Australia/New Zealand New Thread

[Kokeshi123]

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/

Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”

This is... really really disturbing, honestly.

I grew up admiring (and, let's be honest, envying) Australians because as a nation, they always came across as a down-to-earth, fearless lot who had a healthy skepticism of authority while also being basically very civic/community minded.

What's gone wrong?

There is an ‘alarming’ number of patients in hospital in Denmark now with RS virus - cough and cold virus - most of them are age 1-3. Don’t know if it’s related to the end of lockdown or not but it’s a bit coincidental. Covid looks mild compared to this in kids. I personally know a number of children who had covid - no symptoms- and this one - two weeks off school with very high temperature. There were almost no children hospitalised with covid and only 2 deaths of people under 28. Makes no sense to worry about kids with covid. I’d be slightly more worried with this RS virus because it seems to actually cause illness in kids which at the least is unpleasant and can end up in hospital. It’s fascinating what will happen when the boarder is eventually opened.

@newstart1234

There is an ‘alarming’ number of patients in hospital in Denmark now with RS virus - cough and cold virus - most of them are age 1-3. Don’t know if it’s related to the end of lockdown or not but it’s a bit coincidental. Covid looks mild compared to this in kids. I personally know a number of children who had covid - no symptoms- and this one - two weeks off school with very high temperature. There were almost no children hospitalised with covid and only 2 deaths of people under 28. Makes no sense to worry about kids with covid. I’d be slightly more worried with this RS virus because it seems to actually cause illness in kids which at the least is unpleasant and can end up in hospital. It’s fascinating what will happen when the boarder is eventually opened.

I think RSV is a usual autumn disease in babies but I imagine cases may be higher this year if they haven't been exposed to it's of bugs.

My daughter was hospitalised and on oxygen for 4 days for it when she was 10 weeks old. I had actually never heard of it and it was my mum an ex nurse putting 2 and 2 together and telling me to ring doctors again after they told me it was just a cold. Luckily we caught it quite early.

Same thing is happening in parts of the US with RSV. Kids hospitals are filling up because of it.

So Qantas are taking bookings for flights to the UK just before Christmas!

I hope they are also putting on extra flights for people wanting to come back.

Are nurses in the UK all vaccinated? This is concerning in Sydney. amp.smh.com.au/national/nsw/unvaccinated-nurses-bring-heart-procedures-to-standstill-in-sydney-hospital-20210916-p58s7v.html?__twitter_impression=true

Oh we would so love to fly back to Oz in June/July.... but we really can't if it is astronomical...

@ajandjjmum

So Qantas are taking bookings for flights to the UK just before Christmas!

They’ve said they’ll only fly if home quarantine is in place by then. I’m skeptical. They’ve been scheduling flights months in advance and cancelling them again all through the pandemic. Meanwhile the airlines that have been servicing Oz under the caps (Singapore, Emirates, Etihad) are on the verge of pulling out completely because the Oz government refuses to give them any clarity on their future caps/quarantine plans. It’s a mess.

Ah that sounds more realistic sadly :( We love singapre airlines!

I’ve got so much respect for Singapore Airlines. They’ve kept running throughout, done their best to reallocate people that have been arbitrarily bumped off flights by the constantly changing quarantine quotas, and have been the lone advocate for the interests of stranded Aussies recently.

If I can I will never fly QANTAS again.

How many years are the Aussies and NZers going to keep influenza out of their countries, I wonder? It could be very nasty when it does make a return if there is a gap of two years or more, unless both countries are really hardcore about making sure everyone gets the flu shot.

Flu has only gone away because the measures we’ve used to keep Covid down also keep other illnesses down. Once things open up again they’ll be back to the normal spread of illnesses. Presumably flu has been down everywhere including the U.K. as most countries had some levels of restrictions through their winters.

Not sure about that--flu was also virtually absent in countries that implemented few NPIs, including NZ (which has mostly kept covid-19 out) and Sweden (which used relatively few mitigations and mostly let covid-19 sort of wash through the population at first). Looks to me like it was mostly travel bans that zapped the flu.

She won't use them unless she wants to cause a constitutional crisis.

I’m not sure of the point of your post. I was stating that yes, she has power. Are you denying that too?

God no idea how that post ended up here, sorry

[quote Blackbird2020]@psychomath

Yep, zero-Covid countries have almost no real-life experience of what it’s like living in a pandemic with young children. The rest of the world has now had experience of young children getting Covid (and the majority of the cases were symptomless).

The irrational fear (for young children’s health) generated by a new virus that is being kept a bay by all sorts of extreme international and national border controls is a hard thing to shrug off, I guess.[/quote]
Oh do fuck off. We all have experience of living in a pandemic with children, just under different circumstances. You living somewhere the government decided to let thousands of people die doesn't make you a better or more rational person, it just means your experience is different. We still don't know whether all that 'symptomless' covid caused the heart or cognitive problems that are widespread in adults, for example.

