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Aussies: Football, Meat Pies, and Rampant SARS


Stubby

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To be fair to Gladys, NSW was the first of the three areas (NSW, VIC, NZ) to get hit by the Delta strain and I'm assuming that's why that crucial first week was too light; they were treating it like other outbreaks. And in the past, NSW had success with prior outbreaks with rigorous testing and contact tracing, having had daily case numbers in the teens and early 20s that would eventually go down without having to shut down. In effect, Gladys' success in previous outbreaks made it harder to deal with this time around.

I think people are forgetting those circumstances (first to deal with Delta) and the context (previous outbreaks contained without lockdown, e.g. Northern Beaches and the Crossroads Hotel), which is easy to do if you're not in NSW. Under those circumstances, they made the best decision that seemed to at the time. We all have the benefit of hindsight now.

And now we're seeing that Andrews has had his chance and blown it. Even with the advantages of seeing what happened in NSW, and not having experienced any success in a non-lockdown situation, it still hasn't worked for them. Delta is just a nasty beast and I'm not even sure that locking down harder for a week would have made much of a difference in NSW if it didn't in Victoria.

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On 9/2/2021 at 8:57 AM, Jeor said:

@Stubby, I was skeptical of this too but I have to say the locked down LGAs seem to have worked. There hasn't been widespread leakage out to other LGAs and this has gone on for well over two months now. In my LGA (which is geographically large in Sydney's north, but mercifully free of COVID cases and has never been above single figures) we have stayed that way during this lockdown, which I think signals its success. And some parts of my LGA are only two suburbs away from some of the locked down LGAs.

Also, while the first week or two of Sydney's lockdown was Lockdown Lite, it certainly hasn't been that way for the last two months. 5km radius, only one person allowed out for shopping, etc. I know there's all the pictures of people at the beach etc, but I believe mobile data and other methods of checking have shown that compliance in Sydney (or lack thereof) has been no different to Melbourne and other cities.

I think we're seeing from VIC's uptick in cases that it doesn't matter with Delta, same with New Zealand. Even the hardcore Daniel Andrews and Jacinda Ardern haven't been able to drive this thing down. I don't see criticism of them in the papers for not going hard enough, but they're having the same early outcomes as Gladys has in NSW.

I know I shouldn't, but there's a dark part of me that would be curious to see a Delta outbreak in Perth and Brisbane. I'd like to see the smug McGowan and Palaszczuk, who are so keen to lecture everyone else, show us how they always have all the answers to COVID. They've never had to make any really tough decisions.

As someone who has a 93 year old nonna living in Perth…I hope you’re wrong about an outbreak!

But yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Gladys herself was fairly smug once upon a time though…I remember her constantly referring to Vic’s 700 daily cases as if it was an international catastrophe. COVID has a way of biting you in the arse eventually.

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On 9/2/2021 at 10:27 PM, Jeor said:

I know I shouldn't, but there's a dark part of me that would be curious to see a Delta outbreak in Perth and Brisbane. I'd like to see the smug McGowan and Palaszczuk, who are so keen to lecture everyone else, show us how they always have all the answers to COVID. They've never had to make any really tough decisions.

Given the constant trickle of cases into southern Qld I feel like we may get this reality sooner rather than later.

So looks like with this UK deal we have the vaccine supply now to hit those 70/80% double dose targets by the end of October easily. Hell with 10 million doses per month this month and next we could hit near 100% unless my maths is off. It's more a matter of the capacity to get them into arms. The political fighting over opening up is only set to increase.

I really think we need to open the Pfizer shots to the AZ hesitant over 60s, and soon. Yes it's silly the ones who are holding out for it, but we should have the supply now, and it won't eat into things that much in any case given the vast vast majority in those age groups are AZ jabbed now.

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On 9/3/2021 at 12:47 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

The lesson I think we are learning (hopefully) that the only way to actually beat Delta  in a currently free population is to have the hardest possible lockdown from day 1. Any delay will mean you probably get it back under control sufficiently to eliminate.

Yeah agreed, I'd add to it that the snap 3 day lockdowns that were used for prior outbreaks are also a trap - you've got to go straight into it and stick at it for at least 2 full weeks.

