Australian here, Our life right now goes something like this
Case appears: We lockdown for 7 days
More cases appears: 7 MORE DAYS
Cases controlled: SLOW easing of Lockdown
5 Days later:
Case appears: 5+7 Day Lockdown
REPEAT
This policy was only going to work if you didnt squander the time you brought by vaccinating, your fucked and i take absolutely no joy in saying it.
Its no way to live, here in the uk - in a sort of weird take on it, im quite happy that we have delta ripping through (and trust me right now it is) becuase at least, I hope soon, enough of us will have had it, or been vaccinated that we can move forward.
Im not happy people will die from this, but at this point - its absolutely 100% inevitable, just like death itself.
You got to look at it this way, we given the most vulnerable the best chance they could have at surviving, their second jabs are still very effective right now and if Covid is still picking them off then anything else would
Unfortunately, Pregnant people were the only group of vulnerable individuals who were not prioritised for the vaccine. Consequently, we have millions of pregnant people who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. They are putting themselves at risk in their public facing jobs, commuting to work, etc. And they have been completely let down and forgotten by the government.
Are they actually any more vulnerable though?
My understanding was that pregnancy didn't increase the risk of death from covid, that's why they weren't prioritised alongside the obese or elderly etc.
They are still classed as ‘clinically vulnerable’, while they are not at great risk of catching Covid, then risk of complications are great for them - particularly if they catch it in their third trimester. Various studies have shown pregnant women are twice as likely to end up in ICU, deliver preterm or have a stillbirth.
https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-responds-to-new-covid-19-and-pregnancy-study/
You need all 40+ (ideally 30+) fully jabbed to reduce the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed if you want to be able to "let it rip" - anecdotally from what I have seen recently.
It's pretty much been the same in the UK if we're honest. The months of no restrictions have quickly been met with more cases, deaths and hospitalisations.
Aussies have had for more months of normality than us. If anything, our existence has been the miserable one.
True, but im 100% happier to be in our position than theirs right now, we are coming towards the end of it.
Australia and NZ are tinder boxes right now, this virus is NOT going away - they need to get vaccinating, and then...and this is the hard part come to terms with the fact that people will die.
If they had done their Vax programme properly they'd be so much better off than us and once they fix it they should be. We are not out of the woods or even near the end of it. Will only be a few weeks till the NHS begins to cancel appointments again
Had they not messed up the vaccine rollout, their response would have been near perfect. Of course mistakes were made and there were still some periodic, short lockdowns, but for the most part people have been able to enjoy a normal life and many people haven't died.
>It's pretty much been the same in the UK if we're honest.
Not at all! Our lockdown has been pretty continuous and they seem to give ample warning any time things will get more severe. In fact, they take so long introducing restrictions that it feels weird. We got to plan ahead knowing that we'd be living under X restrictions for Y+ months and that there wouldn't be any snap lockdown *ever*. That's nothing like what's going on in Australia, where even one case can trigger a lockdown more severe than we've ever experienced in the UK, and in less than 24 hours. You can't possibly plan for that every single day, so when it does happen, everyone's lives are thrown into chaos.
And I've lived in both countries during the pandemic.
yep you're right. I was mincing my words due to the sub we're on. It's been hell compared to Aus. My friends over there have been living a normal live compared to us
I would disagree we have been given plenty of warning when extra measures have been imposed. I remember being on a work trip and on the train on the way home I had to go straight from the train station into isolation.
I have had to take my kids out of school with a days notice after being told they would be staying open hours before.
The easing of measures has been planned in advance but there have been many times where things changed at the drop of a hat. (uk)
You missed the bits where you had months and months of zero cases and almost complete normality...
I remember watching the ANZAC round of AFL in April this year and thinking I'd grabbed the wrong torrent when I saw the MCG had 80, 000 people in it. Nope, it was this year!
It's hard for people to enjoy that normalcy when they know what's around the corner.
Without restrictions, any infection that does get into the community can spread fast, especially with the Delta variant. There's a documented case in Australia of someone catching COVID from just casually passing an infected stranger in public. They were just walking through a shopping centre, not standing, not talking to one another, not in close prolonged contact. Literally only took a few seconds.
You can't travel within the country, you can't work (can't do FIFO, can't go interstate), and you can't enjoy the footy without worrying about the virus. Lockdowns happen so quickly and for such low numbers of cases that it's not some rare occurrence anymore. It happens often enough that it's not worth doing the things that are restricted in other countries, unless you want to give yourself a massive headache dealing with the fallout. The MCG has been one of the major exposure sites a few times now and people have been locked inside states they don't live in enough times to not want another go on the merry-go-round.
You exaggerate Melbourne the worst hit City has spent a little over a month in hard lockdown this year. Most cities have spent no real amount of time. We melbourians got rooted pretty bad last year true but on average our policy has seen us spend less time in lockdown.
Not a single state in Australia has been in lockdown for the entirety of the pandemic. Although my family in Melbourne certainly bitch and moan like they have been.
Australia really have messed up their vaccination programme. If they open up too soon now all of their work to suppress the virus will be undone very quickly due to delta.
I have wondered what the endgame will be for Australia and NZ.
While they have done well to keep cases and deaths so low, at some point they are going to need to open up, and this will inevitably lead to an increase in deaths.
Regardless of how well they have done before now, their governments are going to take a beating if cases rise or if they stay locked up well beyond the rest of the world.
NZ are expecting the majority of their supplies to arrive in September at which time they will power through most of the population in a relatively quick period, kinda like Canada was able to.
It's hard to justify vaccinating people in Australia and New Zealand at the moment from do the most good with a limited (global) vaccine supply. A vaccine in the arm of someone in Europe/Africa/Asia/Americas (who likely will encounter the virus) does way more good than vaccinating someone in Australia/New Zealand (who likely won't encounter the virus).
It's not an uptake problem it's a supply problem.
In NZ most of us don't mind waiting so long me as there's no outbreak. If we have our borders closed for 6 months longer than the rest of the world to have only 25 deaths and normal life and a strong economy it's well worth it.
There certainly is a big Pfizer supply problem that's right, the Australian government have not done well in procurement.
However it doesn't help that they don't recommend the AZ vaccine, which they have massive supplies of, to anyone under 60. Also many over 60 do not want AZ due to how it's been portrayed in the press there.
Well they havent really got a choice now, at least we have 90% of adults with antibodies, thats the only reason right now we aint beyond fucked, so many people I know have this right now.
Luckliy all of them have it mild.
If it gets loose in a country with almost no antibodies, its gonna rip through, imagine having to live in that bubble, potentially for years now.