Oh do fuck off. We all have experience of living in a pandemic with children, just under different circumstances. You living somewhere the government decided to let thousands of people die doesn't make you a better or more rational person, it just means your experience is different. We still don't know whether all that 'symptomless' covid caused the heart or cognitive problems that are widespread in adults, for example.

We all have different experiences. But we are doing our kids no favours when we don't recognise the risk that Covid is to them (really really low). Of course we don't know what lies ahead and we are still in the early days of this virus. The same could be said for the vaccines that have been developed to fight against it. Yet people are loudly shouting for kids to be vaccinated.

Of course we've all did it differently. My government did let more than needed die because they were too slow to lock down in March 2020 and again Dec 2020. But the vast majority of those lives lost could not have been saved because we simply could not keep Covid out.

To me now, the biggest challenge is keeping our kids safe and well. I don't see Covid being a risk in that. I do see people's fear of Covid as the biggest risk to my children. That's not to say I agree with 'let it rip'. Far from it. But we do need to properly assess the risk to children.

The jcvi scientists agree that the risk to children aged 12-16 of heart or cognitive problems from symptomless covid is small. Very small. Almost smaller than the risk from the vaccine. For children under age 12 the scientific consensus is that the risk of cognitive or heart problems from symptomless covid is small beyond measure. Far too small to consider vaccination. It’s good news, very good.

There was a reputable virologist on radio 4 (bbc) the other day who seemed to have the settled opinion that both covid and flu will continue to cause high numbers of deaths for years. He was particularly concerned about flu as it’s been ‘pushed out’ by covid for a long time and was concerned it’ll come back with a vengeance. The vaccine for flu is around 40-70% effective also.

@CallItLoneliness

Oh do fuck off

Is that also your standard opening line when you disagree with someone in real life, or just here on an anonymous forum?

[quote Blackbird2020]@CallItLoneliness

Oh do fuck off

Is that also your standard opening line when you disagree with someone in real life, or just here on an anonymous forum?[/quote]
To be fair, it was backed up with some reasons.

@Wakeupin2022 Your government COULD have kept COVID out, or at a much lower level, but chose not to (I am assuming you're in the UK). You're an island nation, same as many that have had zero or very low COVID. The differences between your cities (where most of the population live) and our cities (where most of the population live) are negligible in terms of population density etc. Countries within Europe did close their borders to other European countries. Finland has managed a relatively low level of COVID with land borders with Sweden and Russia. All this "we couldn't" stuff is just a(nother in your case) way to have a pop at countries that have chosen to do things differently.

You might believe that kids are all going to be fine. We all thought that about adults too, but now there is evidence of persistent heart inflammation in 60%, and cognitive damage in nearly all adult COVID patients, even those with very mild COVID. I don't think we have the answers to these questions for kids yet, and (as a scientist) I suspect the answers won't be good when we get them. If I can avoid taking that chance with my kids, I will, but it isn't irrational, or silly, it's science, and an opportunity my government have given me that yours couldn't be arsed to give you and your kids.

What I clumsily meant to to say was that as Australia and New Zealand have successfully controlled the spread of COVID within its borders, the number of children infected with COVID in these countries is just a fraction compared to other countries, and so there is little ‘on the ground’ experience (from say, a family’s perspective) of children getting COVID and recovering from it.

The current research shows that children without underlying health conditions have extremely small chances of experiencing severe symptoms that require hospitalisation and, just out today, long-COVID symptoms in the 12-15 group seem to go by the 12 week mark in most cases. I’ll see if I can dig out the links...

My point is some fear is real, naturally we want to protect our children, but some fears are imagined, and we all need to be able to access up-to-date and well-evidenced research with regards to childrens’ health & COVID before allowing potentially unfounded fears to dominate various decisions.

[quote Blackbird2020]@CallItLoneliness

Oh do fuck off

Is that also your standard opening line when you disagree with someone in real life, or just here on an anonymous forum?[/quote]
Is it ok for WakeUpIn2022 to call me irrational and silly in real life, or just on an anonymous internet forum? If someone said those things to me in real life, they would get exactly the same response--I'm antipodean, after all.

I'm beyond sick of Australia and NZ being tarred as ridiculous for our restrictions and approach on one hand, and then to be told we haven't experienced the real pandemic on the other, like it has been some kind of paradise here.

Well of course NZ hasnt experienced the pandemic spreading through its country yet. Mainly due to its restrictions!

It will have to with an "exit wave" at some point but hopefully with most people jabbed it will cause far less disruption.

Blackbird2020
@CallItLoneliness

Oh do fuck off

confused Is that also your standard opening line when you disagree with someone in real life, or just here on an anonymous forum?

To be fair, it was backed up with some reasons

Irrespective, it’s unpleasant to be told to fuck off.

We are all entitled to respectfully give our own opinions, and respect those who hold different opinions from us.