Australia says no to AZ and J&J vaccines--vax rollout likely to be delayed by months

[Kokeshi123]

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/13/australia-wont-buy-johnson-johnsons-one-dose-covid-vaccine-due-to-astrazeneca-similarities

I know quite a lot of Ozzies who are completely stranded outside their country due to the fact that they cannot keep small children within a hotel room for two weeks and pay a fortune for the priviledge. As it is, it's looking like Oz will not be removing its quarantine requirements until well into 2022 at the earliest.

I mean, I do think that a basic strategy of "(1) Hold borders tight with Zero Covid until the vax>(2) Unroll vax> (3) Open borders" is a sound one, but it does depend on the second and third bits of the plan actually happening...

Yes that’s right - the federal election in particular not being until May 2022 is really unhelpfully timed

Isn’t it just!

But as my dad says, in Australia it’s always an election year somewhere...

But imagine ScoMo won’t want to take risks if the states are lining up for continued control unless he’s had a VERY big vaccine rollout improvement. Which looks dodgy AF.

Exactly. I don’t see any movement on this mid next year. MAYBE building additional quarantine facilities for international students which would need to be ready feb 2022.

If zero covid is the goal you simply cannot open up any time soon.

I suspect the states will follow different ideas. NSW is full of people who regularly travel and also have dealt calmly with outbreaks of cases and I think would have a much easier time of accepting low level cases sweeping through, so long as they didn’t cause massive deaths and clogging up of hospitals. The whole way through Gladys has never said that zero Covid is the long term strategy (as far as I’ve seen).
Hospitals are well prepared for increased numbers and we are a lot better at treating cases now too.
I think NSW will ease up on travel first especially as I can imagine that once Gladys is totally in charge of vaccination it will be done very quickly and smoothly. I was in having my flu jab last week and my Dr said they were champing at the bit to vaccinate, were running regular mornings and had very few cancellations, but at this stage couldn’t increase numbers as they didn’t have supply. They were fully booked up for 2 months for the clinics they run though and said they had plans for massive capacity increase.
I suspect Qld and WA will follow the lead of NSW once they see how it can be done.
It feels like we’re all ready and it’s just the government holding us back!
When you see the numbers immediately flying to NZ I think that shows the govt the desire for people to get back to normal.
Plus the optics of countries like the U.K. going back to normal life and us still stuck here are really bad.

optics of the UK going back to normal life

Ermm... I think the optics of up to 5 year hospital treatment delays, 150,000 deaths, 1 million suffering long covid, ruined businesses - and predicted more to come kinda makes Australia (and New Zealand and Taiwan and Singapore and Japan and South Korea) look the very opposite of bad.

I don't think in fact. I know. I spoke to my family in Australia this evening. They're happy with their largely Covid free life. One of them wants to see their parents, who live in New Zealand, but they're not rushing to visit. They're wary of the risks and content to wait it out a bit longer.

Of course they don't represent every Australian but if the majority were so keen to emulate the UK, I doubt they'd be the election issues you mentioned on this thread. Clearly a Covid safe country is electorally popular.

*there'd not they'd

And I can absolutely assure you that's it's very very far from normal life in the UK sadly. Unlike, travel abroad aside, in Australia.

Yes by the “optics of normal life” what I mean is that they can travel soon whereas hearing over here things like “it’s going to be another year yet” just makes people wonder why on Earth we can’t just crack on and vaccinate our small population.
People I speak to just can’t understand why on Earth, when there is a successful vaccine we can’t just get on and have it.

So what is your solution Iced?

I'm not Iced, but I'm guessing her solution is: vaccinate everyone, focus on continued developments of good treatments, open up in stages and deal with any issues as and when they crop up.

The realities of T-cell and B-cell immunity make it very unlikely we're going to get some kind of complete "vaccine escape"--whatever vaccine we provide will produce enough immunity to prevent serious illness, which is all we should care about. In any case, we already deal with the fact that the flu vax needs updating each year, and they're talking about rolling the updated COVID vax into the flu shot and giving it as a single jab each year in future. Problem solved. If this boosts flu vax uptake levels, it might even turn out to be a really good thing in future.

If you are so frightened of long covid that the above isn't good enough, feel free to go hide in a cupboard for the rest of your life. Most people won't be joining you though.

I do wonder how it will end for Aus and NZ though. So many scientists say that Covid is here with us for the long term , possibly forever I guess.. and boosters will be needed each year, as with the flu. How can they maintain their zero Covid approach when the reality is there will be spikes of Covid in many countries at different times? I also wonder about the long term impact on tourism and certain jobs that require travel....there is always going to be risk once you open your borders, even with the vaccine, so the only no risk approach is to close borders very long term. They can't really back away from the approach now, so while other countries are re opening international business and tourism, they could remain closed off from the rest of the world for years, potentially. ..as anything else will risk new cases.

While I think the approach was good short term and saved lives, long term it's incredibly limiting and will continue to have a devastating impact on many families.

Have a look at Guernsey. Like a mini Australia experiment.

