Aussies and NZers: Jabs, Jobs and (grounded) Jets

[Paxter]

Can’t agree with Dom Perignon’s decision to proceed with a relaxation of restrictions this week.

Cases were going to go up anyway with Omicron now spreading, but I would still like to see some caution where possible (and more encouragement for the unvacced to change their positions).

[The Anti-Targ]

If the unvaxed haven't changed their mind by now I don't see anything really moving them. I guess there are still some people "doing more research", but if those people are actually genuine and likely to get vaccinated once they have published their peer reviewed articles on the safety and efficacy of vaccination, then they are a very small minority of the currently unvaxed.

Auckland has now been out of lockdown for 2 weeks, and case numbers are going down. Of the eligible population in [greater] Auckland about 93% are double vaxed. Can we conclude with reasonable confidence that (for delta at least) high vaccination rates+vaccine passports+masks+the majority of people still behaving with reasonable caution = an epidemic under reasonable control? it does seem that way. I was expecting case numbers to shoot up in Auckland by now, but it hasn't happened. Of ciurse it might be loads of mildly symptomatic people not bothering with testing, since if you test positive you are on home isolation, but if you rid out the mild symptoms telling yourself it's just a cold, or allergies then you still get to go out and do stuff. So we might be seeing a significant divergence between diagnosed cases and true infection rate.

The Auckland border floodgates are now open, and thousands of people have left Auckland to visit or go on a holiday. We will either see responsible behaviour continuing and further spread outside Auckland will be minimal, or all hell will break loose in parts of the country with considerably lower vaccination rates (the double vaxed rate outside of Auckland ranges from 81% (Northland) - 94% (Wellington)).

We are only 7,400 people away from a national average rate of 90%, but clearly there are significant regional (and even intra-regional) variations.

[Impmk2]

20 hours ago, Paxter said:

Can’t agree with Dom Perignon’s decision to proceed with a relaxation of restrictions this week.

Cases were going to go up anyway with Omicron now spreading, but I would still like to see some caution where possible (and more encouragement for the unvacced to change their positions).

Yeah I have to agree. I tend to be pretty over cautious on covid stuff but honestly I think the modelling showing 25k cases/day by the end of January is massively optimistic. It's doubling every ~3 days both here and overseas. No reason to think that won't sustain in the short term. That would put Sydney at 25k/day at the beginning of the month.

 

No way it won't seed through the entire country with those numbers. And even if it is substantially milder it'll still put the health systems under pressure just with the sheer magnitude. I think we're in for a rough couple months. Stay safe everyone. 

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, Impmk2 said:

Yeah I have to agree. I tend to be pretty over cautious on covid stuff but honestly I think the modelling showing 25k cases/day by the end of January is massively optimistic. It's doubling every ~3 days both here and overseas. No reason to think that won't sustain in the short term. That would put Sydney at 25k/day at the beginning of the month.

No way it won't seed through the entire country with those numbers. And even if it is substantially milder it'll still put the health systems under pressure just with the sheer magnitude. I think we're in for a rough couple months. Stay safe everyone. 

Doubling every two days here in Ontario. And our (conservative) Premier is increasing restrictions, not loosening them! Come on Dom!

I think you're right that the caseload will be extremely high for the next little while, but I'm still hopeful that vaccinations will ameliorate health care pressures to a large extent. I'm not sure total lockdowns are the way to go (i.e. Austria), but let's see. 

[Wall Flower]

3 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

Yeah I have to agree. I tend to be pretty over cautious on covid stuff but honestly I think the modelling showing 25k cases/day by the end of January is massively optimistic. It's doubling every ~3 days both here and overseas. No reason to think that won't sustain in the short term. That would put Sydney at 25k/day at the beginning of the month.

 

No way it won't seed through the entire country with those numbers. And even if it is substantially milder it'll still put the health systems under pressure just with the sheer magnitude. I think we're in for a rough couple months. Stay safe everyone. 