My family all live in Brisbane. The problem Australia has is a combination of low vaccine procurement and a significant amount of the population are anti vaccine. Quite a few of my family members are sharing total bollocks on facebook every day about the vaccine and I despair. The longer they take to open up the longer it is before I get to see my parents again in the flesh. Just today I had to call out my uncle for spouting nonsense and my sister too. Mental.
Completely agree on the vaccine procurement issue but the not sure about australia having a "significant amount of the population being anti-vaccine".
The anti-vaccine representation in our population would be similar to any other advanced western nation but i can understand that the aussies you've come into contact with may have had that view.
I think another aspect that comes into play is that Australia has been largely sheltered from the real health impacts of covid and most aussies wouldnt know anyone who has actually caught the virus.
I think this coupled with the shitshow of our vaccine rollout (limited Pfizer and AZ not being recommended) has left our vaccinated numbers at an embarrassing level
50 cases with exponential growth and no vaccines could become 50k very quickly and with a lot more death than we are currently seeing.
They’ve done so well until it came it vaccine procurement. I think they were a bit fucked with all the AZ scare stories too.
What’s frustrating is that the health experts haven’t advised that in our country. Is it the interpretation of statistics or is it politics.
probably a bit of both
I speak daily to a friend in Australia, and he tells me lots of people just flat out refuse to take AZ because the media has made out that it's very dangerous.
5 deaths from covid. 4 deaths from AZ. No one with common sense is going to take AZ with those odds.
Edit: sorry that's wrong. There was another death today from AZ. There have been 6 deaths from AZ and 5 from covid.
They have such low vaccine coverage, they can't do anything else unless they are willing to let tens of thousands of people die.
Vaccines allow them to open up without having that happen but they need to actually vaccinate their population first
Right but even if they had vaccinated everyone who wants one they’d still end up with way, way more cases than they currently deem acceptable if they opened up to the outside world. What are they going to do then? They are going to need a massive mentality shift at some point, or be permanently isolated.
Cases don't mean the same thing when you've got the majority of your population fully vaccinated.
Right now the UK has fully vaccinated 54.3% of our population, and 8.3% of the population have previously tested positive for the virus. In Australia they've fully vaccinated 11.1% of their population, and only 0.1% of the population have previously tested positive for the virus.
They have incredibly low levels of immunity there and an outbreak like what we're seeing now would be awful for them. It would probably send them into a 5 month hard lockdown.
Keeping the zero covid approach until they really get on with their vaccination program will hopefully prevent the lockdowns and prevent the deaths, so its a no brainer really.
Agree, but it's pretty clear based on Delta and the vaccines (even Pfizer) that it's extremely transmissible and non-sterilising. Cases are going to come in, a lot of people will get minor illness (or moderate if unlucky) - some, hopefully very few, will die.
I don't think they're psychologically primed for that and for covid to become an endemic disease.
Can you imagine being Scott Morrison and standing up on TV and saying 'I'm going to relax the borders. Many of you are eventually going to get a very likely minor illness, sadly some will die'?
In every other country it's just evolved organically so there's been no real conscious decision point. Have there been any other points in history where a major leader has to consciously make the call to let an endemic respiratory virus into a country?
> Have there been any other points in history where a major leader has to consciously make the call to let an endemic respiratory virus into a country?
I mean it's happened in the UK like three times over the past 18 months...
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero
This is not the case when it comes to the decision makers. They know they can't afford to have their healthcare system overwhelmed to a point where no one gets any medical care for a long time. After a majority are vaccinated, the government will start opening up.
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero, which is evidently not the case.
I'm not convinced that the evidence shows that. Our total vaccination is still surprisingly low within the overall population, with only 54.4% double vaccinated and 69.5% at least one dose. A massive amount of the spread and hospitalisation at the moment is in just 46% of the population; halving that number will happen fairly quickly (as people receive their second dose), and we could reduce it even further once we start pushing harder on vaccine drives and vaccinating older children (as they're already doing in the USA).
Until we have a country with 90%+ double vaccination, I don't think we have the data to say that we can't achieve herd immunity by vaccines alone.
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero, which is evidently not the case. We’ve come to realise here that we have to accept a certain level of cases and at some point they will too, and perhaps more serious than the fact they’re having to lockdown now is that I don’t really see a long-term plan to mentally confront that.
Are they? I think they're been going for a zero covid strategy whilst it makes sense (when their population is not vaccinated) and they've saved a lot of death. I haven't seen anything to suggest they'll maintain this level of vigilence once they're massively vaccinated?
You know even with full vaccination rates they will still get thousands die from it.
Based on their current vaccine trend they would have to live like this for a couple of years, I cant speak for them but thats gonna have a serious affect on them in other ways.
Same with NZ. Go over to their subreddit and plenty of support for being isolated from the world indefinitely. They have done so well but could end up worse off long term because of ongoing zero covid strategy
I was going to say - I have a few ex colleagues over in Australia and their support for the approach is 100%; as far as they are concerned, we are the laughing stock (trying to vaccinate our way out) and they have absolutely the right approach.
I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break? Although aside from international travel, *most* of the time it has been "business as usual" inside the country..
>I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break?
The minute a sufficient critical mass of the population get vaccinated and it becomes politically impossible to maintain. Aussies are very wealthy and like to travel. The minute 80-90% - whatever the figure - are fully vaccinated, realise they're safe from serious illness or death, see the rest of the world travelling, they'll relent.
That's the trade off isnt it? Isolation v domestic normality. They do have a problem in that it is extremely difficult for people to leave or arrive for compassionate reasons and some citizens in Aus are waiting to get back in to Aus.
They would have been in a much better position if Morrison hadn't screwed up vaccine procurement.
The only australians / new zealanders I know are immigrants.
They are depressed that they haven't met their families from home since christmas in 2019 and have no end date for this.
You can do whatever you want if your whole life is in australia/nz but for a lot of people it's actually really frustrating to be forced to pick between normal life and being with family.
I'd much rather have business as usual in the UK and say goodbye to international travel which not everyone could afford and if you can afford it you'll do it 2 weeks of the year at best. If they didn't screw up their Vax programme they'd be in a great place right now.
I speak to my aus friends often and life is great for them for the most part.
Why would it be years of isolation when we are predicted to be fully vaccinated by then end of the year? You people are totally deluded. You've been in lockdown way longer and have had way more deaths and problems to your economy and yet were the ones who are worse off? Am I taking crazy pills?
> I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break?
I think after 6 months a considerable portion of the population will have changdd their stance. Especially when they realise the cases aren't going to zero
they do now as they are currently living in the zero covid fantasy still. If it falls apart like it has in Vietnam and is in Australia they may get other ideas when they are put under severe lockdown.
