Central Spoke 29.03.2021 (Mar 29, 2021)

President

Gerard Barker

President Elect

Anthony Davies

Secretary

Mark McFadden

Treasurer

Sam Baulch

Community Service

Brendan O'Neill

Vocational Service

Peter Hayes

Club Service

Bob McMillan

International Service

James Mepham

Rotary Foundation

Tim Goodall

Membership

North Northeast

Public Relations

James Mepham

Youth Service

Garry Askew

Ronnie’s Wrap.

Rotarians

Thanks to Kate Lawrence (Nooka’s daughter) who was our guest speaker last week. Kate was the club’s Rotary exchange student in 1999 and spent a year in Sweden. She is now a medical nurse at South West Health Care in charge of the covid 19 vaccination program. Kate gave an interesting talk on the pandemic and the roll out of the vaccine in Australia. it was fascinating to hear that North Korea is one of seven countries declared as virus free. Must be that relaxed lifestyle they have!

We’re in the money, we’re in the money. Congratulations to Sirileo Miss (and her owners) on her commanding victory at Sandown last week. Ridden a treat by Melissa Julius, she is going places, hopefully Caulfield this Saturday 3^rd April and then Adelaide for the group 1 Australasian Oaks on May 1^st.

Our get well thoughts are with Bob Coffey who has been in Geelong cardiac care unit this past week and our condolences go to Steve Hickman and family on the passing of his niece’s husband.

The Auction Committee are holding a dinner meeting at 6.30 on Thursday 1^st April at Madala 134 and remind everyone that the auction dinner is fast approaching (Saturday April 17) Please keep getting your tables organised (Lew’s lessons 1 to 5 have been extremely helpful), donate a bottle of wine to Big Bob if you haven’t already, have donations confirmed, and vouchers ready to give to Quincy.

We will be back at the Central Court Motel on Wednesday 31st March, 12.30 for 1pm. Please contact Mark McFadden on 0407 052 758 or email Mark.McFadden@roads.vic.gov.au to confirm your attendance by 6pm Tuesday 30th March. You will need to register your details at the door. Payment by card is preferred. This week Jann will be giving his presentation on his exchange year in Germany, and Bono will definitely be finemaster.

Rotary in Australia is turning 100 on Wednesday 21^st April and I am pleased to announce all four Warrnambool Rotary clubs will be lunching together on that day. Details to come in the next week.

Have a safe and happy Easter

Cheers

Ronnie

Kate speaks to the club.

(Ian ducks inconspicuously to get out of the photo.)

We are meeting this Wednesday!

We are meeting this Wednesday at the Central Court. 12.30 for 1.00. It is important that we give the venue exact numbers.

Please r.s.v.p to Macca –

0407 052 758 or

mark.mcfadden@roads.vic.gov.au

Auction advice.

A note from the President:-

I think it would be a good idea to get the table captains to advise their guests that the $66 tickets can be paid via EFT into the following ANZ bank account

Rotary Club of Warrnambool Central

BSB 013900

Account 318062463

Ref : Auction - your name (s)

We can then have a list of those who have paid prior to the dinner (hopefully all of them will have paid to save us the trouble chasing them up and handling cash on the night)

Regards

Ronnie

Minutes.

Attendance: Nooka reported 29 members and one guest – his lovely daughter Kate Lawrence. Then Lindsay Bullivant turned up. The mathematics was thrown into chaos and no reliable attendance figure could be arrived at.

Meal: Jason continued his good run with an excellent chicken risotto and some cheesy bread, but then let the team down with a gloop of thawed frozen vegies. Don’t worry Jason, we all make mistakes. Just pick yourself up, get to the next contest and play the next ball on its merits.

Penno kicked the meeting off before inviting our President to the lectern. Ronnie advised members we will hopefully joining the other three Warrnambool Rotary clubs on our 100^th Birthday, Wednesday the 21^st of April. More details to come. In other reports;

· Hayessey had the sad duty of informing us that the Trade Fair has again been deferred due to COVID restrictions and will now be scheduled for 2022. Peter is doing a wonderful job under very trying circumstances.

· Tim is hoping to assist the concreter with our ramp project on Monday or Tuesday next week.

· Malcolm is looking for volunteers on Saturday 17^th April from 3-5pm at the racecourse to assist with setting up for our Auction. Let Malcolm know if you can help.

· Lew is still keen to find out who is going to the auction. Please let Lew know who the guests are that you are bringing to the event.

Kate Lawrence then spoke to us about the COVID vaccination program. Kate is a former outbound exchange student of our club and has a masters degree in public health. Kate noted that very few countries had avoided the pandemic all together, with six pacific nations and North Korea being the only countries to report no cases.

