Australian Response

ceadaoin.

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Another lockdown for Victoria over 26 cases, complete with panic buying. So 2020 lol

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/victoria-covid-cases-melbourne-outbreak-lockdown-restrictions/100169172


https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-victoria-lockdown-update-panic-buying-toilet-paper-stripped-from-melbourne-shelves/86af445d-4de5-4b06-bc7e-d43c5a6700d4

What # would you wait for before locking down or would you lockdown at all?

Cake Man

derfderf wrote: »

Before covid I would have went home, no question. It's always touch and go if you'd make it in time, but I'd try
I looked in to to this time. The options to return to Ireland were limited. Nothing flying west, everything was through the US. Several connecting flights, and changes of airport. 58 hours travel time. Overall cost was about $16k (including return flight through abu ahabi).

That wasn't why I didn't go though. So many people are stuck overseas due to canceled flights, who knows how long it would take to secure a flight. Then you have the 2 weeks quarantine. I have a 2 year old son, I can't spend two months away.

Yeah this was my exact situation too recently. My dad passed away three weeks ago at home (not from Covid but he did pick it up while in the hospital for another matter which then delayed his chemo sessions and other scans as doctors couldn't do anything until he somewhat recovered from it, which surely didn't help). Considered trying to get home but as you mentioned above between crazy flight routes and costs (obviously you don't think too much of money at a time like that but it's still a consideration), not knowing how long it would be before getting back into the country and then having to quarantine on my own in a hotel room for two weeks stewing about everything that happened - I decided to stay and had to make do with streaming the funeral online.

Peregrinus

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Another lockdown for Victoria over 26 cases, complete with panic buying. So 2020 lol

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/victoria-covid-cases-melbourne-outbreak-lockdown-restrictions/100169172


https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-victoria-lockdown-update-panic-buying-toilet-paper-stripped-from-melbourne-shelves/86af445d-4de5-4b06-bc7e-d43c5a6700d4

Hey, don't knock it. Early lockdowns as a strategy have generally worked extremely well in Australia. They have been effective at containing outbreaks while they are still small and, because they are effective, they don't last long, and so their social economic impact is modest.

Contrast the UK, where the government has systematically resisting locking down until too late. 130,000 people have died and GDP declined by 8.7% in a year - its largest annual fall ever. (Corresponding figure for Australia: 1%.)

If you're going to err, definitely better to err on the side of locking down too early rather than too late. But I remain to be convinced that there is any error at all in the Australia policy of rapid lockdown.

wassie

ceadaoin. wrote: »

Another lockdown for Victoria over 26 cases, complete with panic buying. So 2020 lol

Australia -"Hotel quanrantine. So 2020 lol"

.....and then laugh louder to see our half arsed attempt at it.

Noo

If it means that they get their arse into gear regarding the vaccine rollout then so be it.

is_that_so

Another fortress Australia piece.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57224635

is_that_so

is_that_so wrote: »

Another fortress Australia piece.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57224635

its great, it exposes the open borders crowd as the weirdo nutters they are.

Critics argue the extension of closed borders will cause long-lasting damage to the economy, young people and separated families. It also tarnishes Australia's character as open and free, they say.

Calls for a clear plan to pull Australia back into the world are growing, as the country wrestles with an uncomfortable tension - balancing the safety of closed borders against what is lost by living in isolation.

"A Fortress Australia with the drawbridge pulled up indefinitely is not where we want to be," says former Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane.

Who thinks policy should be determined by a race discrimination guy during a global pandemic?

lets all be diseased together rather than risk the chance of being called racist......because somehow its racist to be sensible during a pandemic. That seems to be the gist of the article.

Chivito550

From my experience of living there for over 3 years, Australia is quite an insular place. Lots of people who live there genuinely believe they live in the best country on earth and see no reason to visit anywhere else, not unlike the attitude found in USA. There's not going to be huge appetite to open up the borders when that's a common attitude, one that is likely magnified tenfold since Covid started, as Australia have relative normality to the rest of the world. Add to that the fact many Australians don't see the need to get vaccinated as there is no pandemic visible in their country, and Australia is looking at many years sitting on the sidelines. Hugely successful short term approach, but it could backfire in the long run. Time will tell.

I'm not saying their approach is right or wrong for the record.

ArthurDayne

Peregrinus wrote: »

Hey, don't knock it. Early lockdowns as a strategy have generally worked extremely well in Australia. They have been effective at containing outbreaks while they are still small and, because they are effective, they don't last long, and so their social economic impact is modest.

Contrast the UK, where the government has systematically resisting locking down until too late. 130,000 people have died and GDP declined by 8.7% in a year - its largest annual fall ever. (Corresponding figure for Australia: 1%.)

If you're going to err, definitely better to err on the side of locking down too early rather than too late. But I remain to be convinced that there is any error at all in the Australia policy of rapid lockdown.