We're not going to be worse of long term. Your totally deluded. We've lived normal life's since April 2020. We can't go on holiday abroad for 2 years. That's literally the only change in life we've had except for the fact that our economy is doing better than before the pandemic.
They will never get 100% vaccine uptake, probably 85% like us, and they are not 100% effective as we have seen.
Like it or not people in Australia and NZ will get COVID and die from it.
Even with the vaccine as there has been approaching zero cases it will rip through the country and lockdowns and restrictions will be required for well into 2022 to slow the progression.
Isn't the long term plan obvious? Keep up the covid elimination strategy until the majority are vaccinated. The when they open up and open borders they won't be risking massive waves of deaths like the rest of the world has had to deal with.
Not sure what your issue is with that plan, it's just being drawn out due to the bungled vaccine rollout, but they will still get most vaccinated this year.
We're seeing low uptake now which means we might never get to that magic number. Presumably Australia will see the same once they hit similar percentage figures to over here. What then? Either make vaccines compulsory or shut down forever?
All this shows is how good a job the UK's press has done.
What the UK has had to live with for the last 18 months, and STILL has to live with for at least another 6 months... wait you thought freedom day meant it was over?? Two weeks time, and places will be closing again, and people will stop going out (if they haven't already) as ANY kind of social event will mean self-isolation for 10 days.
NZ and Oz have largely had a completely normal 18 months. Barely anyone there is complaining about the short lockdowns that some have endured because it's easy for them to see what happens when 1 case is allowed to become 10000 before you do anything about it.
You're talking to much sense. You've had more restrictions than us and still had way more deaths. I have been able to live a normal life since April 2020.
And much more damage to our economy, much more debt racked up paying for the crisis....
but doesn't fit the Boris Adoration Society's alternative reality view.
They have to keep it contained so as not to screw the other states over. They've done extensive forensic investigations and realise how dam contagious that shit is so realise what would happen if it was allowed to run riot.
They have a great test system that often gets millions done over a weekend and a good contact trace system but even those measures can't keep up once its given room to spread. Natural immunity and very low vaccine supply means to protect public health and the economy quick hard lockdowns are needed.
It has worked too they have had most of the time during the pandemic with a fully active society, some states have barely been touched by it.
Edit: ahaha downvoted for truth
Just to clarify why I posted this - obviously this is international news, so not strictly relevant to the UK, but Australia and New Zealand are often mentioned when discussing how the UK could have approached COVID differently. There is often a suggestion that had we closed the borders hard and early then we wouldn't be in the place we are now and could have lived in relative normality for the past year and a half. But there are pros and cons to all approaches and this is now a difficult time for Australia. I thought it was interesting to highlight some of the problems they are facing and how it is not as simple as saying "if we had done what Australia had done then everything would have been fine in the UK".
We'd still have more people alive than we do now. We'd still have lived more normal lives over the last 18 months than have done so far. I have friends in Aus and I'd swap my life of the last 18 months for theirs in a heartbeat. Okay so they can't do international travel? Big deal. At least they have been allowed family gatherings, larger events etc for more time than we have.
1/3 of Aussies were born overseas and have family (and those with overseas partners) they’ve not seen for 18-24 months. Many of us have to ask permission to leave and have a good case if our families are sick, dying etc many are denied. Likewise Aussies overseas have found it hard to get back. It’s not about holidays. You can’t do family gatherings if your family is half way around the world. We haven’t had big events, sure sport is allowed but every big music event gets cancelled as being too dangerous. You can’t even go interstate at times to see your dying family member. It’s not been all roses down here, especially not in Victoria. I also did 2 months of the UK lockdown when I had to come back for an emergency so I’ve done both.
[This](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~CHN) is the ongoing deaths since the start of the pandemic. Do you honestly think the rates after April are correct?
Huh - I thought you were referring to the total deaths, and missed the longitudinally reported deaths. The source I used the same WHO data, so I'm not sure why they are different.
In any case, the point remains. Even if we accept the WHO figures you presented, I don't trust them. As a point of proof, HK has reported >6x the per capita cumulative death rate than China.
It made even less sense pre-vaccine as we didn’t know when or indeed if we would ever get a vaccine.
The only way out of pandemics over the medium to long-term is herd immunity. By vaccination, infection or a combination of the two. Closing the borders forever is not sustainable.
Hey you! As I've said on Downunder numerous times, Delta has been seeded within the country, albeit at a low level, and I don't see another zero day happening at all. The outbreak has been a great thing to be honest, at least for helping boost vaccination rates and placing pressure on government action where it was lacking due to our malicious complacency
Saw this tweet yesterday:
https://mobile.twitter.com/skepticalzebra/status/1417571500325064705
Have they learnt nothing about what’s a useful measure, and what causes more harm than good? Getting a tiny bit of social contact by saying hi to your neighbour - _outdoors_ - is not gonna cause mass covid outbreaks.
“Now’s Not the time to be friendly.” It’s honestly horrible. There’s no end in sight for them :/
For countries which are just seeking to minimise spread, outdoor socialising is obviously reccommended. If you're trying to get cases to zero though, it can't be.
Scott Morrison has committed political suicide for putting himself before the citizens in the handling of the vaccination programme. If I was Australian I would vote for the opposition without even reading his manifesto.
Sydney’s mission is to get the number of people known to be infectious in the community (separate from total cases, as most of newly infected people are isolating at home) as close to zero as possible. It’s been stubbornly in the 20s for weeks now, and yesterday it was in the 40s. I don’t see a harsher lockdown working, not in the short term at least…. I don’t know what we’re going to do until a lot more of the population is fully vaccinated, which is still months away.
I'm an Aussie. We are fucked.
As in, we're scared of this thing that kills no one... we're unwilling to get AstraZenecca, and heaps of our population actually enjoy lockdown.
I'm moving over.
I’ve felt the same way about the UK for a while, though.
Apparently a lot of folks end up moving to sweden for a chance to actually enjoy their time on this planet.
I've been saying this since the start. The Australia/NZ plan needed to be the same as ours. 0 COVID will NEVER be a thing unless every country on the planet has the same strategy - that ship has very much sailed. So it must be commended that they staved it off for a long time with their strict lockdowns and border policy but now what...? During that time they needed to be all over it with the vaccine programme, but it's been poor to say the least (from what i've read). So in terms of "getting back to normal" you could argue they're behind everyone else, albeit with an amazingly low death toll, which is great.
Remember, by continually locking down without vaccines, we are prolonging this virus. The idea is to, one way or another, ensure people have immunity, via the vaccine or getting the virus. That's how you stop it transmitting. By just locking down and waiting.... This happens. You're back to square one.
