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.

@AllHailTheGreatGoddess

Mills was always one of my favourites.

They have my compliance until the populace has been offered a vaccine, after that no more.

They can fuck off with playgrounds though. My DS11 is being a real trooper about this, but we go to the playground everyday and he kicks a ball around with his mates. If this increases the spread. So be it.

I have surprised myself with how libertarian I am. Guess I didn't know what I had until someone tried to take it away.

I didn't realise how libertarian I was either.

Nor did I realise how unlibertarian the Oz government was till this.

Sometimes it takes the shit to hit the fan before you realise what's wrong about your government and what they are doing right, despite your political perspective and it's so easy to just bob along in peacetime and non-pandemic time

It’s extraordinary. I hadn’t actually realised until recently that the Victorian parliament doesn't even bother sitting during lockdowns/restrictions. As in, doesn’t do what every other workplace in the world has done and move to zoom. They just don’t sit - no debate, scrutiny, questions at all. It’s borderline fascist when you put it next to the unscrutinised “health advice”, nanny state punitive restrictions and OTT demonisation of mostly law abiding citizens.

The political implications of covid will be felt in Oz long after coronavirus really does become like the flu - and they won’t be pretty.

@sashagabadon

heard on the news this morning that the Scottish Government would like to keep for ever some of the emergency powers they granted themselves last year. I haven't looked at the details but that is alarming to me. It's misson creep and not want the public agreed to.

It's an odd set of items. Online registration of births etc - fine. They also want the ability beyond March 2022 to close schools on a whimas light as they "consult" the CMO, but it isn't clear why they think they should still be closing schools next April. They also want to be able to release prisoners as and when, plus run online courts - but it isn't clear if this is when the defendant wants it, or when the prison service can't be bothered bringing them in to court. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/covid-scotland-snp-government-plans-24777647.amp

Don’t forget the federal government tried to bring in internet censorship not that long ago. Luckily it fell over once they realised searches like ‘breast screening’ would be blocked.

Then there was the proposed policy for young people to have wait six months after losing a job to get the dole. Also canned.

My only hope is that I still think as a whole the Australian people are a fairly sensible bunch. Most of us don’t want to be restricted like this forever. It’s just hard to just say it out loud at the moment.

Troops will be deployed to the Queensland border in a bid to block New South Wales' rampant COVID-19 outbreak from breaching the state line.

www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-19/covid-19-qld-nsw-border-troops-essential-workers/100388548

I have family in Aus and am baffled at their level of fear! its ridiculous that healthy people jn thier 30/40 are so afraid

The average age of covid death is 80+

Why on earth are people so scared. No one i know gives two hoots about covid - i'm 45 and not even arsed if i catch it - nor i anyone i know.

Literally mumsnet is the only place i know where people worry about covid. Noone else cares or worries about it

I cannot believe Aus is following the lockdown mistakes we made

The Economist has noted that the only countries persisting with a COVID elimination strategy are islands and dictatorships. (From the SMHH article linked upthread)

It's true. If you're a small island, keeping the virus out completely is feasible (and may be a very good idea if you have limited medical facilities). Australia, of course, is an island, but a very big one, which probably explains why it is a bit of a borderline case--they've succeeded in keeping it kinda out... but only at huge cost, including lost of state border closures.

Those of you who have reached a higher plane where Covid deaths are not upsetting-
What are your thoughts about the rising numbers globally of Delta in children? What about Australia's First Nations people who are 92% unvaccinated and are living with massive generational trauma?
It seems that the 130k deaths in UK last year just got you more immune to feeling loss.

Rising numbers of children - not ideal but until they start vaccinating young children there’s not a lot we can do. As far as I’m aware, even with children catching it, they aren’t being desperately ill with it. Can’t keep them off school for longer, that’s much worse for them in the long term
Indigenous populations I think should be prioritised for vaccines (can’t believe they weren’t in the first place) and they need to crack on and get on with it. But once they’ve been offered vaccines and have had that opportunity, it’s up to them to decide to take it or self isolate - we can’t mollycoddle them as if they can’t process risk.
I’m not immune to loss, but I also accept that the government can’t save everyone from everything.

History teaches me that the passive acceptance of a police state is more of a risk to my children than this virus.

I am not immune, from Covid, or loss, or fear. What I am, is accepting of the inevitability of the virus spreading. That part is done. It is coming, get ready.

We can mitigate for a while longer, I want those indigeneous populations vaccinated ASAP, I want my kids vaccinated ASAP. But after that, it is done.

And in the meantime, no restrictions that are not absolutely necessary to keep it bubbling while we get vaccinated.

Maybe because I'm in WA and have zero desire to ever go back to UK, until my mum wears me down with guilt trips, and so there's next to no impact to me at moment (although I do feel like Covid's coming to us) but fears of a police state feel absolutely overblown to me.

So far there is no evidence that mortality is rising in kids due to delta, from the infinitesimally low rate we know it is. So not at all concerned by that.

And you cannot lockdown a whole country indefinitely to protect even a vulnerable indigenous population, sven you must se that’s impossible. So government is just going to have to bloody figure that one out quick smart.

