Who thinks Australia and NZ have got it right ?

[marilenagrace]

What do you think ? Do you think that keeping everyone out of the country is the right approach long term to deal with covid ? Do you wish we did that here in the UK ?

Tealights surely even you can see that moving forwards with all their tweaks and monitoring they’ll never return to holidays and free travel - ever - and keep cases to a level they have currently

They’ll never be able to open fully

Never

Goodness, talk about OTT.

They will. Yes they will. Although the UK will be one of the last they open to, but that's ok. They have 100s of other countries to let in first.

Many of us have family in Australia and not all Australians are happy with this as a long term solution

But the majority are happy. My family included.

40% of Australians don't even have a passport. So no big rush to fully open.

A very small number of deaths is very very different from 150,000 and 2 million+ Long Covid disability.

Meanwhile in Australia, the healthcare system is operating as normal. No 5 year backlog there.

There is no opening and keeping cases to as low as they have them now

Never gonna happen

Wrong.

We shall see🤣

Btw it's not just Australia and New Zealand.

East Asia is doing well too.

They’ll struggle tho tealights given 1/3 of Australians do not want the vaccine

Hesitancy is a big thing there

Slow but steady wins the race.

@sleepwouldbenice biggest issue is that our govt put all their eggs in one basket (just about) with astra zeneca being the bulk vaccine over here. Limited supplies of pfizer were ordered (and then delayed with eu issues). Then the change in age limit to astra zeneca putting further pressure on pfizer supplies. Then (again) az age limit being lifted to 60 and over and the pfizer supplies still only dribbling in.
Pfizer was initially only being done through vaccine centers but has just opened to a small amount of gps.
And in terms of roll out we are at the point of 1a 1b (quarantine, healthcare, aged care workers, high risk medical conditions) and over 40.
We are day 4 of a two week lockdown in NSW but got sent home preemptively a week earlier. Outdoor exercise in groups of 10 or less but one area has apparently shut the playgrounds and parks again.
The delta variant has caused the other states to put in 3-4 day lockdowns as soon as a case appears in the community because of the increased spread.
It's frustrating that our vaccinations are so slow (dh had his first yesterday) but I'm still relieved that our last year has been relatively normal.

Singapore is changing, though:

"We are continuing with our efforts to control the worrisome Delta variant of Covid-19. Given its high transmissibility, it will be hard to bring infections down to zero. Instead, we are adopting an aggressive ring-fencing strategy - casting a wide net to isolate contacts of infected persons, and testing tens of thousands every day....The bad news is that Covid-19 may never go away. The good news is that it is possible to live normally with it in our midst. This means Covid-19 will very likely become endemic."

By Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung. Co-chairs of the Covid-19 multi-ministry task force.

www.straitstimes.com/opinion/living-normally-with-covid-19

Big difference between eliminate, versus suppress and contain. You bet Singapore won't be opting for the UK way of letting it freely spread.

Singapore is taking measures to minimise the risks. Which is what living with it (as opposed to dying from it) means.

For a start they're using more effective vaccines.

Slow but steady wins the race

Not when it comes to vaccination!

@Pinkcadillac

Slow but steady wins the race

Not when it comes to vaccination!

Well yes. Given the news that I posted upthread.

AZ less effective. So the UK has vaccinated lots of people. But many of those will have had a vaccine with lower efficacy against the Delta strain. Which is running rampant completely uncontained in the UK.

Singapore is getting ready to live normally with Covid, according to their government. That is a huge change.

It is also being discussed in Australia www.theage.com.au/national/singapore-s-covid-plan-offers-pathway-out-of-lockdowns-20210627-p584lx.html

It's looking like the UK will need to give mRNA boosters to all the (many) people who've had AZ. If the government wants to 'live with' rather than be overrun with Covid.

Yes. Unlike the UK they're taking action to be able to.

Tealights Aus and Singapore are planning to do exactly what we are doing

Only we are ahead! 🙈🙈

@Watapalava

Tealights Aus and Singapore are planning to do exactly what we are doing

Only we are ahead! 🙈🙈

No it really isn't.

Singapore is using an effective vaccine.

Singapore is vaccinating children.

Singapore is keeping the borders shut to high risk countries to limit spread until they have majority vaccinated.

Singapore has mask adherence.

I could go on but it's bedtime.

We are very different (in a bad way) from Singapore.

After 2 doses AZ and Pfizer are 92% and 96% effective against the sets variant respectively a coding to PHE reports.

I have no idea how the majority of Australians can be happy with an absolute fuckwit of a PM that is everything they claim to hate.

“We don’t need federally built quarantine, we just need better hotel quarantine” - Cases are still escaping hotel quarantine to this day and have done so in nearly every state so far.

“We don’t need to rush to get everyone vaccinated” - Currently have lower vaccination rates than most third world countries, which is further preventing herd immunity

“We don’t need to get the Pfizer vaccine due to ‘health concerns’” - no such concerns were ever made to the government and now that they're going with Pfizer they’re incredibly behind and have no stock of it.

@Lucidas - attitudes are finally changing #scottydoesnothing. Starting to see some panic by our inept PM with an upcoming election.

What terrifies me, is we do not currently have a leader to get us from current state to covid normal. We need a clear plan, which I cannot see coming anytime soon.

Teaslightsandd I generally agree with you and until recently I also felt we don't need to be in a huge hurry with vaccinations (I'm in NZ). But the Delta variant has changed my opinion and I think NZ and Aus are extremely vulnerable right now even with our solid contact tracing systems and quarantine facilities. We really need to speed up or we could jeopardize all the hard work we've put into elimination over the last year. This variant really doesn't mess around as we can see from what's going on in Aus right now. It's actually only through dumb luck that we've avoided an outbreak in NZ this week too.

I think Scotty has had a bit of a free ride through all this because the individual premiers have stepped up and been so firm about protecting their states. I know there has been a lot of back and forth over the strictness of interstate borders and agree a lot of it has politicized but we are lucky the premiers have stepped up and held their ground throughout.

Sadly I suspect that Australia, New Zealand and similarly unprotected countries are just at the start of their pandemic. Hopefully the delta plus variant will be less lethal but now it's out there it'll be very hard to contain especially once it enters the health and care system.

Agree Spotty, ScoMo has been lucky the States all took the action he wasn't prepared to.

We've just had one more case in WA, just been reading though, the expectation is we'll have enough Pfizer for all adults to have 2 doses by end of October, I think that will help overcome hesitancy, as at the moment there's still the perception AZ is more risky.

I don't know anyone who is happy with Morrison.
Worst PM ever.