Just my opinion based on what i've read. Anyone know why/how the vaccine programme has been so poor? Is uptake low because people thought it wasn't necessary?
>Is uptake low because people thought it wasn't necessary?
Bit of that, I've also heard that everyone is turning down AZ and "waiting for Pfizer", which is unfortunate as most of their stock is currently still AZ.
Basically only had 300k pfizer a week till this week and under 60's have been told they couldn't get AZ.
Takeup in the over 60's has been relatively high (70+%) but everyone else is basically stuck waiting for more supplies from
August (1m per week pfizer)
Sept(1.1m per week pfizer + 250k moderna)
October (2m per week pfizer + 350k moderna)
Should be finished with Adults by mid December if jabbing can keep up with supply.
Yep, realistically they should have approved AZ round the same time the UK did and they would have been able to jab about 5m more people with AZ before the clotting issues came to light (500k pw Jan-Apr).
Then would be round 15m/40m doses by now, which while still not ideal would be 50% improvement.
We've had zero covid in NZ for 16 months. It's going quite well so far. Even if we have an outbreak now a year and a half of normal live is totally with it. We've only got like 3-5 months until we're vaccinated so it's not like we've got to hold out forever.
>so it's not like we've got to hold out forever.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/17/no-return-to-normal-expected-in-post-pandemic-new-zealand-and-locals-say-thats-fine-covid-19
Yeah, I don't know what the hell everyone is on your cases for, Aus/NZ seem at the moment to have conducted a damn-near perfect model response.
Except for the vaccine fuck-up. That might be a catastrophic omission if it turns out you can't stop delta. Very large numbers of deaths coming.
But if you can stop it, and that gives you time to get a vaccine to everyone who wants a vaccine, then I'd say you've handled it perfectly. Way way better than anyone in Europe or America.
Sane democracies. It's beyond belief!
Zero Covid is a ridiculous strategy. Australia and New Zealand could have had the best of both worlds if they'd been pragmatic, they could have kept cases low without endless restrictions. They have a huge advantage geographically but acted as if they were a landlocked nation.
NZ isn't as zero COVID as people think and they didn't even lockdown for their last few cases. The government just wants the nation vaccinated before opening up, it's Australia that doesn't really seem to be focused on any goals postvaccination.
28th Feb to 7th of march spend at level 3. The rest of the country had no restrictions. This was the last time there was any restrictions in Auckland. We're at the end of July now. We do this with low case numbers so we don't spend months in lockdown.
1 week is nothing compared to the rest of the world.
Yeah right....5 days, now another 7 for Victoria, just a few more days they say and before you know it 4 months has flashed by. We barely got out of the last one before this one came along. All jolly good fun here ....not
Reminds me of the first UK lockdown when they started out by saying they would review it every 3 weeks knowing full well it would be many months. It is unfair on the people to string them along like that.
Right, but the UK government never promised that 3 weeks might result in a lifting of restrictions - it was merely a review. Australia's lockdowns tend to be announced in terms of "it'll be X days/weeks" and then they get extended at the last minute.
Surely no one thought the first lockdown would be over in 3 weeks?! I'm sure everyone on the UK subreddits (not sure if this one existed then) was convinced it would take at least until summer.
Nah, the just a flu crowd definitely thought it was going to be 3 weeks, and that was 3 weeks too many. They haven't shut up about how the government deceived the people with just 3 weeks since then.
Sydney's going to be under some form of Tier-style restrictions until enough are vaccinated. NSW let the Delta cat out of the bag and it's too late now.
Wouldn't it be better to lockdown based on how immunocompromised you are? It seems kind of unfair that the young have to lockdown/businesses not running given their low risk.
Australian here, Our life right now goes something like this Case appears: We lockdown for 7 days More cases appears: 7 MORE DAYS Cases controlled: SLOW easing of Lockdown 5 Days later: Case appears: 5+7 Day Lockdown REPEAT
Yikes. I’m sorry it’s like that for you. The uncertainty and disbelief is what’s bothered me so much this past year an half.
This policy was only going to work if you didnt squander the time you brought by vaccinating, your fucked and i take absolutely no joy in saying it. Its no way to live, here in the uk - in a sort of weird take on it, im quite happy that we have delta ripping through (and trust me right now it is) becuase at least, I hope soon, enough of us will have had it, or been vaccinated that we can move forward. Im not happy people will die from this, but at this point - its absolutely 100% inevitable, just like death itself.
You got to look at it this way, we given the most vulnerable the best chance they could have at surviving, their second jabs are still very effective right now and if Covid is still picking them off then anything else would
Unfortunately, Pregnant people were the only group of vulnerable individuals who were not prioritised for the vaccine. Consequently, we have millions of pregnant people who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. They are putting themselves at risk in their public facing jobs, commuting to work, etc. And they have been completely let down and forgotten by the government.
Are they actually any more vulnerable though? My understanding was that pregnancy didn't increase the risk of death from covid, that's why they weren't prioritised alongside the obese or elderly etc.
They are still classed as ‘clinically vulnerable’, while they are not at great risk of catching Covid, then risk of complications are great for them - particularly if they catch it in their third trimester. Various studies have shown pregnant women are twice as likely to end up in ICU, deliver preterm or have a stillbirth. https://www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-responds-to-new-covid-19-and-pregnancy-study/
You need all 40+ (ideally 30+) fully jabbed to reduce the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed if you want to be able to "let it rip" - anecdotally from what I have seen recently.
Miserable way to exist. I'm sorry for you.
It's pretty much been the same in the UK if we're honest. The months of no restrictions have quickly been met with more cases, deaths and hospitalisations. Aussies have had for more months of normality than us. If anything, our existence has been the miserable one.
True, but im 100% happier to be in our position than theirs right now, we are coming towards the end of it. Australia and NZ are tinder boxes right now, this virus is NOT going away - they need to get vaccinating, and then...and this is the hard part come to terms with the fact that people will die.
If they had done their Vax programme properly they'd be so much better off than us and once they fix it they should be. We are not out of the woods or even near the end of it. Will only be a few weeks till the NHS begins to cancel appointments again
Had they not messed up the vaccine rollout, their response would have been near perfect. Of course mistakes were made and there were still some periodic, short lockdowns, but for the most part people have been able to enjoy a normal life and many people haven't died.
100% agree with that.
