The Coronavirus Thread (We nearly didn't see City in the 2021 Grand Final)

[belaguttman]

11 minutes ago, NewConvert said:

Prefab relocatable without suicide points? Have not seen those. And no I did not write that quarantine facilities need be hospitals, I wrote that they share a lot of things in common such as air circulation.

All we need (and are getting) is Howard Springs like accommodation, suicide points are easy to design out of the plan. We are already using hotels, an equivalent standard of accommodation in seperate small demountable units but without shared ventilation is not that difficult.

One thing that they don't need is hospital standard ventilation. Over 200 staff members at RMH have caught Covid infections with hospital standard ventilation!

Edited August 19, 2021 by belaguttman

[jw1739]

In the gloom there is sometimes a light that we should all see.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-20/meet-the-creator-of-canberra-covid-19-hero-ken-behrens/100393472

[haz]

Got my first jab 💪 

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, haz said:

Got my first jab 💪 

Good lad. My wife gets her second next Wednesday, so we'll both be double-dosed then. It's the only way forward from here. Not a perfect way, but the best we've got at the moment.

[jw1739]

The "Ken Behrens" one is, I reckon, up there with the very best. I recall the Channel 9 (??) one about Sydney and the "Bogan moth", which is possibly the best I've ever seen.

[jw1739]

Interesting news this morning for all those pushing for us to "open up." Lacazette of Arsenal has tested positive for COVID-19. Something like this getting into the EPL could cause havoc.

[Shahanga]

Now Andrews has goons firing rubber bullets at people who have the temerity to disagree with him.

“Lucky” parliament is suspended, no annoying questions from there.

Is this Victoria or Apartheid era South Africa? 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Shahanga

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, Shahanga said:

Now Andrews has goons firing rubber bullets at people who have the temerity to disagree with him.

“Lucky” parliament is suspended, no annoying questions from there.

Is this Victoria or Apartheid era South Africa? 

It is quite possible that this lockdown will go into December. There are just not enough vaccine doses to do the job required. 70% and 80% vaccinations of the adult population will not be enough to halt the march of the Delta mutation. What we need is 95% of the whole population to have any chance at all. And, of course, another mutation could spoil that party too.

This is not a good time for any of us. But neither protests nor rubber bullets are helpful in people coming together to work out the best way forward.

[malloy]

2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

Now Andrews has goons firing rubber bullets at people who have the temerity to disagree with him.

“Lucky” parliament is suspended, no annoying questions from there.

Is this Victoria or Apartheid era South Africa? 

They were pepper bullets (essentially a paintball filled with pepper spray stuff).

[Shahanga]

33 minutes ago, malloy said:

They were pepper bullets (essentially a paintball filled with pepper spray stuff).

Ok.

Not quite as bad then. Still heavy handed I’m thinking.

(What’s wrong with let them protest, let them go home?)

I mean a few years ago that’s even what happened with the misguided souls disrupting Friday peak hour to protest about the West Australian state government’s alleged actions (one of the most bizarre protests in Melbourne ever, surely)

[belaguttman]

Distressing to see the protests. I can understand why it is frustrating but, really, what are the protesters suggesting as an alternative plan?

[Shahanga]

1 hour ago, belaguttman said:

Distressing to see the protests. I can understand why it is frustrating but, really, what are the protesters suggesting as an alternative plan?

Worthy question. I’m sure they’d have some ideas and perhaps some might be even be ok.

Ultimately I’d like to see an abandonment of Covid Zero and instead actions for suppression, now acknowledging we’ll be opening up in say mid December when we’ve hit decent vax rates and thus there is no point chasing an elusive Covid Zero.

id like to see kids in school and yes in play grounds for starters. Stop limiting exercise. Focus on where all the spreading actually occurs. Protect the vulnerable.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Shahanga

[kingofhearts]

5 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

Worthy question. I’m sure they’d have some ideas and perhaps some might be even be ok.

Ultimately I’d like to see an abandonment of Covid Zero and actions for suppression, now acknowledging we’ll be opening up in say mid December when we’ve hit decent vax rates and thus there is no point chasing an elusive Covid Zero.

id like to see kids in school and yes in play grounds for starters. Stop limiting exercise. Focus on where all the spreading actually occurs. Protect the vulnerable.

