Australian Response

And the authoritarianism continues. This will definitely stop the virus and isn't just a pointless exercise in control, right? Hopefully none of those people are alcohol dependent or they might be in trouble.

We will if they insist on using a photo of VB, that stuff should just be banned outright.

I agree with you on this, but the real issue is whether its even possible for Australia to vaccinate a large enough amount of people in order to open up without a large covid wave. I'm not sure it is. We're currently in a wave despite a huge vaccine take up, and some small amounts of acquired immunity.

Vaccination should do two things — (1) reduce the size of the wave of infections that occurs when restrictions are lifted, and (2) reduce the severity of that wave of infections, so that a smaller proportion of the infected are hospitalised, receive intensive care, or die.

Obviously, the greater proportion of the population that you vaccinate, the more success you will have in achieving these two objectives.

Also obvious is that it will be some more months before Australia will have levels of vaccination that might allow for a general lifting of restrictions.

By then, we will have somewhat better information than we have now about what happens when restrictions are lifted in a largely vaccinated population. Bear in mind that it's not yet two months since the UK embarked on this experiment, so while we know something of how it plays out, there is still much to learn. By November/December the UK will be four or five months into the experiment, plus other countries will have embarked on their own experiment, so hopefully a good deal more will have been learned. Which means that Australia may be slightly better positioned to plan and implement its unlocking were than the countries that did it first.

Can Australia vaccinate enough people to make it possible to open up without a large wave? In one sense, no; relative to the experience we've had to date, any Covid wave will be, in Australian terms, a "large wave". The real question, I think, is whether it will be large enough to cause significant numbers of deaths, overburden the public health system or trigger an economic recession. If widespread vaccination is sufficiently effective at achieving the second objective - reducing severity of the disease - then Australia can have quite a big wave, and still keep those impacts low.

None of this means that existing restrictions continue unchanged until November/December or even longer. The Australian strategy is that restrictions should very responsive to the facts on the ground. If they are responsive enough they can be effective to change the facts on the ground, and then they can be altered.

Most attention is focussed on the areas of Australia that are most heavily restricted - particularly NSW and Victoria. Obviously, those two states haven't yet got the situation under control - NSW had 1,384 new cases yesterday, and VIC had 323. But other states have been more successful - the delta variant has been introduced into Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, but all three successfully squashed it with rapid, tough lockdowns and are now effectively Delta-free and, so, lockdown-free. It's not impossible that lockdowns in Victoria and NSW, coupled with the advance in vaccinations, will enable one or both of those states to bring their outbreaks under control to a point where at least some lockdown restrictions can be relaxed even before the 70%/80% vaccination targets are reached. (Equally, it's not impossible that matters will get worse in one or more of the other states, requiring lockdowns there, though hopefully they will again be short and sharp.)

Its frustrating to see the effort Peregrinus' puts into his well thought out posts, and thats the crap thats posted in response. Fingers in ears lalalalala.

According to the article it is not clear who is confiscating alcohol, clearly states its not police. Its says health service is restricting alcohol (and also says alcohol limits can be increased if required by an individual), yet it doesnt say who is actually stopping the alcohol, if anyone actually is. All very vague.

Just reading that.

So there are certain apartment complexes that have been placed in the control the health authority to prevent the spread of COVID.

That control involves managing all the food, drink, medicine, people etc. that enters the building.

Now I know that is not widespread in NSW but as the above indicted there are some people who are locked in their homes.

That sounds like something out of China.

I don't think anything that drastic ever happed here.

Give me a 2km limit with the exception of work and essential shopping which was the worst we had here any day

I don't love the "authoritarian 6 beer law". I don't care much one way or the other - six beers per person per day doesn't look like cruel and unusual deprivation to me - but I am concerned about the very strict lock-in that comes with it.

I'm benefitting from having much less in the way of lockdown that Ireland had, as well as having fewer deaths in the community and a stronger economy. What's not to like?

Lol, oh that's grand then. No, the fact that people are having their alcohol consumption policed, in their own **** homes is absolutely ridiculous. Or at least, it is to most normal people. It's not a coincidence that it's happening in public housing buildings first. No way they would try this in a private building full of well off people but sure (not yet anyway) who cares about a bunch of poor people. They deserve it anyway the filthy, plague rats 🙄

They can do it them, they can do it to you. I'm sure you might care then.

