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.

I honestly think the Brisbane one was the exception - possibly it worked as it was caught at a VERY early stage? Possibly it hasn’t worked and there are cases circulating now.
I guess there are two things though - firstly, can people really live in hard lockdown like in Victoria long term? And secondly, should they? What’s the level of lockdown needed to allow cases to spread in a slowish fashion to move through this phase and out the other side.
I can see that just opening up wouldn’t work as I suspect the hospitals aren’t as prepared as they should be (how? We’ve had a year and a half!) but equally the lockdown failure in Victoria is showing us that people just can’t put up with this level of restrictions long term.

The lockdown in Victoria is failing because Gladys didn't do her lockdown well, at all, Victoria was well-infected by her dilatory management.

As for "can't put up with restrictions", read won't/don't.

@echt

The lockdown in Victoria is failing because Gladys didn't do her lockdown well, at all, Victoria was well-infected by her dilatory management.

As for "can't put up with restrictions", read won't/don't.

I’ve been away from Australia for a long time now. One of the things that’s struck me from afar recently is the massive blame culture in Australia. I’m not sure if was always that way and I was blind to it, but I’ve ever seen as much hate directed at one individual as I have this month at Gladys Berejiklian. 99% of the world can’t keep Delta out yet everything is this one woman’s fault.

Boris Johnson presided over Covid positive patients being sent en masse back to care homes from hospitals last year (leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths) and somehow attracted a fraction of the ire directed at Gladys. You’d think she was gleefully letting it rip but last time I checked she was overseeing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Yes it was late but she was trying to balance safety and freedom in the face of a threat that simply evolved.

But that's because she (and Scott Morrison and the fed gvmt) has been so critical of other states, and were more than happy to stick the boot in when Victoria was going through issues last year. If you hold yourself up as the gold standard, and get called the woman who saved Australia then you should expect to get back what you were happy to dish out. And the consequences of going late are far worse than being a bit trigger happy and locking down early, now there's Victoria and NZ in trouble from cases starting in NSW.

People seem to think Covid is the only thing to fear.

I'm in the (rather lonely ) camp of thinking Gladys is actually doing a fine job. I think she has more awareness of the horrendous impact lockdowns have on mental health and people's livelihoods and has been trying to strike as much balance as possible.

I was one of the first close contacts from the limo driver after shopping in the same store as him and remember the ridicule when health said he had passed it on from passing someone in the store. They had to back this up with CCTV footage as nobody believed it could be so contagious.

She began the management of the outbreak the same way as all the other previous ones we've had in sydney, it was only as time went on that realisation came that it wouldn't work as the delta strain was a whole new beast.

I'm sick of hearing from other states about our 'mockdown' I've been at home for 12 weeks now and there's nothing easy about it, oh but we had a curfew! A curfew wouldn't make an ounce of different to me, I'm a single mum with an 8yo, oh we were only allowed out for an hour a day, really? You think me walking round the park twice a day instead of once while my son rides his scooter is going to cause a super spreading event!? Probably not but it will help my mental health and mean I can keep going with this for a bit longer.

And look at what's happening in Victoria, compliance is causing issues down there because they've had such awful long lockdowns people can't do it anymore and they've only just started it.

It was completely obvious how contagious Delta was. Gladys gambled with supreme arrogance and lost. Victorian numbers are sitting below 100 while NSW is over 1000. Our decision to lockdown early is evidently making a difference.
Victorians are weary of lockdown but we are also weary of being mocked and unsupported by the other states and federal government. That was as big an injury last year to my mental health as the extended pain of separation from beloved family.

@beingsunny I’m in agreement with you - although I wouldn’t say it out loud here! I think she has an understanding that other leaders don’t of how hard lockdown is, especially for people in flats and shared houses etc. She seems desperate to balance the needs of mental health vs lockdown and also understands the psychology of lockdown, why people break the rules etc.
Unfortunately there are a lot of thickos out there, and also a lot of people who seem entirely unable to put themselves in the shoes of people living day to day, in small units, trying to work, study etc all in a small space with no outdoor areas at all.