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36 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yeah agreed, I'd add to it that the snap 3 day lockdowns that were used for prior outbreaks are also a trap - you've got to go straight into it and stick at it for at least 2 full weeks.

I'm not sure about that. It seems dependent on how early you catch it. Qld, SA, NT and WA managed to contain Delta with relatively short (1 weekish in all cases?) hard lockdowns when they caught the first case relatively early on before big clusters formed.

Vic and NZ are kind of different stories - didn't catch it until several generations in where it had already spread to 20+ people. In those cases yeah, lockdown very hard for several weeks and you might contain with a little luck.

 

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14 hours ago, Stubby said:

We did have Delta here, just days after the first cases hit NSW.  Total lockdown city-wide for a week and it stopped it.

True, I'd forgotten that. But McGowan's "lockdown" then was a Clayton's lockdown - schools remained open and there were no travel radius restrictions, and he eased it within days. The truth is, despite talking a big game, the lockdown wasn't as hard as other states (Victoria) and in my opinion he got a lucky break. It certainly wasn't due to the hardness of the lockdown (though I admit the speed of it probably helped). I should add to my earlier comments, I don't wish for a Perth outbreak, of course!

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1 hour ago, Jeor said:

True, I'd forgotten that. But McGowan's "lockdown" then was a Clayton's lockdown - schools remained open and there were no travel radius restrictions, and he eased it within days. The truth is, despite talking a big game, the lockdown wasn't as hard as other states (Victoria) and in my opinion he got a lucky break. It certainly wasn't due to the hardness of the lockdown (though I admit the speed of it probably helped). I should add to my earlier comments, I don't wish for a Perth outbreak, of course!

Mate there was no need for a travel radius restriction, because WA restricts the types of travel allowed for the whole city.  The record speaks for itself.

The fact of the matter is that the NSW and Cth govts dropped the ball so hard it went pear shaped.

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I've been saying for this entire pandemic that there's much more luck involved in whether an outbreak takes root than people are comfortable accepting. Victoria had legitimate issues with their contact tracing infrastructure last year, but those were only found out because they also got unlucky. Queensland have been exceptionally lucky with their quarantine leaks this year.

Stubby I'm not in the habit for making apologies for coalition governments, but most of the media criticism of Gladys is beat up bullshit. Yes she should have locked down earlier, they thought the contact tracing that had successfully suppressed the previous outbreaks would be sufficient and they were wrong. They've made a bunch of incorrect decisions giving in to the demand for heavy handed policing, but that's a separate issue to how it got away, and there have certainly been failures to protect certain populations appropriately via vaccination and they should be raked over the coals on that.

But the reason it got away from us isn't a lack of seriousness on our part, it's because it got into the supply chain of essential workers. That's the luck component - who catches it in the initial outbreak and who their close network extends to. In our case it got into the supply chain via a seafood wholesale distributor in Marrickville - a suburb which hasn't remained an area of concern, but was the vector to where it blew up.

I keep seeing people from other states and NZ discussing this and all I can think of is that the entire media coverage of it is completely cooked because it bears no resemblance to the reality I've been living for the last few months.

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2 hours ago, karaddin said:

I've been saying for this entire pandemic that there's much more luck involved in whether an outbreak takes root than people are comfortable accepting. Victoria had legitimate issues with their contact tracing infrastructure last year, but those were only found out because they also got unlucky. Queensland have been exceptionally lucky with their quarantine leaks this year.

Stubby I'm not in the habit for making apologies for coalition governments, but most of the media criticism of Gladys is beat up bullshit. Yes she should have locked down earlier, they thought the contact tracing that had successfully suppressed the previous outbreaks would be sufficient and they were wrong. They've made a bunch of incorrect decisions giving in to the demand for heavy handed policing, but that's a separate issue to how it got away, and there have certainly been failures to protect certain populations appropriately via vaccination and they should be raked over the coals on that.

But the reason it got away from us isn't a lack of seriousness on our part, it's because it got into the supply chain of essential workers. That's the luck component - who catches it in the initial outbreak and who their close network extends to. In our case it got into the supply chain via a seafood wholesale distributor in Marrickville - a suburb which hasn't remained an area of concern, but was the vector to where it blew up.

