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...

I thought France’s plans to ban domestic flights that can be done on the train in 2.5h max instead were amazing. We need more initiatives like this, I agree.

However, you can’t ‘tackle excessive globalisation’ by suddenly not allowing people to see their families. It’s a lot more complicated than that.

Really well done to Australia (and NZ) for refusing to accept the needless deaths of their citizens, either through Covid or through vaccine side effects.

They’ve absolutely done the best thing so far. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next 2-3 years. I don’t think Covid can be kept out without strict measures and without them there will be many Covid related deaths even with a vaccine. So the choice between restrictions and deaths will have to be made at some point and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

@savethegrannies

By taking a zero covid approach, Australia has basically dug itself a very large hole which it is hard to see how it will get out of. The government also knows it can't alter policy now or all the suffering and hardship caused by its crackpot closed borders approach will have been for nothing. But 2024. 2024! WTAF??

2024! Feels surreal.

I’m looking forward to moving on generally very much here but it will be hard not to easily get into Aus.

EileenGC Swings and roundabouts.

A friend hasn't been able to see her family for over a year, and they live in the same city in the UK (London).

None of them can drive (medical reasons), all are CV and one is CEV. Not all of them are fully vaccinated. It's not safe for them to visit by public transport until numbers are lower, and in London (with many 1000s daily travelling on the public transport from the airports) they're likely in for a long wait.

Now the government's let the South African strain in. Labour have called for a proper quarantine system but I doubt the government will do anything. They've consistently prioritised intentional travel above lives, health (long covid), and jobs.

If my friend and her family were in Australia, New Zealand, or East Asia, they'd have been able to see each other..

Post pandemic, tackling globalisation doesn't have to mean 'stopping people seeing families'. Rationing travel, i.e. one flight a year with exemptions for emergencies, isn't the same as no travel.

What about people who can't afford to see their families? Flights to Australia aren't cheap. Perhaps we should offer grants/loans to people on benefits or low incomes for them to visit family? I'd be happy with that but I would other people?

Australia doesn't have to keep their borders shut. They just need to keep out people from UK, Europe (except Iceland, Isle of Man, and Channel Islands), and South America.

Assuming you also meant to include the US on that list, a) that's quite a large proportion of the world and b) a lot of people in Australia will have family in those countries. It's still not an inconsequential decision even if it's not every continent. If they do keep their borders shit for years and the rest of the world opens up more, I wonder if public opinion will start to shift over time - similar to the way lots of people here were calling for harsher lockdown measures at the beginning, but many are getting fed up and want to open up more now that it's been going on for years.

Shut

@Tealightsandd I suspect a lot of it is simply that they worry that uptake of the vaccine would be poor. When weighing up our relative risks from COVID and the vaccine, right now we feel pretty safe from COVID.

I am pro-vaccination, myself and my children have everything on schedule and get flu vaccines every year. But even I felt a bit nervous about this one. I was still planning on having it, but I can understand why people were leaning towards not doing so. People were already nervous about how quickly it was brought out. (Yes I understand how that was able to happen). But then add in potentially life threatening side effects when we don't feel threatened by COVID and suddenly vaccine uptake is low. And low vaccine uptake means no herd immunity and no open borders.

The government know they have to get a really high level of vaccine uptake in order to validate their actions. Otherwise as pp have mentioned, all we will have done is delay he disaster.

To be fair, if your family had been in Denmark, France Germany or many other Eu countries they’d have been able to see each other. There is a balance to be found here; the U.K. and Australia seem to be on the opposite ends of the spectrum.

By stopping the vaccines they seems to be saying that the risk of the vaccine outweighs the benefit of international travel to and from Australia. It’s a bold statement.

Your friend is vulnerable. That’s very different to a healthy 30 year old who would voluntarily put themselves through the risk of taking multiple flights to travel to Australia and visit their dying child/elderly family member/long list of circumstances we’re not aware of. They simply don’t have that option.

I’m pretty sure people on benefits were aware of how much it costs to fly to Australia even pre-Covid. I don’t think they now expect extra help same as they didn’t before.

We’re talking about healthy people being denied the option to visit their family. I have been lucky in that all of mine are on the same continent and I’ve taken many flights throughout this year, happily putting myself at (a very tiny) risk. I put myself at risk many times a day through a variety of decisions.

Your CV or CEV friends’ situation is very different. I’m personally not sure what solutions these people would suggest going forward. We will never achieve zero Covid.

U.K. is apparently at herd immunity now ( more or less, not sure I entirely agree). Through it and generally out the other side. Zero Covid strategy counties are still at the beginning imo.
We are not at herd immunity yet. About 50% of the population has antibodies (declining in the older groups as they approach their secdon vaccination).

It’s a shambles. I have another thread on this - I’ve been waiting to get home to see my ageing parents and new nephew for ages. I am now thinking of just leaving my kids here and paying through the nose and going back to Oz for 3 weeks - 2 in quarantine, 1 actual holiday. Can’t put toddlers through 2 weeks trapped in a hotel, but desperate to see my family. We were hoping to all go at Christmas but that is obviously vanishingly unlikely now for cost and quarantine reasons.

Am furious with scomo for being such a smug fucking twat and not PLANNING.

Ah I see EileenGC the millions of vulnerable don't matter. Who cares if they can't see their families? Right ok.

The white West isn't the whole world. (Yes, I know South America isn't only white). Australia and New Zealand can, at some point, open up to East Asia (that's a lot of people) and probably much of Africa too.

I have close relatives in Australia. According to them, the majority of Australians aren't hugely bothered about the borders being restricted. Lots of people there don't travel abroad anyhow. International travel especially long haul is expensive. Not everyone (wherever they are in the world has the luxury of affording that).

