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.

everyone is moving on and no one is looking to them anymore (other than as an example to point out the long term problems with a zero covid approach)

Speak for yourself!

Being pleased that we have more infection-acquired immunity at this point than they do is like boasting that no one can break the windows in our house because we broke them all earlier.

You can't assess the value of a lot of infection-acquired immunity in a population without taking into account the route that got you there. In the UK we paid for our levels of natural immunity with the lives and health of large numbers of people who got covid before being vaccinated.

NZ and Australia may well, post Delta, have no choice but to accept more infections than they'd expected because they won't be able to vaccinate enough. They'll be doing that after vaccinations though, and they'll suffer less death and health damage as a result.

Being pleased that we have more infection-acquired immunity at this point than they do is like boasting that no one can break the windows in our house because we broke them all earlier.

I think its fairly clear at this stage that being vaccinated does not stop infections, and that being vaccinated can still result in deaths, especially amongst the most vulnerable. Some vaccines, like pfizer, are already losing their efficacy. The parts of the world with high numbers of previously infected people like the US and UK are in a much better position than Australia. Even with vaccines they are still going to go through surges of cases and deaths.

www.newstatesman.com/world/australasia/2021/07/how-failure-covid-19-has-exposed-dangerous-delusion-fortress-australia

This is a good article IMO that sums up the situation well. By a Sydney based academic.

That’s a great article. Many of the points we are trying to make on here. It’s not about being gleeful but realistic about the global nature of this pandemic.

The virus is here to stay sadly. I wish it were not so - at some point Australia will have to open up to the world at some point or risk mass revolution from its people against its government so eventually covid will have to be faced.

Best tactic to vaccinate vaccinate and a quickly as possible.

think its fairly clear at this stage that being vaccinated does not stop infections, and that being vaccinated can still result in deaths

In America (where they're mostly using Pfizer and Moderna) 99.5% of deaths are now in the unvaccinated.

Australia will have to open up to the world at some point or risk mass revolution from its people against its government so

Oh they'll almost certainly open up (gradually - and with high risk countries like the UK at the back of the queue). But actually it won't be to please the majority. More than 50% would be pretty content staying shut long term.

@tiltedtomatoes

everyone is moving on and no one is looking to them anymore (other than as an example to point out the long term problems with a zero covid approach)

Speak for yourself!

Being pleased that we have more infection-acquired immunity at this point than they do is like boasting that no one can break the windows in our house because we broke them all earlier.

You can't assess the value of a lot of infection-acquired immunity in a population without taking into account the route that got you there. In the UK we paid for our levels of natural immunity with the lives and health of large numbers of people who got covid before being vaccinated.

NZ and Australia may well, post Delta, have no choice but to accept more infections than they'd expected because they won't be able to vaccinate enough. They'll be doing that after vaccinations though, and they'll suffer less death and health damage as a result.

This

Good post.

I know they won't stay shut but can somebody tell me why they apparently have to? Obviously they don't actually need to. It's a choice.

Luckily Australia have the solution or at least one of them. They make their own AZ vaccine, they need to urgently change the messaging and the risk assessment about this vaccine and the media must stop talking it down. They can learn from the roll out execution and messaging here which has been world leading particularly with regards to convincing hard to reach populations for example ( despite ignorant comments from a pp upthread that Australians have nothing to learn from the U.K.).
It can definitely be turned around and get back on track.
It needs a few more influential voices like this academic in the media to put the case and explain the predicament and take the population with them.

The parts of the world with high numbers of previously infected people like the US and UK are in a much better position than Australia.

All the people who are still alive in those countries may well think of themselves as better off because there's more immunity around them. All the ones who died or acquired permanent health damage thanks to those waves of infections are not likely to be thinking that.

Ah 'influential voices' to tell the masses what they should want?

What predicament?

Booming economy (unlike the UK). Very few deaths, limited numbers at risk of long term Long Covid disability.

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.