No. It's not a weight issue. A bottle of spirits weighs the same as a bottle of wine, but one is being confiscated and the other isn't. Stop making excuses for a ridiculously authoritarian move by the NSW government. Not sure why you keep insinuating that anyone who disagrees is an alcoholic? Bit weird tbh. I'm not an alcoholic either, good for us. I still don't agree with the government dictating what people can drink in their own homes but you do you.

The rule is maximum one bottle of spirits per person per day. I don't think you'd find it unduly restrictive.

I take the point that it's very intrusive, and it is concerning. But what's missing in the newspaper coveraqe is any account of why the rule is applied. Have they experience of an increased problem of drink-fuelled domestic violence when people are locked down like this? Have their own staff been subjected to hostility and/or violence fuelled by drink? I think you have to ask what problem it is they are trying to solve with this measure, and if you don't have that information it's hard to make a full evaluation of this measure.

Straw man much?

It is draconian, I agree.

But keeping people in strict isolation is pretty much the definition of "quarantine". It's not a novel idea, nor one that is unique to Australia.

Ireland imposes strict quarantine obligations on people who arrive from designated countries. It's strongly arguable that they pose less of a risk of transmission than people who live, not in the same country, but in the same building as numerous infected people.

What are you on about? Did I mention anything about "rejoicing " in this post? My post was wrong? So they aren't policing peoples alcohol intake in quarantined building? That's good

I was at Ireland Serbia match last week that had 25,000 at it.

Two groups of people on this thread, the Aus based ones who refer to the past as justification for why the Zero Covid was the correct strategy but apart from one or two posters are reluctant to discuss the present and future, or will only address selective parts.

The non-Aus ones who range from rabid Anti-Aus to circumspect/curious, many of whom ignore Australia's successful record until recently, and only want to discuss Australia/NZ's less perfect present/future.

I was at a football game a couple of weeks ago in Australia with 48,000 at it. This week the crowd was 59,000 (though I wasn't there myself).

The point is, the lockdowns are local; lockdowns are only in place where there is infection in the community. Likewise travel restrictions; I cannot travel to New South Wales, but I just got back from two weeks' trekking in the Northern Territory with people from Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia. The travel restrictions are tough, but they are effective in preventing the spread of the infection, and it's because of them that I have been subject to very little in the way of lockdown, and my state has seen only 9 covid deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The future depends crucially on vaccination, and here we have two problems. The first has been widely noted; it's the slow pace of vaccination. But that's not an insoluble problem. The second has been less discussed; what level of vaccination do we need in order to reduce other controls, and still not have a blowout of infections and deaths? The federal government is promoting a plan for phased reduction of restrictions when 70% and 80% targets are reached for adult vaccination; not all of the states are entirely committed to this yet. But what bothers me is that none of the discussion I have seen refers to much (or anything) in the way of epidemiological modelling to justify these particular targets, or to offer any assurance that these levels of vaccination will be enough to avoid the blowout. I'm not saying they won't be, or that modelling on this doesn't exist; just that nobody seems to be talking about this very much, although to me it looks like the central question.

how long has Auckland been in the toughest restrictions in the world outside China now?

Exactly. It might make us feel better looking at Australia and NZ now having their localised lockdowns and stating that Zero Covid doesn't work but at the end of the day we've had Lockdowns and restrictions in some shape or form since March last year

We've also had 5,000 deaths and almost 400,000 recorded cases, 5 times the Australian figures on a fifth of their population

Not sure what you imagine that we or anyone else could have done about that, the physical location and relative isolation of both helped enormously. There was no no magic like this that was available to the rest of the world and these stats add very little to any argument for alternatives.

The reason people continue to look in is that they long remained a rallying call for COVID zero, something that now been shown to be basically ineffective. One can appreciate the parochialism on how things have gone but they need to hit those targets, something we looking in know are quite an ask.

Off the top of my head there are 2 ways to take care of the border issue... Either close it or strike a deal with the assembly/westminster that all external borders to the Island would be closed and controlled

We're not surrounded by 500m other people, we have at least 45km of a sea to the next island... The virus only spreads within 2 meters so that's the equivalent to 22,500 buffers