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?

Is there much of a backlash in the NZ media? Could this cost Ardern politically?

From this side of the world we only see the feted young female PM who successfully led her country through a zero-Covid strategy. I have read literally nothing about NZ’s extremely late rollout or the political implications of it.

Wow, I didn’t realise that vaccines weren’t available up until August in NZ.

They were available long before August - I had mine in May and they had been vaccinating for a while by then - but the bulk didn't start arriving until July.

@gofg you must have been in a top priority group? because they very much were not generally available in May. About 30,000 Frontline workers - doctors and border workers - got jabs from March. My elderly parents didn’t get their until July. My dad is undergoing chemo so was in an early priority group.

@Blackbird2020 Yes there is a backlash. I voted for Jacinda and generally think she is really charismatic and likeable. If there was an election tomorrow I wouldn’t vote for her or for Labour. The failure to roll out vaccine more quickly or to urgently increase ICU capacity when we had zero Covid is a massive failure by this Govt.

I didn’t get my first jab until 22 August and I booked as soon as I possibly could. I’m 40 so was in the lowest priority group.

Yes that's what I meant TheWest, still pursuing covid zero at the present time. Obviously they're not going to stay sealed off from the world forever (well, China might try I suppose, but Queensland won't).

I wonder about Tas!

Whether you like her or not, Jacinda is usually a polished communicator but yesterday her messaging was all over the place. She managed to unify everyone from all sides of the political spectrum by pissing us all off. I think this will damage her politically for sure. I voted for her twice but right now I wouldn't vote her in again. I agree the vaccination roll out has been a shambles. So many people haven't had a chance to get their second dose yet ffs.

@Gennz18 - I got mine as a healthcare worker (I'm not really) - but I was just pointing out that the vaccinations did not start in August. My friends - over 60, but no other top priority classification, also got theirs in May.

@Gennz18 and @Cousinit - out of interest, who would you vote for? I can't see any great alternative at the moment.

To be honest if there was an election tomorrow I’d vote for ACT and I never ever thought in a million years I would say that. Hopefully
Labour have sorted their shit out by 2023.

I said “to the general public” @gofg. I couldn’t get my first shot until a week into lockdown and that was only because I went down to a centre and waited for a walk-in spot.

If you are a healthcare worker in your 60s you were quite high priority for the scarce early batches. Also for some unknown reason the toll out was nationwide Instead of prioritising Auckland where all the international arrivals and lockdowns have been. I think the upper South Island has the most vaccinated population in the country. The South Island hasn’t had a covid case since last year.

I agree the alternatives are not great. Maybe Naional but they would really need to get their shit together for me to consider them. I just feel so angry towards this government right now but they may yet redeem themselves if they can steer us through this next tricky phase. I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about things as they stand, though.

I agree @Cousinit if they pulled off a slick execution of this next phase I might begrudgingly come back round but I don’t see it happening. I will not forgive them for taking Auckland kids out of school for 4 months while the rest of the world was basically fully vaccinated. And the embarrassing debacle of MIQ.

News is actually starting to trickle through actually... just found this: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/oct/05/by-ending-covid-elimination-jacinda-ardern-once-again-fails-to-turn-compassion-into-policy

I guess there will be an increased media focus on NZ over the next few weeks/months.

I think some of you in NZ need to take a step back and think. What is most important - vaccination rates, or covid deaths? We may not have been first out of the gate with vaccinations, but at the time there was no need as there was no covid here. Would you rather we took the vaccines and left a shortage for countries who actually had covid running rife? Look at the numbers killed by Delta in other countries and ask yourself how many deaths here. You seem to be fixated on vaccination rates and nothing else.

As for moaning about lockdowns - I get that it is hard, but have you forgotten that when most of the world had some form of restrictions we were living freely (other than the borders being closed of course). Has Auckland been in lockdown as long as Melbourne has? the UK? parts of Europe? Was Christmas "cancelled" here last year? You really have nothing to complain about.

If you are a healthcare worker in your 60s you were quite high priority for the scarce early batches.