I'm with you shahanga! I'll get a few mates together and we can run for government our bloody selves!

This government is completely and utterly out of control and today's actions were completely unacceptable.Not really a great look with police shooting rubber bullets and pepper spraying people.Whilst yes, there were some dickheads/anti vaxxers there looking to make trouble, they get lumped in with the people just expressing their right to protest. If your own government won't let you protest, what can you do?

Such a waste of police resources too, their essentially hired goons now.They just do any dirty work the government needs them to do.

I'd also like them to stop with the double standards and bullshit rhetoric.How can we place the AFL, construction industry and the horse racing industry over the teaching of children??? Ffs no wonder we're going backwards. Shutting down playgrounds? What the actual fuck.Why are they making such strange decisions? It seems that as long as you're in the back pocket of the labour party, you are exempt to all restrictions, regardless of how bad lockdown gets.

Covid 0 will never be achieved again as NSW is completely out of control,  we are completely fucked. It's time for Dan to wake up and decide a day that all restrictions are going to be lifted. We will now have enough vaccinations by the end of the month and if you haven't booked one in by reopening ;say by mid December as you are saying; that is your fault.Yes, there will be a surge in cases when things reopen but as long as their is not a large amount of hospilisations that is fine. This is an endemic disease that we now have to live with.

Lockdowns need to also be scrapped as people are over sitting at home doing fuck all with their lives when we sacrificed so much last year only to end up right back where we started.Dan can stop with the lectures and the tantrums on live tv, nobody is listening to his rubbish anymore. The effects of these prolonged lockdowns include: a record number of people commiting suicide,record rates of depression and loss of income/ jobs for small business.It brings me back to this question: is the cure worse then the disease? It's pretty easy for those to call for lockdowns when they aren't the ones effected by them.

Remember, the average age people die from this disease is 81 years old.Not to mention those who live unhealthy lifestyles (overweight people, smokers ext) are the ones who are in fact dying from this disease and are having the most severe reaction to this virus.Has the government ever cared about old people/the vulnerable before? Why are we locking down now and "protecting them" when aged care has been a disaster for years?

It's time to end the fear porn, the lies and give us a plan.If the government continues to impose more and more restrictions on the people, you are only going to make the protests/resistance stronger.All levels of government, get your shit together and give us some fucking hope ffs!!!!

 

[Shahanga]

I communicate with a number of people in South Africa. Plenty of Covid. People get it, generally are crook for about a month then get better.

Ok no one wants to be ill for a month, or worse rock up in hospital, but it’s not Ebola. So tone the fear down, get a jab and get on with life. Once we have decent vax rates mortality rates should be around flu levels. This shit ain’t going away and locking  people up isn’t going to solve anything (which is why we are at lockdown #6 FFS). And making kids pay just because you’re scared is not a solution either.

and please don’t tell me ICU won’t cope. Surely our government has built up the capacity in the last 18 months? Otherwise WTF have they been doing? Blaming each other to cover up their own failures perhaps?

[belaguttman]

11 hours ago, Shahanga said:

and please don’t tell me ICU won’t cope. Surely our government has built up the capacity in the last 18 months? Otherwise WTF have they been doing? Blaming each other to cover up their own failures perhaps?

The number of ICU beds is not the problem, and hasn't been for 12 months. The problem is that the beds don't run themselves and, already, the health system is stretched to find enough trained staff to run the beds. Each ICU nurse has specific training, nursing is 1:1, it takes 5 staff to turn each patient and this is happening hourly for some patients. During the second wave, multiple hospitals had hundreds of staff unavailable at a time, they either had Covid, were recovering, or had been exposed and were isolating. This put enormous strain on the remaining staff. 

It also meant that, if you had a non-Covid related illness, you would have very little chance of getting the medical attention that you needed.

The risk equation is the difficulty here, Of course we need to gradually remove restrictions as community vaccination rates exceed 80%, however we are somewhat victims of our own success here, the UK can open up and 'tolerate 100 deaths a day as this is a reduction from their worst, 100 deaths a day is difficult here where we've usually had none.

