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.

@psychomath

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

What's the GG?

Governer General but I was wrong it was actually the Attorney General that said it

@Ozgirl75

Watching Dan Andrews’ about turn has truly been something to watch. Now people in Melbourne are stuck with this awful restrictive lockdown which he has accepted both isn’t working, and that some of the measures are actually purely designed to punish people and make the police’s lives easier. How this man is still in power in a country full of people who I assumed didn’t take any crap astounds me. Plus the figures he’s given to support the ongoing restrictions are wrong, then you have Anastasia giving 100% wrong medical advice about children. It’s worrying that people aren’t questioning this more.

The big problem with Anna’s new under 12 vaccination drive is that some parents will take that to imply that Covid is genuinely dangerous for young children. Praying on parents’ desire to keep their children safe with incorrect information is a new depth for Australian politics.

Numbers clearly coming down in Auckland now.

@Ozgirl75

Watching Dan Andrews’ about turn has truly been something to watch. Now people in Melbourne are stuck with this awful restrictive lockdown which he has accepted both isn’t working, and that some of the measures are actually purely designed to punish people and make the police’s lives easier. How this man is still in power in a country full of people who I assumed didn’t take any crap astounds me. Plus the figures he’s given to support the ongoing restrictions are wrong, then you have Anastasia giving 100% wrong medical advice about children. It’s worrying that people aren’t questioning this more.

@Ozgirl75 - can you back up your statements with facts? That Daniel Andrews has said the lockdown isn't working and that some of the measures are actually purely designed to punish people? Also what are the incorrect figures you say he has given, can you elaborate?

It's clear that the lockdown isn't going to achieve zero cases, but in a population with a low vaccination rate at the start of this lockdown, we have still prevented many thousands of cases and most importantly prevented the health system being overwhelmed. So the lockdown, as horrible as it is, has worked.

It’s all been said up thread - at the presser he said that the closing of playgrounds was because people were using them to congregate, not because there had been transmission between children there.
He also said that the lockdown had prevented 6000 cases and therefore 600 hospitalisations. The hospitalisation rate isn’t 10%
There is no doubt that lockdown has prevented cases, I don’t doubt that. What is true though is that he has brought in a load of totally disproportionate measures, in order to have a “short sharp lockdown” when he is, in fact, having no such thing. It’s a long lockdown, won’t get to zero, and with (some) restrictions which won’t make any difference to the spread of cases but will make people’s lives significantly worse.
I’ve never said that the states should have NO restrictions but I’ve said all along, they need to be restrictions which are measurably stopping the spread (not just to make the police’ lives easier) and are proportional to the risk.

Just a reminder of what Dan Andrew’s said about why there is currently no Parliament in Victoria at the moment. It is an absolute disgrace. Australia is totally fvcked.

Just a reminder of what Dan Andrew’s said about why there is currently no Parliament in Victoria at the moment. It is an absolute disgrace. Australia is totally fvcked.

Wow that is really scary!

Why on earth are they not conducting Parliament virtually? That’s indefensible.

Hang in an elected politician said people don’t think parliament is important 😱😱!

That is scary! And why does he think people vote for politicians if not to do the job they are elected to do which will always include holding the government to account through parliamentary process!

Gosh how can he do that?! So he has no accountability whatsoever?

@Flyornofly

Just a reminder of what Dan Andrew’s said about why there is currently no Parliament in Victoria at the moment. It is an absolute disgrace. Australia is totally fvcked.

Where is this quoted from?

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/victoria/andrews-knows-the-value-of-the-parliament-he-should-keep-it-open-20210830-p58n68.html

The Brisbane Times! Ha might have known!

I'm in England. I just googled the quote 🤷

But is the Victorian government sitting and being held to account?🤔

Wow that’s absolutely shocking. How difficult is it to set up a zoom call ffs?

My extract was from The Age www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/andrews-knows-the-value-of-the-parliament-he-should-keep-it-open-20210830-p58n68.html

and he was quoted directly so the poster above can stop with the questioning of the source. It’s outrageous and undemocratic and needs to stop (or start, as the case may be).

Fair enough for a few weeks or months at the very beginning, when things were a bit chaotic. But Victoria’s been through a previous long lockdown last year, surely they should have drawn up a virtual Parliament plan by now?

Really does feel like he simply doesn’t want to be accountable.

@flyornofly

My extract was from The Age www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/andrews-knows-the-value-of-the-parliament-he-should-keep-it-open-20210830-p58n68.html

and he was quoted directly so the poster above can stop with the questioning of the source. It’s outrageous and undemocratic and needs to stop (or start, as the case may be).

It doesn't matter whether it's The Age, The Brisbane Times, The Herald Sun. They are all owned by Fairfax who undermine public health measures and have put Victorian lives at risk. They have constantly published editorials pushing a one sided viewpoint unsupported by evidence.
I rest my case.

a one sided viewpoint
That's what you get without a Parliament.
I get that you want to be supportive, but covid and vaccines cannot be the entire business of government.

Sorry is the story false and Parliament sitting? It’s not something people can lie about easy so either it isn’t sitting at which point it’s a disgrace or it is at which ooh t I will blame bad reporting! But I cannot blame the Jews for being bias is a story that a place that has been in lockdown on abs off for longer than anywhere on the planet still cannot manage a virtual Parliament that fact will speak for itself!

@Ozgirl75

Watching Dan Andrews’ about turn has truly been something to watch. Now people in Melbourne are stuck with this awful restrictive lockdown which he has accepted both isn’t working, and that some of the measures are actually purely designed to punish people and make the police’s lives easier. How this man is still in power in a country full of people who I assumed didn’t take any crap astounds me. Plus the figures he’s given to support the ongoing restrictions are wrong, then you have Anastasia giving 100% wrong medical advice about children. It’s worrying that people aren’t questioning this more.

Daniel Andrews has does an about turn, his hand has been forced by the consequences of Gladys's lack spine.

Andrews is the premier of Victoria, so the crap-taking propensities of the rest of the country are irrelevant.

What figures is he wrong about?

It doesn't matter whether it's The Age, The Brisbane Times, The Herald Sun. They are all owned by Fairfax who undermine public health measures and have put Victorian lives at risk. They have constantly published editorials pushing a one sided viewpoint unsupported by evidence. I rest my case.

Huh? The Age is now owned by Nine Entertainment and still skews left. The Herald Sun is owned by Murdoch and skews right.

@echt

He stated the current lockdown had prevented 6000 infections and consequently 600 hospitalisations. He followed that statement up with “and no hospitalised case will be mild”. This is a gross overstatement of hospitalisation rates. NSW—which has broadly similar vaccination rates—is running at 5.5%:

www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/covid-hospital-numbers-surge-42-per-cent-in-a-week-but-worst-to-come-in-october-20210901-p58nvj.html

And this is a proportion of recorded cases. Once an outbreak gets as big as NSW’s you no longer capture every case. Many are mild and don’t get tested or are asymptomatic. This study from early this year in the US when vaccines were still early in their rollout put it at 2%:

“The overall IHR was 2.1% and varied more by age than by race or sex. Infection-hospitalization ratio estimates ranged from 0.4% for those younger than 40 years to 9.2% for those older than 60 years. Hospitalization rates based on case counts overestimated the IHR by a factor of 10, but this overestimation differed by demographic groups, especially age.”

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33729203/