Australian Response

Noo

TomSweeney wrote: »

This is it, whereas Australia will just have a series of unending lockdowns, their vaccine uptake is slow, and even if they get to 100% vaccination as they are such a paranoid nanny state I can't see them ever opening up their borders - which is a shame, I had hoped one day to see Ayers rock or Uluru as they call it now.

Ever? Theyre never going to let anyone in or out of the country ever again? Ever?

Ive said it before on this thread, its not the uptake thats the problem (wouldn't be any higher or lower than other western countries), its the government rollout. You cant just walk into your gp and ask for it. The rollout has been massively inadequate.

So until the government their arse into gear, yes lockdowns (which have been working well in Australia) will keep happening. Once the vaccine situation improves then the narrative will change to reopening.

gral6

Peregrinus wrote: »

It doesn't work to produce zero covid (defined as "zero community transmission"), obviously.

But it may well work to produce less covid, at less economic cost, with less societal disruption, than other approaches have worked. You have to think about what your goal here is before you can talk meaningfully about which approaches work and which don't.

Sure, it is less economic cost, especially for aviation and tourism sectors of economy.
Zero covid strategy does not work, that's it.

TomSweeney

Noo wrote: »

Ever? Theyre never going to let anyone in or out of the country ever again? Ever?

Ive said it before on this thread, its not the uptake thats the problem (wouldn't be any higher or lower than other western countries), its the government rollout. You cant just walk into your gp and ask for it. The rollout has been massively inadequate.

So until the government their arse into gear, yes lockdowns (which have been working well in Australia) will keep happening. Once the vaccine situation improves then the narrative will change to reopening.

It would not surprise me , when they are not letting fully vaccinated people that have had THREE negative PCR tests out of quarantine to see their dying father, when they are letting babies die denying them life saving surgery because they need to cross an INTERNAL border.


They have gone collectively insane, and they seem to have the support of the public, it will take a huge shift in public opinion to change things ..


cannot see it happening, maybe ill get there in my retirement years (I'm 43 now) ...

FuzzyThinking

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

Ireland will go back to normal.

We could do with paying more attention to what is working in Denmark, Iceland and other neighbours a couple of hours flying time away, with whom we share a lot of similarities (and normally a common travel zone and single market) and perhaps not getting lost in what’s happening in two relatively much more isolated islands nearly 20,000 km away and trying to apply that here, just because we speak the same language.

We’re going to be fully vaccinated here very soon, with very likely one of the highest uptakes in the world.

There’s no reason why life won’t be back to normal.

Even if you get reluctance in aspects of politics here, the EU will drag us back to normality regardless. We can’t just keep endless restrictions on travel etc beyond a certain point when risks are low.

Not to labour the point, but I see no evidence that life will ever be normal in Ireland. Nothing has been said about restrictions going. Ireland also has no opposition. Unique in the world for not having opposition, be it in politics or the media.

But back to Australia.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

The risk is that there’ll be no drive to get vaccinated. If you’re Kath & Kim living in some Melbourne suburb and never contemplate going “overseas” and you keep encountering negative stories about vaccines etc, why would you bother?

It looks to me like the government there sees no urgency in reopening borders.

It’s starting to get serious coverage on business news channels and international media like CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/27/australia/sydney-lockdown-australia-covid-pandemic-intl-cmd/index.html

Lead story on CNN.com today.

The issues aren’t now, but if they’re still closed off when other comparable countries and regions are vaccinated and are back to normal, it’s going to get harder and harder to justify being out of step.

I’m hearing dates like not before Xmas 2022 for example.

The big test will be to see what the vaccine uptake is. At the moment it’s a lack of government urgency in procurement, but give it a few months and there’ll be a better picture.

Noo

Noo wrote: »

Ever? Theyre never going to let anyone in or out of the country ever again? Ever?

Ive said it before on this thread, its not the uptake thats the problem (wouldn't be any higher or lower than other western countries), its the government rollout. You cant just walk into your gp and ask for it. The rollout has been massively inadequate.

So until the government their arse into gear, yes lockdowns (which have been working well in Australia) will keep happening. Once the vaccine situation improves then the narrative will change to reopening.

What do you make of what Greg Hunt and Scott Morrison said about the population being vaccinated being no guarantee that the borders would reopen?

https://www.cimbusinessevents.com.au/health-minister-warns-vaccines-not-enough-to-open-borders-as-morrison-hits-the-panic-button/

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/covid-australia-s-borders-to-remain-closed-indefinitely-says-pm-morrison-121050900416_1.html

Granted, the articles are from a couple of months ago.