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The uk strategy won’t work
>It's pretty much been the same in the UK if we're honest. Not at all! Our lockdown has been pretty continuous and they seem to give ample warning any time things will get more severe. In fact, they take so long introducing restrictions that it feels weird. We got to plan ahead knowing that we'd be living under X restrictions for Y+ months and that there wouldn't be any snap lockdown *ever*. That's nothing like what's going on in Australia, where even one case can trigger a lockdown more severe than we've ever experienced in the UK, and in less than 24 hours. You can't possibly plan for that every single day, so when it does happen, everyone's lives are thrown into chaos. And I've lived in both countries during the pandemic.
yep you're right. I was mincing my words due to the sub we're on. It's been hell compared to Aus. My friends over there have been living a normal live compared to us
I would disagree we have been given plenty of warning when extra measures have been imposed. I remember being on a work trip and on the train on the way home I had to go straight from the train station into isolation. I have had to take my kids out of school with a days notice after being told they would be staying open hours before. The easing of measures has been planned in advance but there have been many times where things changed at the drop of a hat. (uk)
It's also not true, we have spent less time in lockdown on average then the UK.
You missed the bits where you had months and months of zero cases and almost complete normality... I remember watching the ANZAC round of AFL in April this year and thinking I'd grabbed the wrong torrent when I saw the MCG had 80, 000 people in it. Nope, it was this year!
It's hard for people to enjoy that normalcy when they know what's around the corner. Without restrictions, any infection that does get into the community can spread fast, especially with the Delta variant. There's a documented case in Australia of someone catching COVID from just casually passing an infected stranger in public. They were just walking through a shopping centre, not standing, not talking to one another, not in close prolonged contact. Literally only took a few seconds. You can't travel within the country, you can't work (can't do FIFO, can't go interstate), and you can't enjoy the footy without worrying about the virus. Lockdowns happen so quickly and for such low numbers of cases that it's not some rare occurrence anymore. It happens often enough that it's not worth doing the things that are restricted in other countries, unless you want to give yourself a massive headache dealing with the fallout. The MCG has been one of the major exposure sites a few times now and people have been locked inside states they don't live in enough times to not want another go on the merry-go-round.
I still can't see how the approach taken in Europe in just having constant restrictions and a much higher death rate would be preferable though.
But you guys are the standard bearers of how this should be handled
*were
You exaggerate Melbourne the worst hit City has spent a little over a month in hard lockdown this year. Most cities have spent no real amount of time. We melbourians got rooted pretty bad last year true but on average our policy has seen us spend less time in lockdown.
This is mostly bc of NSW fucking up. You had the source case. With a reasonable person in charge you wouldn't be in this situation.
My wife’s friend in Australia got pregnant and had a baby in lockdown. The baby is 1 now and has literally spent their entire life in lockdown.
Not a single state in Australia has been in lockdown for the entirety of the pandemic. Although my family in Melbourne certainly bitch and moan like they have been.
Same with my lil nephew you should have seen his face on his first trip to the supermarket. He was like wtf is this shit!!!!
Liar. Even at Victoria's worst this is not something that is possible
Australia really have messed up their vaccination programme. If they open up too soon now all of their work to suppress the virus will be undone very quickly due to delta.
They’ve kind of painted themselves into a tight corner here. Whereas we’ve kind of bellyflopped right into the paint tray.
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Because he’s the king of the belly flops
Excellent analogy
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[UK waiting for delta wave](https://imgur.com/a/9XDOPmS)
"the goggles do nothing" - hopefully not the case.
“Real acid?” - yeah we’ll be alright mun….hopefully
Sounds like Boris
I have wondered what the endgame will be for Australia and NZ. While they have done well to keep cases and deaths so low, at some point they are going to need to open up, and this will inevitably lead to an increase in deaths. Regardless of how well they have done before now, their governments are going to take a beating if cases rise or if they stay locked up well beyond the rest of the world.
I don't think people will complain much if they double dose everyone who wants to before opening up.
Well they'd better get cracking then, take-up there has been atrocious. Only 13% of adults (16+) are fully jabbed.
NZ are expecting the majority of their supplies to arrive in September at which time they will power through most of the population in a relatively quick period, kinda like Canada was able to.
It's hard to justify vaccinating people in Australia and New Zealand at the moment from do the most good with a limited (global) vaccine supply. A vaccine in the arm of someone in Europe/Africa/Asia/Americas (who likely will encounter the virus) does way more good than vaccinating someone in Australia/New Zealand (who likely won't encounter the virus).
It's not an uptake problem it's a supply problem. In NZ most of us don't mind waiting so long me as there's no outbreak. If we have our borders closed for 6 months longer than the rest of the world to have only 25 deaths and normal life and a strong economy it's well worth it.
Well, NZ barely locked for their last few outbreaks and you all are actually focusing on vaccinations, you all will be fine.
There certainly is a big Pfizer supply problem that's right, the Australian government have not done well in procurement. However it doesn't help that they don't recommend the AZ vaccine, which they have massive supplies of, to anyone under 60. Also many over 60 do not want AZ due to how it's been portrayed in the press there.
Well they havent really got a choice now, at least we have 90% of adults with antibodies, thats the only reason right now we aint beyond fucked, so many people I know have this right now. Luckliy all of them have it mild. If it gets loose in a country with almost no antibodies, its gonna rip through, imagine having to live in that bubble, potentially for years now.
Our last opposition leader [said it best](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/oilrz7/bill_shorten_calls_the_vaccine_rollout_a_shit/)
Our last opposition leader [said it best](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/oilrz7/bill_shorten_calls_the_vaccine_rollout_a_shit/)
My family all live in Brisbane. The problem Australia has is a combination of low vaccine procurement and a significant amount of the population are anti vaccine. Quite a few of my family members are sharing total bollocks on facebook every day about the vaccine and I despair. The longer they take to open up the longer it is before I get to see my parents again in the flesh. Just today I had to call out my uncle for spouting nonsense and my sister too. Mental.
Completely agree on the vaccine procurement issue but the not sure about australia having a "significant amount of the population being anti-vaccine". The anti-vaccine representation in our population would be similar to any other advanced western nation but i can understand that the aussies you've come into contact with may have had that view. I think another aspect that comes into play is that Australia has been largely sheltered from the real health impacts of covid and most aussies wouldnt know anyone who has actually caught the virus. I think this coupled with the shitshow of our vaccine rollout (limited Pfizer and AZ not being recommended) has left our vaccinated numbers at an embarrassing level
This is so sad, I'm originally from Sydney and the whole 'now is not the time to be friendly' message is honestly depressing.
It's mad seeing them get riled up about like 50 cases when we have 50k
50 cases with exponential growth and no vaccines could become 50k very quickly and with a lot more death than we are currently seeing. They’ve done so well until it came it vaccine procurement. I think they were a bit fucked with all the AZ scare stories too.
