Austalian state likely can't contain Delta, will let it rip

[starfro]

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-07/nsw-delta-variant-may-never-be-controlled/100273956

Be thankful that here most vulnerable people are double jabbed, whereas over there it's far, far fewer.

Delta cannot be contained, it's too transmissible.

Of course they will open up eventually (not to the UK at first) but they don't actually need to. For the majority there's no predicament. It's only in very recent history that humans travelled internationally on mass. People and societies survived for centuries without mass travel.

Please don't be ridiculous. A third of the country has relatives overseas. Of course it's a need, in the next couple of years or so, not a "nice to have."

The fact that people didn't expect international travel in the past is beyond the point. People in the past also used to think it was normal to die of a bad chest in your 70s, rather than being something that society should try to prevent; would it be OK if we used that as an excuse for allowing COVID to spread completely unchecked? Because that's basically exactly the same argument. Just as we now have higher standards for life expectancy and for surviving well into old age, we also have higher expectations in terms of being able to emigrate and also occasionally see our relatives again.

Is the academic author of the new statesman article ( a leftish publication) a “far right nut bag” unwuthering?
I don’t know as I don’t know him. It seemed a very sensible and measured article to me?
Did you read it?
If sensible voices like this are being dismissed as “far right nutbags” then It is an even more sticky situation. I don’t think you are right though and his view isn’t being dismissed from what I can see.
AZ is a good vaccine and it works. All vaccines have issues of one sort or another.
Some of the U.K. data has it as good as if not better than some measures than Pfzier. We have issued about equal quantities here with some Moderna in the mix ( the posh vaccine according to my dd)

I think when you say "sensible voices" you mean those that chime with your point-of-view. I call those sorts of views... other things.

You linked a "sensible voice" you agreed with in an earlier post, and pointed out the majority of commenters agreed with him: I read that article and by the time I did, the majority of commenters did not agree with him, and found his position easy to dismantle and his views pretty reprehensible. (It may well have changed since.)

Well yes, what I consider a sensible POV. It’s fine that others disagree. It’s just good that this POV is getting airtime, even if pushed back . It gets the conversation started which I think is a good thing. Rather than zero Covid being the only strategy in the room.
We’re still having the conversation here. We still have advocates for zero Covid pushing their case which is their right. I like to hear all opinions. Imo I think zero Covid advocates are extremists (just the opposite spectrum of those that want no restrictions at all) but they are still allowed a voice.

Australia needs to get vaccinated quickly and that means bringing the AZ back on board and stop this stupid bloody scaremongering about it. It is perfectly fine for the over 40s. Risk analysis has shown that. The politics and racism involved in this whole pandemic is breathtaking.

The article is written by two professors at The University of Sydney. I don’t think they are ‘right wing nut jobs’. There needs to be a balanced discussion about what happens after following a zero Covid strategy when the world is at a different stage to you. And the consequences of a zero Covid strategy.

It’s very worrying the dissing of AZ too. It’s a perfectly good vaccine. I’m very grateful to have had it and thankful to the scientists. But then I can also do an accurate risk assessment.

If I was in Australia I’d be getting whatever vaccine was offered right now.

It is perfectly fine for the over 40s.

Well, as I understand it, current policy in Australia is that it is not perfectly fine for the over 40s. It is only considered fine for use in the over 60s, now. Under 60s have been told to get Pfizer.

Meanwhile, many younger people are disregarding this advice and getting AZ jabs as they want to help get things moving in the right direction.

I just spoke to my 40 something year old friend in Sydney now on lockdown. She is desperate to travel. She said which vaccine did you have. I said AZ. I and all my friends had it. The amount of posturing about that vaccine is just embarrassing. The data shows it is totally fine over a certain age. And that’s only because the risk of serious illness with Covid goes down when younger. I do believe with delta variant it is now statistically better to have AZ over the age of 30 than risk catching Covid and getting a blood clot that way. How many of us take the contraceptive pill which is statistically much much higher of causing a blood clot. Or smoke. Or walk down the street and cross the road in traffic. Makes me cross all this misinformation and a lot of yes comes from politics (look at macron saying no AZ to over 65 when it was first released - whoops u turn there when the data showed it was actually more efficacious than Pfizer for the over 65s). It’s politics and racism. Makes me sick that this kind of stuff gets prioritised over public health.

@unwuthering yes that is correct. And is not based on the science at all.

You don't think the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) is a scientific body, or makes decisions informed by scientific analysis?

It has been shown with data that you are more at risk of getting a blood clot from Covid than taking AZ in over 40s and now with delta variant that has moved to over 30. Now the ATAGI and the EMA can then take whatever decision they wish but those are the facts based on the data.