Noo

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What do you make of what Greg Hunt and Scott Morrison said about the population being vaccinated being no guarantee that the borders would reopen?

https://www.cimbusinessevents.com.au/health-minister-warns-vaccines-not-enough-to-open-borders-as-morrison-hits-the-panic-button/


https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/covid-australia-s-borders-to-remain-closed-indefinitely-says-pm-morrison-121050900416_1.html

Granted, the articles are from a couple of months ago.

My opinion is that they are vague ass-covering statements. "We'll open the border once everyone is vaccinated" is just asking for trouble as you cant guarantee right now which other countries will have sufficient vaccine coverage. When the australia population is vaccinated, doesnt mean its a good idea to commit to open the border to every country.

What about those that ARE vaccinated and have a negative test i hear you ask? "We'll open the border to vaccinated people on 19th September", what could possibly go wrong in giving an exact date in the future for something like that. How are those exact date approaches working out in ireland?

It'll be a cautious step by step approach to the border. E.g. step 1 was nz. Next may be a bubble with other south pacific islands. For that nz bubble, they was originally talk about japan too. Imagine if they had committed to a bubble with japan starting on an exact date, seeing where they are now.

So thats my opinion, saying the border will be shut indefinitely is the arse covering way of saying we are not committing to any arbitarary dates because theres no way of guaranteeing we can stick to them.

Hobgoblin11

Will the new Delta force be enough to lock Australia down for months?

gral6

Hobgoblin11 wrote: »

Will the new Delta force be enough to lock Australia down for months?

Australia will be locked down for the rest of the foreseeble future, it looks like.

Peregrinus

gral6 wrote: »

Australia will be locked down for the rest of the foreseeble future, it looks like.

Most of Australia isn't locked down even now, and the areas that are locked down will be locked down for the foreseeable future, provided your foreseeable future doesn't stretch beyond a couple of weeks.

But don't let boring things like reality interfere with your obsession, gralt6.

gral6

Peregrinus wrote: »

Most of Australia isn't locked down even now, and the areas that are locked down will be locked down for the foreseeable future, provided your foreseeable future doesn't stretch beyond a couple of weeks.

But don't let boring things like reality interfere with your obsession, gralt6.

The reality is that Australia is blocked off from the world. The reality is that there is no light at the end of the tunnel for Australia. The reality is that there is no problem to lock people down in Australia for a couple of cases. Sad ., but true.

Manic Moran

Peregrinus wrote: »

Most of Australia isn't locked down even now, and the areas that are locked down will be locked down for the foreseeable future, provided your foreseeable future doesn't stretch beyond a couple of weeks.

But don't let boring things like reality interfere with your obsession, gralt6.

It does, however, seem that if the standard reaction to a COVID case is to lock everything down wherever they happen, then lockdowns are going to be a thing for the forseeable future. As are business problems, especially for the service and tourism sectors.

4% vaccination rate? That's utter, stunning, incompetence. My little part of Texas has a 2million population, currently 73% of 12-and-over have received at least one shot, 58% have received two. Life here is basically back to normal, except masks are still a thing on occasion. Unless some strain shows up against which the vaccine is ineffective, I find it unforseeable that we will enter another lockdown period. I don't see Australia doing anything other than entering and leaving lockdowns for months to come. The country not opening until December 2022, as the PM suggested, is a disaster.

Gael23

The attitude to vaccines is that because there’s no virus in the country until now, they don’t need it.

I do imagine public opinion will shift once the rest of the world moves on in the later part of this year.

ceadaoin.

Leaving newborn babies abandoned in hospitals because their parents are denied permission to see them, not allowing people to travel to see dying relatives, or any relatives, even forcing people to miss their loved ones final days when they live in another Australian state. Not allowed to leave the country. Zero international tourism, billions lost from international students. Locking people in their apartments. Lockdown at the drop of a hat over a handful of cases. This is all normal for the forseeable future in Australia and has been for over a year, and there is no road map out of this situation. No acceptable level of cases, or vaccination rates have been published.

And they still think they are the envy of the world? Lol

Edit: oh and I forgot about their movements being tracked by qr codes everywhere they go and the police having access to and using that information. It's just a police state now, but it's "for their own good" so that's ok.

is_that_so

Peregrinus wrote: »

Most of Australia isn't locked down even now, and the areas that are locked down will be locked down for the foreseeable future, provided your foreseeable future doesn't stretch beyond a couple of weeks.