As you said, the best thing we can do is to get vaccinated, it'll halve your risk of getting infected, enormously reduce your chance of becoming seriously ill, but it won't reduce your chance of being infective if you do become infected. Ironically, those of us that have been vaccinated will be still wearing masks to protect the Covidiots that refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks.

[belaguttman]

13 hours ago, Shahanga said:

Ultimately I’d like to see an abandonment of Covid Zero and instead actions for suppression, now acknowledging we’ll be opening up in say mid December when we’ve hit decent vax rates and thus there is no point chasing an elusive Covid Zero.

We've never had a Covid zero strategy, it's unrealistic, especially with the ridiculous unfit-for-purpose hotel quarantine that will regularly leak infection into the community. What we've aimed for is aggressive suppression (not the same) until we get vaccination rates up. There have been a few factors working against us though:

The Federal Government has resisted far more suitable Howard Springs type quarantine facilities for 12 months

poor vaccination procurement strategy by the Federal Government

poor vaccination rollout implementation, again by the Federal Government

successful suppression has reduced the urgency for many people to vaccinate

Exacerbated by vaccine disinformation and poor vaccine messaging by the Federal Government.

Behind the raw vaccination figures, only half of aged care staff have been fully-vaccinated (a Federal Government responsibility) and far less than half of NDIS carers or recipients have been vaccinated, again, both programmes are a Federal responsibility.

Notice a theme here? Add to this, delta is a far more aggressive illness in children and virtually none of them have been vaccinated. I'm not saying we shouldn't open up, just just we need to truly understand the consequences to vulnerable groups that, often through no fault of their own, haven't been offered a vaccine yet.

Edited August 22, 2021 by belaguttman

[jw1739]

I would be fairly certain that most people do not understand the difference between "COVID-zero" and "aggressive suppression" and earlier in the piece the so-called experts had great difficulty in actually explaining the difference. To most people I would say that, unless the latter term is quantified in some way, in practice the two terms mean the same thing.

I've had to deal with various bits of the Federal Government bureaucracy over the past 19 months (and continuing) and it is a bloody nightmare. Telephone wait times, correspondence delays, unsigned and undated letters - all built-in road blocks to frustrate and anger the citizen, and finally reduce them to tears. Any department that has the word "service" or "services" in its title can be guaranteed not to provide any.

And the State government is not much better if any at all. 

 

[belaguttman]

38 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

I would be fairly certain that most people do not understand the difference between "COVID-zero" and "aggressive suppression" and earlier in the piece the so-called experts had great difficulty in actually explaining the difference. To most people I would say that, unless the latter term is quantified in some way, in practice the two terms mean the same thing.

We have 'Smallpox-Zero", we had a successful eradication strategy through worldwide vaccination and it no longer exists in the wild. As a result of this we no longer need public health vigilance or ongoing vaccinations. We can't have Covid elimination as it continues to exist in our biosphere. The best we can hope for is local suppression, always a temporary relief at best, especially with the other issues that I outlined above. Suppression requires unpleasant terrible restrictions, the only thing worse than that is what happens with no restrictions - they are the choices because exponential growth in case numbers, makes the response binary. NSW has the worst of both strategies really, enough restrictions to reduce the R eff from 8 or so to 1.3, but the effective reproduction number is still >1 so the case load grows.

45 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

I've had to deal with various bits of the Federal Government bureaucracy over the past 19 months (and continuing) and it is a bloody nightmare. Telephone wait times, correspondence delays, unsigned and undated letters - all built-in road blocks to frustrate and anger the citizen, and finally reduce them to tears. Any department that has the word "service" or "services" in its title can be guaranteed not to provide any.

 

The Federal Government has organised the public service around denying any benefit to the community, the assumption is that everyone is disingenuous and the role of the Federal Government is to protect the community's money from the community. The neo-liberal agenda of both political parties has either driven most talented people from public service, or marginalised them (managed them) into positions where they have no influence. We voted for that so don't be surprised that JobKeeper or JobSeeker were so difficult to get, that is the whole organisational ethos of Centrelink and every other Department these days.

[Shahanga]

The State governments have a Covid Zero (which as you quite rightly point out, makes no sense) but they just haven’t come out and said it.

