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.

But isn't that the expectation?
High cases low death and hospitalisation?

The Australian government will basically be keeping sydney in lockdown until bac rates are to a level then open up

Sorry *vax levels

@beingsunny

The Australian government will basically be keeping sydney in lockdown until bac rates are to a level then open up

But won’t that be many months?

Surely Australia now needs to stop concentrating on trying to contain the virus, and start concentrating on getting everyone vaccinated? Same with all of the 'zero Covid' countries?

So they will wait until the entire world is vaccinated first? Australia has many, many immigrants (well, nearly everybody, of course!) including a large number from Asia. Are they expecting people never to travel back and forth until the entire population of this area, including children, has been jabbed?

I think a significant factor will be the impact of natural immunity from exposure. Zero covid countries will have very little, it seems likely that could result in a larger exit wave even with very widespread vaccination.

The situation is so complex with so many competing factors that it's not difficult to see why there have been so many different approaches. There is no real black and white, better or worse at the moment. It's all just shades of grey.

@Sunshinegirl82

I think a significant factor will be the impact of natural immunity from exposure. Zero covid countries will have very little, it seems likely that could result in a larger exit wave even with very widespread vaccination.

The situation is so complex with so many competing factors that it's not difficult to see why there have been so many different approaches. There is no real black and white, better or worse at the moment. It's all just shades of grey.

I think that’s a given, yes. When you look at the antibody titer studies those who are naive to the virus (never infected) show markedly less neutralising antibodies and a diminished T cell response. For example in the PITCH study released today:

www.pitch-study.org/Figures_Appendix_PITCH_Dosing_interval_23072021.pdf

Dotty, as well as the immigrant population who might want to travel (I'm among them) the indigenous population are likely more vulnerable from a health impact, and international travel isn't generally a consideration for them, so yes, we should be prepared to not travel until we are confident we can protect these communities.

@IndigoC yes it will likely be late October

@Jackgrealishscurtains they are doing both, suppress until vax levels are high enough. That's the strategy they are averaging 200,000 vaccinations per day now.

Gibraltar - 116% double jabbed (x-border workers included too), eligible if over 16. Currently they have higher cases/pop than the UK

Nope, England is 1 in 75, Gib is 1 in 140, hopefully going there soon :)

Can't say uk because health is devolved, though Wales is very low.

Don’t forget, the populations over here are much smaller so the % vaccinated does jump up quite quickly. Do Sydney only has about 5 million inhabitants of which a % will be under 12, so feasibly we could all be vaccinated in a couple of months - and that’s not taking into account how many are already done. Plus we could discount people in their 20s who are nice to have vaccinated but probably not necessary to keep in lockdown for.
So even if we did nothing but vaccinate Sydney we could be open by September which is fine, I think most people would accept that to avoid the mass deaths that other countries have seen, especially if the govt increases the financial help for people.

They could easily have the whole population vaccinated by November if they had supply. They’ve done over 10 million doses so far, which is a mixture of first and double doses but a good start as we only have a population of 25 million.

Cases are still going up. There are suggestions to make the lockdown even more tough - essentially welding the doors shut, because anything less than that won't work.

@IndigoC - yeah immunity through infection does appear to be better than vaccine alone. The ideal would be vaccination then infection, which is what is happening at the moment. This is why the current UK strategy of vaccinating and letting people get very mildly infected is the best course of action.

I wonder if the zero Covid crowd here in the U.K. will reflect on the disastrous situation facing Australia over the next 12 months?
I hope they do but I bet they don’t.
Thank goodness all the zero Covid talk here has died away completely. It was always a strategy pre determined to fail eventually imo.
I do think Australia can still do ok but only if they can get their act together and stop the inter state arguing and scientific squabbling.
They have at least one of the solutions, AZ, but their senior politicians and Health Advisers have trashed it so much that they need to work hard on reversing public perception.
I’m really quite shocked at the situation in Australia right now, they’ve wasted their 2020 advantage.

If Australia had vaccinated like the UK then they would have emerged as one of the Covid success stories. Though they would (and still do) have the problem of changing the psychology of the country from "don't spread the virus at all costs" to "everyone needs to get infected". We have this problem here, but it's not nearly as bad. This is the reason SAGE have groups of psychologists/behviourists working for them.

I was reading comments from an Australian today. He said he was hugely at risk from the virus due to medical issues and might die if he got it. However he'd not bothered getting vaccinated as Australia had no virus in circulation.

Members of Indy SAGE are still pushing ZeroCovid here in the UK. It's very fringe now and they're increasingly desperate, making up stuff about Long Covid in Kids (JCVI have said it's no more common than any other virus)

Up until the last week it’s been “a please stay home, maybe if you want to, you can go to the shops but don’t if you want? maybe??” Sort of lockdown.
Soft and frustrating.

The incompetence from both state govt in its political stand of “no lockdowns” and the federal govts total lack of leadership and putting all of its eggs in the qld uni vaccine (which would if been brilliant, if it didn’t give you a false positive to HIV) then in AstraZeneca.
Lack of ordering additional vaccines and lack of urgency.

I agree, starfro, that they’re in the cleft stick of no covid equals no rush to get a vaccine, so that in order to encourage vaccination there ironically needs to be much, much higher cases.

We couldn’t of vaccinated like the UK because there was No vaccines to give.
Federal Govt didn’t purchase enough or fast enough so there has been nothing to give.
They didn’t start production of AZ until March.

And then is the strategy for Australia that once everyone is vaccinated, just open up and let the virus naturally spread through the population, accept that some people will still become ill and die from Covid but generally move forward?

I don't think there's a city in Australia right now that doesn't feel the urgency of vaccination.

The tide of though has most definitely turned as to whether this is urgent or not.

Everyone I know is either partially vaxxed or had 1st dose.

Cases in sydney are 90% in a few suburbs, these are areas with a culture of multi generational households so the numbers reflect that one person goes out to work in an essential role catches it and then infects the 12 others they live with.

It's not that the lockdown isn't hard enough, it's concentrated in an areas with these households and where the majority of work is in warehousing, supply chain, essential services so they are continuing to work.

The area I live in is very affluent, (not me) but most are wfh, it is where the outbreak began but there have been almost no cases in my locale for several weeks.

I believe the strategy will be remain in lockdown until vaccinations are at a level (October is being suggested) then schools will return, and a safe reopening at a slow pace like last year. They will likely still aim for suppressing the virus for a time, but the need for lockdowns such as this won't be required.

@beingsunny

I believe the strategy will be remain in lockdown until vaccinations are at a level (October is being suggested) then schools will return, and a safe reopening at a slow pace like last year. They will likely still aim for suppressing the virus for a time, but the need for lockdowns such as this won't be required.

The UK did a similar thing. However this was with the Alpha variant and a large amount of infection-acquired immunity. Had it not been for Delta, the exti wave would have been very small.

Australia is going to have to do it with little to no infection based immunity, and against the Delta variant.

We’re all looking at Australia right now( like people were looking at the U.K. too) but in the plus side some in Australia are changing the conversation to life after vaccine just like we in the U.K. have, so it’ll be sticky but they’ll get there by this time next year I reckon.
New Zealand are no where near even starting that conversation so once Australia are out the other side, we’ll all be watching the kiwis!