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?

The unusually high hospitalisation rate in aus - could it be that the delta variant is hitting without many in the population having had the other variants first?

The deaths in the UK are climbing and climbing and hospitalisations are creeping up too. I bloody hope Boris is right about ‘much better to have exit wave in summer than winter’ and it doesn’t keep climbing and climbing.

I wonder how this will play out in aus if they go for British style living with covid. I’m not quite sure Singapore style would work in the longer term given the quite different methods of government.

Interesting read in The Guardian today:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/08/morrison-and-berejiklian-are-attempting-to-shift-the-blame-for-covid-on-to-us

The petty sniping between the States and some of the people too is pretty depressing to see. I thought Australia as a country had a sunnier more positive outlook. Not any more.
The big argument now is that some states feel NSW in particular has had higher number of doses than other states presumably referring to pfzier of course as AZ seems pretty available everywhere.
The politicking and fracturing between the states is worse than anything we saw here in the U.K.
The messaging around AZ generally is pretty poor given it is a vaccine being rolled out all over the world.
On the whole though it’s playing out just as it did here in 2020 and early 2021 so I’m sure they’ll get to our current position soon enough. They should be watching us closely now as we go into Autumn as it’ll be the same for their Autumn next year. Fingers crossed for all of us!

Totally agree that he’s placing the blame onto people rather than taking responsibility. However, what are the options at this point? I mean, since the vaccine rollout, in the UK there has been almost no strong opposition to the route that’s been taken so far. Yes people are wanting more classroom ventilation, more hospital capacity, more mask wearing in some situations etc, but it’s not a full throated roar of opposition to just living ‘normally’ again. The mistake bojo made was when this approach was taken before the vaccine which did attract overwhelming opposition from almost everyone. Very few people or organisations were against the lockdowns and other measures. Now - almost nothing. I simply maybe wrongly assumed Australia would go the route of comparable liberal democracies once the vaccine was done.

What more should the government be doing other than common sense measures like providing better services to remote communities, increasing hospital capacity improve ventilation in schools etc.?

“What more should the government be doing other than common sense measures like providing better services to remote communities, increasing hospital capacity improve ventilation in schools etc.?”

Exactly this. I do not want anything more from the government.

I saw this article the other day and applauded the fact that these questions are finally being asked.
www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/australia-is-spending-up-to-25-million-for-each-covid-life-saved/news-story/ff9e95686349940bcf076f69b5a4067a

No ‘two-speed recovery’: Treasurer calls for Sydney to open together

(scroll down to update @ 3.22PM).

www.smh.com.au/national/australia-news-live-covid-19-cases-continues-to-rise-in-nsw-victoria-and-act-daniel-andrews-lashes-federal-government-s-pfizer-vaccine-allocation-20210907-p58pma.html

Well the emails have been released confirming that our gormless Health Minister knocked back Pfizer's offer to vaccinate the whole country months ago.

Why was Aus chosen?

Seems out of step with suffering in other countries and need

Once vaccines have been rolled out and everyone has the opportunity to get 2 doses (with a plan for boosters maybe later for some) then the Government has no more tools in it's toolkit unless people actually want a police state enforcing lockdowns on a increasingly restless population. No doubt some people do want this, but the vast majority want to get on with it, as is the case here in the UK.
At some point of course it is up to the people themselves but it is no one's "fault" if they catch it.
It's a virus that is easily transmissible between humans - nothing can really be done to stop that happening, it can just be slowed down to some extent and vaccines stop most people getting really sick but still some do (but at a much lower rate)
People expecting any Government in any country in the world to remove any risk for them from the virus forever are deluded imo.
One of our health ministers here in the UK said some time ago (and I paraphase) that if a person wanted to avoid covid they'd have to go and stand in the middle of a large field forever.
I think something along those lines needs to be spelt out to the Aussie public too - there is only so much the Government can actually do.

Well the big one is its a federal responsibility to vaccinate the indigenous communities and they're failing miserably there. They need to look at some of the few success stories and get that rolled out, the target of 80% needs to include them.

@MarshaBradyo I believe it was for research, based on a zero Covid country.

Oh right. I understand people being annoyed at that decision atm

Although given how desperate we and others places were for the limited Pfizer supply I’m appreciating more lives saved due to higher doses, it would have been tough to see with so much suffering

@MarshaBradyo

Why was Aus chosen?

Seems out of step with suffering in other countries and need

Probably because It would have been useful for research purposes to compare a population with very low exposure to the virus (Australia) to other countries where a significant proportion had already been infected. That's just a guess though.