I'm not saying they shouldn't (eventually) open up, at a safer stage. But it's important to point out that it's not a need.

Perhaps they could seize this as an opportunity to be world leaders on climate change? Scott Morrison has been castigated for not doing anything about it. So here's his chance. Limit polluting flights...

I think NSW will get this outbreak under control, I hope so anyway. Obviously Delta is a game changer and so infectious it might be hard to eliminate if there’s 14,000 contacts (as suggested upthread) but they’ve been successful so far and I hope they are with this outbreak.

I then hope that it is a wake up call for the powers that be over there to get the fuck on with vaccinating because sooner or later Delta or the next variant will make its way through in a way that can’t easily be contained. I believe that’s advice that’s been given to the Australian government - they haven’t listened so far but I hope they will now.

@Delatron

That’s a great article. Many of the points we are trying to make on here. It’s not about being gleeful but realistic about the global nature of this pandemic.

Yep. It's all about having a grown-up discussion of different long-term strategies, and their strengths and weaknesses.

@sashagabadon

Luckily Australia have the solution or at least one of them. They make their own AZ vaccine, they need to urgently change the messaging and the risk assessment about this vaccine and the media must stop talking it down. They can learn from the roll out execution and messaging here which has been world leading particularly with regards to convincing hard to reach populations for example ( despite ignorant comments from a pp upthread that Australians have nothing to learn from the U.K.). It can definitely be turned around and get back on track. It needs a few more influential voices like this academic in the media to put the case and explain the predicament and take the population with them.

They are allowing AZ in under 60s providing you have it via GP so you can discuss the risks, which is sensible.

I don’t think that many will be keen to have it, especially in states that have avoided new outbreaks( or that controlled them quickly).

Hasn't NSW just tightened the restrictions in Sydney and acknowledged a longer, tougher lockdown is needed to bring this outbreak under control? That doesn't sound like they are "letting it rip" to me. I have no doubt they will stamp it out as there is no other option while only 9% are vaccinated.

I don’t think we’ll be able to judge for a while who has done “best” in this pandemic, and what will it be judged on? I mean, China got on top of it pretty quickly by locking people in their flats and not letting them out at all. I don’t think many countries would look at that as best practice though.
Hopefully, when we look in the future at the different things governments do, we’ll be able to take the best bits from every country and roll it into a pandemic plan for the future.
So I think Australia did a great job at first, but their vaccine rollout in the early stages was too slow. It was “a race” after all.
The U.K. has done a great job at vaccinating, but doing very little to stop it coming into the country back in Feb 2020 was a mistake.
Every country will have its good and bad decisions and hopefully we can analyse these to see what worked and what didn’t.

Also, I will say, the 9% vaccine rate is a red herring. That’s vaccine rate of the population who have had 2 doses. About 30% have had one dose and in people above 70 the % of fully vaccinated is much higher. Also vaccine rates differ across different areas. This is part of the reason that the western Sydney outbreak is a worry, because only 50% of people over 70 have been vaccinated, rather than 80- 90% in other areas.

@Tealightsandd

Ah 'influential voices' to tell the masses what they should want?

What predicament?

Booming economy (unlike the UK). Very few deaths, limited numbers at risk of long term Long Covid disability.

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.

I'm not saying they shouldn't (eventually) open up, at a safer stage. But it's important to point out that it's not a need.

‘Booming economy’? Try telling that to business owners and casual employees in Sydney at the moment with no job keeper. Locking down is the right thing until we get higher vaccine coverage but I think it’s naive to assume that all Australians are thriving economically at the moment. Even the house price boom has lots of losers. As usual, those who already had money are doing just fine but many of those who were struggling even before the pandemic are having a pretty hard time.

Don’t forget that many of us with family interstate can’t see tham at the moment. Maybe you just have a very different life to me but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a person in Australia whose life hasn’t been impacted by the pandemic in some way even though (luckily) most of us don’t know anyone who has been very sick or died from Covid.

