Australian Response

Mehapoy · 01-07-2021 2:26am

Calahonda52 wrote: »

..
You are neglecting tourism as well as the 100's of 1000's of foreign student attending Oz universities, paying full fare.
You also ignoring the xx's of 1000's of folk who travel and do slave labour in the fields.
The students

As to this this piece ......

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57647418

if the side effect of the pandemic is to wean oz universities from being dependent on foreign student fees for survival it would be a result for all Australians i think.

Peregrinus · 01-07-2021 3:08am

Mehapoy wrote: »

The other strategies are locking down borders both internally and externally, denying citizens rights to return to their own country, quarantining people in hotels which has caused the outbreaks and severely effecting small business owners for years to come. But hey Australia looks great in those tables with 0 infections, kinda like a reverse olympic medal table thats everywhere every 4 years.

It looks well in tables because it works and, obviously, strategies that work are greatly to be preferred over strategies that don't.

Mehapoy wrote: »

Even now the whole confusion over AZ vaccine for under 40s with conflicting advice everywhere will hamper getting anywhere near enough % of the pop vaccinated, so its closed borders, lockdown and dont leave your state for the forseeable.

No argument here; the vaccine rollout has been a sh1tshow. But that's a problem that can only be resolved by improving the vaccine rollout; relaxing the pandemic control measures instead will obviously make matters worse, not better.

Peregrinus · 01-07-2021 3:12am

Mehapoy wrote: »

if the side effect of the pandemic is to wean oz universities from being dependent on foreign student fees for survival it would be a result for all Australians i think.

Australian universities are dependent on foreign student fees because it is a very intentional government policy that they should be; their whole public funding mechanism is based on this.

If that's no longer viable - and I don't think it is - then the outcomes are either (a) a new funding mechanism (which requires the political will to provide one) or (b) a large contraction of the higher education sector.

I think option (b) would be very bad for Australia, but I fear the present junta think that it would be very good for them, which means they are unlikely to go for option (a).

derfderf · 01-07-2021 5:48am

Mehapoy wrote: »

The other strategies are locking down borders both internally and externally, denying citizens rights to return to their own country, quarantining people in hotels which has caused the outbreaks and severely effecting small business owners for years to come.

Quarantining people in hotels has caused the outbreaks? The other option is letting them quarantine at home, or no quarantine. There would be far more outbreaks without it.

wassie · 02-07-2021 8:08am

Australian Govt has announced they have agreed in principle on a 4 Phase plan transform the country into a vaccinated nation that manages COVID-19 with few restrictions.

This would be in line with the Govts previous indications in their may federal budget which pointed to a wider reopening of the country in 2022.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-02/covid-lockdown-vaccination-phases-national-cabinet/100262808

"The changes will be reliant on vaccination rates, sending a clear message to Australians that eased restrictions and a post-COVID world are directly linked to their choice to get vaccinated."

gral6 · 02-07-2021 12:31pm

So, Australia is trying to isolate from the world even more now by cutting international arrivals again. I thought, something like that was only possible in North Korea. Total mess and complete lack of any strategy but zero covid.

Noo · 02-07-2021 1:45pm

gral6 wrote: »

So, Australia is trying to isolate from the world even more now by cutting international arrivals again. I thought, something like that was only possible in North Korea. Total mess and complete lack of any strategy but zero covid.

Care to comment on the rest of todays announcements for context, which literally focuses on the strategy for opening up? Whether people agree with it or not, or how successful it will actually be is yet to be seen obviously, but how can you say Australia is trying to isolate from the world based today's announcements?

Edit: Also don't just read Irish articles on whats happening in Australia.

gral6 · 02-07-2021 2:52pm

Noo wrote: »

Care to comment on the rest of todays announcements for context, which literally focuses on the strategy for opening up? Whether people agree with it or not, or how successful it will actually be is yet to be seen obviously, but how can you say Australia is trying to isolate from the world based today's announcements?

Edit: Also don't just read Irish articles on whats happening in Australia.

Welcome to North Korea lads.
''Australia announced a dramatic cut in the number of people who will be allowed to enter the country, as it struggles to contain coronavirus clusters that plunged major cities into lockdown.'' :pac:

MadYaker · 02-07-2021 3:58pm

gral6 wrote: »

Welcome to North Korea lads.
''Australia announced a dramatic cut in the number of people who will be allowed to enter the country, as it struggles to contain coronavirus clusters that plunged major cities into lockdown.'' :pac:

What sort of bizarre agenda are you pursuing here? They’ve had their freedom curtailed a lot less than us and most other countries. I’d happily have sacrificed international travel if it meant we could’ve spent as little time in lockdown as they have but that wasn’t an option for us.

ceadaoin. · 02-07-2021 4:37pm

So what about the tens of thousands of Australians who are stuck abroad and can't get back? Suck it up even longer? Many of them no longer have visas to be in the countries they're in. Can they claim asylum or something?