I'd say you should be more upset with Boris Johnson than Scott Morrison Flyornofly
Had Boris done the same as Scott (the UK is also an island afterall), Australia might have been able to consider opening up to the UK. Instead it will just be New Zealand, and then perhaps East Asia.

Ah I see EileenGC the millions of vulnerable don't matter. Who cares if they can't see their families? Right ok.

@Tealightsandd where did I say that? Don’t interpret other people’s words to suit your narrative.

Vulnerable people aren’t being stopped from seeing their families by governments and border controls. They are not seeing their families due to their health. These are two separate matters.

Everyone is different but I would not want everywhere closed off to me bar SE Asia, Aus and NZ.

Once we’re through this first vaccination stage I’m hoping things will feel very different here.

Then I accept boosters for variants yearly.

@newstart1234

Is the average Australian annoyed about not being able to leave the country? I’m not sure if my perspective is skewed because I’m used to going to another country on a weekly basis, but it’s seems that Australia seems quite calm about the lack of international travel, despite having a high proportion of immigrants. I wonder what will happen to the level of immigration especially from Europe over the next decade.

No, my perspective and that of people I talk to is that we are happy to keep the borders closed. I would love to go on a holiday overseas (had one cancelled) but would much rather miss out on holidays than have thousands of people die and have restrictions in my every day life. My job, and that of almost everyone I know, is back to normal. I appreciate that I am lucky as all my family is Australian and we all have jobs in industries that haven't been affected.

That said, I do feel for those who can't afford the flights/quarantine to come home or see relatives etc, and those whose jobs have been affected. My SIL is from overseas, they had to cancel their wedding as her family couldn't come. She is now pregnant and who knows how old the baby will be before her family meet it. It is so hard for her and her family.

As a mid-30s person with no health issues and no fear of covid (my state has been covid free for months), I am not willing to have a vaccine with possibly fatal side affects. My husband got the Pfizer, had his second dose last week, due to his work. I am happy to wait until it is my turn.

There's no twisting of words. You complained that Australia's policy of keeping covid out, stopped families with members split between UK and Australia seeing each other.

I pointed out it works both ways. The UK policy of letting covid in stops families who are vulnerable from seeing each other safely.

The first is a minority group compared to the vulnerable. There are many more vulnerable in the UK (millions) than people with close family (and the money to fly long haul) in Australia.

In Australia families can see other without risk. We could've had the same if we'd adopted the same border restrictions and quarantine as Australia. Both within the UK and for travel to Australia (for those with money to fly long haul) .

@Tealightsandd but the latter is not what this thread is about

Also there is no way Aus will open up to SE Asia. To do so they will have to accept some covid onshore. Right now that seems impossible politically. See the poster above who is happy to sit around for years waiting for a Pfizer vaccine as she has no need to be overseas so who cares.

I am hoping that at some point the 30+% of aussies who were born abroad, or the almost 50% who have at least one parent abroad, will club together and start lobbying the Australian government to stop being such insular fuckwits. The scale of families being ripped apart is shocking

The premise of the Aussie approach is to have no restrictions within the country. The U.K. could never ever ever have been able to achieve this, there will always be 1 or 2 cases that slip in unnoticed and it would spread like wildfire. I remember last summer reading that a guy jet skiied to or from the Isle of Man! It would be impossible to tighten the boarder to the degree required to allow normal life safely. See also - Northern Ireland.

This is a good article and sums up how I feel (albeit from the other side).

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/13/with-australias-delayed-vaccine-rollout-a-reunion-with-my-parents-overseas-inches-further-from-reach

I'm not talking about now. Further along, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Australia (and New Zealand) open up to East Asia a lot sooner than they do to the UK.

I think it's quite offensive to talk about families being 'ripped apart'. Hundreds of thousands of families in the UK have been permanently ripped apart by the loss of a loved one.

If someone living in Australia is foreign born, they are either (like my own relatives) living there by choice - and have the same choice to return to the UK if they prefer, or they are a refugee. And refugees really do know what it's like to be ripped apart from their families. The very nature of being a refugee (an escape from risk to life in their country of origin) means they're likely to never see their families again.

In any case, people can travel to and from Australia. You might say but but expensives quarantine, but then equally there are many for whom the long haul flight in itself is too expensive.

Of course we could've achieved it newstart1234. If we'd wanted to. We're an island. It's relatively easy for us. We could've redeployed furloughed travel industry workers to police our borders (including unofficial ones, as with the case of jet ski man).

I think while other developed (i.e., generally comparable) nations are still suffering lockdowns and horrendous death tolls it's pretty obvious that countries like Australia and NZ, where people are living normally and very few have died, are in the best position. But if the vaccine rollout is successful in Europe and North America, hopefully our subsequent death rates will also stay low and we'll be able to go back to living fairly normally too. At that point, the biggest disadvantage that other Western countries will have compared to Australia will be that we had much higher death rates in the past, but day to day life will look much the same. I think that's where it'll be most difficult for people in Aus if the borders are still closed to large parts of the world - the sense that if they'd taken the same approach as other countries, they'd have had a shit few years but now it would be over. Humans in general seem to be quite biased towards the present, and it's easy to minimise how difficult things were once they've got better - especially as relatively few Australians will have been directly impacted by covid, so the massive costs of our own approach would be mostly hypothetical for them. At what point do people start thinking they'd take having suffered a lot in the past, over being indefinitely separated from their close family now?

Not saying that either approach was better or worse by the way, especially as a lot of the vaccine success of different countries has been down to chance - I just think the balance of opinion is likely to shift quite significantly over time.

Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are developed countries. So are Iceland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.

Apparently (according to a study I read earlier) the Japanese passport is the most valuable in the world. They have an excellent healthcare system too. Better than ours.