What do I mean? Well to date every time we get cases they suppress them until confirmed zero. To me that’s Covid Zero.  I’m more interested in actions than words.  (This has of course been supported by the closed borders policy of the Feds.) 

As to the Feds yes, they haven’t covered themselves in glory either and have been largely “deers in the highlight” in response to the behaviour of the states. Too scared to govern it seems because their majority is so slim. 

Fair hit on them about quarantine facilities. I’m not sure why they are now building them, they needed them last year, but surely not now. Isn’t the plan to open up?  (This is a large reason why I don’t believe they will actually open up, their behaviour doesn’t match the rhetoric)

I think their critics about vaccine procurement are a little harsh. Granted they haven’t been stellar but they’ve had  issues. They backed 4 horses, which seemed wise.

1. UQ was a high risk choice (HIV involved) and effectively fell over.

2. Astra came through but because we had no cases was considered too high risk for some (clearly it’s a lot safer than Covid and a lot of other things) and got effectively sidelined. Only a few crusty old football forum types ended up having it, it seems.

3. Novavax took much longer to get through development etc and thus won’t arrive to 2022.

4. Pfizer. All good but in high demand and short supply.

As an aside perhaps it’s just wishful thinking but I suspect of the unvaccinated most are just hesitant, not anti vaxxers. Fundamentally they see the other vaccinations they’ve had in their lives and think, “those things were tested for decades”. “This has been around 5 minutes”. “With no Covid cases, I’ll just put it off a while”, “or wait for Pfizer”.  As Covid spreads in their communities these people’s attitudes will change. 
So the current outbreak will have a silver lining in that regard.

[belaguttman]

26 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

What do I mean? Well to date every time we get cases they suppress them until confirmed zero. To me that’s Covid Zero.  I’m more interested in actions than words.  (This has of course been supported by the closed borders policy of the Feds.) 

Actually, we ended the last lockdown before we had zero cases, it ended when we had zero community transmission cases. If we have any community transmission (mystery cases) then the number s will grow exponentially every single time.

 

28 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

I think their critics about vaccine procurement are a little harsh. Granted they haven’t been stellar but they’ve had  issues. They backed 4 horses, which seemed wise.

Every country has the same procurement issues, most developed countries have done better. We were actually offered Pfizer early in the piece, the DoH sent along a junior official who haggled over the price and demanded Pfizer's IP. Pfizer walked away and successfully negotiated a deal with Israel. We didn't bother to speak to J&J, nor to the Russians over their Sputnik vaccine. We ordered too few from Pfizer and so went to the back of the queue for additional orders, we only spoke to Moderna recently.

 

32 minutes ago, Shahanga said:

As an aside perhaps it’s just wishful thinking but I suspect of the unvaccinated most are just hesitant, not anti vaxxers. Fundamentally they see the other vaccinations they’ve had in their lives and think, “those things were tested for decades”. “This has been around 5 minutes”. “With no Covid cases, I’ll just put it off a while”, “or wait for Pfizer”.  As Covid spreads in their communities these people’s attitudes will change. 
So the current outbreak will have a silver lining in that regard.

I agree with that. The Government's campaign to educate the community has been outstandingly and perplexingly poor. Adenovirus virus vector vaccines have been around for ages, the Covid vaccine basic science was completed 20 years ago for the first Covid pandemic and was only shelved because the pandemic was successfully contained and Big Pharma lost interest. Ironically, the new vaccines are the ones people are most interested in, the mRNA vaccines. In all cases they are probably the most studied and researched vaccines in history

[jw1739]

35 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

Actually, we ended the last lockdown before we had zero cases, it ended when we had zero community transmission cases. If we have any community transmission (mystery cases) then the number s will grow exponentially every single time.

Is that actually true Bela? And even if it was it was for a very short time only, because LD6 started two weeks after LD5 finished. Earlier in the piece I thought we  considered an outbreak controlled only if we had 14 consecutive days without any local transmission cases?

[Shahanga]

13 hours ago, jw1739 said:

Is that actually true Bela? And even if it was it was for a very short time only, because LD6 started two weeks after LD5 finished. Earlier in the piece I thought we  considered an outbreak controlled only if we had 14 consecutive days without any local transmission cases?

