Australian Response

So you think they should do less have a few more people dying every day? Why?

Ah yes nice, completely worth ruining peoples lives to save a few.

When do people think that international borders will reopen realistically ? As i cannot wait to emigrate. Christmas time? early - mid 22?

Realistically, never. I wouldn't take a chance to emigrate to Australia anyway. Only if people fine when they detained.

Are you trying to escape Australia? Surely trying to get into it?

The longest lockdown measures in Europe not enough for you, you need a top up? Bizarre.

Really there are different experiences when you talk of 'Australia', during the pandemic its been more like a nimber of countries. NSW and Victoria have accepted that zero covid is not going to be achievable as cases are climbing still in both. WA, QLD are different in that there are no cases of the virus so maintaining zero covid is their priority, they seem like they'll have shut borders, both internally and internationally, for awhile yet. If you listen to the rhetoric from Mcgowan it seems even with everybody who wants to be vaccinated done he will not be tolerating a case of covid so shut borders for quite a while yet there. In the case of QLD their premier has said that she won't open up until all children are 'protected', whether that means she wants under 12's vaccinated, when its not approved anywhere else in the world, i dont know but if she's talking like that they will have shut borders for a long time too, or until their tourism industry says enough is enough.

Yeah hurr durr, I'm just a big dumb idiot. Ffs.

Good luck to everyone in Australia, hopefully the dystopian police state is just a temporary state of affairs 👍

Ah yes but that wasn't a covid death, so it won't count for the leaderboards. Nor will the families who haven't been able to see eachother for 18 months due to border restrictions. The Australians who can't even afford to return home due to the cost of hotel quarantine. The families who have missed funerals etc. etc.

The Covid obsessed only see the leaderboards, not the other impacts.

I don't think we can say that Austrlian success in limiting infection "also led to their vaccine problems". They have vaccine problems because they don't have enough vaccines. That's because they stuffed up the procurement project. That wasn't a conseqence of succesful infection controls.

You mention vaccine hesitancy. We don't yet know how big a problem this might be in Australia yet, because the limiting factor has been constraint on supply. As supplies have increased, take-up has increased and, so far, as fast as the government can shovel it out, people are taking it up. So, whatever amount of vaccine hesitancy may or may not be out there, it hasn't yet had any practical effect - which means we are unable to measure it.

There's anecdotal evidence which is hard to evaluate, and there are surveys, etc, about attitudes to vaccination. But experience elsewhere suggests that these tend to be unreliable; French surveys a few months ago were suggesting something like 35% of the population were expressing vaccine hesitancy, but France has now outstripped the UK for percentage of the population vaccinated. It seems that what people say when asked in the abstract is not necessarily a reliable guide to what they will do when actually offered vaccination. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out in Australia.

Gosh. Noted right-wing commentator on noted right-wing TV channel mentions survey to which no link is provided and of which no details are given to enable those with an interest in the matter to inform themselves and make their own judgments.

Do you not recognise when you're being played, MilkyToast?

The problem is that Australia failed completely regarding the handing of the Coronavirus. They believed that the virus can be beaten only by quarantine and travel restrictions. They even went so far as to discussing jail time for Australians wanting to return from India, a proposal which was later scrapped.... ( This whole idea sounds even a bit fascist to me, as it sort of criminalizes returning citizens into their own country or sort of declaring your own citizens as persona non grata...) Also forbidding their won citizens and permanent residents to leave Australia is something I only knew from Eastern Europe under communism and behind the iron curtain.

On the one side, one can always argue that the virus was new, and nobody new, and better safe than sorry. The geographic location of both Australia and NZ make that thinking of isolation also possible.

However this would or may have worked with something like the Spanish flu or other strong flu-like viruses. The Coronavirus especially the Delta variant is totally different. Even more Australia failed in handling the Corona-crisis as they don't vaccinate the population or failed to vaccinate by the time every other developed nation would have. The population size of both Australia and NZ is not that high that one can't vaccinate 70 to 80% of the population, the only challenge is probably only going to be the vast distance.

I've never been to Australia, but always held a high regard for the country. However the handling of Coronavirus has put Australia way down on any ranking for me.

Apparently it's until the end of 2021.

I would largely believe that they would allow tourists in from 2022 onwards, if they are double vaccinated and the last vaccine is at least 2 weeks past.

It would seem practical to upload documents of vaccination into some online account and later on, get some kind of travel authorisation to enter.

Whether politicians and law makers would go along with that, is another debate.

Economically they would only hurt themselves if they keep to isolationism.

I would have thought their first decision would be how to allow their own people home rather than how to bring in tourists.

Australia never believed that the virus could be "beaten only by quarantine and travel restrictions"; the long-term plan was always herd immunity through vaccination. Auarantine and travel restrictions (and other pandemic control measures) were interim measures until that could be achieved. The problem is that through a combination of bad luck and incompetence they stuffed up the procurement of vaccine, which has left them reliant on quarantine and travel restrictions for longer than they would have wished or, I think, expected at the outset.

The thing is, the quarantine and travel restrictions have worked pretty well, and they continue to work well. Over the course of the pandemic Australia has had much less Covid infection, and many fewer Covid deaths, than comparable countries, and it has achieved this at a much lower fiscal and economic cost, and with much less limitation of people's lives. (Sure, our international travel has been heavily restricted, but in other areas of life we've had much less restriction than other countries). There's persistent denial about this in this thread.

But once you look at the facts openly and dispassionately, it's clear that, however poor Australia's vaccine procurement has been, (a) its pandemic control has been, and continues to be, very good, and (b) given its current situation, the rational choice for Australia is still to maintain its pandemic control measures until it achieves much higher levels of vaccination.