It’s probably the case that governments cannot impose harder conditions without evidence. (Ie more than 20 for hotspots, almost 1:100 for towers, and more than 150 for a Melbourne metro).
But the evidence was there.
With the towers they acted at well below 1;100 which would be 30 cases. They shutdown the towers at 12 cases, and within days of the first case. From commentary they knew they had a problem the day prior. So in this case they acted swiftly to close the spread down. ie Only a day or two for dramatic control measures.
Professor Sutton said the first Cedar Meats employee to test positive for coronavirus received the diagnosis on April 2, but had told authorities that he had not been at work for four weeks before becoming unwell.
A second worker tested positive on April 24. After a third worker tested positive on April 26, the health department shut the abattoir on April 29 and told its 350 staff to self-isolate.
On Thursday, Professor Sutton said if he could go back in time, he would shut the abattoir down after the second case.
"It was the first meatworks outbreak in Australia. I think even two linked cases is probably enough to shut a place down and probably regardless of size,"
Almost all of Victoria’s new cases can be linked to the abattoir.
7news.com.au
By the time of the tower shutdown there were quite a number of clusters well above two. Yes workplaces since have been acted reasonably promptly with the notable exception of the two quarantine hotels, but clusters forming around other centres of mixing and in particular parents of schools mixing seemingly did not have any specific action to target the group, just close contacts of individuals affected.
The Al-Taqwa College cluster total now stands at 102. Cedar Meats by comparison I think is 106? Why are there no special measures on school parents?
So if we take Sutton at his word that two linked cases was enough to shutdown a workplace, why was this logic not also extended to when there was a clear pattern of many sizeable clusters well above two linked cases occurring around two types of situations 1/parents mixing at schools and 2/family gatherings. Why were stronger steps not taken earlier to try and curtail this?
With schools, student to adult transmission and student to student transmission may be rare, but adult to adult transmission amongst their parents seems to have been rife at many schools in the northern suburbs. Mainly private religious based ones of many different faiths, but also public schools.
The pattern seems to be get some cases, clean the school, isolate direct contacts, but with things bubbling along with little specific being done to control the community spread beyond these initial measures. The delay on schools returning would seem to be a belated reaction to it. Ditto on family gatherings.
And indeed cases really started to balloon in particular with family gathering sizes being relaxed. It took way too long to act on this.