It is true. Of the 5 lockdowns that have ended that’s what they did in one instance. 

[NewConvert]

Just to add to the conversation a mate's father passed away in a smallish country town in regional Victoria. He passed away at home rather than in the local hospital because there were not enough staff at the hospital to give him palliative care over his last week. The reason was that being winter on the foothills of skiing fields means that staff have colds but due to the pandemic staff with colds have to isolate until they are proven not to have COVID-19. Hence palliative care was reduced to one nurse.

[Shahanga]

6 minutes ago, NewConvert said:

Just to add to the conversation a mate's father passed away in a smallish country town in regional Victoria. He passed away at home rather than in the local hospital because there were not enough staff at the hospital to give him palliative care over his last week. The reason was that being winter on the foothills of skiing fields means that staff have colds but due to the pandemic staff with colds have to isolate until they are proven not to have COVID-19. Hence palliative care was reduced to one nurse.

There’s a heap of nasty little stories (with assorted variations) like that. That’s the “hidden” side of these restrictions.

[belaguttman]

2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

There’s a heap of nasty little stories (with assorted variations) like that. That’s the “hidden” side of these restrictions.

It's the cost of the pandemic. Hospitals are high risk transmission areas. One infected staff member turns up and suddenly staff are infected all over the hospital. There are no good choices here, only bad choices and even worse choices.

2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

It is true. Of the 5 lockdowns that have ended that’s what they did in one instance. 

The worry is unlinked community cases as this means that there is still someone who is Covid positive, out and about reinfecting more people as soon as restrictions are lifted

[jw1739]

30 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

It's the cost of the pandemic. Hospitals are high risk transmission areas. One infected staff member turns up and suddenly staff are infected all over the hospital. There are no good choices here, only bad choices and even worse choices.

I would have thought that allocating one or more specific hospitals for COVID patients and COVID medical staff would have been an obvious step? At the very least that would have prevented non-COVID patients from being infected.

Another matter that bothers me is that if vaccinations are so important (which they are) why are GP Clinics not vaccinating seven days per week with extended hours? It's simply a matter of rostering on a supervising doctor and a qualified nurse - it's actually the nurse who does the actual injection (in my experience).

On lockdowns - I'm not fundamentally opposed to them, but as for many laws and regulations, the people who they are attempting to regulate simply ignore them or find a way around them, while the people who would have done the right thing anyway will be made to suffer. I'm not sure that lockdowns will work for Delta anyway, except as a delaying tactic. From anecdotal evidence it seems as though I could be infected over the fence as soon as I open the back door. And then the air entering the house could be carrying the virus too....

My final offering for this morning is the basic security flaw in the smartphone vaccination certificate:https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-08-23/covid-19-vaccine-certificates-forged-in-10-minutes/100390578

FMD.

[belaguttman]

7 hours ago, jw1739 said:

I would have thought that allocating one or more specific hospitals for COVID patients and COVID medical staff would have been an obvious step? At the very least that would have prevented non-COVID patients from being infected.

Because you can't always predict who will be a Covid +ve patient as we have seen this week at RMH, and because it may be staff that introduce Covid to the hospital.

7 hours ago, jw1739 said:

Another matter that bothers me is that if vaccinations are so important (which they are) why are GP Clinics not vaccinating seven days per week with extended hours? It's simply a matter of rostering on a supervising doctor and a qualified nurse - it's actually the nurse who does the actual injection (in my experience).

Many GP clinics are now stocked with AZ. Most people are refusing AZ because the education around risk benefit assessments has been done so poorly by the Federal Government. A few months ago the Federal Government supply chain of AZ was as poor as everything else they were managing. I had my first dose of AZ through a local rural GP. They weren't Abe to offer me the second dose during the optimal window as they hadn't been provided any stock by the Federal Government. We had to get it through the State Government clinic in Wangaratta that did have stock. This brings me to the second problem, the duplication of resources with State and Federal auspiced programmes. The State Governments have had to step in because the Federal Government has consistently failed to deliver anything beyond press releases and media appearances. Only half the Aged Care staff are vaccinated, only a quarter of NDIS carers and recipients are vaccinated, both Federal responsibilities. 

