That’s an Olympic standard backflip with 2 1/2 twists and pike.
We are “only” two weeks away (under full lockdown) from having Delta eliminated.
But yes, Sydney is going to be in lockdown until the end September on present trends. Only outside chance of a better result. Odds are it will be extended. But that’s still a near-elimination strategy. Could/Should we be doing a metric shedload better. You betcha.
We’re suffering infection fatigue. The news headlines are now how many new cases in Sydney and Melbourne. When’s the last time you saw the US rates on the main news bulletins? Complacency means we are still below 50% vaccinated and less than half those fully.
Australia New cases 319 Rolling 7 Days 300
U.S.A. New Cases 161,990 Rolling 7 Days 118,067
You can take your chances in the USA or India, I’m staying right here.
You aren’t going to eliminate it. No country is going to be able to do so and maintain something approaching a normal life. It is so virulent and so widespread that you are just going to have to deal with it. High levels of speedy vaccination are the key but I suspect the Australian people aren’t going to bear rolling lockdowns forever.
Tough as it is in Melbourne, doing its fifth lockdown, the scariest news is the appearance of cases in Dubbo and Walgett, with them both to go into immediate shutdown today. Moving well away from the cities, adequate health services for an outbreak and into sizeable indigenous communities.
Elimination is difficult. Keeping it out in the first place is easier, but still difficult. New Zealand has been very lucky so far. We had a three day lock down in Wellington after a Sydney man tested positive for the Delta variant on return to Sydney from Wellington. No one got infected. Despite him being present at many well populated events and places. Bullet dodged. But I am under no illusion that we are safe here. We need to press on with the vaccine and hope we get enough vaccinated so that when it finally hits us we won’t be affected as badly as we might otherwise.
Yes, those countries with a low loading of infected people initially and the willingness to completely close borders have kept it at a low level.
However, that is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. This is going to be in circulation for years to come so everyone is going to have to live with it and that means an acceptance that it will find its way into places like NZ and spread through the population even when highly vaccinated. I doubt kiwis will stand rolling lockdowns in perpetuity so a number of infections and corresponding number of deaths will happen at some point and will need to be accepted as the cost of returning to normal.
As tedious and disruptive as the lockdowns have been for some people, we’ve been buoyed by knowing that the fiasco unfolding in the US, UK and other countries we like to compare ourselves with was much, much worse. Between lockdowns life was cautious normal and generally fine. The main public reaction in the lead-up to this last outbreak was to demand the lockdowns be harder and more extensive. With just under a thousand deaths, we feel that the short-term pain has been worth it, and the economy is going like the clappers.
Yes, we are all annoyed that we didn’t get our act together with a forward plan for vaccination and that has left us very vulnerable now. There’s a real risk as others have said that the cat is out of the bag and nothing will get it back in.
It’s been interesting in the sense that the public reaction has been both dispiriting and encouraging at the same time. I’m not sure how well I have “read the room” but my feeling is that the majority are actually ahead of the leadership particularly the conservative leadership in terms of understanding the “go hard go early” principle that has worked for Australia well. The intelligence we have shown in this respect is something of which I’m quietly proud. Before Covid I would have said the “mateship” ideal in Australia was dying if not dead. But when it counts, we have definitely shown some of that type of thinking - that we have to do this for the good of all.
Of course there is a segment of the population, lead by Murdoch, that doesn’t or won’t get it, and we have our share of crazies. This is dispiriting but my feeling is they are the minority. We don’t have a Federal election due for a couple of years but my feeling at the moment is that the incumbent - who has shown all the leadership of wet lettuce over the whole thing - would get a thorough kicking from the electorate if there was an election now.
I am not in Melbourne but two of my closest friends are there. It’s been interesting to see the views of the more right wing one develop - at the beginning she was all “I’m dubious about this draconian lockdown” and now with each outbreak she’s “lock down harder dammit it’s the only way!”
