Geelong gift cancelled

No racing at geelong tomorrow

Berwick and Ringwood? Surely same reasons for cancelling Geelong would be the same for the remainder of the VAL carnivals?

BMara wrote:No racing at geelong tomorrow

Very sad - just seems an over reaction at this point in time.

I respect the VAL's decision but I don't agree with it.

It's not as bad as the idiots stockpiling toilet paper but it does feed into the panic unnecessarily.

The government's ban on mass gatherings starts on Monday. Geelong could have easily gone ahead and the chances of a COVID 19 case happening there is extremely remote, basically negligible.

There are only 160 known cases of people with COVID-19 in Australia with 36 in Victoria - out of a population of 6.4mil.  That's only 6 per million.

Take appropriate precautions as outlined below and no-one should have any reason to be concerned.

To cancel Geelong now just adds to the paranoia.  It would be better to keep the carnival going and let the athletes decide for themselves. My guess is they would have turned up wanting to support the carnival.

I can't see why they couldn't get through the weekend and reassess on Monday.

What's done is done. I feel sorry for those all ready to go and race tomorrow.

Now wonder if it's worth bothering to train for the rest of the season.


The latest from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.
Nine new cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) were confirmed yesterday - bringing the total number of cases in Victoria to 36. This includes Victoria's first recorded case of community transmission.

The new cases include 6 men and 3 women aged between 20-70. All cases are recovering at home in isolation. Of the 9 new cases, 7 have a history of international travel. Case interviews are still being completed with some cases.

One case has no history of travel or contact with a confirmed case - the first case of community transmission.

A confirmed case who attended the Golden Plains music festival was not unwell at the event. As a result, no further action is required by festival goers.

The Department of Health and Human Services last night confirmed that a member of the McLaren Formula One team tested positive to COVID-19. They are recovering in isolation. A further seven F1 team members tested for COVID-19 have all returned negative test results.

"There have been a number of new developments in the past 24 hours. This includes the positive test in a Formula One team member, the rapidly changing threat posed by the spread of the virus in Europe, and the cancellation and suspension of other mass gathering events around the world," Victoria's Chief Officer Professor Brett Sutton said.

"Through an abundance of caution, and after consultation with the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, I advised the Grand Prix Corporation not to allow spectators at the Australian Grand Prix, which has since been cancelled.

"My updated advice was based on other factors such as Victoria's first case of community transmission and the clear difficulty other countries are having containing COVID-19 without cancelling events.

"I am reviewing this rapidly evolving situation daily and will be discussing recommendations around future mass gatherings with my Federal and State counterparts at today's Australian Health Protection Principal Committee meeting.

"My advice will continue to be focused on doing whatever is necessary to minimise the spread of infection and keep Victorians safe."

Professor Sutton said we expect to see more and more cases of COVID-19 in Victoria.

"For the virus to spread, extended close personal contact is most likely required. But visitors to locations where cases have been should be aware of the signs and symptoms of COVID-19. Close personal contact is at least 15 minutes face-to-face or more than 2 hours in the same room," Professor Sutton said.


"At the moment, we urge the public to be mindful and take steps to minimise the risk of COVID-19.

"Everyone also has a role to play in protecting yourself and your family. Hands should be washed regularly with soap and water. Cough or sneeze into a tissue or your elbow. If you are ill, stay at home."

The Department of Health and Human Services follows up and monitors all close contacts of confirmed cases and provides them with information and support. All close contacts must self-isolate for 14-days.

Agree admin seems like a massive overreaction, run at your own risk I say, especially when bans have yet to be officially put in place, real shame it's happened

Race meeting protocols need to be addressed by VAL and clubs to ensure the remaining 3 meets have the best opportunity to go ahead.
Athletes will support the remaining carnivals.
Is there an alternative to wearing the communal singlets?
No handshake just verbal thanks after race?
Hand sanitizers etc readily available?
Have warm up areas well spaced out to reduce close proximity to each other?

Went for a walk before dinner and found steampacket gardens a bit waterlogged and dug up due to a broken pipe. No way the meet could have been run.
Corona virus a convenient excuse?