And, yes, having had quite a few deaths does mean you are able to be a bit more relaxed about the risk. People die of stuff all the time. People will die of covid in the future. But we’ve all been out and about among covid for over a year and feel confident life can continue, with vaccines of course. And that’s where hopefully australia will get to in the next year or so, too.

@DetMcNulty you’ve already had multiple breaches of check in data being misused by the WA police, and WA residents being locked out of their State and home indefinitely. Plus of course the WA premier refusing to follow national plans. It’s definitely not a democratic utopia over there!

@Watapalava

I have family in Aus and am baffled at their level of fear! its ridiculous that healthy people jn thier 30/40 are so afraid

The average age of covid death is 80+

Why on earth are people so scared. No one i know gives two hoots about covid - i'm 45 and not even arsed if i catch it - nor i anyone i know.

Literally mumsnet is the only place i know where people worry about covid. Noone else cares or worries about it

I cannot believe Aus is following the lockdown mistakes we made

A) we aren’t making the lockdown mistakes you made B) who do you think people in their 80s get covid from? C) we have had a number of young healthy people die and most of us would prefer to minimise that number

Quarantine and getting citizens home is a federal government responsibility, which they've abdicated to the states. They've finally, 18 months agreed to funding for a quarantine facility in Jandakot, but too little too late. And he's not refusing to follow national plan, he's said he'd follow the Doherty institute guidelines (which the plan is predicated on), which state that as well as 80% vax rate there are other factors to consider, such as case rates, which is exactly the same as Gladys has also admitted, but for some reason that's not reported in the same way.

Thing is, it’s always a tragedy when a young person dies. But young people die in avoidable ways quite often, all over the world. Car crashes, drug overdoses, suicide, accidents, drownings, as well as various diseases especially in developing countries. All terrible tragedies and we do what we can to mitigate the risk but we don’t ban parents with young children from having a swimming pool, or say that you have to be 30 before you can drive etc. With flu, young people sadly die, but we do what we can: vaccinate, tell people to wash their hands in the winter months and that’s about it. We don’t keep children off school for months on end.
In 2016 my children were at school when an awful flu went through school, at times 40% of our junior school were off sick. But there was no suggestion that we should close for the remaining 60%. It was just a case of “well, take time off, then come back”. In fact my son did get the flu (mildly as he was vaccinated) and did pass it onto my parents who were both hit quite badly with it (my mum got pneumonia) but at no point did we think “this is the fault of the government for not bringing in provisions to stop this” we just thought “oh well, one of those unfortunate things”.

I assume all the vulnerable people have been vaccinated in Australia by now. At this point in the UK (And Denmark where I used to be) the emphasis was on opening up and kids were very much back in school. I’m not sure what ‘lockdown mistakes’ you’re referring to mr Bob? The biggest one for me was not putting India on the red list earlier but other than that, I’m not sure what lockdown mistakes. There have been other mistakes like not emphasising the need to improve ventilation in schools and workplaces and not paying people to stay at home who have covid symptoms or covid, but the actual lockdown was sensible for me. There was always going to be more covid because of the geography of Europe. I’m not sure a tighter lockdown would improve the situation as people were catching covid in hospital, work and at home.

Wrt high number of people dying of covid, I think unfortunately this will continue for years. Lockdowns will delay it but it’s a new disease that clearly is a shock to the human body. There are other methods to slow the spread other than to lockdown a country; the options available are not simply high deaths or lockdown.

You’d think all the vulnerable people would be vaccinated by now in Aus as we’ve been vaccinating since March and yet nearly every death that’s announced bar a couple have been of people in their 70s and 80s who aren’t vaccinated.
They’ve had 5 months and they were a priority group for about 3 months so I don’t know why they’ve slipped through the net.

Now THAT is a good question. All of the oldies I know are double vaccinated and have been for a while (first shots March/April) - both where I am in Hornsby Shire and where my most of my family is which is Blacktown/Mount Druitt.

My PILs and Mum are not in care homes though so I am not sure how the rollout actually worked with people in homes. It did seem to me to be a wasted opportunity to not vaccinate care home staff while you were there doing the residents. Seemed like a 2 birds 1 stone type situation.

310,000 jabs yesterday across the country. There aren't that many of us. We will be done soon! This too shall pass.

8% of the Aboriginal population in western New South Wales have been vaccinated. 8%. This could be a tragedy of huge proportions

Why haven’t remote communities and aboriginal Australians been prioritised?

Because our Federal Government is inept, is shirking it's responsibilities and led by a fool?

They have in many areas, but there are 2 issues, 1 how remote they are and 2 their understandable lack of trust in the government. Victoria has done really well, they have a higher % of Indigenous vaxed than non- indigenous. NT is also doing pretty well, looks like they other states should learn from them. I mentioned earlier, there are some communities near Alice Spring that are 100% vaccinated, and others close to that which have used the Elders to communicate, and in some case cash payments for anyone being vaccinated.

NSW and WA have particular issues in being able to reach some communities physically, plus unfortunately in Kimberly and Pilbarra, there are religous groups pushing the anti vax message.

But fundamentally yes, what @AllHailTheGreatGoddess said.

@AllHailTheGreatGoddess

Because our Federal Government is inept, is shirking it's responsibilities and led by a fool?

Yup