I’d suggest that that isn’t a risk, that is the reality and probably has been so for a long time.
The hard thing for countries with a quasi-elimination policy will be getting to the point where virus circulation and some level death is accepted, even with a well-vaccinated population.
With the huge levels present from the start in the UK and Europe generally elimination was never a realistic proposition. We’ve got to the point now where life is fairly normal even with much larger numbers of infections and deaths than Australia would put up with. The only real difference for me personally is a continued working from home and my own unwillingness to jump through the hoops needed to travel abroad. My holidays last year and this have all been domestic.
This is the difference between having a plan and not having a plan. Australia had a plan. The US didn’t. Australia’s plan may or may not have been the right plan, but even the wrong plan is usually better than no plan.
Australia had a good plan, and more than our share of good fortune.
There was, at one stage a different model of federal/state government being developed.
Facts and science based, co-operation, collaborative. Trusted. Effective.
Government: “Oops. We made a policy decision based on the best available advise. That thinking has changed so the policy will be changed. Sorry.”
Public: “No worries, mate. Good on ya.”
Could have worked long term too on other national programs of interest.
Then we get an election, or two and seeking partisan advantage comes back like an addiction. The Premiers of Queensland and Western Australia start playing shitty games of bugger thy neighbor.
Sadly the real story isn’t quite that encouraging. When Covid first hit, our dickwad Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) downplayed things and on the critical weekend when the full realisation of the problem was dawning on other people, he proudly pronounced he was going to go to the football. It was the State Premiers who had the nous to step up and say “if you don’t do something about a lockdown and a coordinated response, we are going to do it piecemeal, State by State”. Only then did Morrison realise he was going to be made to look like the Slowest Guy in the Room and get moving.
Since then the Federal response has been to my impression slightly fractured, with the government departments being relatively competent, but held back by a PM who doesn’t have the skill to organise a drunken party in a brewery, but who (as a former advertising exec) only knows how to run ad campaign telling everyone what a great party it was.
As an aside, there is an Australian journalist who has a column every Sunday which includes amongst other things a “tweet of the week” - this week it was this gem -
“Could one of you journalists please ask Scott Morrison if he has any leadership ambitions?”.
I’m a bit surprised to hear you say this. I don’t see how what these Premiers have done that has buggered their neighbours. And indeed the NSW Premier’s snarking at the Qld Premier over border controls never made any sense (since when have NSW’ers cared so much about not being able to come to Qld?) except as pure political cheap shots.
But I’m admittedly biased. I’m open to other points of view.
First point, I endorse your assessment of what ScoMo has (not) done and why he joined the consensus national government
But you also need to factor in that Sydney is the country’s international destination hub. And it wasn’t so much the passengers as the flight crews who were going to, and inevitably did bring in COVID-19 Delta.
Pitted against that Sydney had the the best quarantine regime, best contact tracking, and the best luck (the Ruby Princess was a cannon ball somehow dodged). We also had a competent Premier, bugger all opposition and no election in the offing so Gladys could play by the experts with political impunity. If Sydney had Melbourne systems then it would have been entrenched in the local community and wicked all the up the far northern coast. Where none of the measures in Queensland would have held it, though obviously the subtropical sunshine assists constraining a flu contagion much more so than the dank, dark and cold.
If you like Sydney did the heavy lifting for Queensland.
Serendipitous for you. There was no alternative here. Anything less and we would have lost 1,000 (or more) people like Melbourne did.
But it was (Queensland Premier) Palaszczuk who first put up the partisan drawbridge and used the “Queenslander first, Australian second” rhetoric to win in 2020. Bless her little banana bending socks.
…I really doubt that you know what kiwis will or won’t stand for. What we voted for at the last election and what we will stand for is a continuation of the range of measures that have both kept us safe and kept things almost completely normal.
We have eliminated it. Elimination is a process, not an outcome. And I have lived a normal life since April 2020. The only difference is that I scan QR codes when entering businesses/locations and I wear a mask when on a bus or a train.
