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Aussies: Football, Meat Pies, and Rampant SARS


Stubby

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3 hours ago, Paxter said:

Now everyone is copying McGowan. Lock it down baby!

We have plenty of Delta circulating here in Ontario and the stance is to lockdown less, rather than more. The vaccine is a point of difference but one in four people are still unvaccinated, and most people are only partially vacced. 

Eh think their hands were forced. It was running well ahead of contact tracing and growing exponentially. Choices were either let it keep going and lockdown when it gets into a few aged care facilities, the deaths start rising, and there's a public outcry (most 60+ are only vaccinated with a single AZ dose at the moment which offers not great protection against delta, and only around 30% of aged care workers are currently vaccinated). Or lockdown now and contain it.

The calculus will change I think when 50%+ of the population are vaccinated and the majority of the over 60s have had their 2nd dose.

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Yeah I agree that their hands were forced, particularly in NSW.

It's just interesting how different countries respond so differently to similar situations. Though I think the 60+ group is mostly double vaxxed here now (even if they had AZ).

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Very angry that we're not just pushing AZ for everyone. Yes, it would result in a few deaths. If we applied the risk-avoidance for AZ to driving, virtually nobody would be allowed to drive. In my view its criminal so few of us are still unvaccinated. 

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3 hours ago, Stubby said:

I got my first dose of Pfizer on Monday. It was so quiet that Laoise got to come back as a walk in an hour later.

Bet it's not as quiet today.

That's a pretty clear demonstration of how much impact an active outbreak has on lighting a fire under our asses then. NSW has set back to back new highs for daily vaccinations the last couple of days and the queue on Monday was ridiculously long.

Ants - I might not go quite as far, but I'm very much on board with allowing people to accept AZ with the higher risk as long as they're giving genuine informed consent and getting a proper risk assessment. As I understand it the blood clot risk isn't actually correlated with other common blood clot risks, but with a separate factor - we need to make sure that information is getting to people so those with regular risk factors realise it doesn't apply to them, and those with the relevant one do.

That said if we're about to have a big influx of Pfizer supply and will have the organizational infrastructure to actually get it to people, then it will get people to fully vaccinated faster than AZ now due to the much shorter gap between doses. My Dad had his first AZ 6 weeks ago, but I'm still going to have my second Pfizer almost a month before he gets his second. All of which really just highlights the complexity of a roll out and why this should be properly coordinated and based on public health and public buy in instead of the bs that's going on.

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2 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

The mixed messaging on the vaccines is just fucking depressing. Like seriously, could we balls this up any more?!

To be fair the States, with one notable exception, have done better than than the Feds in the vaccine and general covid management screw-up dept.

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4 minutes ago, Stubby said:

To be fair the States, with one notable exception, have done better than than the Feds in the vaccine and general covid management screw-up dept.

I generally agree, but as others have said not a fan of the messaging out of Qld and WA today tbh. There's many things that we'll allow an informed adult to consent to with a higher risk factor. I don't think they needed to be as combative as they were.

But yeah I really don't think it's too much to ask for the Feds to inform and get the AMA, GPs,  and states on board before announcing vaccine policy. Avoiding public fights which undermine confidence in the rollout should be a priority.

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8 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

I generally agree, but as others have said not a fan of the messaging out of Qld and WA today tbh. There's many things that we'll allow an informed adult to consent to with a higher risk factor. I don't think they needed to be as combative as they were.

But yeah I really don't think it's too much to ask for the Feds to inform and get the AMA, GPs,  and states on board before announcing vaccine policy. Avoiding public fights which undermine confidence in the rollout should be a priority.

Not a fan of the xenophobic/racist tack Qld and I think Vic were taking yesterday either. I didn't actually listen to the Vic presser, but had to turn the Qld one off in disgust.

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And jab 2 done. Was pleasantly surprised with the experience at SAs mass vaccination hub at the Adelaide showground. They were professional and friendly, and I would've spent less than an hour there across the 2 visits, including the 2x 15min waits.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sydney has another two weeks of lockdown, and now Melbourne's gone down for a lockdown again too. 

Crazy to think we squandered so much time with vaccinations!

To be fair, of our political leaders I think ScoMo comes off the worst. Daniel Andrews was brutal and copped a lot of flak, but it kind of worked in the end, and Gladys Berejiklian actually has quite a lot of political capital in NSW which she built up by not locking down earlier, and she's using that dry powder now.

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Yes, the vaccinations are the real problem and ScoMo bears a lot of the blame for that. The demonisation of AstraZeneca in particular and the overplaying of all the risks is egregious. They should have opened AZ to everyone (after consultation with GPs) to begin with.

That being said, ScoMo takes a lot of heat over the closed borders but I think that blame needs to be shared with the Premiers. It seems odd that Labor leaders like Palaszczuk and Andrews are getting next to no flak (or indeed praise) for strongly campaigning for arrival numbers to be cut, and then Morrison is being blamed for being heartless etc when he's essentially doing what they wanted.

Less than two weeks to go here in Sydney...supposedly. I don't think this will go on for 3 months like Victoria, but I am anticipating the lockdown will be continued at least into mid-August. A bit harder to reopen now that schools appear to be transmission sites and Delta is so easily caught.

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2 hours ago, Jeor said:

Yes, the vaccinations are the real problem and ScoMo bears a lot of the blame for that. The demonisation of AstraZeneca in particular and the overplaying of all the risks is egregious. They should have opened AZ to everyone (after consultation with GPs) to begin with.