Why don't people read posts properly. I said I was "classed as a healthcare worker, but I'm not" - far from it. I actually felt a bit bad about having it, but it was offered so I took it. Yes, I am in my 60s but it wouldn't have mattered if I had been 18 - we were all offered the vaccine. I also live in an DHB area which has poor vaccination figures, yet by the time I received my second vaccine, in late May, they had moved on to another group, and there was only one vaccination centre in town at that stage.

Excuse me @gofg I did read your post properly - I don’t care what you do but if the ministry of health considered you met the priority requirements for healthcare workers you obviously got your jab well in advance of most other New Zealanders. The vaccination figures bear this out so I’m not quite sure what your argument is.

Yes Auckland has been in harder lockdown longer than any of the countries you name. I assume you don’t live in Auckland and haven’t done 4 rounds of level 3-4 lockdowns since March last year, working full time with your kids out of school and childcare? Don’t lecture me about how lucky I am. How dare you.

Yes of course the Govt should have prioritised getting vaccines for NZers as fast as possible, looking after the health of its citizen is literally its job.

Wow at nz moving on from elimination. I was told on this thread that children in nz would gain immunity through vaccination and vaccination alone. Seems unlikely now unless perpetual lockdowns of different severities are also involved.

Which is imo a good thing , avoiding mammoth quarantines after trips abroad and school closures in perpetuity.

Would you rather we took the vaccines and left a shortage for countries who actually had covid running rife?

If the main vaccine NZ is using is Pfizer, then the above argument doesn’t wash. Other developed countries didn’t have issues with supply (apart from issues caused by their own negotiating/ordering process), and developing countries find it very difficult to use Pfizer (and Moderna to a lesser extent) in any meaningful quantity due to its price point and storage requirements, so they have gone for cheaper and easier to transport/store vaccines.

I hope that the NZ government aren’t actually using this as a reason for their delayed roll-out. I suspect they aren’t, and it’s just an urban myth that’s circulating...

Plus the population of NZ is tiny, it would hardly make a dent in world supply.

I think NZ’s population is around 5 million. As a comparison London’s population is 9 million.

@milkyaqua

I'm sad about Gladys. I wish they'd let her just get through this year, and this part of the pandemic response before hauling her over the coals.

I'm more than sad, I'm in despair. I knew the moment she was gone what was coming and I haven't been wrong - the new Premier in NSW is Opus Dei educated, anti abortion, anti women's rights, anti climate change and totally pro business.

I fully understand why she had to go after ICAC said it was opening an investigation. But the ones who are going for her leaving are women in NSW.

Gladys was a rare breed these days, a Liberal moderate with social progressive ideas. She decriminalised abortion when no Labour Premier had done before her. She invested big in public health, something close to her heart with new hospitals gaining record levels of public funding. She was fully in support of climate change a price in carbon and her government was drafting a bill to legalise assisting dying in NSW. Bill that now with the ultra religious conservative Premier will never see the light.

She made a mistake and she's paid for it. But with her gone a lot of progressive social change in NSW is gone as well.

@newstart1234

Wow at nz moving on from elimination. I was told on this thread that children in nz would gain immunity through vaccination and vaccination alone. Seems unlikely now unless perpetual lockdowns of different severities are also involved.

The problem is that there are far too many strident antivaxxers in NZ (yes, same as some other places) to vaccinate enough of the population to avoid the virus circulating.

You should see some of the dribbly antivax nonsense in my FB feed from some quarters back home, some very vocal folks really believe it's all a big conspiracy and that the vaccine will render their children infertile or kill them all... they will never vaccinate, and there's still no overwhelming push back on this sentiment from the top. It's remarkable.

I hope that the NZ government aren’t actually using this as a reason for their delayed roll-out.

They do use this as the reason, yes.

Worse, it turns out that Oz and NZ could have been part of the early investors and therefore receive the earliest deliveries. They declined.

They do use this as the reason, yes

That a whole country will isolate itself from the rest of the world, plus risk the devastating consequences of an uncontrollable outbreak in an almost completely unvaccinated population, in order to help say, the combined cities of Milan and Berlin seems very odd.

NZ declining vaccines makes very very little difference to other countries - it’s population is so tiny!