Kate informed us South West Healthcare has set up a vaccine hub in the old Sam’s Warehouse site. Once they start receiving a supply of vaccine, they will let the community know how to organise an appointment. Most people will receive the Astra Zeneca vaccine manufactured by CSL in Melbourne. This vaccine involves two doses given, ideally, 12 weeks apart. The Astra Zeneca vaccine has been shown to be 70% effective at reducing the illness caused by the virus*. There are some common mild side effects that include tenderness at the injection site, fatigue and headache, malaise, fever and chills, joint and muscle pain and nausea. These side effects usually only last a few days and were less common in older people. Blood clotting has been reported as a problem, but it does not remain a concern (see below). You should not have a flu vaccine 14 days before or after your COVID vaccine. People under the age of 18 should not be vaccinated.

When people go to receive their vaccine, they should;

· Allow 30 mins.

· Bring I.D. and the name of their GP.

· Be aware of the need to sing a consent form.

· Wear a shirt you can roll up.

We thank Kate for her excellent and topical presentation.

Members were made aware that Rob Coffey is in hospital, and our thoughts were with Rob as we closed the meeting. We wish Rob a speedy recovery.

(*These figures are based on four randomised controlled clinical trials run in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. The overall efficacy figure was 70.5%, but this included a mix of people receiving either two standard doses or a low dose followed by a standard dose. The efficacy for only those people receiving a low dose followed by a standard dose was 90%. There is reason to believe an efficacy of much greater than 70% can be achieved with this vaccine. - Ed.)

Trev has trouble finding a park.

That figures.

The week before it was Pip keeping Trev out of a park.

Kim Jong-un wards off COVID-19 with a medicinal durry.

Boré’s view.

Adam Kent announced to the club two weeks ago that his nickname was ‘Boof’. Wanting to be exacting, your correspondent googled ‘Boof definition’. Don’t do that. Apparently, the word means something entirely different in the United States than what it does here. What is the world coming to? However, the word does mean in Australia more or less what I thought it meant.

Seems a bit harsh Adam but, if you insist, Boof it is.

We thank Boré for another wonderful cartoon.

Bring a bottle.

Hi,

Another reminder in the Bulletin for the members to bring
their wine to this weeks meeting or hand me $25.00 to $30.00 so that I
can buy one on their behalf thanks mate.

Cheers

Bob

Rotary Horse Racing update.

Our young horse Sirileo Miss was just too good again last Wednesday, winning easily in her third race. Two wins and a second from her first three starts means she has already won more than her purchase price for connections. Certainly, the twenty members of our syndicate would not be regretting their prudent financial decision to purchase a share in the filly. We thank all the team at Wilde Racing for their wonderful work in preparing the horse. Symon Wilde advises us that they are setting the horse for a big race in Adelaide. We may need to convene a meeting of the Rotary club at Morphettville Racetrack in a few weeks.

We are all grown-ups. We understand that when you buy a share in a race horse there is an element of chance involved. Sometimes you get an incredibly good-looking horse like Physicality, sometimes you get a bit eater like Vassa Blue, and occasionally you get a horse that is good at running fast like Sirileo Miss. The point is, you have to take a chance to give yourself the possibility of owning a share in the next Sirileo Miss when it comes along.

Hutto brought us the very exciting news that Wilde Racing will again be offering a share in a Wilde Racing horse at our Charity Auction. The choice is clear: you can choose years of excitement or choose a lifetime of bitterness and regret. Every member wants to be thinking about how they can leave our Charity Auction owning a share in this horse.

Of course, if the horse turns out to be a dud, forget I ever mentioned it.

Flying during a pandemic.

There are several good reasons not to fly during a pandemic. It is a good way to transport the virus from one location to another, and indeed right around the world, very quickly. Also, cramming the most amount of people possible into a small aluminum cylinder with poor airflow and countless uncleanable surfaces is not ideal. Central Spoke OH&S expert Pip Ritchie understands the problem and sends us this report.

Club decision making.

Our club is considering applying for a grant to purchase new club tops for members. The question arose as to whether we should order long sleeved or short sleeved tops. Our Club Secretary, Potholes, advised that ‘no good comes from wearing long sleeves’.

I agreed.

Our President pointed out that the Club’s approach to working bees and community service projects had always been ‘Suns out, Guns out’.

We will bring you more news on the procurement of new short sleeved Rotary tops as it comes to hand.

Astra Zeneca and blood clots.

We are all about to be offered the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The science community says it is safe and effective, but there has been some concern raised about the risk of blood clots. At the risk of boring everyone to death, I wanted to provide a semi-scientific explanation.