But don't let boring things like reality interfere with your obsession, gralt6.

Internally it probably looks like "we're doing great" but the rest of the western world is now looking past COVID, to normality and free movement. There is unquestionably an exit strategy issue in Asia and the generally very low levels of vaccination make it look like that solution is another year out. Here's a BBC piece on the so-called top of class Asian countries.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57492961

dmn22

Australia’s economy recovered to where it was pre-pandemic already. We will take years to the same.

They spent a fraction of time in lockdowns compared to us.

If I had to choose to live in Australia since COVID came about or in Ireland I know which one I would have picked.

The level of delusion and false superiority on this thread is hilarious

LLMMLL

dmn22 wrote: »

Australia’s economy recovered to where it was pre-pandemic already. We will take years to the same.

They spent a fraction of time in lockdowns compared to us.

If I had to choose to live in Australia since COVID came about or in Ireland I know which one I would have picked.

The level of delusion and false superiority on this thread is hilarious

It's absolutely insane. Posters going on about a premature baby and not being able to travel abroad for funerals as if everything has been lovely in Europe.

I personally spent a good portion of the last year in my apartment with feck all to do and I'm one of the lucky ones. People in Ireland have lost jobs, have not been able to visit dying loved ones. And a lot more people have died. What is this insanity that seems to think Australians have it worse than us?

Covid Deaths

1. US - 619,519
2. Brazil - 514,092
3. India - 397,668
4. Mexico - 232,564
5. Peru - 191,899
6. Russia - 133,893
7. UK - 128,103
8. Italy - 127,500
9. France - 111,012
10. Colombia - 104,678
61. Ireland - 4,989
109. Australia - 910

Deaths by 1mil population

Ireland 50th. Australia 158th

I know where I wish I was living my life the last 15 months or so.

Peregrinus

Manic Moran wrote: »

It does, however, seem that if the standard reaction to a COVID case is to lock everything down wherever they happen, then lockdowns are going to be a thing for the forseeable future. As are business problems, especially for the service and tourism sectors.

4% vaccination rate? That's utter, stunning, incompetence. My little part of Texas has a 2million population, currently 73% of 12-and-over have received at least one shot, 58% have received two. Life here is basically back to normal, except masks are still a thing on occasion. Unless some strain shows up against which the vaccine is ineffective, I find it unforseeable that we will enter another lockdown period. I don't see Australia doing anything other than entering and leaving lockdowns for months to come. The country not opening until December 2022, as the PM suggested, is a disaster.

This. Well, not quite everything here, but this is the basically problem.

The problem is not the zero Covid strategy which, gral6's claims notwithstanding, has worked very well - far fewer Covid infections, far fewer Covid cases, far less restriction on social and economic life, far lower cost - than strategies pursued in Europe and the US. What's not to like?

The problem is the very poor performance on vaccination. This isn't a consequence of the zero covid strategy, since it's perfectly possible to pursue both a zero covid strategy and a vaccination programme. Indeed, that was supposed to be the plan - successful vaccination was how Australia would transition from (effective) covid prevention measures back to "normality".

So what went wrong? Through a combination of bad luck, bad judgment and incompetence the federal government has stuffed up both the procurement and the delivery of vaccines.

Early in the piece, the federal government noted that substantial political capital was accruing to the state governments for Australian success in preventing covid transmission. Public health services are operated by the state governments, and of course the interstate, intra-state travel restrictions, and the general lockdown of March-April 2020 were also decided upon and implemented by the state governments. All the political credit, poll boosts, etc, went to the state governments. The federal government was primarily responsible for international border protection, and what people mainly noticed about that was cruise ships being allowed to dock, and their Covid-infected passengers to travel onwards throughout the country. The bulk of Australia's first wave of covid infections was due to this lapse.

So, the federal government decided, it would try to get some of that sweet, sweet poll boost action by taking control of, and therefore credit for, vaccination. This was going to be difficult because, as noted, the public health services are state-run. Or largely so; GP services had a significant federal input, so the feds decided that they would distribute the vaccine through the GP service, dealing directly with GPs and by-passing State Health Departments, and so get a slice of the action that way.