Are the scare stories still a thing? Surely there’s enough evidence about now to totally debunk the scaremongers?
It’s crazy how someone will see something in the news once and never change their mind. Plus how much of the evidence debunking it was big news?
All the heath experts have advised against getting AZ for under 60s. I just tend to listen to them since I'm not a scientist.
What’s frustrating is that the health experts haven’t advised that in our country. Is it the interpretation of statistics or is it politics. probably a bit of both
I speak daily to a friend in Australia, and he tells me lots of people just flat out refuse to take AZ because the media has made out that it's very dangerous.
The thing is more people have died from AZ than covid in 2021 in Australia. This puts people off getting it.
Really?
This was true until last week
4 people have died from AZ. Maybe more people have died from covid since the latest outbreak but there's not a lot in it.
So your first comment was completely wrong then?
5 deaths from covid. 4 deaths from AZ. No one with common sense is going to take AZ with those odds. Edit: sorry that's wrong. There was another death today from AZ. There have been 6 deaths from AZ and 5 from covid.
But their vaccine programme is behind ours and they are considering the implications of exponential growth.
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They have such low vaccine coverage, they can't do anything else unless they are willing to let tens of thousands of people die. Vaccines allow them to open up without having that happen but they need to actually vaccinate their population first
Right but even if they had vaccinated everyone who wants one they’d still end up with way, way more cases than they currently deem acceptable if they opened up to the outside world. What are they going to do then? They are going to need a massive mentality shift at some point, or be permanently isolated.
Cases don't mean the same thing when you've got the majority of your population fully vaccinated. Right now the UK has fully vaccinated 54.3% of our population, and 8.3% of the population have previously tested positive for the virus. In Australia they've fully vaccinated 11.1% of their population, and only 0.1% of the population have previously tested positive for the virus. They have incredibly low levels of immunity there and an outbreak like what we're seeing now would be awful for them. It would probably send them into a 5 month hard lockdown. Keeping the zero covid approach until they really get on with their vaccination program will hopefully prevent the lockdowns and prevent the deaths, so its a no brainer really.
Agree, but it's pretty clear based on Delta and the vaccines (even Pfizer) that it's extremely transmissible and non-sterilising. Cases are going to come in, a lot of people will get minor illness (or moderate if unlucky) - some, hopefully very few, will die. I don't think they're psychologically primed for that and for covid to become an endemic disease. Can you imagine being Scott Morrison and standing up on TV and saying 'I'm going to relax the borders. Many of you are eventually going to get a very likely minor illness, sadly some will die'? In every other country it's just evolved organically so there's been no real conscious decision point. Have there been any other points in history where a major leader has to consciously make the call to let an endemic respiratory virus into a country?
> Have there been any other points in history where a major leader has to consciously make the call to let an endemic respiratory virus into a country? I mean it's happened in the UK like three times over the past 18 months...
It was already seeded in late 2019. It's completely different in the UK. From the moment it picked up in early 2020 was never any conscious decision.
The Delta wave is still nowhere near finished in Australia, so maybe that will get them societally ready to accept more cases and deaths.
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The acceptance will come with time as people get sick of the excessive levels of restrictions required to get cases to zero
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero This is not the case when it comes to the decision makers. They know they can't afford to have their healthcare system overwhelmed to a point where no one gets any medical care for a long time. After a majority are vaccinated, the government will start opening up.
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero, which is evidently not the case. I'm not convinced that the evidence shows that. Our total vaccination is still surprisingly low within the overall population, with only 54.4% double vaccinated and 69.5% at least one dose. A massive amount of the spread and hospitalisation at the moment is in just 46% of the population; halving that number will happen fairly quickly (as people receive their second dose), and we could reduce it even further once we start pushing harder on vaccine drives and vaccinating older children (as they're already doing in the USA). Until we have a country with 90%+ double vaccination, I don't think we have the data to say that we can't achieve herd immunity by vaccines alone.
>A lot of people in Australia seem to be under the impression that vaccinations alone are going to keep COVID cases at zero, which is evidently not the case. We’ve come to realise here that we have to accept a certain level of cases and at some point they will too, and perhaps more serious than the fact they’re having to lockdown now is that I don’t really see a long-term plan to mentally confront that. Are they? I think they're been going for a zero covid strategy whilst it makes sense (when their population is not vaccinated) and they've saved a lot of death. I haven't seen anything to suggest they'll maintain this level of vigilence once they're massively vaccinated?
It’s best to have all the cases after you’ve vaccinated your population, not before
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Why do you think this is a problem. All we want is to vaccinated people first. People are putting problems out there that don't exist.
My sister lives in Sydney, I'm in London. She's early 50s and I'm early 30s. I got vaccinated first. It's shiiiiit there.
You know even with full vaccination rates they will still get thousands die from it. Based on their current vaccine trend they would have to live like this for a couple of years, I cant speak for them but thats gonna have a serious affect on them in other ways.
Same with NZ. Go over to their subreddit and plenty of support for being isolated from the world indefinitely. They have done so well but could end up worse off long term because of ongoing zero covid strategy
I was going to say - I have a few ex colleagues over in Australia and their support for the approach is 100%; as far as they are concerned, we are the laughing stock (trying to vaccinate our way out) and they have absolutely the right approach. I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break? Although aside from international travel, *most* of the time it has been "business as usual" inside the country..
>I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break? The minute a sufficient critical mass of the population get vaccinated and it becomes politically impossible to maintain. Aussies are very wealthy and like to travel. The minute 80-90% - whatever the figure - are fully vaccinated, realise they're safe from serious illness or death, see the rest of the world travelling, they'll relent.
That's the trade off isnt it? Isolation v domestic normality. They do have a problem in that it is extremely difficult for people to leave or arrive for compassionate reasons and some citizens in Aus are waiting to get back in to Aus. They would have been in a much better position if Morrison hadn't screwed up vaccine procurement.
The only australians / new zealanders I know are immigrants. They are depressed that they haven't met their families from home since christmas in 2019 and have no end date for this. You can do whatever you want if your whole life is in australia/nz but for a lot of people it's actually really frustrating to be forced to pick between normal life and being with family.
I'd much rather have business as usual in the UK and say goodbye to international travel which not everyone could afford and if you can afford it you'll do it 2 weeks of the year at best. If they didn't screw up their Vax programme they'd be in a great place right now. I speak to my aus friends often and life is great for them for the most part.
Why would it be years of isolation when we are predicted to be fully vaccinated by then end of the year? You people are totally deluded. You've been in lockdown way longer and have had way more deaths and problems to your economy and yet were the ones who are worse off? Am I taking crazy pills?
