Around here - Snap 3 day Lockdown - Brisbane

Around here it seems that one State or another is going into lockdown.  Brisbane, Queensland has been very lucky in the fact that we were in 2 months lock down April/May 2020 like the rest of Australia and from time to time we do a snap 3 day lockdown which isn't too bad.  About 4 weeks ago we went into a 3 day lockdown that extended to a 4 day lockdown however these short lockdowns seem manageable.  We've had a few this year and they are short and sharp and get us through safely.  Yesterday the 31st July we went into another 3 day lockdown from 4pm for 11 of our Local Government areas as follows:-

• Brisbane City
• Moreton Bay
• Gold Coast
• Ipswich
• Lockyer Valley
• Logan City
• Noosa Shire
• Redland City
• Scenic Rim
• Somerset
• Sunshine Coast

This latest outbreak is due to a University Medical Student who tutored a student from Indooroopilly High School and then the whole family contracted Covid.  This is the very contagious "Delta" variant so it's way more serious than our April/May Australia wide lockdown from 2020.  There is no school on Monday, only students of essential workers and on-line learning will commence on Tuesday.   Masks must be worn by teachers and students from now on at school when they go back. [Updated - Queensland Health think the family gave Covid to the Medical Student who came to tutor - we are now in further lockdown until Sunday 8th August, 2020 at 4.00 pm.]

Personally I think this lockdown will extend to 2-4 weeks at the very least as this school had open days for parents and Universities and businesses came to talk to parents about careers so lots of outside people into the schools from all over Brisbane and those people would have gone back to work places and businesses.  The good thing is we have gone into lockdown about 2 days after the first case however there will be many more cases arising from this outbreak.  They believe the medical student caught it from returning overseas Covid patients who may have been in hospital.  They are still trying to work on that link in the middle.

Sydney are having a lot of trouble trying to manage this Delta variant and they have been in lockdown for 6 weeks now with another 3 to go before further decisions are made.  Their main problem is at the moment is the number of cases that have been in the community.  So if there are 200 cases and they are all at home in isolation, you have a chance to get on top of things however everyday half of the cases have been out and about in the community so it's just spreading like wild fire every day.

Whilst we lead fairly normal lives in Queensland, we have been mask wearing for the past 4 weeks because of NSW border hoppers however we have managed to not have any outbreaks.  At the end of the day, we are still in the middle of a PANDEMIC and sometimes we forget that because we generally lead pretty normal lives.  Just think, my kids, kids will be learning about this pandemic in their history lessons in years to come.  Learning about how people had to stay home, no one could travel overseas or for that matter Interstate as travel plans get interrupted all the time due to Interstate border closures.  So whilst we wish this pandemic would end...we, the whole world are still pretty much in the middle of it and not out the other side by any means so I'm not surprized life is not back to normal.  I have had my first AstraZeneca jab with the second one due in about four weeks time. 

So on with some photos of what's been happening at home.

This was my sourdough bread using the long oval banneton however I needed to do my cut deeper on this one.  The bread was delicious and we had it with minestrone soup for dinner.

Sourdough bread and minestrone soup for dinner.

This is one of our regular recipes from the Thermomix Book "Five Seed Bread"

These are the micro-herbs that I wrote about in this post.

Lovely gifted lemons from my friend who has a fabulous lemon and lime tree.

Multi-Grain Sourdough Bread - this one looks better than it was because I used a different recipe from another person and it was too dense so I am going to stick to Elaine Boddy's recipes.  I'm loving the rustic artisan look to my breads though that makes me very happy.