I keep seeing people from other states and NZ discussing this and all I can think of is that the entire media coverage of it is completely cooked because it bears no resemblance to the reality I've been living for the last few months.

That's for damned sure. A few months back we had a weekend visitor from Aus (when we had that travel bubble for a few weeks, ahh simpler times) who tested positive the day of his return to Aus. He was almost certainly contagious for a time while he was here, but no local cases emerged. Luck is about the only thing it can be put down to.

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's for damned sure. A few months back we had a weekend visitor from Aus (when we had that travel bubble for a few weeks, ahh simpler times) who tested positive the day of his return to Aus. He was almost certainly contagious for a time while he was here, but no local cases emerged. Luck is about the only thing it can be put down to.

It would be great if we could control the entire thing but that's just not the way the world works. Just control all the parts you can and capitalise on the luck as long as you can. Which at this point means getting as many people vaccinated as possible and not making vaccination decisions on the assumption of a permanent zero covid scenario. Looking at ATAGI and Astrazeneca here.

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I'm not saying they didn't take it seriously. I'm saying they played politics with it. The WA govt has prefaced every decision as based on medical advice. It might well be that the medical advice aligned with policy views, but the clear fact is that it has worked.

Since Covid started WA has had less total cases - Delta included - than NSW had today.

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4 hours ago, Stubby said:

I'm not saying they didn't take it seriously. I'm saying they played politics with it. The WA govt has prefaced every decision as based on medical advice. It might well be that the medical advice aligned with policy views, but the clear fact is that it has worked.

Since Covid started WA has had less total cases - Delta included - than NSW had today.

Casting McGowan as the altruistic person who doesn't play politics is a little disingenuous, I think. Now, I'm not saying Gladys hasn't played politics too - they all do, and yes, she was also overconfident in the contact tracing compared to other states and glad to put that out there, which hasn't won her many friends and has probably contributed to the schadenfreude here.

While the WA government's hyper alert stance has certainly helped and should give them some credit, I think luck is a larger factor in their success. There is a level of confidence in the WA government's ability to control COVID-19 (and their subsequent hectoring/crowing over other states for being failures) that isn't warranted, in my view.

So I think, @Stubby, we'll have to agree to disagree here. We do come from fundamentally different geographical contexts on this point, so that's not surprising in the end!

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Quote

While the WA government's hyper alert stance has certainly helped and should give them some credit, I think luck is a larger factor in their success. There is a level of confidence in the WA government's ability to control COVID-19 (and their subsequent hectoring/crowing over other states for being failures) that isn't warranted, in my view.

@Jeor WA is not hectoring others states for being failures. It is simply defending it's actions in reply to the demeaning way the Cth & NSW have attacked us for being stricter. Morrison thinks we are 'cave dwellers' and we are the hectoring ones? Pull the other one.

Again, the facts speak for themselves. NSW & the Cth in particular preferred $$ over people.  Now they are trying to bully the rest of the nation to do the same.

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7 hours ago, Stubby said:

@Jeor WA is not hectoring others states for being failures. It is simply defending it's actions in reply to the demeaning way the Cth & NSW have attacked us for being stricter. Morrison thinks we are 'cave dwellers' and we are the hectoring ones? Pull the other one.

Again, the facts speak for themselves. NSW & the Cth in particular preferred $$ over people.  Now they are trying to bully the rest of the nation to do the same.

I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that WA and other AU states that have it under control are only really being badgered by your own national govt. Whereas NZ has been getting it in the neck from know it alls and busy bodies from all over the place. Most especially the British press calling Jacinda Adern arrogant and other choice words. Of course we can ignore international criticism, your own govt trying to exert pressure to let the disease in not so easy to ignore. It is irresponsible to open up until there is a very high vaccination rate. And now we know there can be no herd immunity through vaccination with this virus the end goal by letting the virus in even with a high vaccination rate is (IMO) an intolerable number of deaths.

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If we can pivot to a more general argument about the long-term plan with COVID-19, it sounds like there is some difference there.