Idea could be wear AV club colours to distinguish if normal VAL colours could be a contamination risk. No handshakes, Athletes only at races and ensure that they are present on track 45 before and after events for warming up and cooling down purposes. We generally have a sensible running community who want these events to go ahead.

Hope it’s not an excuse Kanga. Maybe the plumbers have corona and had to the week off halfway through their job.
If it was your carnival, wouldn’t you be willing to wheelbarrow sand from the beach just to get through the day of running?

Youngy, I appreciate your position but I would urge you to read the following to understand just how much time matters here. It discusses at length why there was such a massive difference between the known number of cases and eventual “true” number of cases over a series of days in Wuhan, amongst many other related issues.

At this point, the biggest priority for Australia is mitigation through social distancing.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

“ Mitigation
Mitigation requires heavy social distancing. People need to stop hanging out to drop the transmission rate (R), from the R=~2–3 that the virus follows without measures, to below 1, so that it eventually dies out.

These measures require closing companies, shops, mass transit, schools, enforcing lockdowns… The worse your situation, the worse the social distancing. The earlier you impose heavy measures, the less time you need to keep them, the easier it is to identify brewing cases, and the fewer people get infected.

This is what Wuhan had to do. This is what Italy was forced to accept. Because when the virus is rampant, the only measure is to lock down all the infected areas to stop spreading it at once.
With thousands of official cases — and tens of thousands of true ones — this is what countries like Iran, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland or the US need to do.

...

In this theoretical model that resembles loosely Hubei, waiting one more day creates 40% more cases!

So, maybe, if the Hubei authorities had declared the lockdown on 1/22 instead of 1/23, they might have reduced the number of cases by a staggering 20k.

And remember, these are just cases. Mortality would be much higher, because not only would there be directly 40% more deaths.

There would also be a much higher collapse of the healthcare system, leading to a mortality rate up to 10x higher as we saw before. So a one-day difference in social distancing measures can end exploding the number of deaths in your community by multiplying more cases and higher fatality rate.”

“Dan Suan MBBS FRACP FRCPA PhD
Staff Specialist Immunologist, Westmead Hospital
Staff Specialist Immunopathologist, NSW Health Pathology
Research Officer, Immunogenomics Lab, Garvan Institute


Hi a few people asked me where Australia is at the moment with Covid-19. We reached our 100th case on Tuesday the 10th of March (3 days ago, x-axis), and we now have 199 confirmed cases (y-axis) - I've plotted this point with a red dot. We are testing really well, so it is a fairly accurate number, waaayyy more accurate than the USA which is on the precipice of a total disaster (separate story, I'm so upset). It's at a very early part of the curve, but you can see we are doing really well compared to other industrialised nations (we want to be as close to the Japanese, Singaporean and Hong Kong curves as possible).

The next two weeks is absolutely critical to the direction of this curve. Total social isolation, complete interpersonal distancing, combined with massively increased testing (which we have just built capacity for this week in our labs) will flatten this curve and save countless Australian lives. We can do this with no vaccine and no effective antivirals.

Each individual simply has to make it their personal responsibility to have minimal contact with all other people. Cancel all unnecessary things.

I am running my clinics by phone so patients don't have to come to hospital. We have a narrow window of opportunity to do this, this could not be more urgent. I hope you understand I would not say this if I was not absolutely sure of how critical this is. Please share with your family and friends. Sending lots of love, take care please

I'm with you Tom, for the sake of sacrificing a few weeks of our lives, it's it worth risking the health of those who we might happen to infect, without even knowing, like our elderly parents or grandparents, infants with existing respiratory challenges, taking it to the work place, school uni etc...
If the rate of infection can be reduced, then our healthcare system might in fact be be adequately equipped to save your mother or father, grandmother or grandfather. It's not just about us, it's about the wider community and to take the attitude that it's an overreaction, might just be irresponsible enough to be a contributor to a wider, larger infection rate.
Life is way more important than pro running, yes, shocking isn't it, but the events will go on in the future, a sacrifice today could be the savior for tomorrow.