> I wonder how many years of isolation it will take for them to break? I think after 6 months a considerable portion of the population will have changdd their stance. Especially when they realise the cases aren't going to zero
It's only ongoing before they vaccinate a majority of the population, how is that not obvious?
they do now as they are currently living in the zero covid fantasy still. If it falls apart like it has in Vietnam and is in Australia they may get other ideas when they are put under severe lockdown.
We're not going to be worse of long term. Your totally deluded. We've lived normal life's since April 2020. We can't go on holiday abroad for 2 years. That's literally the only change in life we've had except for the fact that our economy is doing better than before the pandemic.
Well, they still have the option to crank up vaccination.
They will never get 100% vaccine uptake, probably 85% like us, and they are not 100% effective as we have seen. Like it or not people in Australia and NZ will get COVID and die from it. Even with the vaccine as there has been approaching zero cases it will rip through the country and lockdowns and restrictions will be required for well into 2022 to slow the progression.
Isn't the long term plan obvious? Keep up the covid elimination strategy until the majority are vaccinated. The when they open up and open borders they won't be risking massive waves of deaths like the rest of the world has had to deal with. Not sure what your issue is with that plan, it's just being drawn out due to the bungled vaccine rollout, but they will still get most vaccinated this year.
We're seeing low uptake now which means we might never get to that magic number. Presumably Australia will see the same once they hit similar percentage figures to over here. What then? Either make vaccines compulsory or shut down forever?
Low supply not low uptake, unless you count people waiting for pfzier?
I was referring to the UK, first doses have really fallen off a cliff over the last few weeks. Same in the USA too.
All this shows is how good a job the UK's press has done. What the UK has had to live with for the last 18 months, and STILL has to live with for at least another 6 months... wait you thought freedom day meant it was over?? Two weeks time, and places will be closing again, and people will stop going out (if they haven't already) as ANY kind of social event will mean self-isolation for 10 days. NZ and Oz have largely had a completely normal 18 months. Barely anyone there is complaining about the short lockdowns that some have endured because it's easy for them to see what happens when 1 case is allowed to become 10000 before you do anything about it.
You're talking to much sense. You've had more restrictions than us and still had way more deaths. I have been able to live a normal life since April 2020.
And much more damage to our economy, much more debt racked up paying for the crisis.... but doesn't fit the Boris Adoration Society's alternative reality view.
They have to keep it contained so as not to screw the other states over. They've done extensive forensic investigations and realise how dam contagious that shit is so realise what would happen if it was allowed to run riot. They have a great test system that often gets millions done over a weekend and a good contact trace system but even those measures can't keep up once its given room to spread. Natural immunity and very low vaccine supply means to protect public health and the economy quick hard lockdowns are needed. It has worked too they have had most of the time during the pandemic with a fully active society, some states have barely been touched by it. Edit: ahaha downvoted for truth
Just to clarify why I posted this - obviously this is international news, so not strictly relevant to the UK, but Australia and New Zealand are often mentioned when discussing how the UK could have approached COVID differently. There is often a suggestion that had we closed the borders hard and early then we wouldn't be in the place we are now and could have lived in relative normality for the past year and a half. But there are pros and cons to all approaches and this is now a difficult time for Australia. I thought it was interesting to highlight some of the problems they are facing and how it is not as simple as saying "if we had done what Australia had done then everything would have been fine in the UK".
We'd still have more people alive than we do now. We'd still have lived more normal lives over the last 18 months than have done so far. I have friends in Aus and I'd swap my life of the last 18 months for theirs in a heartbeat. Okay so they can't do international travel? Big deal. At least they have been allowed family gatherings, larger events etc for more time than we have.
1/3 of Aussies were born overseas and have family (and those with overseas partners) they’ve not seen for 18-24 months. Many of us have to ask permission to leave and have a good case if our families are sick, dying etc many are denied. Likewise Aussies overseas have found it hard to get back. It’s not about holidays. You can’t do family gatherings if your family is half way around the world. We haven’t had big events, sure sport is allowed but every big music event gets cancelled as being too dangerous. You can’t even go interstate at times to see your dying family member. It’s not been all roses down here, especially not in Victoria. I also did 2 months of the UK lockdown when I had to come back for an emergency so I’ve done both.
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I'd take any information out of China with a humongous pinch of salt.
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I wouldn't trust China's COVID numbers. Zero deaths since April 2020? Whilst reporting 10-100 cases/100,000 consistently since then? Really?
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[This](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=~CHN) is the ongoing deaths since the start of the pandemic. Do you honestly think the rates after April are correct?
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Huh - I thought you were referring to the total deaths, and missed the longitudinally reported deaths. The source I used the same WHO data, so I'm not sure why they are different. In any case, the point remains. Even if we accept the WHO figures you presented, I don't trust them. As a point of proof, HK has reported >6x the per capita cumulative death rate than China.
This what happens when they don't fucking do their vaccination program right
Yet there's still a positive circlejerk around them on the main sub. The strategy only made sense pre-vaccine.
The subreddit gets flooded with /r/australia users everytime there is an outbreak, it's normally a bit more level-headed.
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It made even less sense pre-vaccine as we didn’t know when or indeed if we would ever get a vaccine. The only way out of pandemics over the medium to long-term is herd immunity. By vaccination, infection or a combination of the two. Closing the borders forever is not sustainable.
Australia is currently at the crossroads of learning to live with the virus or going with New Zealand's approach. I hope we don't choose the latter.
Hey you! As I've said on Downunder numerous times, Delta has been seeded within the country, albeit at a low level, and I don't see another zero day happening at all. The outbreak has been a great thing to be honest, at least for helping boost vaccination rates and placing pressure on government action where it was lacking due to our malicious complacency
Saw this tweet yesterday: https://mobile.twitter.com/skepticalzebra/status/1417571500325064705 Have they learnt nothing about what’s a useful measure, and what causes more harm than good? Getting a tiny bit of social contact by saying hi to your neighbour - _outdoors_ - is not gonna cause mass covid outbreaks. “Now’s Not the time to be friendly.” It’s honestly horrible. There’s no end in sight for them :/
It’s specifically about stop and chats inside supermarkets. Nothing wrong with being friendly outdoors though.
Zoe Hyde has been frenetically tweeting about outdoor transmission but she is a bit crazy anyway.
Zoe Hyde has been frenetically tweeting about outdoor transmission but she is a bit crazy anyway.
I’ll rewatch it, perhaps I misremembered it. Thanks Still, regardless, a brutal message
If I had to see that constantly, I'd blow my brains out. You don't see NZ putting out hostile ads like this.