I certainly have some concerns about reopening, especially from a schoolteacher's point of view where the vast majority of children (under 12, under 16) aren't vaccinated. That's going to be a big problem and I imagine case rates are going to rocket through us in NSW in November - I'm actually not sure we'll make it to the end of the school year intact, there may well be another lockdown despite what Gladys is saying.

Things are obviously working well for WA, so I understand why they want that to continue. But I feel they also need a long-term game plan. Now that doesn't have to necessarily involve reopening right now - a cogent argument can be made as to why reopening in the next 6 months could be too soon. But beyond pulling up the drawbridge and waiting until things get better, I think there need to be further elements in the plan. There's a lot of data out there that suggests that things aren't going to get better and this situation could continue indefinitely - vaccines weaken in efficacy, the virus mutates, delta has shown us that even a handful of cases will rapidly spiral out of control. In this circumstance, the only hope is that a more benign mutation takes over, and that's really luck of the draw.

When I say long term game plan, I'm not going the full US-style rhetoric of "save the economy" and "freedom (whatever that means)". But I think we need to up our game (nationally) on a few fronts. First of all, recognise that constructing purpose-built quarantine facilities in every state is a must and should be federally funded. Second, keep getting vaccinated (including study of boosters if necessary). Third (and this is probably most controversial), I think the feds should seriously consider some restructuring of the economy to prepare us for the long haul - e.g. offering to retrain people in those industries most affected (entertainment, travel, etc) which would probably be a better and more lasting use of government money. And probably about a hundred more ideas that I hope some government committee is looking at.

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I feel a vaccine-passport system will be the best way to go (once an adequate % of the population is vaccinated). We can't stay locked down and we can't keep the virus out indefinitely. So some sort of vaccine-passport system I think will strike the best balance of keeping the country as open as is sensibly possible without ending up having our health system overrun with unvaccinated patients.

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1 hour ago, Skyrazer said:

I feel a vaccine-passport system will be the best way to go (once an adequate % of the population is vaccinated). We can't stay locked down and we can't keep the virus out indefinitely. So some sort of vaccine-passport system I think will strike the best balance of keeping the country as open as is sensibly possible without ending up having our health system overrun with unvaccinated patients.

I think this is a statement that is not necessarily true if by that you mean keep it from becoming established in the community. Assuming we are successful in eliminating delta this time around, it would seem that keeping the virus out of the community indefinitely should be one of the options on the table where a country or state is considering its long term future in a world where COVID-19 will be endemic in some countries and it will be around for between at least several years and forever. It should not simply be dismissed as an option, it may be dismissed early on after due consideration, but it should be on the list to start with.

Mandatory full vaccination for passengers and crew of inbound flights and ships, a test upon arrival, accommodation at an approved facility (approved hotel (full price) or purpose built quarantine facility (nominal charge)) for 3 days and another test at day 3, could be an effective way to keep the virus out indefinitely. Immediate deportation if you are not a legal resident or a hefty fine if you are if the conditions for entry are not met. So long as there is social licence to have lockdowns whenever community cases emerge (IMO that would need at least 75% popular support, otherwise too many people will violate lockdown rules and eventually lead to establishment in the community), then a country / state can maintain an effectively disease free population indefinitely (barring acts of bioterrorism).

If we maintained an indefinite elimination policy our travel and tourism sector would need to adjust and possibly downsize. But if we can move our economy away from significant dependance on tourism that would be over all a good thing. Tourism is environmentally not the best kind of industry, from a current GHG emission perspective, but also from a local environmental damage and contamination perspective, not least of which is Euro (mostly) freedom campers pooping in public places and on road sides.

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I still can't see how the virus will be kept out, even if we only allow half of the traffic in pre-COVID. Mandatory vaccination for incoming international travellers absolutely, but being vaxed does not mean you're immune to still contracting and spreading the virus. Expanding fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities is also needed, but even right now with the very limited hard-capped numbers coming in, our quarantine system is pretty much maxed out. We would have nowhere near the capacity to handle an amount coming in that's anywhere near pre-COVID, so continuing to parse every international traveller who comes in through quarantine while opening up our borders to any degree would likely be unworkable.

Hence why I'm doubtful the virus can realistically be kept out permanently.

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