Australia in a mess - NZ with a plan

[StartupRepair]

More than half of Australia is in lockdown now, sparked (imo) by the intransigence of the NSW Premier who ignored all warnings about Delta. Our procurement of and messaging around vaccines has been dangerously incompetent.
It all feels a bit bleak today. At least NZ seems to have a plan.

@Watapalava

I have no idea how Australia and NZ will ever open up and accept the level of cases and deaths which will be inevitable once things open even if 100% are vaccinated!

More people will likely die everyday as part of normal life than they’re experiencing now
For uk the current death rate is so much lower than what we had

For Aus/NZ coming to terms with say 50 deaths a day - which will be the norm even when fully vaccinated - will be a difficult figure to accept

we are averaging 90 deaths a day in the UK at the moment and it's fairly stable. It has been at times above 1000 so I suppose that's good.

Nobody seems to be that bothered about 90 deaths a day these days. Yet I remember being horrified watching the covid crisis unfold in Italy right at the beginning and there being 50 deaths a day. It takes a long time for everyone to adjust to the death figures

Jacobean Ardern is barking MAD in her pursuit of the impossible

At what point will she admit she's screwed up and open up as there'll be cases in NZ for ever unless they ban anyone ever coming in.

Honestly the woman doesn't appear to have a brain in her head.

I think the person without a brain in their head is the one advocating the country open up while the majority remain unvaccinated!!

@Mandalay246

Jacobean Ardern is barking MAD in her pursuit of the impossible

At what point will she admit she's screwed up and open up as there'll be cases in NZ for ever unless they ban anyone ever coming in.

Honestly the woman doesn't appear to have a brain in her head.

I think the person without a brain in their head is the one advocating the country open up while the majority remain unvaccinated!!

And that's another thing that boggles my mind, how NZ with its tiny population is still so unvaccinated when this has been going on SO long.

Honestly I think the woman is hopeless. I know it's unfashionable to say so as she took her baby to work or whatever, but I think she is clueless.

Is supply the issue in NZ? Does NZ have any domestic vaccine production capability or are all vaccines imported?

Frazzled

Yes 90/day seems to be our ‘acceptable’ level

Boris has always said we would get to a point were we accept a certain amount similar to flu - which for uk can be as high as 20,000 a year

I just can’t see Aus/NZ accepting that - I have family in Aus and there seem overly scared for a virus with an average age of death of over 80

I have no idea how Australia and NZ will ever open up and accept the level of cases and deaths which will be inevitable once things open even if 100% are vaccinated!

Zero covid is over in NSW, probably Vic, and therefore it's over in Australia.

Without Australia to bubble with, a zero covid NZ is economic toast. Few skilled immigrants are going to move to a place which makes visiting family almost practically impossible and a trading nation must openly trade. See: LOTR Amazon withdrawal.

we are averaging 90 deaths a day in the UK at the moment and it's fairly stable

Deaths with covid, not all of covid.

How many people used to die each day? How many die each year of flu? Car crashes? Cancer? Murder? All causes?

Deaths with covid, not all of covid.

Yes, but we seem to be in a position now where the death certificate numbers more or less align in a stable way with the 28 day numbers (because the 28 day numbers include a few more who didn’t die of Covid, as you say, but also miss some who died of covid outside the 28-day window). So it turns out to be a pretty decent measure.

I do think 90/day will drop with boosters for the vulnerable and increased virus-acquired immunity in the community over the next few months, especially next month when schools go back. I suspect the minimum age for vaccination will drop to 12 before Christmas, and we’ll stabilise at a lower number of average deaths.

@PicsInRed

we are averaging 90 deaths a day in the UK at the moment and it's fairly stable

Deaths with covid, not all of covid.

How many people used to die each day? How many die each year of flu? Car crashes? Cancer? Murder? All causes?

From memory, the average number of deaths per day in the UK is around 1,200.

From memory, the average number of deaths per day in the UK is around 1,200.

Thank you. So, if we're down to 90 with covid, not of covid, we probably then need to divine which of those are likely to be covid as primary cause of death and figure out whether that number is greater than what we already deemed acceptable from other contagious drivers of death prior to this pandemic.

Thank you. So, if we're down to 90 with covid, not of covid, we probably then need to divine which of those are likely to be covid as primary cause of death and figure out whether that number is greater than what we already deemed acceptable from other contagious drivers of death prior to this pandemic.

As mentioned above, we have a way to do this - death certificates provide this information, but with significant lag so not very useful as a monitoring statistic. They are, however, shown on the government dashboard.

The death certificate numbers and the 28 day numbers (by date of death) track pretty closely now, meaning the 28 day figure is a reliable indicator.

The ONS reports both deaths due to
Covid (ie where it is listed as the underlying cause of death, the condition/event that started the chain of events leading to death) and deaths involving Covid (where Covid is listed on the death certificate whether an underlying cause or not.) They say in around 92% of deaths where Covid is listed on the certificate, Covid is the underlying cause.

Honestly I think the woman is hopeless. I know it's unfashionable to say so as she took her baby to work or whatever, but I think she is clueless.

I've always thought the woman was a complete idiot and that's speaking as someone who used to live in NZ. I am watching with interest to see how her strategy plays out over the next 12 months though. The population of NZ is tiny so she has a very easy job in comparison to most other countries.