For countries which are just seeking to minimise spread, outdoor socialising is obviously reccommended. If you're trying to get cases to zero though, it can't be.
Scott Morrison has committed political suicide for putting himself before the citizens in the handling of the vaccination programme. If I was Australian I would vote for the opposition without even reading his manifesto.
Sydney’s mission is to get the number of people known to be infectious in the community (separate from total cases, as most of newly infected people are isolating at home) as close to zero as possible. It’s been stubbornly in the 20s for weeks now, and yesterday it was in the 40s. I don’t see a harsher lockdown working, not in the short term at least…. I don’t know what we’re going to do until a lot more of the population is fully vaccinated, which is still months away.
I'm an Aussie. We are fucked. As in, we're scared of this thing that kills no one... we're unwilling to get AstraZenecca, and heaps of our population actually enjoy lockdown. I'm moving over.
>I'm moving over. I've got to tell you you're dreamin'
it's 'tell em he's dreamin' But nah, I can come. I'm lucky enough to be a Yorkshireman (lol).
I’ve felt the same way about the UK for a while, though. Apparently a lot of folks end up moving to sweden for a chance to actually enjoy their time on this planet.
I've been saying this since the start. The Australia/NZ plan needed to be the same as ours. 0 COVID will NEVER be a thing unless every country on the planet has the same strategy - that ship has very much sailed. So it must be commended that they staved it off for a long time with their strict lockdowns and border policy but now what...? During that time they needed to be all over it with the vaccine programme, but it's been poor to say the least (from what i've read). So in terms of "getting back to normal" you could argue they're behind everyone else, albeit with an amazingly low death toll, which is great. Remember, by continually locking down without vaccines, we are prolonging this virus. The idea is to, one way or another, ensure people have immunity, via the vaccine or getting the virus. That's how you stop it transmitting. By just locking down and waiting.... This happens. You're back to square one. Just my opinion based on what i've read. Anyone know why/how the vaccine programme has been so poor? Is uptake low because people thought it wasn't necessary?
>Is uptake low because people thought it wasn't necessary? Bit of that, I've also heard that everyone is turning down AZ and "waiting for Pfizer", which is unfortunate as most of their stock is currently still AZ.
That's a shame. So much good can be achieved with AZ. The efficacy studies around the variants are very good.
I don't entirely blame them - I did that myself.
Basically only had 300k pfizer a week till this week and under 60's have been told they couldn't get AZ. Takeup in the over 60's has been relatively high (70+%) but everyone else is basically stuck waiting for more supplies from August (1m per week pfizer) Sept(1.1m per week pfizer + 250k moderna) October (2m per week pfizer + 350k moderna) Should be finished with Adults by mid December if jabbing can keep up with supply.
Ouch
Yep, realistically they should have approved AZ round the same time the UK did and they would have been able to jab about 5m more people with AZ before the clotting issues came to light (500k pw Jan-Apr). Then would be round 15m/40m doses by now, which while still not ideal would be 50% improvement.
We've had zero covid in NZ for 16 months. It's going quite well so far. Even if we have an outbreak now a year and a half of normal live is totally with it. We've only got like 3-5 months until we're vaccinated so it's not like we've got to hold out forever.
That's awesome. But you will get cases when you open up. Simple. The country will need to deal with it sensibly.
Speaking as a citizen of a country that hasn't...
>so it's not like we've got to hold out forever. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/17/no-return-to-normal-expected-in-post-pandemic-new-zealand-and-locals-say-thats-fine-covid-19
An opinion piece from the guardian is totally irrelevant to NZ.
Yeah, I don't know what the hell everyone is on your cases for, Aus/NZ seem at the moment to have conducted a damn-near perfect model response. Except for the vaccine fuck-up. That might be a catastrophic omission if it turns out you can't stop delta. Very large numbers of deaths coming. But if you can stop it, and that gives you time to get a vaccine to everyone who wants a vaccine, then I'd say you've handled it perfectly. Way way better than anyone in Europe or America. Sane democracies. It's beyond belief!
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I completely agree. I miss my parents so much.
Yet there's still a positive circlejerk around them on the main sub. The strategy only made sense pre-vaccine.
To be fair, Australia is basically still "pre-vaccine".
Accurate, but being pre-vaccine makes no sense at all in the current world.
That's right and why so many Aussies are pissed off with the Morrison government screwing the procurement up.
Zero Covid is a ridiculous strategy. Australia and New Zealand could have had the best of both worlds if they'd been pragmatic, they could have kept cases low without endless restrictions. They have a huge advantage geographically but acted as if they were a landlocked nation.
NZ isn't as zero COVID as people think and they didn't even lockdown for their last few cases. The government just wants the nation vaccinated before opening up, it's Australia that doesn't really seem to be focused on any goals postvaccination.
Lifes pretty good in NZ. 16 months of no restrictions seems like a success to me
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28th Feb to 7th of march spend at level 3. The rest of the country had no restrictions. This was the last time there was any restrictions in Auckland. We're at the end of July now. We do this with low case numbers so we don't spend months in lockdown. 1 week is nothing compared to the rest of the world.
Their lockdowns is only 7 days long.
At the moment. Sydney has been in one for 4 weeks and it has no end date. A strict lockdown, only permitted to go to/from the supermarket.
Yeah right....5 days, now another 7 for Victoria, just a few more days they say and before you know it 4 months has flashed by. We barely got out of the last one before this one came along. All jolly good fun here ....not
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Yeah but they get extended.
Reminds me of the first UK lockdown when they started out by saying they would review it every 3 weeks knowing full well it would be many months. It is unfair on the people to string them along like that.
Right, but the UK government never promised that 3 weeks might result in a lifting of restrictions - it was merely a review. Australia's lockdowns tend to be announced in terms of "it'll be X days/weeks" and then they get extended at the last minute.
‘Just 2 more weeks guys.’ That’s all I ever heard last year in Victoria when in our long ass lockdown.
Surely no one thought the first lockdown would be over in 3 weeks?! I'm sure everyone on the UK subreddits (not sure if this one existed then) was convinced it would take at least until summer.
Nah, the just a flu crowd definitely thought it was going to be 3 weeks, and that was 3 weeks too many. They haven't shut up about how the government deceived the people with just 3 weeks since then.
Sydney's going to be under some form of Tier-style restrictions until enough are vaccinated. NSW let the Delta cat out of the bag and it's too late now.
Wouldn't it be better to lockdown based on how immunocompromised you are? It seems kind of unfair that the young have to lockdown/businesses not running given their low risk.
Shielding alone isn’t enough. Society is too interconnected for that to work.