It took a few moments to realise that one letter being replaced by another that was next to it on the keyboard changed the whole tone of the post.

Correct, not one but two, if you count a repost with 'me' as a comment as a second.

I hope you meant 'previous'.

https://twitter.com/WA_Police/status/1473148436518109185?s=20

Ha, with no logical basis for doing so that's what I thought when I saw the photo when it was posted!

'I helped my uncle jack off a horse.' 'I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse.' So are capital letters.