MadYaker · 02-07-2021 7:59pm

Is that actually happening? My understanding was that people who are citizens can return, though they'd have to quarantine.

02-07-2021 10:12pm

MadYaker wrote: »

Is that actually happening? My understanding was that people who are citizens can return, though they'd have to quarantine.

The only thing stopping a citizen is if the flight they want to be on is full. That’s it.

You can travel to Australia if you are an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a New Zealand citizen usually resident in Australia.
Australia has strict border measures in place to protect the health of the Australian community. Very limited flights are currently available to and from Australia and you may not be able to travel at this time. See Smartraveller. Travel restrictions are subject to change. Please check back regularly. See: National Cabinet media statement.
Unless arriving on a quarantine-free flight from New Zealand, all travellers arriving in Australia, including Australian citizens, must quarantine for 14 days at a designated facility, such as a hotel in the city of arrival. See Coronavirus (COVID-19) advice for travellers.
You may be required to pay for the costs of your quarantine. To find out more about quarantine requirements, contact the relevant state or territory government health department.

https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/australian-citizen-or-permanent-resident

Chris_5339762 · 02-07-2021 10:20pm

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

The only thing stopping a citizen is if the flight they want to be on is full. That’s it.

...also the sheer cost of it. Fewer arrivals allowed means fewer people per flight, which means airlines cancelling flights with few business class people. For a good while there, maybe even now, unless you were paying business class fares your flight basically wasn't going.

Getting a slot is actually quite difficult, otherwise why would 30 - 40,000 people still be abroad wanting to come home?

Noo · 02-07-2021 11:26pm

ceadaoin. wrote: »

So what about the tens of thousands of Australians who are stuck abroad and can't get back? Suck it up even longer? Many of them no longer have visas to be in the countries they're in. Can they claim asylum or something?

Again, they literally said in the announcements that in order to mitigate the reduced entry numbers they plan on increasing repatriation flights.

Again, not saying its the right answer or its a perfect system. In just saying that it was addressed in someway...its hard it discuss the topic when people ignore the proposed plan in relation to that topic (this isnt in aimed at you, just a general pet peeve).

Like the other guy who has some agenda and sees the headline "australia to reduce international arrivals" and goes on some speil about having no covid exit strategy and turning into north korea, yet the entire announcement was literally to layout their covid exit strategy. How can you engage with that.

ceadaoin. · 03-07-2021 12:03am

MadYaker wrote: »

Is that actually happening? My understanding was that people who are citizens can return, though they'd have to quarantine.

Yes it is happening. technically they can return but the cost of flights is from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, numbers are limited and they can be cancelled at any time. That's why there are so many citizens stuck abroad. It will only get worse now with arrivals cut and fewer flights. Grand if you're rich and/or famous though, you don't even have to do the hotel quarantine then and can afford to pay for business class tickets.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/03/it-makes-me-sick-families-of-australians-stranded-overseas-devastated-after-arrivals-cap-slashed

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55851074

ceadaoin. · 03-07-2021 12:09am

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

The only thing stopping a citizen is if the flight they want to be on is full. That’s it.

https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/australian-citizen-or-permanent-resident

Lol, sure it is.

fun loving criminal · 03-07-2021 12:16am

Hope Australia will be able to get over their latest increase in cases. We wouldn't want an Aussie variant to spread. It would be quite aggressive in nature.

Wolf359f · 03-07-2021 12:24am

fun loving criminal wrote: »

Hope Australia will be able to get over their latest increase in cases. We wouldn't want an Aussie variant to spread. It would be quite aggressive in nature.

Would it be able to get out of Australia though?
I could have sworn I heard NPHET mention preparing for a rough flu season..... doesn't it come from Australia/Asia? How the **** can it spread and get out to the west with all the restrictions? Does it even have an animal host it can wait in for travel restrictions worldwide to lift?

Gael23 · 05-07-2021 11:59am

One only hopes that when they see the rest of the world moving on the Australian government will realise what they are doing isn’t the right course

is_that_so · 05-07-2021 4:11pm

Silly Hunger Games analogy aside there's quite a challenge for the vaccination programme. 7.2% fully vaccinated is very poor.