@StartupRepair Victoria is only 3 weeks into the outbreak.

When NSW hit 3 weeks there were daily cases in the 30's 37 to be exact.

One of the things that’s struck me from afar recently is the massive blame culture in Australia.

Totally agree, and I am finding this particular thing so ridiculous.

Very very few countries have been able to keep Delta out. Even countries like Vietnam which crushed the first wave have been completely spanked by this virus.

A breach was inevitable.

It happened to be GB in charge at the time, but it would have happened at some point, with someone in charge, as an absolute inevitability--are there some Australians who are really under the impression they could have kept the virus out for ever and ever?

Anger should be directed at the failure to get the vax rolled out faster, and at those baby boomers who chose to dither around waiting and vaccine-shopping for months on end, rather than rolling a sleeve up and getting on with it.

The lockdown in Victoria is failing because Gladys didn't do her lockdown well, at all, Victoria was well-infected by her dilatory management.

So what if she had done things differently and crushed the outbreak? It would have just been delaying the inevitable. The virus can't be kept out forever. At least the current panic has galvanized NSW people into action in terms of getting jabbed. It's just a pity it takes a crisis before a lot of people are prepared to get their shots.

@beingsunny

People seem to think Covid is the only thing to fear.

I'm in the (rather lonely ) camp of thinking Gladys is actually doing a fine job. I think she has more awareness of the horrendous impact lockdowns have on mental health and people's livelihoods and has been trying to strike as much balance as possible.

I was one of the first close contacts from the limo driver after shopping in the same store as him and remember the ridicule when health said he had passed it on from passing someone in the store. They had to back this up with CCTV footage as nobody believed it could be so contagious.

She began the management of the outbreak the same way as all the other previous ones we've had in sydney, it was only as time went on that realisation came that it wouldn't work as the delta strain was a whole new beast.

I'm sick of hearing from other states about our 'mockdown' I've been at home for 12 weeks now and there's nothing easy about it, oh but we had a curfew! A curfew wouldn't make an ounce of different to me, I'm a single mum with an 8yo, oh we were only allowed out for an hour a day, really? You think me walking round the park twice a day instead of once while my son rides his scooter is going to cause a super spreading event!? Probably not but it will help my mental health and mean I can keep going with this for a bit longer.

I agree with this. It's easy to centre your blame on one person when that is who you see every day at 11am giving bad news, but the unmitigated bile directed Gladys' way is horrifying. Social media makes this easy; Facebook and Twitter have eroded comprehension and reading skills to a point that people rarely read past a headline. If there is a source given, they won't click it. I find it quite sad.

I think the fact that what works for one state won't necessarily work for another, along with the politics which the Federal government has definitely contributed to doesn't help with the finger pointing. I absolutely can accept that managing an outbreak in Sydney or Melbourne is going to be considerably more difficult than in Perth, but the counter point should be considered by Gladys and ScoMo, whereby certainly for WA, if an outbreak gets into our regions the complexities of our geography make it equally difficult to manage.

The WA and Victorian premier have been a target of just as much vitriol as she has, probably more from the Murdoch press and news, who have gone pretty easy on her compared to either of them, and she's certainly been happy to criticise them in the past.

Re the blame culture, it's also the openly blaming and shaming of members of the public. It's very strange and divisive. Like others have said, COVID was inevitably going to get in somehow and it is not an individuals fault that it has done.

There really is an odd blame thing going on. I wonder if its almost a displacement thing where they feel the need to blame "someone" for covid so it's Gladys. When really covid was eventually coming.

Most of what she has said since I've been following (so only last few weeks) has seemed quite sensible. Certainly made more sense than some of D Andrews comments which I know friends and family in Victoria have revered.

@DetMcNulty

But that's because she (and Scott Morrison and the fed gvmt) has been so critical of other states, and were more than happy to stick the boot in when Victoria was going through issues last year. If you hold yourself up as the gold standard, and get called the woman who saved Australia then you should expect to get back what you were happy to dish out. And the consequences of going late are far worse than being a bit trigger happy and locking down early, now there's Victoria and NZ in trouble from cases starting in NSW.