They kept covid out or very low at the borders. Vaccinafed, and are now opening back up with some borders testing but no isolation (from 1rth May) if the levels in the area someone is traveling from are low enough.

They are potentially about to show us the best of both worlds. Normal life and sensible border restrictions.

Or it might go spectacularly wrong.

Isle of Man are also free of all restrictions and have rattled through vaccinations so should be making a border announcement soon.

Obviously nothing like Australia size wise and so much easier to implement, but a model that should be of interest

Aaaaand...24 hours after opening the Aus/nz travel bubble a fully vaxxed airport worker tests positive in Auckland. Queue usual response: Gladys saying it doesn’t matter and we need to get on with life, comments sections screeching about how they knew the world was unsafe and Aus needs to shut down again for a long time. Will be interesting to see which camp wins.

I really wish I could take a banner ad out sometimes. The Aus strategy isn't zero covid forever. It was to provide initial protection while the health system capacity was increased, and treatments and vaccinations were developed.
Yes they are planning to vaccinate.
Yes they are currently stuck on hold with the same clotting issue a lot of countries are facing with AZ no supply issues for others.
Yes the majority over here want to be vaccinated.
Yes they want the borders to open, but not when most are unvaccinated.
Yes they have and are talking about covid being endemic, a long term issue and thy we will have to accept a low level of cases.

@Flyornofly I really appreciate how Gladys has handled the whole covid situation throughout. Low drama, solid decision making, no over promising etc.
In terms of traveling to NZ I feel like we have the lowest chances of being shut out of NSW for a long term than any other state. Otherwise we wouldn't even consider it!

Sounds like the travel bubble will not pop, fortunately, as it sounds like it was just one case (if they are getting several mystery cases, the bubble will end, but hopefully this is not the case this time).

Yes, Isle of Man and Guernsey will be interesting to watch.

@spottygymbag I 100% agree with your post. The frustration when people are like “oh now they’re stuck cut off forever” as if the government (well at least Gladys who has done a brilliant job and I have a huge amount of respect for) hasnt thought that we might want to travel again at some point.
It seems to surprise people that we can hold two thoughts in our head “we like how life is now, but we also want to plan to travel safely in the future”

@Kokeshi123

Sounds like the travel bubble will not pop, fortunately, as it sounds like it was just one case (if they are getting several mystery cases, the bubble will end, but hopefully this is not the case this time).

Yes, Isle of Man and Guernsey will be interesting to watch.

The bubble is unlikely to pop. People will be asked to "shelter in place" for a hopefully short lockdown, may have to quarantine for a short period while it is brought under control. Then it will resume as normal. Just like what we have been experiencing with the state borders for much of the past year. It would need to be quite. Widespread, catastrophic outbreak to pop. Or as a result of additional bubbles opening without risk mitigation to the existing one.

@spottygymbag

I really wish I could take a banner ad out sometimes. The Aus strategy isn't zero covid forever. It was to provide initial protection while the health system capacity was increased, and treatments and vaccinations were developed. Yes they are planning to vaccinate. Yes they are currently stuck on hold with the same clotting issue a lot of countries are facing with AZ no supply issues for others. Yes the majority over here want to be vaccinated. Yes they want the borders to open, but not when most are unvaccinated. Yes they have and are talking about covid being endemic, a long term issue and thy we will have to accept a low level of cases.

I prefer this take to previous Aus posters who didn’t seem to mind it being very long term.

As an Aus who’d like to see family I hope it’s not years.

Realistically it probably will be though. It certainly won't be in the short term. And even though it's shit I'm ok with that because like the others I don't want to go through what the uk has. I like my kids safely attending daycare, ballet, swimming and birthday parties. I like going to work with my colleagues and enjoying work lunches, and going out for friends birthdays.
We've all had to make sacrifices throughout this pandemic. Easy International travel is ours.
I don't agree with how people have been stuck overseas. The govt could have done more. But then they did also say to get home ASAP early on.

@Ozgirl75 I get the feeling we're often viewed as poor little colonials in the outback who probably can't understand our civil liberties have been taken away!

It has been awful here no doubt but we will be back to normality soon (or almost). Fingers crossed

People eating out, hairdresser, shops, clubs, sports very much looking forward to every step of reopening.

It’ll be good. But I doubt I’ll be able to go to Aus for a while. If I didn’t have family there of course it wouldn’t matter.

Can you also imagine the international uproar if Australia and NZ started stamping their feet and demanding more vaccines ahead of other orders for countries with huge numbers when we currently have such low risk? We are lucky we can wait at the moment, although I wish Scotty hadn't put all his eggs in the one basket.

Personally (I am an optimist!) I think it will open up quicker than we think. I suspect by the end of the year we’ll be letting vaccinated people home quarantine for a few days and take a test and the rules will be “stay at home if you’re sick” but we will see a slow acceptance of people getting sick (especially if there isn’t a big uptick in deaths).
We will learn to live with cases and some deaths, like we do with seasonal flu and other illnesses.

I do think we have followed the correct strategy though, especially NSW. We’ve potentially saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.

Completely agree @Ozgirl75 It has been a much les traumatic experience for us over here than many others.