One decision we made here in U.K. was that people couldn’t vaccine shop. You got the vaccine you got. A few exceptions of course and some were unhappy but generally that strategy worked with minimal grumbling and not much air time for those that did grumble.
It also really helped our roll out that it started in early December and we were in another peak ( the alpha one - remember that!) for much of it. It has also become a positive thing to do generally. The anti vaccine movement are not really getting much traction here at all , mostly as the roll out has been quick and that reduces the time for misinformation to circle. People also want to travel and that possibility is encouraging the younger cohorts to get vaccinated. Sadiq in London has said that anyone that gets vaccinated yesterday or today goes into a random draw for tickets to the final tomorrow at Wembley. That’ll encourage a few more. Things like that work.

Even so, that is the recommendation Australian GPs and so on are following, on advice from ATAGI.

It is no doubt an easier sell, the percentage of risk of serious clotting from contracting Covid vs from receiving a vaccine (necessitating hospitalisation and months of ongoing monitoring and treatment with blood thinners, etc, as best case results, or worst case, death), when there are many thousands of active cases as in the UK.

@unwuthering yes it probably is an easier sell here. We are way ahead (time wise) of Australia in this pandemic.

@unwuthering

Even so, that is the recommendation Australian GPs and so on are following, on advice from ATAGI.

It is no doubt an easier sell, the percentage of risk of serious clotting from contracting Covid vs from receiving a vaccine (necessitating hospitalisation and months of ongoing monitoring and treatment with blood thinners, etc, as best case results, or worst case, death), when there are many thousands of active cases as in the UK.

Yes agreed. It’s the balance of risk and in a wave the balance massively swings to the vaccine.

I see that Fiji, a country with very little virus pre-Delta , has succumbed to it:

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/fiji/

This is why this thread is here: there is a real possibility that countries that have taken the ZeroCoid approach will be unable to contain it.

Another argument against zero Covid to me as in a zero Covid environment that balance of risk never swings to the vaccine. Result - limbo

Of course it swings to the vaccine if the rest of the world don’t go zero covid. You can’t reopen your external borders otherwise.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

Of course it swings to the vaccine if the rest of the world don’t go zero covid. You can’t reopen your external borders otherwise.

That’s a good point. No man is an island even if a country can be one! Yes risk swings to the vaccine globally even if not locally. This is what needs to be explained, or at least start the conversation.

It's an absolute tragedy what's happening in Fiji at the moment. I would argue the government was unwilling rather than unable to contain it though. Rather like NSW they left it too late and the consequences have been devastating. They have vaccines but are unable to get the population vaccinated quickly enough to make much of an impact atm.

I thought this was an interesting article, with regard to how the cluster developed and the timing of the Sydney lockdown:

On Wednesday, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said locking Greater Sydney and its surrounding areas down earlier would not have made a difference to the Delta variant's spread, because businesses like Great Ocean Foods would have continued to operate.

"Clearly the issue is that this had established a number of workplace clusters, which then provided seeding. So those workplace clusters would have seeded because essential work would have still continued," she said.

"When you look at the weekend before lockdown was implemented, the case rate was tiny, six cases, with four announced after the deadline," she said.

"To suggest you'd go into lockdown for six cases, even if you knew another four were coming in, you should not have to do that."

Fiona Stanaway, a senior lecturer in epidemiology at the University of Sydney, also thinks the timing of the lockdown was understandable.

"They didn't know about the workplace clusters. If they had known, they could have locked down sooner," she said.

Thailand is another that initially managed to suppress the virus, but now is unable to deal with a more transmissible variant:

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/thailand/

They are also running into the problem that they cannot toughen restrictions for fear of ruining businesses (people won't comply if they have no means of supporting their families), but without an extremely tough lockdown they cannot hope to contain them.

www.afr.com/politics/federal/australia-s-great-dilemma-when-do-we-stop-locking-down-20210714-p589ly

Article today showing changing narrative in Australia starting the conversation away from lockdown/ zero Covid.
Interesting they are suggesting opening up at 50% adult double jabbed. We are at 66% adult double jabbed so a lower level of vaccine coverage than we have ( and look at our cases!). That really would be an experiment on the Aussie public.
I don’t think politically it could be allowed as low as 50% and would need to be higher.
But they are talking about 2021 being transition year for public acceptance of Covid and 2022 being the year when Covid can circulate in the community.

www.afr.com/politics/federal/there-is-no-such-thing-as-zero-virus-risk-20210715-p589xx

I don't think the afr is a good source for how people and communities are feeling. They are pushing the pro business line. We are all witnessing how that is failing in Sydney.
Just because business is sick of the pandemic doesn't mean that people are prepared to accept mass deaths.