NZ isn’t in lockdown because of NSW. It was quarantine failure.We might as well all just say we’re in lockdown because of China

I too think Gladys is on the right track - and NSW may well be out of the swamp before the other states.

I think Australia is just going through the 5 stages of grief - like the UK and Europe had to in 2020 and early 2021.
It just that the UK went through it as one country whereas Australian states (no doubt due to the size of the country and different political systems) are going through it at different speeds
denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

UK/ Europe is at acceptance. NZ and WA seem to be still in denial, Victoria is maybe at anger and NSW is at bargaining.
I honestly think it's a process every country has to go through but we'll all get out the other side.

There's little point in blaming any one individual for anything - it's a waste of time. It's much better to focus on what to do now - vaccinations the number one thing above everything else and improved testing infrastructure and ensuring that hospitals can cope, make sure there is plenty of PPE etc .
Thousands of staff may possibly need to be redeployed and trained to be ICU ready - In the UK, medical students and retired nurses returned to the workforce.
UK had to do all this at speed last year but now in a much much calmer situation. Nightingale Hospitals were built to increase capacity and we re-purposed all our existing hospitals and brought private hospitals on board. We now have ability to do about 1 million PCR tests a day and bought 1 billion LFT test kits for regular testing of the whole population including school kids.
Australia may not need to do all the UK had to - as vaccinations will hopefully do their thing, but States should be looking at these contingencies rather than assuming there is nothing to learn from overseas and spending time trying to identify the exact moment covid arrived and who is to blame. It doesn't matter.

The anger from Victoria. twitter.com/DaveMilbo/status/1431146374905561092?s=19

yep that's definitely an angry article , also denial thrown into the mix - he even says at the end the "alternative is unthinkable" (to lockdowns)
But if you refuse to even "think" about it, you can't prepare and it leaves you ultimately in a much worse position than you could have been.

@Kokeshi123

Anger should be directed at the failure to get the vax rolled out faster

^ This

Whilst Australians fights amongst themselves about who is locking down ‘better’, who spread what where, who has the better premier, the man at the top knows that everyone is now far too distracted with inter-state bickering to notice what he and his government did/didn’t do that caused this avoidable situation in the first place.

Focus on the bigger picture and see how pointless this inter-state blame culture is. It plays straight into the hands of the man who got you all into this mess in the first place.

Blackbird absolutely.

The article is clearly ragey but seems to suggest that living with Covid as the next step means the Melbourne lockdown last year was all for nothing which is wrong, that was needed by the Victorians because we didn't have vaccines then.

Previous lockdowns are “sunk costs” and basically we can’t focus too much on what we’ve done before if it distracts us from the correct course of action right now. I actually can understand where Andrews is coming from - he feels like all the past sacrifices are for nothing if they “give in” now - but this may lead him to make incorrect decisions for the current situation.
And he can’t completely ignore the past - the long lockdown is basically the reason for why this current lockdown is now failing - because people just can’t cope with it any longer and also can see how futile it is.

In Melbourne.
Until more are vaccinated, we have to continue lockdowns.
The hospital system in Victoria is already on a knife edge, not with cases, but with staff isolating through exposure so they're short staffed.
We know we have to live with it going forward but with only 25% fully vaccinated there's a long way to go to get to 70% or 80% - 2 to 3 months.
Gladys talking about lifting restrictions next week ( or soon) is absolutely lunacy.

Allowing up to 5 fully vaccinated people to meet isn’t much though - plus she needed to do something to keep the momentum of vaccination going, and this was a “low risk, moderate reward” option (outside, vaccinated, not high risk suburbs). If she kept us all on full lockdown forever she knows that people would just stop bothering after a while (lockdown fatigue). It’s a smart move and has given such a lot of happiness to my children who can now see a couple of friends in the school holidays.