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


Paxter

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I think, if the virus had originally possessed the characteristics of omicron the pandemic would have been a lot worse than it was at the start, but at the same time it might have been over before now. I think we wouldn't have been able to eliminate it like we did with the og virus, our health system would have been overwhelmed very early and our economy would have been extremely badly affected. I think we are very fortunate we have so many people with immunity from vaccination, and in other parts of the world from a combination of vaccination and / or previous exposure to prevent the devastation.

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I am really glad we didn't get hit with a Delta at the start. That would've been the worst of all worlds. Both more severe and spreading 2x faster than Wuhan killing the efficacy of NPIs. Many more would've died. Omicron would've been worse as well, but I don't think as bad as Delta. I'm still not convinced that Omicron is more inherently tranmissible than Delta, just that it can move through our heavily immunised / previously infected populations far faster, and it seems to both peak and drop insanely quickly - possibly a shorter generation time. There also isn't really any data on how a hard lockdown would work for Omicron yet. The Netherlands is the test piece, though given the time of year and the whole couple years into the pandemic thing complaince may not be great.

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New Zealand was the test case for a hard lockdown vs delta, we almost managed elimination, but failed in the end, but we did prevent it from running wild and free through the country, and it is still only taking a slow stroll 5 months later. Still, we went at it hard when we only had one confirmed case in the country. The Netherlands has been seeing 10K cases per day basically since the start of November.

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One young bloke has been jaunting through Perth while infected.  40+ exposure sites in a few days.

Result = nightclubs closed for the next few days, everyone to mask up indoors in public places, and some festivals cancelled.

Prick.

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11 hours ago, Stubby said:

One young bloke has been jaunting through Perth while infected.  40+ exposure sites in a few days.

Result = nightclubs closed for the next few days, everyone to mask up indoors in public places, and some festivals cancelled.

Prick.

Perth may be fortunate in that it seems the traveller had Delta rather than Omicron. I think if it was Omicron there would be more spread and much harder to stamp out, but with Delta there's still a chance WA may be able to avoid the worst of it long-term. Pretty crappy time for it all to happen, though.

I have a Christmas dilemma. As you can tell from my previous posts, our family is pretty cautious about COVID-19, given we have an unvaccinated 8 year-old and unvaccinated 4 month-old, not to mention an elderly (but vaccinated) mother-in-law living with us. None of me, my wife or mother-in-law are eligible for boosters yet although we're close and booking for January based on the newly-reduced 4-month timeframe.

Our extended family normally has a big Christmas picnic (given that it's about 40 people including 10 children under 12, no one is mad enough to host it themselves. The middle generation like me are all young families and none of us have a big enough house to host (we live in Sydney after all!) while the older generation have all downsized to apartments or townhouses.

The weather forecast looks to be a downpour on Monday 27th (the date of the shindig). My brother has offered to host at his place as a wet weather option (good on him for offering), which means there will be a large amount of people crammed into his 3 bedroom place. He and his family are pretty laissez-faire about COVID-19 and although they're vaxxed, he's told me that he thinks the restrictions are too onerous and that omicron's mild anyway so it doesn't matter if they or their three kids get it. To put this all into context, he was in a Sydney locked-down LGA so is pretty weary of all the rules and I can sort of get that.

My wife is very concerned about our newborn (she's not even sure if the picnic is a goer) and it's pretty clear we're the most risk-averse out of the extended family. Extended family hasn't seen the baby so there's lots of pressure to attend (and my brother and parents won't understand us not attending either). I foresee family opprobrium to come at this joyous time of the year...

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Well, I got through that Christmas season relatively unscathed - thanks to a blessed cousin who set the tone in the extended family Whatsapp with a "totally understandable! Looking forward to meeting bub another time".

Sydney numbers are climbing rapidly. 11K today (on a higher number of tests, to be fair) but positivity rate is still growing. Hospitalisations and ICU are only increasing at a linear rate so NSW may be able to ride it out, but a lot depends on when the hospitalisations/ICU admissions start to level off, and it's anyone's guess as to when that will happen.

Have an unused travel voucher that expires soon - considering a family trip to QLD in the Easter break - seems like their border policy is relaxed now and that might be a goer.

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@Jeor glad your family was understanding. It's a difficult time of year.

We're struggling with NYE at the moment. A friend is hosting a small (~8 people at last count) shindig this year at his new place, and I know him and his wife have been putting in a lot of effort getting their new house ready after the move. We're all young (late 30s, early 40s) relatively healthy and vaccinated. And its going to be 37C and he has a pool.

Otoh I'm really not feeling like catching this thing. Don't think I'm planning on seeing anyone particularly vulnerable in the next couple weeks but still....

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On 12/30/2021 at 12:32 PM, Impmk2 said:

@Jeor glad your family was understanding. It's a difficult time of year.

