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.

@Blessex

There is some kind of hysteria happening! This is so weird. It’s like one group is - don’t kill the kids and the other is - don’t vaccinate them!!!

I know.

On reddit I was told I wanted to ‘kill some kids so I can go on holiday’. I kid you not. Yes, I know reddit is a bit of a minefield but this is just a reddit group for my city, not some fringe, crackpot group. Pre Covid it was a fun and useful online community.

It’s getting more and more bizarre here.

I was out for a walk the other day and I noticed a grandma yelling at her granddaughter to get off the the exercise equipment at the park. She said, you know you’re not allowed to touch that.
The little girl must have given her some lip and the grandma got up in her face and said “do you want me to die!”
I couldn’t believe she would put that kind of guilt onto a 8 year old child. The poor girl looked miserable, it took all my power not to intervene.

What is going on, I feel like the crazy has ramped up.
For context, in my lga which is one of the largest in nsw we have 19 active cases all in isolation.

It’s a weird level of hysteria which doesn’t seem to exist for anything else. Flu is genuinely dangerous for children and yet we wouldn’t dream of closing schools or shops to stop them getting sick. I know we have vaccines for flu but loads of people don’t get them, kids get ill and we go “oh well”

It’s getting more and more bizarre here.

If you want a sanity check, try looking at the threads here back in March 2020 and see how they've evolved over time.

Eventually, people get exhausted of living like this and saner voices predominate. (Some people will probably live in a permanent state of panic for years, but by the time you're a year or so into mass spread, they're a minority, as you'll see on Mumsnet now).

I know we have vaccines for flu but loads of people don’t get them, kids get ill and we go “oh well”

The two people I know who are showing absolutely no signs of being able to live with endemic COVID long term, are both people who I know for a fact have never ever bothered to get the flu shot for themselves for their children. I get mine every year and get the kids vaxxed as well. have little prior immunity.

People are so weird, putting COVID into a completely different category to other disease. The reality is that COVID will end up like all the other seasonal viruses in the next couple of years--a minor threat to most people, a possible threat to older people with weak immunity who would be advised to get a booster each year, and other people can reduce the societal risk still further if they opt for boosters as well.

@Kokeshi123

It’s getting more and more bizarre here.

If you want a sanity check, try looking at the threads here back in March 2020 and see how they've evolved over time.

Eventually, people get exhausted of living like this and saner voices predominate. (Some people will probably live in a permanent state of panic for years, but by the time you're a year or so into mass spread, they're a minority, as you'll see on Mumsnet now).

Good to hear. I wonder why some people react so extremely either way? They tend to be the loudest so the moderate majority probably get drowned out a bit. I do think those of us that haven’t been working from home tend to have a slightly more pragmatic viewpoint (not denying that working from home has had an important role to play).

Wonder ifI should leave Mumsnet now that I’m a confirmed child killer

Anyone else in Melbourne right now? The presser this afternoon, sweet Jesus...

I’m not there but from what I’ve read it hasn’t gone down all that well.

Im in UK, just watched the Melbourne presser on FB watch.

Jesus 😆

I’m no fan of Dan Andrews (putting it mildly) and for me it was just wonderful to watch him turn himself inside out trying to justify the changes in policy.
I think every politician in Australia needs to look up the word “hubris”.

Was the extension of measures not expected then?

The 70% of first doses to be reached before restrictions can be loosened was a shock. Living like this until 23rd September and only then the exercise limit increasing to 3 hours from 2 and then the 5km radius being increased to 10km. I actually really respect Andrews, but all this came out of the blue.

@Ozgirl75

I’m no fan of Dan Andrews (putting it mildly) and for me it was just wonderful to watch him turn himself inside out trying to justify the changes in policy. I think every politician in Australia needs to look up the word “hubris”.

I only saw a glimpse of the conference and even that was enough to make me want to top myself. And I don’t even live in Victoria

Gladys cops lots of flack but at least she offers some hope.

The QLD premier has actually come out and said they don’t want to open their borders until under 12’s are vaccinated. She’s running with the current ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ narrative and not the science and it makes me angry. She’s called young children ‘the most vulnerable’ when they’re actually the least vulnerable to Covid.

Meanwhile there is a town literally cut in two on the Qld / NSW border. Some of these people need to stand back and see how insane this all is.