Of course, to distribute vaccine you first have to obtain some. A couple of things went wrong here. First, great hope was placed on a vaccine being developed by the University of Queensland but, quite late in the piece, at the clinical trials stage, it became apparent that the UQ vaccine had problems. Not huge problems, but big enough that no clinician was likely to administer the UQ vaccine in preference to Pfizer, AstraZenica, etc, so development was halted and the vaccine never went into production. Another problem was that the Federal Dept of Health, since it doesn't actually run any health services, has zero experience in procurement. By all accounts they made a complete hames of their relationship with Pfizer, succeeding only in thoroughly alienating them and placing minimal orders (at a time when they were still banking on UQ). When the time came to panic their only viable option was AstraZenica, who by then were already in strife for having formed contracts that they couldn't deliver on, and Australia was pretty much at the back of the queue.

Meanwhile, back at the GP practices, GPs discovered that if they signed up to the federal vaccination distribution programme, underwent the training, set up their premises, etc, because of supply constraints they would only receive between 30 and 50 doses per practice per week. For a lot of them this didn't make sense; their regular services to patients would be severely disrupted and they would be administering relatively few vaccinations. (Plus, they would lose money; GP practices are funded per service delivered.) So they opted out.

The federal government sought to minimise the negative political fallout from all this by emphasising that, hey, there's no rush, we have no Covid in the community in Australia, we can take our time about this and do it in a orderly and measured fashion, etc, etc. And this, of course helped to foster a climate in which the public didn't see vaccination - at least, early vaccination - as a priority.

That's perhaps the context in which we should place statements from federal minsters a couple of months ago about not re-opening borders even when vaccination was well-advanced in Australia; they were trying to avoid people blaming them for continued international border closures caused by the failure to run a rapid and effective vaccination programme; they were trying to decouple the two issues in people's minds.

And so here we are. Supplies are coming on stream now — not as much as we would like, certainly, but in meaningful quantities. And vaccinations are now being delivered through the state health services as well as via GP practices. But we have a population conditioned not to expect early vaccination, not to regard it as urgent, and not to see it as something that will make an immediate difference to them. Plus, the clotting problems with the AZ vaccine have emerged, leading to changed clinical advice about who should receive it and who shouldn't; that wasn't something that held up the UK vaccination programme, because that was largely complete before the clotting problems were known about.

The result of all this is that the vaccination programme has consistently missed every target set for it, and the government has now abandoned target-setting completely.

There's some evidence that things are starting to change now; demand for vaccination in Sydney has rocketed, and the pace of vaccination in all states has picked up sharply. But Australia has lost valuable months that will be hard to make up.

None of this means that the zero covid strategies have been ineffective. On the contrary, they have been highly effective. If they hadn't been, we'd be in a much worse state now than in fact we are.

derfderf

Zero Covid may not be possible long term, but it has worked so far. There have been zero covid deaths here in 2021. There is less urgency to get vaccinated for a lot of people, but the main issue is the shortage of pfizer, and the government policy not to give anyone under 50 AZ (and this was increased to 60 recently). I haven't seen anything that shows Australians are more hesitant to get vaccinated than other countries before covid.

Employment is back to pre-covid levels now. I'm in Sydney. We're in lockdown now, but it's the first one for the whole city since this time last year. Cases are not multiplying. There's been a steady increase of around 18 each day for the last few days, with huge testing numbers (19 positive from 67000 tests).

The government can't keep the borders closed forever. The current government is not in an untouchable position. Once the vaccine rollout picks up pace, either they'll have to look at opening the border, or labour will make that their policy.

Gael23

derfderf wrote: »

Zero Covid may not be possible long term, but it has worked so far. There have been zero covid deaths here in 2021. There is less urgency to get vaccinated for a lot of people, but the main issue is the shortage of pfizer, and the government policy not to give anyone under 50 AZ (and this was increased to 60 recently). I haven't seen anything that shows Australians are more hesitant to get vaccinated than other countries before covid.

Employment is back to pre-covid levels now. I'm in Sydney. We're in lockdown now, but it's the first one for the whole city since this time last year. Cases are not multiplying. There's been a steady increase of around 18 each day for the last few days, with huge testing numbers (19 positive from 67000 tests).

The government can't keep the borders closed forever. The current government is not in an untouchable position. Once the vaccine rollout picks up pace, either they'll have to look at opening the border, or labour will make that their policy.

When is the next election in Australia?

Peregrinus

Gael23 wrote: »

When is the next election in Australia?

The next federal election is due, at the latest, by 3 September 2022, but there is political speculation that it may be called considerably sooner than that.

Manic Moran

derfderf wrote: »

Employment is back to pre-covid levels now. I'm in Sydney. We're in lockdown now, but it's the first one for the whole city since this time last year.

