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 NZ lockdown continues and it's interesting to see the beginning of location based divisions. There are some similarities to the Aus situation starting to develop now that they have different areas in different stages of lockdowns.
Auckland still doing it tough at level 4 with basically everything shut, but the other areas suffering as a result as so much of the industry is in or comes through Auckland.
ECE starting to struggle as operational costs not covered through govt if they can open under lesser restrictions but are hesitant to after their experiences around RSV going through earlier in the year.
Also reading the comments sections there are more comments along the lines of tough luck Auckland- you get the big events and numbers in good times and we don't so it's your turn to suffer now while we go to back to normal (paraphrased but not by much).
Even seeing this among friends with blame for wellington cases being apportioned to the Auckland population in general rather than the individuals who have bent the rules.

Blackbird that’s what the politicians are saying, only able to serve vaccinated people with no option for negative tests etc.
There’s even been talk of fines for businesses who serve the unvaccinated however there isn’t any laws backing this. They have put all ownership back on the business’s to police it and as a business owner I won’t be doing the governments dirty work.
Gladys even said in a presser that she doesn’t want the vaccinated mixing with the unvaccinated and people are lapping it up.
I’m sick to my stomach about the whole thing to be honest.

NZ just got 23 new cases. Delta ain't going anywhere, people.

Vaccination continuing to proceed at terrific pace in Australia, and NZ is speeding up too.

Even seeing this among friends with blame for wellington cases being apportioned to the Auckland population in general rather than the individuals who have bent the rules.

I don't see how blaming things on "individuals who bent the rules" is any less blame-gamey than blaming Auckland as a whole, unless you literally know for a fact how every case was transmitted.

In lockdowns, most transmission tends to happen in places where people are allowed to be even in a lockdown ---within households, in essential workplaces and supply chains, in hospitals etc.

This govt pork-barrels vaccines. In the middle of a pandemic. Shocking stuff.

www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/three-week-covid-19-jab-blitz-to-target-melbourne-s-north-and-west-20210910-p58qmu.html

The transmission was/is largely Auckland centered, and yes in the expected ways (household, essential worker etc).
I was talking about it moving out of Auckland to wellington- other end of the north island- after lockdown had started, from people who didn't follow the rules.
New Zealand might be small but the regionalism is quite ingrained. Saying that as a New Zealander born and bred who had lived in various parts for years at a time.

I agree about the blame thing. In early lockdowns here there was a kind of magical belief (hope) that if you "follow the rules" you would be fine. So supermarkets etc. I think its a kind of way the brain makes people want to feel ok/safe in the face of something scary. But conversely it is unfair when thise who do get it are grilled as to what THEY did that was so risky. There seemed an element of that in Australia too when they had a small number of cases. But I think it might be human nature.

Viruses dont work like that though. You mught have stood 6ft apart in the supermarket but still got it. I was one of the few that cought it outside (must have been closer to someone than I thought or passed someone too close.)

(A tangent but I don't think theres a thread - that little boy who had been in the bush 3 days!? I almost cried he'd been found. I just can't imagine 😔.)

Just to clarify- I don't think blame is helpful either. I have just found it really interesting watching the phases roll through. I've followed the conversations and threads from the start and have found that most of the key themes that played out in the uk earlier are happening or have happened here (with some still to go). Those discussions and divisions etc are now starting to play out over the ditch. Obviously there are a few differences but the main phases each country seems to go through and the human reactions are all very similar.

It's really interesting isn't it?

Yes I always got irritated by this assertion that U.K. reactions from people were wildly different to what Aus would be.

I know both so well (time and x2 passports) the idea that those in Melbourne say would be that different bugged me.

It does seem to be faster but same messages are coming up

There’s definitely a playbook that plays out. US are currently discussing rapid flow tests ( that we have been using here since January) and all the same discussion points come up. We still discuss them of course but it’s a more settled debate that has come down on the side of using them.
Australia hasn’t yet embarked on the rapid test debate yet but it’s coming.
It’ll also play out the same way in NZ too, they are just further behind the curve that Aus is.
We’re all pretty similar really when it comes to it.
One big difference I’ve noticed is that there is less of a controversial debate in both Aus and NZ regarding vaccinating the 12-15 age group. In U.K. the debate is pretty fierce, maybe because we have rolled out the vaccine in age order so more emphasis on age versus benefit than countries that haven’t done this as much.
But it’s not clear if under 16’s are getting vaccinated in high numbers even if they can be, or parents are quietly waiting and seeing and the overall increase in vaccination figures mask this a bit.
Anyway it’ll be interesting to compare vaccination rates in different cohorts, age etc once all roll outs are complete.
Vaccine passports idea just scrapped in England which is great news.