The Federal Government has also quibbled and scrimped with the Medicare rebate to GPs for the vaccine administration so it'a actually costing many GP practices money to give the vaccine to their patients. Many practices spent thousands of dollars on high tech fridges to store Pfizer vaccine, but, of course the Federal Government has failed to deliver stock and most patients are frightened about getting AZ.

7 hours ago, jw1739 said:

On lockdowns - I'm not fundamentally opposed to them, but as for many laws and regulations, the people who they are attempting to regulate simply ignore them or find a way around them, while the people who would have done the right thing anyway will be made to suffer.

It's always the way, there is a small number of people that spoil it for most people. As Freud said, the reason why we have laws against murder is to assist us all to manage our impulses to kill people. Some people are just not good at impulse control.

 

7 hours ago, jw1739 said:

I'm not sure that lockdowns will work for Delta anyway, except as a delaying tactic.

The R nought for delta is probably 4-8. Sydney looks like a basket case but they are managing to keep the R nought to 1.4, so, to an extent their restrictions are working to delay the exponential growth, even though it is still exponential. It means that they will have tens of thousands of daily cases in a month or so instead of within a week, and hopefully we can vaccinate a lot of people in that time and prevent the most serious of complications. That is the best way of 'learning to live with the virus', the alternatives are even worse.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by belaguttman

[Jovan]

I think this entire discussion about vaccination percentage and returning to a new "normal " or eased restrictions is wrong and destined to create even more issues down the road.

Basically it's been reported that at 80% we will see a different landscape, but thats not true. This 80% isn't actually close to 80%, it doesn't include children and as we've seen Delta is ripping through the children and unless we seriously address this it could become a catastrophe.

For us to be able to get the freedom of movement back then the entire population needs vaccination of probably 85 to 90% that includes all children. 

Just another example is bungled miss messaging.  

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, Jovan said:

I think this entire discussion about vaccination percentage and returning to a new "normal " or eased restrictions is wrong and destined to create even more issues down the road.

Basically it's been reported that at 80% we will see a different landscape, but thats not true. This 80% isn't actually close to 80%, it doesn't include children and as we've seen Delta is ripping through the children and unless we seriously address this it could become a catastrophe.

For us to be able to get the freedom of movement back then the entire population needs vaccination of probably 85 to 90% that includes all children. 

Just another example is bungled miss messaging.  

Yes, I've been saying this for a while. 80% of the entire population means one person out of every five is still not vaccinated. With Delta the way it is, it can still rampage though a population at that level. 90% is still one person out of ten not vaccinated, 95% is one in twenty. Berejiklian even talks about 70% of the adult population - that's only two out of every three adults.

I don't understand how the likes of Morrison and Berejiklian can peddle this rubbish. Those childhood vaccinations we had were every baby and every child,  not one in something or other.

I've found it hard to get a definitive figure on the % of children (I assume that children means 0-15 years) but the numbers I've seen suggest it's around 16-18% of the total population.

Morrison et al. continue to misrepresent the results of the modelling. I agree with you that he is creating unrealistic expectations.

Edited August 23, 2021 by jw1739

[jw1739]

If you read the way the media, Morrison, the Doherty Institute etc. are going on this, we're being inculcated to accept a certain death and serious illness rate, which is called "Living with COVID-19". It's going to be a little bit more than this, a little bit less than that, about the same as something else. It must be good for us because we're being told it is.

Of course no-one has actually bothered to ask us what we think.

[belaguttman]

45 minutes ago, jw1739 said:

If you read the way the media, Morrison, the Doherty Institute etc. are going on this, we're being inculcated to accept a certain death and serious illness rate, which is called "Living with COVID-19". It's going to be a little bit more than this, a little bit less than that, about the same as something else. It must be good for us because we're being told it is.

Of course no-one has actually bothered to ask us what we think.

I think that some level of deaths will be inevitable, but, as you said, that discussion should be upfront. Its a harder political sell here as we are being asked to accept more infections and more deaths, UK is averaging 100 deaths a day and that's a reduction from before! 

[jw1739]

18 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

I think that some level of deaths will be inevitable, but, as you said, that discussion should be upfront. Its a harder political sell here as we are being asked to accept more infections and more deaths, UK is averaging 100 deaths a day and that's a reduction from before! 