I don't go to Sydney much, except to change 'planes to go to Cairns, which is a business destination for me from time to time. I'll be astounded if the economy up that way is at pre-COVID levels (And a quick check on the Web indicates that it isn't) given how tourist-oriented it is. I've been looking to get back that way for my job, but unlike other business destinations I have on my to-do list (Canada, Germany, Belgium), I've basically written it off for the next year. Brasil is also on my list, but that's written off now for the opposite reason: Too much COVID. Same difference at the business end, though. No travel.

Peregrinus

Domestic tourism is booming, though - all those Aussies who can't go abroad for their holidays. Heavier-than-normal bookings mean there's a general shortage of tourist accommodation at every level, and the hospitality sector in tourist areas is thriving. But tourist businesses oriented towards the foreign tourist market - e.g. adventure tour operators - are hurting. And the cruise industry has all but closed, though in fact that never generated very much spending in Australia.

Higher education has been badly hit, because of a funding model that relies heaving on fee-paying foreign students.

derfderf

Manic Moran wrote: »

I don't go to Sydney much, except to change 'planes to go to Cairns, which is a business destination for me from time to time. I'll be astounded if the economy up that way is at pre-COVID levels (And a quick check on the Web indicates that it isn't) given how tourist-oriented it is. I've been looking to get back that way for my job, but unlike other business destinations I have on my to-do list (Canada, Germany, Belgium), I've basically written it off for the next year. Brasil is also on my list, but that's written off now for the opposite reason: Too much COVID. Same difference at the business end, though. No travel.

Maybe GDP isn't at the levels it was, but the unemployment rate is back to pre-covid levels.

Manic Moran

derfderf wrote: »

Maybe GDP isn't at the levels it was, but the unemployment rate is back to pre-covid levels.

Because people are simply not trying to work.

https://www.conus.com.au/2021/02/cairns-unemployment-rate-falls-again-but-things-are-not-all-rosy/

However, before we get too excited about what appears to be very positive news we should note that the reason for the fall is not improving employment but rather a sharply falling rate of participation.

https://www.conus.com.au/2021/06/cairns-trend-employment-up-unemployment-rate-down/
Although employment has risen by only 400 over the year the unemployment rate remains low due to a decline in participation. There have been job losses in the youth sector (-1,300) with only modest gains in the middle-aged (+600) and older cohorts (+1,200). In the youth sector the unemployment rate has fallen sharply despite these employment losses; this points to a severe reduction in the participation rate in this cohort as young people remove themselves from the labour force; likely due to the effects on employment in the tourism-facing sectors such as Accommodation & Food Services and Retail which would have been traditionally youth dominated. Note that full-time jobs are now up 3,400 for the year being offset by a similar decline (-2,900) in part-time positions.

gral6

So, the only Australian strategy now is a lockdown? It looks like....

Calahonda52

dmn22 wrote: »

Australia’s economy recovered to where it was pre-pandemic already. We will take years to the same.

They spent a fraction of time in lockdowns compared to us.

If I had to choose to live in Australia since COVID came about or in Ireland I know which one I would have picked.

The level of delusion and false superiority on this thread is hilarious

..
You are neglecting tourism as well as the 100's of 1000's of foreign student attending Oz universities, paying full fare.
You also ignoring the xx's of 1000's of folk who travel and do slave labour in the fields.
The students

As to this this piece ......

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57647418

Peregrinus

gral6 wrote: »

So, the only Australian strategy now is a lockdown? It looks like....

It looks like that if you close your eyes to all the non-lockdown strategies being pursued.

Far from lockdown being their only strategy, Australia has spend much less time in lockdown than most other countries in the developed world, and has also experienced many fewer Covid infections, and many fewer deaths. That's mainly due to all the other strategies that you have decided not to notice.

Mehapoy

Peregrinus wrote: »

It looks like that if you close your eyes to all the non-lockdown strategies being pursued.

Far from lockdown being their only strategy, Australia has spend much less time in lockdown than most other countries in the developed world, and has also experienced many fewer Covid infections, and many fewer deaths. That's mainly due to all the other strategies that you have decided not to notice.

The other strategies are locking down borders both internally and externally, denying citizens rights to return to their own country, quarantining people in hotels which has caused the outbreaks and severely effecting small business owners for years to come. But hey Australia looks great in those tables with 0 infections, kinda like a reverse olympic medal table thats everywhere every 4 years.
Even now the whole confusion over AZ vaccine for under 40s with conflicting advice everywhere will hamper getting anywhere near enough % of the pop vaccinated, so its closed borders, lockdown and dont leave your state for the forseeable.