The Trifecta is on in the Land of Oz. Victoria will follow NSW this coming week and halt the COVID-19 epidemic

 

It's the trifecta folks. The Big thriller. A prelim to the Melbourne Cup to end all Melbourne Cups. The bobby dazzler.

Three out of three big wins will answer the question: do the vaccines stop COVID-19?

First what happened in Portugal

The graph  shows the evolution of daily new cases in Portugal this year. The orange line is the rise in completed double dose vaccination injections measured as a percent of people who have completed vaccination.

The decline of daily COVID-19 case numbers follows 40 percent protection of the population. This is cause and effect in action.

Next, this happened in Australia this year:

Note the fast ramp up of New South Wales fully  completed 2-dose vaccine coverage.

Thank you, Gladys and NSW Health.

Here is what happened next in New South Wales with daily cases of COVID-19:

The black arrow shows the point at which New South Wales reached 30 percent full vaccination protection. It is followed by decreasing numbers of diagnosed daily cases of COVID-19.

This is cause and effect in action again.

Now for the trifecta.

All states now have at least this level of protection. Victoria hit 40 percent fully vaccinated  on 30 September.

This protection will cause a halt to daily cases this week in Victoria. And the  AFL Footy Grand-Final lesson in epidemiology will ensure compliance with other necessary measures for a while.

All the rest will be a long, tedious but successful mop-up operation.

But it will need continued roll-out of vaccination to help make it as short as possible, so Australians of all ages, keep on getting your jabs.

Here is the photo of the short half-nose Saturday race-day win for vaccines in Victoria. It's not the official photo, but from a very skilful punter (Matt Hopcraft) in the stands. The Pundit had two thousand quid on the trifecta, and is over the moon.

From @matt_hopcraft on Twitter 12 October 2021

(Part 5 in a series.)

Part 6 is 

OCT 6 Spotlight on COVID-19 epidemic recovery in the Democratic People's Republic of Coburgistan

Post-script added 4 Oct 2021

From https://covidlive.com.au/vic/hume and https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/victorian-coronavirus-covid-19-data we have for the Victoria local government area, Hume north of the city on Saturday 23th October (reported Sunday):

Yes. Looks like Hume is more than stabilised. It's winner by a nose in a photo finish. It was clearly over the epidemic peak by 9 October, if not the 3rd October. And look at that jump in vaccine coverage.

But there are several other races yet to be decided. It's going to be another few days before the crowd stops shouting.

Just look at that vaccine uptake.

***

Twitter provides more granular coverage of vaccination rates, with details available for Local Government Areas (LGAs) in both NSW and Victoria. The rates mentioned in this Tweet by @dbRaevn are for "15+ year-olds" not the full population. (In New South Wales 16 and older are close to 80.3 percent of the total). Thus "40 percent of 15+" corresponds to approximately 32 percent of total population:

For clarity here are larger images of @dbRaevn 's graphics:

Overall they show that in the key outbreak LGAs of Victoria, full dose vaccine coverage is similar to coverage in New South Wales LGAs at the time that NSW COVID-19 outbreaks peaked.

In short, the @dgRaevn Tweets confirm the Pundit's claims about vaccine coverage based on state averages for double-dose vaccine coverage at the start of this post.

If Hume, Whittlesea and Wyndham outbreaks have truly peaked, that's really encouraging news.

Hume has won the race.

Here is Wyndham's progress 15 October:

That's still not showing signs of a win. Tough for those in the West. Wyndham may yet turn down, and vaccination uptake is extremely encouraging with the late surge in the last two weeks.

8 Oct 2021

The Ides of March are here, but not yet past Caesar.

10 October 2021

It was a close run thing. But Hume was a crowd pleaser.

11 October 2021.

Hume is home and hosed.

12 October 2021

The trifecta paid a million quid.

14 October 2021.

It's a bumpy ride. The tax people took 2/3rds the winnings away.