The race to obtain Covid-19 vaccine supply has been likened to the Hunger Games as Australia’s rollout continues to lag behind similar nations, with just 7.2% of the population fully vaccinated.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/05/australias-race-to-secure-covid-vaccine-supply-likened-to-hunger-games-as-rollout-crawls

wassie · 05-07-2021 6:02pm

The initial start to the programe was undoubtedly slow, but reporting it as a crawl at present is not representative of the current situation.

Yes 8.2m doses delivered so far, but this has ramped up in last couple of weeks (as supply increased) to a rate of 881,000 per week.

Putting in perspective, if Ireland could achieve that rate we'd have the whole country done in just over 5 weeks!

gral6 · 05-07-2021 7:45pm

Australia is an open air concentration camp now. No one is in, no one is out.

Peregrinus · 06-07-2021 1:56am

Wolf359f wrote: »

Would it be able to get out of Australia though?
I could have sworn I heard NPHET mention preparing for a rough flu season..... doesn't it come from Australia/Asia? How the **** can it spread and get out to the west with all the restrictions? Does it even have an animal host it can wait in for travel restrictions worldwide to lift?

Flu is endemic worldwide, and seasonal variants arise on all continents every year. Travel restrictions make it less likely that someone in Ireland will contract a variant occurring first in Australia but don't worry! There will be no shortage of locally-developed variants to meet demand.

Other Covid-related measures have been effective to reduce the spread of flu - constant handwashing, masks, staying at home, minimising social interactions, etc - and for that reason last winter's flue season was very mild indeed. One or two particularly nasty flu variants appear to have become extinct worldwide; this is thought to be a happy by-product of the Covid precautionary measures.

06-07-2021 2:26am

wassie wrote: »

The initial start to the programe was undoubtedly slow, but reporting it as a crawl at present is not representative of the current situation.

Yes 8.2m doses delivered so far, but this has ramped up in last couple of weeks (as supply increased) to a rate of 881,000 per week.

Putting in perspective, if Ireland could achieve that rate we'd have the whole country done in just over 5 weeks!

Except it’s the equivalent of 175k per week here. Half our rate which continues to accelerate

derfderf · 06-07-2021 11:01am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Except it’s the equivalent of 175k per week here. Half our rate which continues to accelerate

Well you would hope Ireland went all out with the vaccine with 50 times the case rate, and 30 times the death rate, that Australia had.

wassie · 06-07-2021 11:14am

Deleted User wrote: »

Except it’s the equivalent of 175k per week here. Half our rate which continues to accelerate

Australia is also accelerating now. As well as some initial low take up rates, they had significant supply issues as they were reliant on AZ.

They have since purchased 40 million doses of Pfizer and 25 million doses of the yet-to-be-approved Moderna vaccine. More than enough to vaccinate the entire population, but the bulk of the supplies are scheduled to arrive in the final three months of the year.

Going by this chart things are going in the right direction (didnt post the pic as it is too large).

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/styles/full__3500x3500__-_b/public/images/publications/2021/07/covid-19-vaccination-international-comparisons-at-equivalent-stages-of-rollout_1.jpg?itok=NhOHQOKf

fun loving criminal · 15-07-2021 8:41am

Here's something that has me very confused with what's going on in New South Wales.

They have similar hospital and ICU numbers to us.

New South Wales has 73 in hospital and 19 in ICU and ourselves with 73 and 20 in ICU.

But their infections kicked off a few weeks ago with their highest numbers last Monday which was over 100 cases. But with ourselves our case numbers have been jumping between 300-500 cases per day.

How can we have more infection but have similar hospital numbers? Makes me think that there's more people in Sydney who have it but maybe don't know it. Unless there's another reason for it?

FileNotFound · 15-07-2021 8:45am

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117611862#Comment_117611862

I assume our greater level of immunity impacts this.

Also will depend on their testing criteria. We are testing everyone and anyone. Some nations are symptomatic people only.

Just a guess mind you.

is_that_so · 15-07-2021 8:46am

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117611862#Comment_117611862

Their level of vaccination is very low so that would leave a lot more of the vulnerable groups at risk. The vast majority of our cases are now in the 18-30 group, who would be far less likely to need hospitalisation.

15-07-2021 8:46am

https://boards.ie/discussion/comment/117611862#Comment_117611862

Australian Response

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