I don’t mind Jacinda. She is a natural leader no matter what you think of her personally, New Zealander’s do defer to her and respect her on the whole from what I can see.
She does get an easy pass from the NZ press though if you listen to press conferences. They ask pretty easy questions and they really don’t challenge her at all , hence why they are in this mess with the vaccine supply and rollout.
If there had been dissenting voices back in 2020 shouting loudly but what’s the end game for zero Covid? Have you ordered vaccines? How many, what sort and when do we get them? Demanding answers all the time. Now they may or may not have got answers half the time but it would have got the population thinking, yes what exactly is the end game here?
They’d be in a better place now imo. So the relaxed media is just to blame.
She’d have a difficult time managing the U.K. though as we’re much meaner to our politicians generally, our media certainly is. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent of say piers Morgan or John humpries or Jeremy paxman shouting at government ministers on the telly and radio every day , which I generally hate and think piers in particular does more harm than good but someone like him does keep politicians on their toes.

@sashagabadon I completely agree with all of your points. I think it's clear there's been very little planning in NZ over the past 12 months. It seemed as though JA believed she could sit back and let other countries shoulder the burden of eliminating COVID and then she would magically open NZ's borders. Now it's become clear that even with reasonable vaccine coverage rates, this will lead to a huge surge in infections, I think she has a huge problem on her hands.

Sasha I agree about the easy ride with the press

Mike Hosking was the only person I'd see criticising her and challenging and so she doesn't seem to engage with him anymore (and I'm sure he's a pain in the arse)

Jennie May is usually pretty nice to her on Breakfast

Here she is talking about their pathway out, I am eternally distracted tha5 she or someone failed to put the curling tong through an sizeable section of her hair at the back 😆

fb.watch/7rD1VQsTUJ/

She does have great hair , almost the antithesis to Boris’s blond mop

From that clip sounds like they are planning a similar red, amber, green list travel system as we have here, which as we know is pretty chaotic and subject to very annoying short notice change. So assume limited travel opportunities for kiwis for most of 2022.
There is always an assumption that it’s for NZ to decide travel bubbles but that’s shortsighted. If there’s an outbreak in NZ in 2022 it could be the Aussies that block NZ travellers rather than the other way round!

And that's another thing that boggles my mind, how NZ with its tiny population is still so unvaccinated when this has been going on SO long.

Maybe read the whole thread? I have already explained about the vaccine rollout on this, and several other threads. Even with a tiny population it takes longer than a couple of weeks ffs.

I don't think NZ's plan was really all that thought out or prepared. I'm a kiwi in oz (in our 9th? week of lockdown) and have been watching it all unfold.
I have a close friend who works higher up in MIQ who has consistently said that they've escaped many close calls by pure luck and that it wouldn't hold forever.
DB and SIL both drs at a large hospital and have been concerned throughout about the lack of preparations.
The recent Port of Tauranga issue seemed to be a bit of an oh-shit moment because then the messaging was about being prepared for snap level 4 lockdowns. Not surprising when it suddenly becomes public knowledge that no one in charge knows at a glance how many of the (phase 1) workers are vaccinated yet working in a border role.
At that time we had a few family and friend calls where we talked about Oz situation and importance of vaccinating early while there was no community spread. Most were very much oh yes we'll get around to it soon, no rush. Here we are a week or so later and quite a few of our friends and family there seem both surprised and unprepared.
I realise my experience is not true of all NZ'ers and there are plenty who have been proactive. But I am frustrated for NZ and my fellow kiwis and hope they have more success than NSW has had.

Zero covid is not a plan

Maybe read the whole thread? I have already explained about the vaccine rollout on this, and several other threads. Even with a tiny population it takes longer than a couple of weeks ffs.

Couple of weeks?? We've been vaccinating in the UK since December 18th 2020, 9 months of full on vaccinating and nearly 78% of a population of nearly 70 million done in that time. You've got what 5 million? Ridiculous situation.

I'd be bloody furious if I lived in Aus or NZ that you haven't taken advantage of your initial strategy.

Sorry @Sagealicious, it was a comment on why the RFDS is underfunded.

Apparently pork barrelling by paying over the odds for useless carparks is a better use of government money.

Couple of weeks?? We've been vaccinating in the UK since December 18th 2020, 9 months of full on vaccinating and nearly 78% of a population of nearly 70 million done in that time. You've got what 5 million? Ridiculous situation.

As I said in my post, maybe read all the posts in this thread. I have already explained that when the vaccines were ordered Pfizer advised that the bulk of them wouldn't arrive until late July - i.e. only two or three weeks ago. It really intrigues me how posters think people can be vaccinated when there are not enough vaccines in the country?

We've been vaccinating in the UK since December 18th 2020

As for this - of course you have, you were riddled with covid at that stage. We weren't - and still aren't. Would you have liked NZ and Australia to be demanding vaccines when we had no cases and you had thousands?

As for this - of course you have, you were riddled with covid at that stage. We weren't - and still aren't. Would you have liked NZ and Australia to be demanding vaccines when we had no cases and you had thousands?

Yeah that's right! Let's remember the UK only sorted out the vaccines in December and magically the supply appeared because we had so much Covid around.........

The UK always realised that the way out of this was vaccines.

We would have been vaccinating from December with 100 or 100k cases daily.

For all the BJ has done wrong (locked down late a few times and been poor with his communication), the vaccines he did get right. That has been a failure of JA and I don't think you can describe it as anything else. She did not prioritise vaccines. Even now she is not prioritising them when she had suspended them for 48 hours and that absolutely sends out the wrong message.

Still plenty of boxes of AstraZeneca in the back of the garage though? You could have used that.