Australian Response

None of this has any basis in the real world and you actually can't stop this thing spreading.

The man on the moon nearly took a decade and we'll be well past COVID. Anyway moving on and I'll leave you to your happy musings.

It's absurd to say that Covid zero has been shown to be "basically ineffective". It hasn't worked perfectly but, on any measure it has worked better than other strategies that have been tried - fewer and shorter restrictions on people's lives, fewer infections, fewer deaths, a lower economic cost.

The only way to oppose it is (a) to disregard covid deaths as wholly irrelevant to a judgment about the efficacy of covid measures, and (b) to claim, as gral6 does, that it involves permanent travel restrictions and, when people point out that you are lying about this, to ignore them, wait for a while and then repeat the lie.

It's not a very persuasive case, on the whole.

I wouldn't be declaring some major victory yet. Its inevitable that those countries will get a sizeable covid wave when they eventually open up

Hence why the plan is for 70% of population to be vaccinated, which going by current rates is only 2 months away (which isnt too far fetched, everyone in my social/work circles have had at least one if not two doses, so I believe it an achievable target at least by end of year anyway).

Opening before then would just undo all the success from the past 18 months. At least have your population vaccinated BEFORE unleashing the virus, Australia have the luxury of being able to do this. This is the point Peregrinus is constantly making which is constantly ignored. Australia have agreed that covid zero is not sustainable long term, focus is now on vaccination. How on earth can that not be seen as a sensible approach?

Just to be clear: I have never said that Ireland should have adopted Australian policies or that, if it had, it would have got Australian results. In fact I have said the opposite, several times. Ireland's situation, socially and geographically, is very different from Australia's, and while Ireland can probably learn from the Australian experience the lesson will not be "do what the Australians did and you will get the results that Australia got".

My only claim is that Australian policies have been the right policies for Australia, and that they have produced - and continue to produce - better results for Australia than other countries have achieved with their policies, and than Australia would likely achieve if it adopted other countries' policies.

I'm very far from using deaths "as a kind of one-upmanship", but I do maintain they are the most important metric (though not the only metric) for evaluating any Covid strategy. The main thing we want is for people not to die. The suggestion that we should discount Covid deaths, and make choices about Covid strategies without regard to the implications for death rates, is simply depraved.

I for one have been wanting to get off this not so lovely island and move to that one

I think you are correct, 70% of the eligible population, you are assuming that when Australia get to 70% they'll drop every restriction in the one go, what makes you think that will be the case?

Perhaps you should look at excess deaths rather than so called Covid deaths. Excess deaths in Ireland in 2020 were up by just approx 600 on 2019. I can't remember exact figures, but I posted this info earlier when somebody was spouting sh1te on here.

Lots of those who died with Covid, were dying anyway. Have overall deaths dropped in Australia in 2020 v 2019?

EDIT: 31,765 v 31,134

It looks like they are making progress?

From rte https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0917/1247293-coronavirus-australia/

For anyone who lives there how is the vaccine rollout working? Are there centres everywhere? Are there walk in vaccination centres or do you have to register? Is there much vaccine skepticism?

This weekend Queensland are doing walk in vaccines for Pfizer for anyone. Also note that the vaccination rate is only counting over 16s. Vaccines are available to over 12s. I saw loads of school kids under 16 getting it when I was getting it.

That was the initial problem earlier in the year, and why the rollout is only really ramping up now. But future supply is good as far as I know.

Also you can walk into nearly any pharmacy is QLD at anytime and get AstraZeneca.

Again, what those of us living on ground here in Australia are seeing strongly indicates that vaccine targets will be met.

According to the Queensland Government's website, walk-ins are offered at a limited number of vaccination centres only. Their preference is that people would register an interest on the website and then wait to be offered an appointment, which is consistent with the idea that, yeah, supplies are still quite constrained. My guess is that walk-ins are offered as and when they may help to reduce the risk that supplies of vaccine that are about to expire go unused.

At current vaccination rates QLD is projected to hit the 70%-of-over-16s target around 20 November, and 80% around 10 December. But of course vaccination rates could change between now and then, depending on the federal government's success or lack of it, in securing supplies, and/or the possibility that vaccine resistance could emerge as a significant factor before one or other of those targets is reached. So, really, the targets will be reached when they are reached.

And moderna is coming from next week I think

Clearly this elderly woman was such a severe threat that the police had to knock her to the ground and stand over her spraying pepper spray in her face. Anything is justified when you consider a certain group to be subhuman plague rats.

The government in Sydney and Melb are trying to get a pandemic under control, mass gatherings are unhelpful and these fücking morons were told what would happen if they turned up. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

there was even a demonstration here in Perth, where we don’t even have any restrictions apart from using a QR code when entering a premises. What sort of mouth breathing imbecile comes out to protest in such an environment?

I suppose if you were living here in Perth you would be out there gral?

Yes they could be, but they are police officers and that is not a good look anywhere. The caption suggests they are in Australia and I suspect the uniform confirms it.

How old do you reckon the person on the ground is?

That's not important at all. I was looking at the actual police officer and unless it's string that is a very bad look for law enforcement. Don't they teach them how to manage a crowd or how to use de-escalation tactics?

I'm not sure you need any context to wonder why a police officer is emptying a can of pepper spray into the face of a protester. There have been protests in other countries and very few have descended to this level. It's not the first one of these images to emerge via media reports either and you may argue it's isolated but it's pretty poor law enforcement even then. In the vast majority of countries that type of response would at the very least be reviewed.

This is a Guardian Australia version of it. Really not the best policing plan judging from some of these videos, but notable that Brisbane seemed to go off peacefully.

Probably not. They've tried its not Australia (it is) there's no context (there is), we don't know what happened prior (we do, she was forcefully shoved to the ground for no reason other than being there) and she's not old, to cast doubt on the images. They will fall back on the good old "well she should have been at home" line in the end. Police brutality is ok once you disagree with the people being subjected to it.

How do you know they didn't do all that?