With the benefit of hindsight one thing that definitely helped our initial response was the intense disaster of the bushfire season that had gone on from late 2019. It meant that all the states, especially the three most populous ones, had run their emergency service and recovery responses through real-life critical testing for about three months solid, so they were very battle-hardened, well integrated, had chains of command all sorted. The politicians had learned when to step out of the way and let the professionals take charge, and knew that that was what the public wanted to see.
The Prime Minister had gone on a secret holiday to Hawaii, which his office denied at the start, and had to come back very shame-faced. That and gaffes with federal support meant that when Covid hit he really, really, really wanted to not repeat that mistake and be proactive and ultra-helpful.
Without the fires I expect our response would have been much more laggard, the pattern of letting the experts lead ignored and the politicisation of response would have been much stronger. Luckily for us they weren’t.
I’m dispirited, not fed up. People who have lost their businesses, or are trapped on the wrong side of a border, are even more dispirited.
Personally, as well as being dispirited, I’m less fed up now, because my state government is treating COVID less as a political opportunity, and more as an unfortunate medical crisis.
I know people who blame the government, or migrants, or the medical system, and clearly some people are angry, but part of the reason they are angry is that nobody listens to them.
Did I mention that I’m feeling dispirited about the whole thing?
Well I guess we’ll see won’t we. Unless at some point you accept a certain level of infection in your country you are committing to lockdowns and border closures forever. What other options are there?
No, you haven’t. You’ve just kept it at a low level for now. If the world hasn’t eliminated it, NZ hasn’t eliminated it. The pandemic has barely got started and this isn’t a virus that wil ever be eradicated from the world.
Your PM has just talked about a phased opening of the borders just today. At which point you will let in the virus again and, vaccinated population or not. It will circulate.
When that happens do you suggest the borders are closed again? that lockdowns are imposed again?
Our strategy is elimination. We haven’t had a community outbreak since February this year. Elimination is a process, not an outcome.
Our borders are already are open to a degree, and they have been open to a degree since the start of the pandemic. All citizens and residents have the right of return, dependent on the availability of Managed Isolation. We had a travel bubble with Australia, that bubble closed when they lost control of the current outbreak. We still have a travel bubble with the Cook Islands. What the Prime Minister talked about today was a continuation of that process.
We will do what we have always done since the start of the pandemic, use the appropriate measures to stomp out the outbreak.
Will we close the borders? It depends. Everything is entirely situational, based on breaking chains of transmission. Will closing the borders break the chain? If yes, then as we did with Australia a few weeks ago we would close the border.
Will we impose lockdowns? Maybe. Again its entirely situational. We’ve had relatively large community outbreaks where we didn’t lockdown because the chains of transmission were quite clear. But we’ve had smaller outbreaks with unknown sources where we did lockdown locally. There is no definitive answer here. It’s all about using the appropriate tools due to the nature of that particular outbreak.
I think you are really underestimating the degree of freedom we have here, and that most New Zealanders are willing to tolerate a few days or a few weeks of restrictions if that means we can keep each other safe. We’ve had a handful of lockdowns, only one national lockdown at Level 4, the rest were localised at either Level 3 or Level 2. Our government has committed to an elimination approach as we move into next year. Which means even as we “open up”, we will still be doing all the things we’ve been doing up till now.
And as you do so you will not be able to keep the virus from arriving in NZ in much greater numbers than you have seen so far.
Also, “all the things we’ve been doing up to now” seems to include lockdowns and restrictions under situations where the virus is circulating in very small numbers. My point is that I don’t think that is sustainable for ever.
I wasn’t talking in epidemiological terms, The fact remains that if NZ wishes to open up again then they will do so in world where the virus in endemic and widespread. Your “elimination” strategy can be maintained but you will have outbreaks, that much is guaranteed and a point will come where your population (any population) will no longer accept lockdowns as a reasonable response.