That being said, ScoMo takes a lot of heat over the closed borders but I think that blame needs to be shared with the Premiers. It seems odd that Labor leaders like Palaszczuk and Andrews are getting next to no flak (or indeed praise) for strongly campaigning for arrival numbers to be cut, and then Morrison is being blamed for being heartless etc when he's essentially doing what they wanted.

Less than two weeks to go here in Sydney...supposedly. I don't think this will go on for 3 months like Victoria, but I am anticipating the lockdown will be continued at least into mid-August. A bit harder to reopen now that schools appear to be transmission sites and Delta is so easily caught.

I hope you're doing okay there in Sydney.

I think a lot of people see the borders remaining closed as a function of the current low level of vaccination in the population, due to a slow and disorganised rollout, as well as failures in the hotel quarantine system which the state premiers have had to take carriage of and blame for despite quarantine being a federal responsibility. 

 The Morrison government isn't responsible for the ATAGI advice to limit the use of Astra Zeneca or the sensationalist reporting of the blood clotting issue. It is responsible for not diversifying procurement of vaccines, for making overconfident announcements about Australia being at the head of the queue and suggesting we'd all be vaccinated by March 2021, for botching the rollout egregiously, particularly to vulnerable groups in the aged care and disability sectors, and for suggesting that the vaccine rollout wasn't a race when we can now see that it was. Morrison has too often relied on spin over substance and it's caught up with him. Of course, I'm a Labor voter so I'm undoubtedly biased but dissatisfaction with the Feds is becoming more widespread generally I think.

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16 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

I hope you're doing okay there in Sydney.

I think a lot of people see the borders remaining closed as a function of the current low level of vaccination in the population, due to a slow and disorganised rollout, as well as failures in the hotel quarantine system which the state premiers have had to take carriage of and blame for despite quarantine being a federal responsibility. 

 The Morrison government isn't responsible for the ATAGI advice to limit the use of Astra Zeneca or the sensationalist reporting of the blood clotting issue. It is responsible for not diversifying procurement of vaccines, for making overconfident announcements about Australia being at the head of the queue and suggesting we'd all be vaccinated by March 2021, for botching the rollout egregiously, particularly to vulnerable groups in the aged care and disability sectors, and for suggesting that the vaccine rollout wasn't a race when we can now see that it was. Morrison has too often relied on spin over substance and it's caught up with him. Of course, I'm a Labor voter so I'm undoubtedly biased but dissatisfaction with the Feds is becoming more widespread generally I think.

The ScoMo govt have repeatedly proven that they are incapable of competently handling large-scale issues that demand comprehensive action.

- Caught with their pants down when the 2019 bushfires broke out.

- Women's issues in Parliament and with Ministers. Haven't really been able to do much of anything and where have we ended up? With Barnaby Joyce being reinstated as Deputy PM....

- When COVID outbreak first started happening, all the Fed LNP really did was take a step back and let the Premiers do the heavy lifting. What they have been in charge of though (hotel quarantine, vaccination, aged care) have all but been bungled one way or another.

Has there been anything they've done competently? The sad part is though - they're still probably going to win the next election....

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14 hours ago, Skyrazer said:

- When COVID outbreak first started happening, all the Fed LNP really did was take a step back and let the Premiers do the heavy lifting. What they have been in charge of though (hotel quarantine, vaccination, aged care) have all but been bungled one way or another.

This is a really significant one. The Premiers have been the ones with the real power here, and one of the unforeseen consequences of the reaction to COVID-19 has been to really lift the profile of state leaders in Australia. In the past they've generally suffered from a lack of cut-through and an ambivalence about who they are and what they do, but now they're very much household names. Even though they must all have incredible stress and heavy workloads, I think premiers have generally become much more loved by their states as they are the ones doing all the work and hard decisions, while ScoMo is very remote and out of touch.

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1 hour ago, Jeor said:

This is a really significant one. The Premiers have been the ones with the real power here, and one of the unforeseen consequences of the reaction to COVID-19 has been to really lift the profile of state leaders in Australia. In the past they've generally suffered from a lack of cut-through and an ambivalence about who they are and what they do, but now they're very much household names. Even though they must all have incredible stress and heavy workloads, I think premiers have generally become much more loved by their states as they are the ones doing all the work and hard decisions, while ScoMo is very remote and out of touch.

Worth noting that even before COVID, the Premiers and the ACT Chief Minister (I'm in Canberra) were dealing with States of Emergency due to a catastrophic fire situation over the summer. ScoMo's handling of the fires was also pretty bad, even when he wasn't secretly holidaying in Hawaii. Fair to say that state and territory leaders have had a lot on their plates.

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1 hour ago, Jeor said:

This is a really significant one. The Premiers have been the ones with the real power here, and one of the unforeseen consequences of the reaction to COVID-19 has been to really lift the profile of state leaders in Australia. In the past they've generally suffered from a lack of cut-through and an ambivalence about who they are and what they do, but now they're very much household names. Even though they must all have incredible stress and heavy workloads, I think premiers have generally become much more loved by their states as they are the ones doing all the work and hard decisions, while ScoMo is very remote and out of touch.

Have also noticed that ScoMo has practically gone into hiding it seems - haven't been seeing much of him lately (especially for a PM). Seems it's been left to Greg Hunt to face the public backlash (who's clearly not having a good time).

Just seems the gravity of the problems has gotten the better of ScoMo and he's clearly struggling to deal with it.

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