We're struggling with NYE at the moment. A friend is hosting a small (~8 people at last count) shindig this year at his new place, and I know him and his wife have been putting in a lot of effort getting their new house ready after the move. We're all young (late 30s, early 40s) relatively healthy and vaccinated. And its going to be 37C and he has a pool.

Otoh I'm really not feeling like catching this thing. Don't think I'm planning on seeing anyone particularly vulnerable in the next couple weeks but still....

Thanks @Impmk2 - it was a relief. Though by all accounts we missed out on a pretty good family gathering where everyone had a great time. Can't win 'em all.

The way things have exploded in Sydney (21K daily cases) is making us cancel most of our social engagements. The limited PCR testing and close contact advice means that case numbers are going to be fairly inaccurate in the next few days. Once rapid antigen testing comes into play (mostly done at home) and the only people getting PCR tests are symptomatic close contacts, the official case numbers will come down a lot. If the government isn't funding RATS, then a whole lot of people won't be bothered to buy them out of their own pocket and there will be a lot of undiagnosed COVID cases.

Call me cynical, but that's a rather good outcome for the government; COVID will become largely invisible. I get that we need to learn to live with it, but one can't help but wonder whether the current Premier is hoping to sweep it all under the carpet. The reopening was too fast (and has now backflipped) but this push to decentralise testing and to rely on everyone to self-manage their own testing/contact tracing is also happening a little too fast.

I don't have a problem with decentralisation per se - it has to happen when we "live with COVID", we can't have all these testing clinics open and staffed forever, and public health shouldn't concentrate all its resources solely on COVID - but I do have a problem with the timing. When infections are accelerating at a breakneck pace it's not the time for government to withdraw from the scene and tell people to manage it all themselves.

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Happy new year all!

Jeor - I'll say this much at least, I'm glad we had Gladys not Dom through the early Delta waves and until we had excellent vaccination numbers, he would have tried to do this last year and we would have had a ton of deaths as a result. As this point i can't see even Dan substantially caving and going back into a lockdown even if Vic cases go as nuts as Sydney is at the moment.

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13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Pretty soon hospitalisation rates with COVID-19 symptoms as the primary reason for admission will be the only reliable metric for tracking how the disease is going.

I would add “secondary reason” too as COVID can trigger or worsen underlying conditions that may be the primary reason for admission.

Anecdotally it seems like you can shave around 25% of total hospital admissions off to account for “incidental COVID”.

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21 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Pretty soon hospitalisation rates with COVID-19 symptoms as the primary reason for admission will be the only reliable metric for tracking how the disease is going.

It shouldn't be - and anyone who works in a hospital will tell you that - or an understanding of Medicine

I shouldn't be surprised but there is a remarkable disconnect between the reality of the situation between people like me who work in hospitals and others who have a weirdly rosy view of 'incidental covid' that has taken hold in the last few months

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1 hour ago, Raja said:

It shouldn't be - and anyone who works in a hospital will tell you that - or an understanding of Medicine

It is pretty difficult though to get a reliable leading indicator when conventional testing infrastructure is completely overwhelmed and many COVID positive people are asymptomatic. 

I don’t know if you were referring to me when you mentioned the rosy view of incidental cases, but I did not mean to underplay the situation when I said that. These cases are a long way short of the majority of COVID admissions. 

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1 hour ago, Paxter said:

It is pretty difficult though to get a reliable leading indicator when conventional testing infrastructure is completely overwhelmed and many COVID positive people are asymptomatic. 

I don’t know if you were referring to me when you mentioned the rosy view of incidental cases, but I did not mean to underplay the situation when I said that. These cases are a long way short of the majority of COVID admissions. 

I wasn't talking about you specifically, more the conversation around 'incidental' covid cases in hospitals both in the main covid thread and also in general. I don't think you are underplaying the situation, as I think the situation itself is complicated and difficult, as you describe.

I posted something similar in the covid thread a few weeks ago, but here is a brief example of 'incidental covid' -

Say you get an admission of a patient that does not have covid and is admitted to the hospital for a valve change of the heart that they desperately need, this occurs without a hitch but then the patient catches covid in the hospital ( This can occur in *lots* of different ways, but is commonly a result of an outbreak in a ward or from staff) - now would we call this 'incidental covid' - I suppose we would, but then what happens if the same person is fine the first day but then slowly gets worse, as they progress through the disease ( Day 10-12 of symptoms are usually the worst ones) - they eventually require oxygen, they end up on CPAP but don't need ICU before eventually being discharged.

Where does this man end up on the stats? Can we be reassured that because he has 'incidental covid' that this scenario didn't put pressure on the system? Absolutely not. And the scenario I describe above is something I've personally seen, not something I've made up.

Doctors are doing everything we can to avoid admitting people with covid; There are some people that get an automatic admission, i.e. any covid patient that requires any amount of oxygen. Then there are some other reasons - ie a covid patient with a massive clot in their lung - why are they being admitted? Because of the massive clot. Is it covid? Well, the covid did cause the clot so..- and you can extend this further to admitting covid patients that are dehydrated ( like you said), or those with diabetes that end up going into diabetic ketoacidosis because now they have covid and it's fucked up their diabetic control - covid admission? Well, maybe...but also caused by covid.