On a population basis 100 deaths per day in the UK equates to 40 per day in Australia, and 10 per day here in Victoria.

Behind those numbers are of course cases (infections), hospitalisations, ICUs and ventilations.

And  accompanying statistics such absences from work, treatment costs, care costs etc. etc.

Personally that's more than a hard sell for me. We wouldn't willingly accept 10 deaths per day from measles, polio, smallpox, mumps, TB etc. etc., just because someone tells us it will be good for us, so why should we accept it as acceptable for COVID-19?

[belaguttman]

1 hour ago, jw1739 said:

On a population basis 100 deaths per day in the UK equates to 40 per day in Australia, and 10 per day here in Victoria.

Behind those numbers are of course cases (infections), hospitalisations, ICUs and ventilations.

And  accompanying statistics such absences from work, treatment costs, care costs etc. etc.

Personally that's more than a hard sell for me. We wouldn't willingly accept 10 deaths per day from measles, polio, smallpox, mumps, TB etc. etc., just because someone tells us it will be good for us, so why should we accept it as acceptable for COVID-19?

well this is the risk assessment we will have to make. For instance, vaccinating 25 million people with a good vaccine like AZ would result in around 7-8 direct deaths, always a hard sell to those families affected even though it protects the whole community. Of course, there has been far more deaths from Covid during this third wave anyway so its all relative unless it happens to you.

Do we open up when most adults are vaccinated and accept a pandemic in our unvaccinated children or do we stay locked down until the children are also vaccinated? There are no right or wrong answers here, there are advantages and disadvantages of each option, but we should be talking about it as a community.

[jw1739]

56 minutes ago, belaguttman said:

well this is the risk assessment we will have to make. For instance, vaccinating 25 million people with a good vaccine like AZ would result in around 7-8 direct deaths, always a hard sell to those families affected even though it protects the whole community. Of course, there has been far more deaths from Covid during this third wave anyway so its all relative unless it happens to you.

Do we open up when most adults are vaccinated and accept a pandemic in our unvaccinated children or do we stay locked down until the children are also vaccinated? There are no right or wrong answers here, there are advantages and disadvantages of each option, but we should be talking about it as a community.

I think that my main problem at the moment is lack of trust in anything that the Federal Government touches. In the past 18 months we have had so many messages and mixed messages about what we are trying to do and how we are trying to do it, so many changes in emphasis, subtle or not, so many lockdowns, border closures and travel restrictions, and so on and so forth, that I no longer trust what suddenly appears to be a shining light at the end of the tunnel - a so-called plan that at best is semi-quantitative - and that the boss of the National Cabinet thinks that they all have agreed to although some others are not quite so sure - a so-called plan that seems to have been cobbled together on the basis that it has all got a bit too tricky in New South Wales, and Prime Minister Scott "I don't hold the hose, mate" Morrison has conveniently found a new Messiah to follow (the Doherty Institute) who has seemingly replaced the previous one (General Frewen - whatever happened to him?). Suddenly, while perhaps 8 deaths in total linked to a particular vaccine (despite some research showing the contrary) was not acceptable but perhaps 10 per day from COVID is going to be.

Overall I'm tired, bewildered, frustrated, fed-up, and I don't trust the bastards.

[Shahanga]

See guys I have a different view. I can’t conceive how we can allow the status quo to continue.

I don’t know whether anyone realises but every year around 2000 die in Australia from car crashes. How come the premiers haven’t banned the car?

BAN CARS DAN, KEEP ME SAFE (so I can die of 1 of 100 other things). 

[jw1739]

2 hours ago, Shahanga said:

See guys I have a different view. I can’t conceive how we can allow the status quo to continue.

I don’t know whether anyone realises but every year around 2000 die in Australia from car crashes. How come the premiers haven’t banned the car?

BAN CARS DAN, KEEP ME SAFE (so I can die of 1 of 100 other things). 

I don't think that we consider the road toll to be "acceptable." Efforts continue to reduce it. Seat belts and the 50kph limit are just examples of this.

We don't ban cars because we see the use of road vehicles as essential to our way of life, but premature death from disease not so.

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by jw1739

[belaguttman]

4 hours ago, Shahanga said:

See guys I have a different view. I can’t conceive how we can allow the status quo to continue.