That's pretty terrifying. I really can't understand NSW going ahead with removing the indoor masking mandate and QR checking codes, which seem like minor inconveniences but with some real benefit to limiting the effects of Omicron. The situation has changed since the National Plan was agreed and we seem to have been mugged by reality once again.

[Paxter]

27 minutes ago, Wall Flower said:

That's pretty terrifying. I really can't understand NSW going ahead with removing the indoor masking mandate and QR checking codes, which seem like minor inconveniences but with some real benefit to limiting the effects of Omicron. The situation has changed since the National Plan was agreed and we seem to have been mugged by reality once again.

Honestly, you know something is wrong when you are moving in the opposite direction to Boris, on a day when NSW posted its highest daily case count.

Harm reduction should be the order of the day here.

[Castellan]

Yes. I am still wearing my mask outside and inside and am pleased to see there are at least some others doing it. I am thinking of getting an N95 mask now, because the thin blue and white medical style masks only protect others from me - if they are not wearing them too, as part of a general agreement not to spread our germs around, there is no point. 

Just before the Christmas season - what a good time to relax rules and let the virus do its thing.

 

 

[karaddin]

Dom would never have locked down for Delta so I'm not going to have any surprise now. I'd have kept masks and QR codes for now, but don't think going back to lockdown would necessarily be the right approach.

Sydney had a good few weeks of cases staying low just in the back of vaccinations after restrictions eased, much like Auckland is currently seeing, and I think that probably lulled people - I didn't change behavior but I did start to relax. At the moment we're only around a week into increasing cases so the current cases aren't going to be post people realizing they need to take it seriously again.

Brook and I got boosters with moderna in the last couple of days, I can barely move my arm lol.

[Impmk2]

NSW health saying they think Omicron 'likely' dominant*. This is not particularly surprising given the growth rates seen over the past week. If things keep progressing as they have, and as we've seen in Europe / US / Canada we can expect testing capacity to be overwhelmed inside the next 3 weeks. Rest of Australia to follow shortly after. Crazy times, even for covid.

Not sure I'm completely happy going along for this part of the ride with the rest of the world. But I guess it had to happen sooner or later. At least this should be short and sharp, and I'm getting more hopeful the reports of the virus actually being attenuated is real. There's a couple preprints with plausible mechanistic data pointing to differences between Delta / Omi, in the lab at least. 

*this is also basically saying their Omicron survellience hasn't been worth a damn to this point. Relying on targetted individual sequencing results is a really poor way to track an outbreak moving this fast.

On 12/16/2021 at 4:11 PM, karaddin said:

Brook and I got boosters with moderna in the last couple of days, I can barely move my arm lol.

Got mine on Wednesday and I can see feel it if I press on the injection site 3 days later. But aside from some serious fatigue 24hrs post-jab, I felt much better than the day after shot 2.

 

[Jeor]

I really disagree with the NSW government's way of handling this. The QR codes in particular are the one I can't understand. Every business was set up with them already, and people had gotten used to checking in. While I'm not a small business owner, dropping them would seem (to me) to have little upside. And the downside is enormous - now if I go out of the house, I have no way of knowing whether I've come into contact with a case or not, when case numbers are exploding. I don't get why a largely automated warning system (QR codes) has been discontinued - it's pretty much the only contact tracing we'd have left during a period of high cases.

I understand not wanting to go into a lockdown, I can sort of understand the scrapping of the square metre rule, and at a very big stretch I can sort of understand masks not being mandatory in a hot summer. But ditching the QR codes is a reckless move. I have a 3-month old baby, an 8 year-old stepdaughter (both still ineligible to be vaccinated at time of writing), my wife and an over 70s mother-in-law (both fully vaxxed as am I, but none of us eligible for boosters yet); I'd really like to know whether I'm coming in contact with any cases or if I'm putting them at risk. As it is, there's no way of knowing.

