There is no formal meeting this week and no ‘coffee conversation’ catch up due to COVID-19 social distancing restrictions.
At our meeting last Thursday 23 April, there was discussion about the difficulty of fundraising due to COVID-19 issues. It was suggested and supported by the members attending that during the period of social distancing members donate $10 per meeting to the Club’s fundraising Club to assist our fundraising objectives.
At the April Board meeting, the Board supported the proposal that all active members voluntarily donate $10 per meeting from and including the meeting of 23 April 2020 to 30 June 2020 to the Rotary Club of Adelaide Light fundraising account: BSB 085-458, Account Number 20-505-9719, with the members name recorded. Payments can be made either per meeting or in advance. As the donation is voluntarily, there will be no follow up for non-payments.
Applications for Rotary Foundation District Grants usually close in late August so it is timely for us to start preparations now towards an application for a Rotary Foundation Grant in the 2020-21 Rotary Year. At our planning meeting last week, Margie Steffens outlined some equipment needs for the Community Outreach Dental Program that would benefit the program’s provision of dental health for disadvantaged South Australians. These include a fold up Chair that could be used as an additional dental Chair and scaling equipment. A proposal with costing and funding options will need to be undertaken in preparation for a grant application.
Upcoming meetings
Here are the meeting dates for the next two months:
Many of us have an interest in following “the numbers” for COVID-19, not least because what happens from here may have impacts on our own health and well-being. Last week, I sent you the plot that is attached below and it occurs to me it might need a little explanation. The numbers below refer to the situation on 23 April.
The plot shows the total number of confirmed cases for each country, standardised by population. For example, we have 6800 confirmed cases for 25 million people, so the number “per 100,000” is 6800/250=27.2.
The vertical axis is on what is known as a “log scale”. What this means is that it is on a multiplicative scale, so the axis is marked in equal increments that are labelled 1,10,100,1000, so each equal increment corresponds to a factor of 10. The reason for this is that epidemics like this tend to grow at a multiplicative rate – if each person infected gives the virus to 2 others, say, then there will be 3 infected; if those 2 each give it to 2 others, there will be an extra 4, making 7; those 4 give it to 8, making 15; the 8 give it to 16, making 31; and so on. It basically doubles at each “generation” of the virus. If we use this “log scale”, the doubling will come out as a straight line. A really steep straight line, such as the early days for Spain, Italy, UK, US, represent about a 30% increase each day, so that the numbers doubled every 3 days. That’s what happens here without any constraints. With social distancing, the line flattens (flattening the curve), so reducing it to a 10% increase per day leads to a doubling every 7 days. The aim of course is to get the % increase as low as possible. We are now below a 1% increase per day.
The lowest curve is South Korea (I haven’t shown China since I don’t believe their numbers!). But Australia and NZ have similarly flat curves out to the right and very low infection rates overall. Its perhaps hard to see in this plot but Spain is at the top followed by Italy. The US and UK are not far behind but, worryingly, they are still going up quite steeply (about 10% per day).
I haven’t given the numbers of deaths here but that tells an even stronger story. In Australia, we have about 70 deaths. The US is 14 times our size, so if they were on a par with us they would have about 1000 deaths. But they have 40,000 deaths, so it is reasonable to suppose that their infection rate is about 40 times as high as ours. (Part of this high death rate may be due to them not being able to care for patients so well because of the enormous patient load).
In Australia, the death rate is close to 1% of confirmed cases and we believe we probably have recorded most of the symptomatic cases (asymptomatic cases are another story!). On that basis, 40,000 deaths in the US would equate to about 4 million symptomatic cases, whereas their testing only gives about 800,000 confirmed cases. This is a measure of how poorly resourced their testing has been relative to ours. Unhappily, when you repeat these numbers for the UK, it is even worse.
Why did we do so much better? It is pretty clear that the virus in the US and the UK started really getting going about 3-4 weeks earlier than it did in Australia and NZ. Prior to social distancing, it doubled about every 3 days – say, 4 times in one week, 16 in 2 weeks, 64 times in 3 weeks – and we “locked down” about the same time as the US, so it is not surprising that they have 40 times as many cases as we have. They needed the lockdown to occur about 3-4 weeks earlier than they did. Trump and Johnson were missing in action and didn’t take it seriously until far too late. We also had the great advantage of a coordinated response AND adequate protective materials (at least partly because of the much smaller load on the system).
If there are 4 million symptomatic cases in the US now, and many more that are asymptomatic, it is quite possible that the US will end up in a few months with 50% of the population immune to the disease and then herd immunity starts to kick in and it will gradually die out there. That is a problem for us. If we wipe it out in Australia and NZ but only 1-2% have immunity, then we have an almost complete population that is vulnerable. In the absence of a vaccine, that is particularly dangerous. It means that any outbreak can escalate very quickly, especially once we have relaxed those internal controls. I think it will be a good while before we will be able to open our borders.
In some respects, this is very encouraging, but we can also see that there are dangers ahead if we let down our guard.
For the benefit of members, we will aim to give the Duty Roster a few weeks ahead - see below.
Responsibility
Chairperson
Attendance
Attendance
Furniture/Hosting
Bottles/ cans
Bread Run
Chairman: Meet/greet speaker for the meeting; introduce and thank speaker. Preparation:- find details about the speaker prior to the meeting. Attendance: Set up reception table (attendance sheet; members list – re -payments; guest welcome sheet; money); register member payments/ apologies/ guests. Hosting: Welcome all at the door; ensure speaker and guests are introduced to appropriatepersons. Furniture: Flags; banner display; raffle balls; collection boxes; Rotary theme banner; gong and hammer; lectern position before and returned after the meeting. Computerset up – Connect to projector. Switch on. Hold function key & press F5 twice. Bottles/cans: Collect bags of bottles/cans at meeting and take to recycle centre for refund, pass refund and empty bags to David Rowe at next meeting. Rotaract: Meets alternate Mondays at 6pm (for a 630pm start) at the General HavelockHotel in Hutt Street. Bread Run: Sundays, meet outside Romeo's, North Adelaide at 4:55pm
Members rostered for Thursday morning duty are asked to be in attendance by 6.45am
United in the spirit of Service we value truth, fairness and friendship; and we welcome the opportunity that Rotary gives us to contribute our talents and resources in support of others.
Rotary Club of Adelaide Light Mission Statement
To be recognised as the Service Club of Choice in the Eastern Precinct of Adelaide because we are a Friendly Breakfast Club that appeals to a broad range of busy people who want to make a difference to local and international communities.