I don’t know whether anyone realises but every year around 2000 die in Australia from car crashes. How come the premiers haven’t banned the car?

BAN CARS DAN, KEEP ME SAFE (so I can die of 1 of 100 other things). 

Well if they all died at once, overloaded the health system, took out half the health system with them and nobody else could get any healthcare treatment during that time then we probably would ban cars. You do make a point though, we do get someone indifferent to things like the road toll or the yearly flu toll as if they are just inevitable, they are influenced by the choices we make. I don't think that we should or even plan to continue  lockdowns indefinitely but I think that we should all be having a nuanced discussion around risk management. We can't leave that to politicians

[NewConvert]

15 hours ago, Shahanga said:

See guys I have a different view. I can’t conceive how we can allow the status quo to continue.

I don’t know whether anyone realises but every year around 2000 die in Australia from car crashes. How come the premiers haven’t banned the car?

BAN CARS DAN, KEEP ME SAFE (so I can die of 1 of 100 other things). 

The actual annual road toll for Australia is between 1200 & 1300. Way back in my yoof like 1970 in Victoria alone the toll was over 1000 when the totall population was about 2M. The first Victorian driver ever jailed for killing someone by driving whilst drunk was 1977 - the only time the "there but for the grace of God, goes I" failed. The next driver jailed for killing someone whilst drunk was 1985.

10 hours ago, belaguttman said:

Well if they all died at once, overloaded the health system, took out half the health system with them and nobody else could get any healthcare treatment during that time then we probably would ban cars. You do make a point though, we do get someone indifferent to things like the road toll or the yearly flu toll as if they are just inevitable, they are influenced by the choices we make. I don't think that we should or even plan to continue  lockdowns indefinitely but I think that we should all be having a nuanced discussion around risk management. We can't leave that to politicians

The other factor that I would add is that we have had a century of road laws which regulate the building of roads, traffic management, vehicles, driver/cyclist/pedestrian behaviour, education and etiquette. Which means that when I walk to my local chemist and cross the road whilst the little man is flashing green I am highly certain that no vehicle is going to hit me - of course there could be a rogue driver but the odds are pretty close to zero.

When it comes to diseases such as a common cold, influenza and COVID-19, none of the above exist. As an example we had to be taught to wash our hands because so many people don't bother or don't do it properly - I am sure I am not the only one who has noticed the number of people at AAMI who don't wash their hands after they have been to the toilet. Also how many times have we all gone to work or somewhere although we have the common cold and we could contaminate someone else?

In the long term, like in about 30 years plus we will learn to live with the Alpha variant of COVID because we would have developed some immunity and would have protocols such as vaccine passports. Now this is predicated that the Delta variant does not continue to mutate into something that the current vaccines are not effective. but as @jw1739 states it is impossible to trust the federal government to do anything right. Their abdication on a federal law protecting employers from being sued if staff choose not to be vaccinated is criminal - my employer has offices in all states bar Tasmania and the territories and we now have different rules for each office depending on the state and for those that travel regularly between the states have to spend time re-checking the rules for the office that they are in.

[jw1739]

1 hour ago, NewConvert said:

When it comes to diseases such as a common cold, influenza and COVID-19, none of the above exist. As an example we had to be taught to wash our hands because so many people don't bother or don't do it properly - I am sure I am not the only one who has noticed the number of people at AAMI who don't wash their hands after they have been to the toilet. Also how many times have we all gone to work or somewhere although we have the common cold and we could contaminate someone else?

 

AAMI Park is a classic example. We don't even design and build public facilities appropriately and up to the latest standard. When you go to wash your hands, the water should be activated by pressing a button with your foot, and the hand-dryer should start and stop automatically. Likewise cafe/restaurant/tourist attraction public hygiene is appalling - how many times have you been told "It's out the back, mate, through the kitchen" and when you get there it's absolutely filthy? Many country places you end up pissing somewhere round the back of a shed.

[kingofhearts]

Another 79 cases today..... We are going to be locked down until Christmas at this rate ffs.

It's time for the government to sit down and have the uncomfortable conversation: what's an acceptable daily infection/death rate that we can manage.