Of course everywhere in the world has been affected in some way. It's a global pandemic - with a highly contagious disease that kills and disables. But you can't possibly say the situation in Australia, including Sydney, is anything close to how it's been in the UK. Sydney locking down with several hundred cases...to deal with it before it gets worse.

The UK on the otherhand has 150,000 deaths, many more long term disabled (including children), and an absolutely battered economy (except for rising house prices, which as you say, is very bad for many people). And now the UK government has decided to let the bodies pile up and become disabled. They are knowingly going to take action that will kill and disable huge numbers.

My family in Australia are very much happy to be there rather than the UK.

If there was a referendum in Australia on opening up, all the polls indicte the majority (as in more than 50%) would vote no. Many wanted tighter borders before Covid. There's no way the majority would want to be like the UK wrt Covid.

And a lockdown of a few weeks or so, is temporary loss of livelihood. Shit, but nothing compared to long term loss of livelihood, which is affecting many Long Covid sufferers.

@sashagabadon

Luckily Australia have the solution or at least one of them. They make their own AZ vaccine, they need to urgently change the messaging and the risk assessment about this vaccine and the media must stop talking it down. They can learn from the roll out execution and messaging here which has been world leading particularly with regards to convincing hard to reach populations for example ( despite ignorant comments from a pp upthread that Australians have nothing to learn from the U.K.). It can definitely be turned around and get back on track. It needs a few more influential voices like this academic in the media to put the case and explain the predicament and take the population with them.

My understanding is thatAstra Zeneca production is being ramped down and the vaccine itself will be quietly retired for the most part when further supplies of the more effective and more acceptable to the population of Australia, who are not keen to die of blood clots when they are at low risk of death from Covid or even infection with Covid currently, of Pfizer and Moderna arrive. In the meantime, and over the last several months, Australia is distributing vaccines to its vulnerable neighbours in the Asia- Pacific region.

But gloating (in a 'caring' way) about how Australia will have to open up some time and then they'll be fucked is really not helpful to anyone. Unless it is making you feel better about your own shitshow.

Right now, a twenty year old is on a ventilator and a teenager is among several in ICU in Sydney. Have a bloody heart.

Nobody in Australia needs their thinking changed by far-right nutbags - they just need a better vaccine rollout, and would prefer better vaccines than the AZ, which has cost the country millions of dollars to secure and proven so disappointing/alarming in its results.

Maybe when you have nearly 30,000 active cases a day, the risk of dying in middleage of bloodclots seems more attractive, even if it is a low risk statistically.

I think you can see from my post above saying I think Aus will deal with this outbreak and then improve its vaccine roll out that I’m not someone who is any way negative about their covid response, which I think has been a huge success. However I don’t think those that have made the point about longevity are “gloating”.

In the UK (England at least, but I think other nations similar), there is still a cohort of scientists who want to push for zero covid. The fact that a nation that has done that (and so far succeeded) is unlikely to be able to maintain it in the medium to long term is actually very relevant to that issue.

would prefer better vaccines than the AZ, which has cost the country millions of dollars to secure and proven so disappointing/alarming in its results

Astra Zeneca is neither disappointing nor alarming. If someone had said in March 2020 we would have a vaccine like Astra Zeneca available from late 2020 with the results it produces we would have all got the champagne out. It is also likely to be the jab which helps some of the most vulnerable communities in the world, as the logistical difficulties surrounding the mRNA vaccines means they’re not going to be easy to distribute in rural Bangladesh for example (not to mention it being provided at cost). I cannot bear the excessive slagging off of this vaccine.

Astra Zeneca is neither disappointing nor alarming.

Well, it seems that way to many Australians, which is what this thread is apparently about.

A number of really quite young Australians have died as a direct result of the AZ vaccine. With a tiny rollout, and deaths occurring at the very start of that shambolic rollout, it has been off-putting in the extreme.