I think the inference of there being “no error at all” in the Australian policy remains to be fully appreciated. Their strategy is one that will almost unavoidably have to be more drawn out because letting the horses bolt now, with more infectious variants doing the rounds, could get very messy very quickly. A highly efficient vaccine rollout will be key for them.

But, at this point in time, I’d accept that their approach has undoubtedly had advantages. That said, I do also think as a country they have geopolitical advantages which assist in pursuing the policy which they did versus a place like Europe where you have a relatively small continental shelf of several hundred million people, with a lot of densely populated cities (particularly the stretch from Northern Italy up through to Northern England), a great level of relatively easy and fast inter-State movement, and much more political sensitivity and balancing of interests involved in closing borders etc. Not to defend Johnson per se, and obviously the UK has an advantage in the form of the Channel but, even at that, its geopolitical situation is still hugely different from Australia.

political analyst

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0527/1224148-coronavirus-melbourne/

Victoria's Acting Premier James Merlino said the conservative federal government's sluggish vaccine roll-out was partly to blame for the latest lockdown.

So there's a small risk that a vaccine will cause a blood clot - but the risk is much lower than that of walking across a road while adhering to the Safe Cross Code.

People in Australia and other countries in which vaccine hesitancy is widespread need to ask themselves if they are willing to go back into and out of lockdown for the foreseeable future. The fools!

Peregrinus

ArthurDayne wrote: »

I think the inference of there being “no error at all” in the Australian policy remains to be fully appreciated. Their strategy is one that will almost unavoidably have to be more drawn out because letting the horses bolt now, with more infectious variants doing the rounds, could get very messy very quickly. A highly efficient vaccine rollout will be key for them.

But, at this point in time, I’d accept that their approach has undoubtedly had advantages. That said, I do also think as a country they have geopolitical advantages which assist in pursuing the policy which they did versus a place like Europe where you have a relatively small continental shelf of several hundred million people, with a lot of densely populated cities (particularly the stretch from Northern Italy up through to Northern England), a great level of relatively easy and fast inter-State movement, and much more political sensitivity and balancing of interests involved in closing borders etc. Not to defend Johnson per se, and obviously the UK has an advantage in the form of the Channel but, even at that, its geopolitical situation is still hugely different from Australia.

All good points. I’ve said before other countries could learn from Australia, but the lesson they should learn is not “slavishly copy Australia”. That Australia’s strategies have worked so well is due in part to Australia’s geographical and strategic situation, and the strategies used by Australia would need adaptation for other countries that are differently situated.

Nor would I argue that there has been “no error at all” in Australia’s handling of the pandemic. Rollout of the vaccine is not going well; this is due at least in part to significant government failure.

But not just to government failure. Right now we’re in a sort of Catch-22 situation in which (a) Australia’s borders won’t reopen until vaccination is well-advanced; but (b) people have not been rushing to vaccinate, because on the one hand they are concerned about side-effects and the government has not made it easy, and on the other hand they see no need to rush because there is no immediate advantage to being vaccinated - you still won’t be able to travel for many months yet, and lots of people have no intention of travelling anyway.

The recent outbreak in Melbourne might be a circuit-breaker here; reportedly, vaccination clinics which were doing slow business now have queues round the block, because people can see a reason to get vaccinated. But this may fade quite quickly if the outbreak is contained and the lockdown is lifted in 7 days. Plus, so far it hasn’t been reflected in other cities where there is no outbreak.

So the government is going to have to find some strategy to improve both numbers and speed of vaccination. Early signs are not encouraging; the federal government seems to be less concerned with doing this and more concerned with positioning itself to blame the state governments for the inadequacies of the vaccination programme.

Gael23

They seem to have put all tier eggs in the AstraZeneca basket which is far from helping matters

Peregrinus

Gael23 wrote: »

They seem to have put all tier eggs in the AstraZeneca basket which is far from helping matters

They put quite a lot of eggs into the UQ basket which, if it had come off, would have been very nice. But late in the day the UQ vaccine was abandoned and the Australians had to scramble for other vaccines, with other governments having got in ahead of them.

I believe that fairly early on Pfizer approached the Australians with a view to a partnership. They thought Australia's handling of quarantine and infection control had been exemplary, and they could be a trailblazer with vaccination as well. But the Australian government had other ideas - approached it in a very high-handed manner and wanted to impose conditions that Pfizer felt were unreasonable, so Pfizer lost interest and did their partnership with Israel instead.

is_that_so

Peregrinus wrote: »

They put quite a lot of eggs into the UQ basket which, if it had come off, would have been very nice. But late in the day the UQ vaccine was abandoned and the Australians had to scramble for other vaccines, with other governments having got in ahead of them.