And even if omicron is less severe, and we have highly vaccinated populations - if we have 10 times the number of cases I'm pretty sure we're still going to get severe cases and overloaded hospitals. If Dom says he's watching the hospitalisation numbers only, that will be the real test in early January after all the Christmas cases.

[karaddin]

@Impmk2 shot #2 was the one I felt the least from haha. My arm was the worst from this last one, but is improving now - it was bad enough that even changes in orientation (ie going from lying down to standing up) made it really throb. The first dose hammered my immune system the most though, these follow ups haven't triggered my joint issues.

[Paxter]

Time to move to a Labor state @Jeor!?

But on a more serious note, I doubt Dom will be able to hold firm on his “live with it” position. Some form of restrictions is both necessary and proportionate at this stage, and even he will see that.

[Jeor]

1 hour ago, Paxter said:

Time to move to a Labor state @Jeor!?

But on a more serious note, I doubt Dom will be able to hold firm on his “live with it” position. Some form of restrictions is both necessary and proportionate at this stage, and even he will see that.

Aarrgghh!! (I wpuld have a laughing face emoji but my phone doesn't allow it!) Yes, this is where my traditional Liberal voting support becomes unstuck. I like the moderate Liberals (eg Turnbull, Gladys), can handle the more conservative if they're generally competent (Howard), but right wing "freedom" nutters (Abbott) are dangerous and Perrottet unfortunately is turning out to be one of them.

News out of Europe is not good and I think you're right, in a few weeks' time Dom is going to have to reconsider. Hospitalisations are around 200 at the moment (the peak last lockdown was 1000) and I think if it starts creeping up after the time lag of all these cases, the strain on the health system is what will change his mind. Sadly, some lives will be lost because of the delay.

[Impmk2]

I feel like either Perrottet / Morrison are being dug in and bloody minded about at least bringing back masks now, or they actually want this to run through as quickly as possible in NSW. Analysis is NSW is currently seeing a 2/3s reduction in hospitalisation (which isn't inconsistent with overseas data), but that is completely overwhelmed by literally having a 15 fold increase in daily case numbers in 3 weeks and accelerating. And when we see the hospitalisation numbers really spike it'll be too late to act.

Not that NSW is alone in being bloody minded and stupid. Here in SA we can't even legally purchase rapid antigen tests for home use. Why I have no idea. We're not running covid zero anymore. People aren't going to sit in queues for 8hrs to be tested if they only have very mild symptoms. It's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and is going to result in huge amounts of harm.

Pretty much every state aside from WA is really starting to spike up too. And christmas is going to be the mother of all superspreading events. The good news from overseas is these Omicron spikes seem very short and sharp. Hopefully just have to get through the next month.

[Impmk2]

Whoops double post

[The Anti-Targ]

I read that today there is +45 hospital admissions and +5 ICU admissions in NSW today. I think there is couldn't be too many more +5 ICU admissions in a day without fairly quickly running out of space to cover all ICU needs. We have about 150 ICO beds in the whole country. I would think the Ministry of Health would start to panic if COVID ICU use got much above 25% of that capacity. I'm guessing NSW must have about 500 ICU beds (nationally Aus has 3x ICU capacity per capita than NZ), according to the article I read COVID ICU occupancy in NSW now sits at 45. I would say 9% is managable but starting to create concern if NSW is at the start of an upwswing in demand.

It's clear ScoMo is betting on omicron sweeping through the country and not putting unmanagable demand on the health system and not causing a politically damaging number of deaths. Too early to know if the bet will pay off, but the early running looks a bit worrying.

We will hopefully have the luxury of time before we start to have to deal with omicron in the community, and that will give us the luxury of seeing what happens in the relatively laissez faire (for now) Australia. You will either serve as a model or a warning, and we will be grateful for you taking on that risk, albeit involuntarily on the part of many, I guess.