Yes I think childhood immunizations are so ingrained here because of the no jab no play policy for daycares, schools and govt support payments. So the hurdle is probably slightly lower for that one. I think NZ will find it a bit tougher on that front. It's well accepted but not mandated in the same way.
I've noticed that difference even when reading threads about the flu and chicken pox vaccines before covid. Flu isn't a scheduled one but the emphasis is definitely on covering the whole family over here.

I dont think its an issue of vaccines as that Australia currently are terrified of covid /lots of scare stories about kids. Whereas we are so much further down the road and there really isn't such a fear of kids getting it.

With the NHS we also have an easy ability to vaccinate vulnerable/specific groups very easily so there isn't a need to blanket vaccinate to ensure vulnerable are caught .

Also there isnt a medical benefit to a child to have a vaccine. So a child is no more at risk from covid than from the vaccine!! However it is looking likely we will introduce vaccines for social/education reasons.

I think that explains the difference. If we were still in the geight of our first lockdown when people were afraid then a vaccine pre sending to shool wtc may have had more traction.

Children are vaccinated in England every year for flu as that is seen in their benefit.

Yes I think our debate is more nuanced now than say last year. We know more in general but also know kids that have caught the virus and been fine so less need to rush and panic about vaccinating the younger ages groups. That’s the way I feel anyway and most of my friends too.
The US seems to have a lot of scaremongering re. Children, more dramatic than here. Might be a cultural thing and I think Aus and NZ may be more similar to the U.K. than US where culture is concerned. Might be wrong about that?

Our (educated) Melbourne relative was horrified we were sending our kids to school unvaccinated. Dan Andrews has certainly emphasised the "for the sake of our children" side. So I think the drive for children to be vaccinated is quite high. But they are still in the thick of it.

Doesnt some modelling suggest that 40-70% of Uk kids have had it already...?

Well in my house we’re at 50% had it, 50% haven’t so we might be representative of the child population as a whole

Yes there big differences in the messaging from Dan. My Melbourne mates are also horrified that we've kept our two in daycare throughout where they have had centers closed completely or only for essential workers. If we were in a hotspot I would think twice, less about them getting it because the research has shown they aren't as at risk but more bout DH and I getting it. However we are now double vaccinated and the cases in our area have remained very low throughout -14 for this outbreak to date I think.

Yup I think that's part of the difference too. All our older/vulnerable groups have been vaccinated (or had the chance to) so there's less of the "but the kids spread germs that might kill my family" fear too.

Also with so much covid people now know a lot of people who have had it and been fine here. There isn't the same fear factor. (I was terrfied initially . I'm vulnerable, we didnt go to supermarkets at all or anywhere indoors for almost a year...until I got it! Howevet having had it and been double vaccinated the fear has gone and we are back to normal!)

I think if you're outside Melbourne, the horror that was last year is unimaginable. Because older people are vaccinated now, and mainly younger people are getting it, the death rate is much lower. There were absolutely horrible things that happened as a result of what went down in the care sector. I also don't think the lockdown fatigue, and the sense of waste that we're right back where we were this time last year, is an easy thing to understand.

I can remember reading threads on here with people worrying about AZ and the clotting risk, and also which clinic to attend to give best chance of Pfizer. People being wary of AZ isn’t just a rest of the world thing. I can remember the Uk stopped recommending it for under 40s around the same time as Aus did.

It’s hard to come back from the fear mongering by the Aus media and government. I can’t blame people for still be wary about it. Especially those in states that are basically covid free.

I was going to say that I think the messaging around kids was different here right from the start. I remember assuring my colleague whose 8yo child is CV that virtually no children were getting seriously ill, and that was before the schools even closed the first time. Whereas I see quite a few Australians online saying things can't open up til under 12s can be vaccinated - it seems to be very much a minority view still, but a bigger minority than here.

@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.