I believe that fairly early on Pfizer approached the Australians with a view to a partnership. They thought Australia's handling of quarantine and infection control had been exemplary, and they could be a trailblazer with vaccination as well. But the Australian government had other ideas - approached it in a very high-handed manner and wanted to impose conditions that Pfizer felt were unreasonable, so Pfizer lost interest and did their partnership with Israel instead.

Just as well they did as there is very little to be learnt about vaccine performance from Australia's approach. It's surprising that Pfizer even considered that given the far more valuable real world data of a country with a high level of the disease and the opportunity to see how a vaccine can work on infection rates.

mandrake04

Chivito550 wrote: »

From my experience of living there for over 3 years, Australia is quite an insular place. Lots of people who live there genuinely believe they live in the best country on earth and see no reason to visit anywhere else, not unlike the attitude found in USA. There's not going to be huge appetite to open up the borders when that's a common attitude, one that is likely magnified tenfold since Covid started, as Australia have relative normality to the rest of the world. Add to that the fact many Australians don't see the need to get vaccinated as there is no pandemic visible in their country, and Australia is looking at many years sitting on the sidelines. Hugely successful short term approach, but it could backfire in the long run. Time will tell.

I'm not saying their approach is right or wrong for the record.

Well I'm not sure if your math's is up to scratch but I would like to remind you, Australia death rate is 35 per million and Irelands 991. If Australia had taken Irelands approach they would have 26,000 deaths instead of 910. I'm sorry but 26,000 deaths is totally unacceptable, the whole reason why governments around the world are taking the action they do is public health reason is not? Ireland is lucky they implemented tough restrictions as they did otherwise their death count would have been much higher like UK and USA.

If the shoe was on the other foot Ireland would have had 175 deaths not near 5000 and minimal lockdowns to go with it. How good would that been?

So although not a perfect approach its still looking better than most other nations so far, its too soon to say wether there can be a clean exit for any nation at this time come the end of the year there will still be many restrictions for many countries especially developing countries but even in highly vaccinated countries I expect there to be some sort travel restrictions with unvaccinated countries, this idea that the rest of the world is going to return to normal by the end of the year or even through next year simply wont happen.

mandrake04

Peregrinus wrote: »

They put quite a lot of eggs into the UQ basket which, if it had come off, would have been very nice. But late in the day the UQ vaccine was abandoned and the Australians had to scramble for other vaccines, with other governments having got in ahead of them.

I believe that fairly early on Pfizer approached the Australians with a view to a partnership. They thought Australia's handling of quarantine and infection control had been exemplary, and they could be a trailblazer with vaccination as well. But the Australian government had other ideas - approached it in a very high-handed manner and wanted to impose conditions that Pfizer felt were unreasonable, so Pfizer lost interest and did their partnership with Israel instead.

I thought the reason was CSL were not capable of manufacturing mRNA vaccines and it was too difficult to retool the plant, so they bet on AZ being a viral vector for domestic production and QU was to come later.

They also bought Novavax which is yet to be approved.

is_that_so wrote: »

Just as well they did as there is very little to be learnt about vaccine performance from Australia's approach. It's surprising that Pfizer even considered that given the far more valuable real world data of a country with a high level of the disease and the opportunity to see how a vaccine can work on infection rates.

I agree there would be little value in running a trial in a low prevalence environment, but what is more interesting is the Israel were the poster boys but now stuck at 60% vaccinated and going nowhere so we get to see if herd immunity can be achieved at below 70%

Chivito550

mandrake04 wrote: »

Well I'm not sure if your math's is up to scratch but I would like to remind you, Australia death rate is 35 per million and Irelands 991. If Australia had taken Irelands approach they would have 26,000 deaths instead of 910. I'm sorry but 26,000 deaths is totally unacceptable, the whole reason why governments around the world are taking the action they do is public health reason is not? Ireland is lucky they implemented tough restrictions as they did otherwise their death count would have been much higher like UK and USA.

If the shoe was on the other foot Ireland would have had 175 deaths not near 5000 and minimal lockdowns to go with it. How good would that been?

So although not a perfect approach its still looking better than most other nations so far, its too soon to say wether there can be a clean exit for any nation at this time come the end of the year there will still be many restrictions for many countries especially developing countries but even in highly vaccinated countries I expect there to be some sort travel restrictions with unvaccinated countries, this idea that the rest of the world is going to return to normal by the end of the year or even through next year simply wont happen.

Much too simplified. Overall mortality in Ireland rose by just 631 compared to 2019.

31,765 in 2020, 31,134 in 2019, 31,116 in 2018.

ongarite

mandrake04 wrote: »

I agree there would be little value in running a trial in a low prevalence environment, but what is more interesting is the Israel were the poster boys but now stuck at 60% vaccinated and going nowhere so we get to see if herd immunity can be achieved at below 70%

Israel is fully vaccinated in adults.
You are mixing up total population & percentage of population which are adults.
They have huge under 18 population which for which vaccine have not being approved for or developed for.
Can't ever see under 12 getting vaccinated.