[Paxter]

8 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I read that today there is +45 hospital admissions and +5 ICU admissions in NSW today. I think there is couldn't be too many more +5 ICU admissions in a day without fairly quickly running out of space to cover all ICU needs. We have about 150 ICO beds in the whole country. I would think the Ministry of Health would start to panic if COVID ICU use got much above 25% of that capacity. I'm guessing NSW must have about 500 ICU beds (nationally Aus has 3x ICU capacity per capita than NZ), according to the article I read COVID ICU occupancy in NSW now sits at 45. I would say 9% is managable but starting to create concern if NSW is at the start of an upwswing in demand.

It's clear ScoMo is betting on omicron sweeping through the country and not putting unmanagable demand on the health system and not causing a politically damaging number of deaths. Too early to know if the bet will pay off, but the early running looks a bit worrying.

We will hopefully have the luxury of time before we start to have to deal with omicron in the community, and that will give us the luxury of seeing what happens in the relatively laissez faire (for now) Australia. You will either serve as a model or a warning, and we will be grateful for you taking on that risk, albeit involuntarily on the part of many, I guess.

I would expect NSW to have significant surge capacity for ICU (Ontario's is about double the normal capacity). But I agree that it's a major concern, both for COVID and non-COVID patients as well as health care staff. 

And Perignon is doing backflips already today...so much for treating everyone like adults. 

[The Anti-Targ]

16 minutes ago, Paxter said:

I would expect NSW to have significant surge capacity for ICU (Ontario's is about double the normal capacity). But I agree that it's a major concern, both for COVID and non-COVID patients as well as health care staff. 

And Perignon is doing backflips already today...so much for treating everyone like adults. 

The problem is, even assuming all the adults actually behave like adults (for which there is plenty of evidence that adults do not) the response message is to be reactive to changing situations, given this is a fast moving disease, if you are reactive in the way you respond you will always be responding too late and the actual situation on the ground today will be worse than the behavioural changes you are making today to respond to the worsening situation you found out had developed a few days ago.

Also darkly amusing that the PM used summer sun protection as an analogy. Apparently 65% pf Australians are diagnosed with some kind of skin cancer before they are 70, so does that make Australian adults sun-smart to the extent they need to be COVID-smart? Not sure.

[Paxter]

45 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The problem is, even assuming all the adults actually behave like adults (for which there is plenty of evidence that adults do not) the response message is to be reactive to changing situations, given this is a fast moving disease, if you are reactive in the way you respond you will always be responding too late and the actual situation on the ground today will be worse than the behavioural changes you are making today to respond to the worsening situation you found out had developed a few days ago.

Also darkly amusing that the PM used summer sun protection as an analogy. Apparently 65% pf Australians are diagnosed with some kind of skin cancer before they are 70, so does that make Australian adults sun-smart to the extent they need to be COVID-smart? Not sure.

Totally agree. I think both the PM and NSW Premier are looking pretty foolish, if not outright negligent and incompetent, to the average voter right now.

Of course, Labor will fail to capitalize.

[Jeor]

The Perrottet backflip has come, and not a moment too soon. Looks pretty silly now to have relaxed things only one week ago and now have to backtrack - indoor mask mandate, QR codes, 2 metre square rule. But with 5700+ cases today, the damage has been done - the spread is sufficiently seeded and widespread that cases will take a while to come down and hospitalisations are sure to increase over the next two weeks.

While it does now seem that there is a stronger body of evidence for Omicron being milder and our vaccination rates are pretty good (still protecting against severe outcomes), the huge increase in cases will probably still mean a serious problem for hospitals.

A lot more of my friends and family seem to be getting it, too; in just the past week I've been notified of cases at my workplace, church, and friends from three different social groups. Thankfully I haven't been in contact with any of them recently (school is out for holidays, and with a newborn our family's decided to stick to online church for both safety and ease of accessibility), but it does feel like it's only a matter of time.