I admit covid patients into the hospital for a living and my sense of frustration around these conversations is based on the fact that there is a lack of understanding about medicine & disease processes. This is understandable, medicine suffers from a significant information asymmetry between a professional and a lay person but that asymmetry has given rise to this notion that 'incidental covid' is a non-issue.

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Happy New Year everyone!

Unfortunately not a happy new year for the 1000+ people in NSW hospitals with COVID. Hospitalisations are rising and given the time lag from cases, I'm pretty sure we can see this continuing to rise at least for the next two weeks and at current rates that will put over 2000 in hospital, which is twice what we had at the peak of the Delta outbreak.

Perrottet says the health system is strong and that it's irresponsible for the Opposition Leader to be talking about the system being at breaking point. However, apart from the hospitalisation numbers themselves, the recent move to allow hospital staff to break their self-isolation period so they can return to work earlier is a pretty obvious indicator that things are not okay with the NSW health system.

Even in an optimistic scenario where the Omicron outbreak peaks within the next 2-4 weeks, steadily rising hospitalisations are baked in for the first half of January. And with Sydneysiders returning to the office from New Year's break over the coming weeks, and school starting up again in February, there are ample factors for further spread, whether the reduced PCR testing picks it up or not.

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Yeah let’s face it - Dom is fucking this up. He can’t stop omicron but he isn’t even trying to lessen the impact. We have a fairly conservative/pro-business Premier in Ontario, who many on the left side of politics deride or actively detest. And he is tightening restrictions significantly compared to NSW. So you guys really have a doozy in power right now!

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1 hour ago, Paxter said:

Yeah let’s face it - Dom is fucking this up. He can’t stop omicron but he isn’t even trying to lessen the impact. We have a fairly conservative/pro-business Premier in Ontario, who many on the left side of politics deride or actively detest. And he is tightening restrictions significantly compared to NSW. So you guys really have a doozy in power right now!

The strange thing is that the loosening of restrictions doesn't really seem to be benefiting businesses at the moment anyway. There is a bit of a phantom lockdown happening; general activity is lower because people are being a bit more cautious, and a whole lot of businesses - especially hospitality - are having to do quick shutdowns because they can't staff themselves (I guess that's why they're loosening the isolation rules). Because there aren't any disaster payments or government support, businesses with lower patronage than usual are just going to be bleeding money. Then again, I'm not a small business owner so maybe some types of businesses are actually doing really well now that they can have customers back. There might be enough of a hardcore constituency of people that will go out and patronise them.

As a teacher I'll be interested as to their schools policy. There will no doubt be fairly significant outbreaks in schools when they come back in late Jan / early Feb. The new close contact definition (involving "household" settings) means that no one will have to isolate but there will be teachers and students who are knocked out for 7 days or so. If it sweeps through a faculty (a lot of cramped staffrooms) I think we'll see staffing problems like the hospitals.

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There seems to be a thing going around the Aus media (fringe media?) about a shocking revelation about 10s of thousands of vaccine side effects that the govt is admitting to and some people getting big compensation payouts.

Have people in Aus not been paying attention that side effects, sometimes severe and even occasionally fatal have been a known and published thing since before the vaccines were approved?

I'm not on Twitter, but a friend WhatsApp'd me a tweet posted by some outfit called New Granada.

What's this apparent side effects shitstorm all about?

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16 hours ago, Jeor said:

Even in an optimistic scenario where the Omicron outbreak peaks within the next 2-4 weeks, steadily rising hospitalisations are baked in for the first half of January. And with Sydneysiders returning to the office from New Year's break over the coming weeks, and school starting up again in February, there are ample factors for further spread, whether the reduced PCR testing picks it up or not.

I think it's likely Sydney will peak inside the next 2 weeks, certainly not a month away. At 20%+ test positivity I doubt we're picking up even 1/3 the cases per day (and likely far less than that), and 1%+ (50k+) of the total Sydney population being infected per day is simply not a sustainable number. Inside 2 weeks of that more than 1/7 of the population would test PCR positive. It'll burn itself out.

 

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

There seems to be a thing going around the Aus media (fringe media?) about a shocking revelation about 10s of thousands of vaccine side effects that the govt is admitting to and some people getting big compensation payouts.

Have people in Aus not been paying attention that side effects, sometimes severe and even occasionally fatal have been a known and published thing since before the vaccines were approved?

 

A quick google all I can find is couple articles in the mainstream media from mid-November. Yeah there's a vaccine induced injury scheme in place & indemnity for healthcare providers. But if there's a shitstorm I've missed it too.

No the vaccine side effects have been very, very well covered by the Australian media. There was a constant barrage of news stories especially around AZ side effects and deaths last year. It was to the point where large portions of the population became very vaccine hesitant. Of course the outbreaks in NSW & Vic soon overcame that.

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