Would the Aussie population have been happy to been used for research purposes by an American pharma company back in 2020 ( as a immunological naive population) though?
I think that would have been a hard sell to a population unaffected by Covid.
Back late last year pfzier was considered the more “risky” option due to the newer mRNA technology. AZ was seen as the less risky option as more traditional.
Israel was a sort of experiment too but they had Covid in the community so different risk analysis and agreed to hand over data to pfzier.
Would Aussies have agreed to be research subjects for the world without the benefit of knowing what we know now?
I’m not sure, and it might have created a big backlash and made vaccine hesitancy higher.
You can’t be sure wrong decisions were made about that as you don’t know what would have happened if they had chosen that path. Plus the Aus Government knew they were going to be making AZ and you don’t know but Pfzier could have insisted they were the only vaccine in use ( or how could they gain useful research data) plus we’ve seen in Israel that it’s not all milk and honey there now anyway
I think that argument is red herring and actually Aus government were right to reject it.

That's a good point - it is only since they have actually have covid as a proper outbreak that people see a perceived risk and perhaps are willing to vaccinate. When there is no perceived risk then that would be a lot harder.
I think the real problem was publicity at the time making out AZ was inferior.

Thank god for First Dog on the Moon:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/08/scott-morrison-got-to-see-his-kids-on-fathers-day-and-everyone-is-furious-at-him-all-the-time-now?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Nailed it. ScoMo’s always a victim of something or other....

Wow Guardian Australia has an article about international flights for australians resuming by xmas!?!? Once reached 80%...

Will that be Uk based Aussie who want to visit relatives?! I bet it will be expensive...

@PileOfBooks

Wow Guardian Australia has an article about international flights for australians resuming by xmas!?!? Once reached 80%...

Will that be Uk based Aussie who want to visit relatives?! I bet it will be expensive...

Just Australians, or will double vaxxed Brits be able to return to the UK for a holiday/see family?

I’m going to pretty despairing if they still won’t let me (an Australian in the U.K.) go home to take care of my sick mother whilst Australian-based Aussies swan around the world on holidays.

My family, like many others, have been paying close attention to the international border & commercial travel info over the past year.

There seems to be some fairly positive news about future travel plans from both the government (getting vaccine passports ready) and the airline industry (Quantas wants to resume flights from London and a few other major hubs by Christmas), however I do actually wonder if any of these plans will transpire.

Most of the rest of the world experienced terrible loss of life prior to the implementation of the vaccines, so when they ‘opened up’ and case numbers and hospitalisations increase again, it was comparatively acceptable. Society here in Europe is probably still slightly anxious, but we can and do try to get on with life as best was possible, as it’s 100 times better than last year.

When Australia opens up and cases inevitably increase, it is extremely likely that there will be an even greater number of deaths than during the worst of lockdown. How will society square that with people going on holiday and an marked increase in the number of overseas visitors? Surely there will be an outcry from the general public and the government will continue with the caps to appease their electorate.

I think the government know full well that it’s not going to be pretty when the domestic restrictions are lifted, and that caps on international travel won’t actually be lifted at 80%, but only want to give positive news right now... sort of a carrot / donkey type situation.

I don’t see us getting back to Oz much before July 2022, to be honest...

I fear you’re right @Blackbird2020

There’s talk of Morrison calling an election in December, to capitalise on the announcement of the so-called freedoms but before the inevitable deaths occur. I’m concerned that Gladys is going too early with her plans to reopen at 70%. They’re the canary down the coal mine for Oz and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty at that level.

But if Oz doesn’t open up some this year, I’m not sure when they ever will. Vaccine-inducing immunity may not be that long lasting and there will likely be new variants. I see NZ has now announced they are reconsidering their opening plans for next year.

BA have already cancelled our February flights - apparently they're not planning to fly to Sydney before 27th March at the earliest.

Had my fingers crossed that our May 2022 trip would happen, but then DS got me excited by talking about the positive vibes for Christmas travel back to the UK, which he's hearing, although if I'm honest, it sounds too good to be true.

Christmas is the carrot, get vaccinated and closer to the time we’ll have to pour cold water over your family reunion plans because of the big exit wave we didn’t tell you about look forward to a well-deserved family get together.

But in all fairness I don’t see any other possible approach to this... the government have to get vaccination levels up. If they were open about the exit wave at this stage, I think people could start thinking “what’s the bloody point in being vaccinated then?!”

smh.com.au/world/europe/for-the-first-time-pm-acknowledges-frustrations-of-expat-australians-20210908-p58q1d.html

This article seems positive for ex pat Aussies. Home quarantine and no exit permission required by November.
Morrison acknowledges Australians wanting to get home , rather than ignoring them, first time I think?
NSW leading the way with home quarantine trial.
Fingers crossed all the U.K. Aussies get home this year.