Peregrinus

ongarite wrote: »

Israel is fully vaccinated in adults.
You are mixing up total population & percentage of population which are adults.
They have huge under 18 population which for which vaccine have not being approved for or developed for.
Can't ever see under 12 getting vaccinated.

Why not? They get vaccinated for measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, typhoid and more besides. There's no general principle against vaccinating children.

SFAIK no vaccine has yet been approved for use in infants or preadolescent children, but that's no because of a presumption that it mustn't happen.

MadYaker

Chivito550 wrote: »

Much too simplified. Overall mortality in Ireland rose by just 631 compared to 2019.

31,765 in 2020, 31,134 in 2019, 31,116 in 2018.

Where'd you get the 2020 figures from?

normanoffside

MadYaker wrote: »

Where'd you get the 2020 figures from?

The CSO have published the final 2020 numbers

Chivito550

Peak stupidity

https://twitter.com/Stevo7AFL/status/1399966204920406017?s=19

josip

Melbourne is a bit stuck it seems.
With only 2% of Australians vaccinated, it looks like they'll have to keep their country isolated and regionally locking down for quite some time yet.
That's going to be a very hard sell domestically when the rest of the world is on a different trajectory.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/02/victoria-covid-update-melbourne-lockdown-extended-as-state-seeks-federal-payments-for-workers

Avon8

Chivito550 wrote: »

From my experience of living there for over 3 years, Australia is quite an insular place. Lots of people who live there genuinely believe they live in the best country on earth and see no reason to visit anywhere else, not unlike the attitude found in USA. There's not going to be huge appetite to open up the borders when that's a common attitude, one that is likely magnified tenfold since Covid started, as Australia have relative normality to the rest of the world.

I think this is a good point. "It's a great country matey, isn't it" is something you'd hear all the time, often from people who'd never once left. When you have that prevailing attitude nationally and in media, coupled with a rising xenophobia in a minority, it's easy to see why the approach has been so popular locally. It's easy to read the headlines from afar and call western Europe a horror show (when death rates for 2020 were well within normal) or say the people there have lost a year of their lives when the majority of places outside of Ireland have had mild or short lockdowns.

As you say, hugely successful short-term when so much was unknown early, and questionable now and longterm. I'd have slightly preferred to have spent 2020 back in Aus but would be more optimistic for the future here generally

charlie_says

Australia going to attempt to lockdown better than everyone else, harder, faster.

100% will work

ShineOn7

josip wrote: »

With only 2% of Australians vaccinated

Why is such a Granny State country so low in Vaccination numbers?

I'd have thought they'd be up there with the UK and Israel for inoculations

ceadaoin.

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Why is such a Granny State country so low in Vaccination numbers?

I'd have thought they'd be up there with the UK and Israel for inoculations

I guess maybe with such low prevalence of the virus there and with no solid plans for when the borders will reopen, a lot of people aren't in any rush to get vaccinated and probably don't see the point. Whatever the reason, they are in a trap of their own making, the world is moving on without them.

When I was there I honestly was shocked by the open racism and xenophobia so I'm sure many are actually happy with the current situation of being closed off.

Pauliedragon

ceadaoin. wrote: »

I guess maybe with such low prevalence of the virus there and with no solid plans for when the borders will reopen, a lot of people aren't in any rush to get vaccinated and probably don't see the point. Whatever the reason, they are in a trap of their own making, the world is moving on without them.

When I was there I honestly was shocked by the open racism and xenophobia so I'm sure many are actually happy with the current situation of being closed off.

I lived over there for the guts of 2 decades until a few years ago and yes they can be insular and racist but no better or worse then Ireland. I left in 1999 when there was very little foreigners here but **** me over the years and obviously I was home retalively regularly all I hear from a lot of people is Polish this and Africans that. Ruining jobs for Irish people. Get rid of all the foreigners it'll solve the housing crisis talking to someone they know spent half my life as an immigrant. Nobody ever says get rid of English people living here why is that? Is it because they are white and speak english as a 1st language?
I'm not in any way religious but I do like the saying "let he who is without sin etc"

Frank Bullitt

josip wrote: »

Melbourne is a bit stuck it seems.
With only 2% of Australians vaccinated, it looks like they'll have to keep their country isolated and regionally locking down for quite some time yet.
That's going to be a very hard sell domestically when the rest of the world is on a different trajectory.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/02/victoria-covid-update-melbourne-lockdown-extended-as-state-seeks-federal-payments-for-workers

What the hell? Is that the actual number???

mandrake04

Frank Bullitt wrote: »

What the hell? Is that the actual number???

15% first dose, 2.6% second.