How can that be!
There isn’t even an approved vaccine for this age group. The is insane.

The GG has come out and said that if premiers maintain closed borders at 80% they will go to the high court.

@bluetongue

The QLD premier has actually come out and said they don’t want to open their borders until under 12’s are vaccinated. She’s running with the current ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ narrative and not the science and it makes me angry. She’s called young children ‘the most vulnerable’ when they’re actually the least vulnerable to Covid.

Meanwhile there is a town literally cut in two on the Qld / NSW border. Some of these people need to stand back and see how insane this all is.

It's almost like a test of who can be the most pig headed... regardless of detriment to anything else.

Crackers. Overtly not based on science. Scary, it makes you wonder where this will end. Or when. It’s hysteria that was similar in Europe, but that was when it was a new disease with no treatments or vaccine. Or preparation. Or testing capacity. This is inexplainable now.

She’s called young children ‘the most vulnerable’ when they’re actually the least vulnerable to Covid.

There’s so much global data available that to come out with stuff like this is totally ridiculous.

There’s people on my local Facebook group right now talking about how they expect special treatment for their children, how they shouldn’t have to send kids back to school and how some teachers should just be put onto full time online learning. As if it’s possible to just conjure up a load of extra teachers to deal with the frightened parents who dont want to send kids to school.
Personally I think parents should be able to keep kids off if they really want to, but they would have register themselves as home schoolers.

I’ve only just caught up with some of what was said at the Vic press conference today. They didn’t close playgrounds because of any evidence of spread between children there but because wanted to punish the parents for meeting there. Now they are opening them back up but with QR codes (yeah, they will get used) and adults wearing masks. The fucking curfew is staying. No science behind that just makes the Police state easier to run.

I’m not in Victoria but from what I read online people there are close to breaking if not broken already. Hope anyone on here that is locked down is doing okay.

@newstart1234

Crackers. Overtly not based on science. Scary, it makes you wonder where this will end. Or when. It’s hysteria that was similar in Europe, but that was when it was a new disease with no treatments or vaccine. Or preparation. Or testing capacity. This is inexplainable now.

Problem is, how do go against governments ‘keeping us safe’ and ‘following the health advice’?

I’m no anti vaxxer or Covid denier but it’s scary when some of the things the conspiracy types have been saying are right.

It's like listening to a March 2020 version on steroids

@bluetongue

I’ve only just caught up with some of what was said at the Vic press conference today. They didn’t close playgrounds because of any evidence of spread between children there but because wanted to punish the parents for meeting there. Now they are opening them back up but with QR codes (yeah, they will get used) and adults wearing masks. The fucking curfew is staying. No science behind that just makes the Police state easier to run.

I’m not in Victoria but from what I read online people there are close to breaking if not broken already. Hope anyone on here that is locked down is doing okay.

It really is bordering on cruel. There’s so much evidence now that there is negligible outdoor transmission and yet the truth has been bent by Dan and Co. I’ve read a 100 page guide put together leading US experts on aerosol transmission and once you get your head around the science it’s very clear why transmission is heavily skewed to indoors. Even the slightest breeze displaces aerosols within seconds.

I watched a few minutes of Dan’s presser after reading posts in here. He claimed the current lockdown had prevented 6000 infections and 600 hospitalisations. Since when did C19 have a 10% hospitalisation rate, especially with most of your vulnerable vaccinated? NSW is running at around 5% currently I think and that’s going to be an overstatement as I’m sure they’re no longer catching every mild and asymptomatic case.
Estimates from the US put the actual hospitalisation to infection rate at around 2%.

I now understand why my relatives based in Victoria are terrorised.

Dan said they were punishing parents!?

I cant find a transcript. We have friends in Victoria but rhey are pro lockdown ("think of the children!"

@Kokeshi123

It’s getting more and more bizarre here.

If you want a sanity check, try looking at the threads here back in March 2020 and see how they've evolved over time.

Eventually, people get exhausted of living like this and saner voices predominate. (Some people will probably live in a permanent state of panic for years, but by the time you're a year or so into mass spread, they're a minority, as you'll see on Mumsnet now).

100% this, maybe not much comfort when you’re smack bang in the middle of it but hearing the stories from Aus, it’s like deja vu for us in the UK. You guys have a vaccine headstart so you’ll very likely move through it all much quicker than we did.