Random events produce phenomenon known as clumping illusions. These are groups of events or ‘clumps’ that are produced at random but intuitively do not appear random to us. If we flip a coin four times, the probability of producing four heads in a row is the same as the probability of producing the sequence head-tail-head-tail, even though the later sequence intuitively appears more likely. Random events produce data that is ‘lumpier’ or ‘less smooth’ than we expect it to be, and we often interpret this as something non-random.

Clumping illusions are fascinating, and have real world practical applications that include helping to explain why poker machine players feel they can ‘read’ the machines, professional sport coaching applications such as the debunked ‘hot hand’ theory in professional basketball, and why so many people complained to Apple about the iPod shuffle. However, that is a subject for another day. Suffice to say, it is well established that random events often don’t intuitively feel random to us.

Some people will get sick after receiving a vaccine in the same way that some people who have not received a vaccine will get sick, because people sometimes get sick. What you want to see is people who have received a vaccine not being diagnosed with any condition at a higher rate than for people who have not received the vaccine.

When conducting initial safety and efficacy testing on a vaccine, there are literally thousands of potential medical conditions that could be recorded following administration of the vaccine. The probability that in any trial you will, by pure chance, produce a higher-than-average figure (or data clump) in one or more of these possible medical conditions is quite high. Remember, if the trial produces an increase in any medical condition, it will be reported.

Smaller sample sizes produce more variation around the mean. If you flip a coin ten times, the chance of getting 70% or more heads (7 or more out of 10) is about 17%. If you flip a coin a hundred times, the chance of getting 70% or more heads (70 or more out of 100) is less than 0.004%. In medical research, you should always be suspicious of small numbers.

The concern about the Astra Zeneca vaccine was caused by nine cases of a rare blood clotting disorder amongst people who had received the vaccine in Europe. This was a greater number than expected, but also a very small number. To the scientific community, this appeared to be a normal statistical anomaly as commonly occurs in these sorts of trials. Subsequent data as more people have been vaccinated has shown that the rate of these blood clotting issues amongst people who have received the Astra Zeneca vaccine is actually slightly lower than would have been expected. This has confirmed that the initial nine cases were just a statistical anomaly.

Almost all journalists have a background in humanities, as do the vast majority of politicians. Unfortunately, the results of vaccine trials and other medical research are often publicly discussed by people who are not professionally trained to understand the results they are commenting on.

Hopefully this provides some explanation as to why some press and politicians reacted to the initial vaccine trial results with alarm while the scientific community remained much more cautious.

Ten years ago.

Ten years ago, PDG Andrew Suggett bought us the sad news that Apex was closing down. Many members of our club were first exposed to service clubs through Apex and we have wonderful memories of our time in Apex. I can’t help but think that without a generation of people in their 20’s and 30’s being involved in Apex, it is so much harder for Rotary to get people involved in service clubs later in life.

Is there an opportunity for Rotary to fill this gap, with Rotaract, satellite Rotary clubs or stand-alone Rotary clubs targeting people in their 20’s and 30’s? How many RYPEN, RYLA and Rotary Exchange graduates would enjoy being involved in a Rotary club designed for people in their 20’s and 30’s? Have we explored this idea as much as we could have? Could this be a combined project of the five group 5 clubs?

Titus.

Our President brings us some Titus this week.

St Kilda (73) v Melbourne (91)

What the hell is this Melbourne?

Falling behind in a game, coming back, absorbing the pressure of an opponent without conceding runs of eight goals.

It’s very confusing.

It was certainly helped by key outs for the Saints, but these are things the Dees usually never do no matter the opponent.

Then up forward you have Kysaiah Pickett who seems to have the energy of the Sun, and who’s every touch seems to be potentially the highlight of the year.

It’s one thing to win, but for it to be exciting? I’m not built for this kind of stuff.

I’m not getting ahead of myself, but does anyone know any good tattooists?

St Kilda’s night was best displayed on Brett Ratten’s face, which oscillated from frustrated, to angry, to a furious stare that scared me, even watching the replay on TV.

I would prefer to be in the Brisbane lockdown than St Kilda’s player’s review today.

Sunday

Hawthorn (49) v Richmond (78)

Here’s my hot takes from this game:

· Richmond are a better team than Hawthorn

· Richmond has better players than Hawthorn

· Hawthorn didn’t give up

· Footy is better with a crowd

· Watching footy with Richmond supporters was funnier when they were terrible

· Watching footy with Hawthorn supporters is funnier when they’re terrible

· Not buying your shout when you’re in a round should be illegal with significant jail time

· Dustin Martin seems to be trying to clock Goal Assists this season just for something to do

Thank you to all those who contributed this week.

Please send contributions to;

bulletin.warrnamboolcentral@gmail.com