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Who'd have thunk?
Deadlier, more contagious virus variant.
None of the crazypants lockdowns, gaslighting, and virtue-signaling ?!
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Maybe we will "learn to live with the virus" instead of panicking and restricting freedoms, as I suggested a year ago. The UK is considering another lockdown next month despite nearing 90% of the population with at least one dose of vaccine. Australia is a warning to us all.
Australia’s measures flattened the curve alright. Their curve is flat as hell, just on the wrong axis.
Australia done thought they could half-ass the lockdown in NSW with delta. They grossly miscalculated. If you followed their "lockdown" at all over the past two months, it was a shambolic failure with few restrictions and failed compliance. The other Australian states with COVID outbreaks basically inherited the leakage from NSW. QLD, NT, SA, WA, and TAS are still essentially COVID free.
So you would have been stricter with lockdown? Deploying the military to enforce lockdown orders in certain neighborhoods wasn't aggressive enough? Even then what would be the point? We know from Israel that even having all your population vaccinated likely won't curb the spread.
Australia was always trying to prevent the impossible: Preventing most of their population from contracting a ubiquitous, highly contagious respiratory virus.
By the time stringent measures were attempted, there were already 100s of untraceable cases each day. The opportunity was missed.
Lockdowns work when the population complies. It seems to have worked in Queensland, South Australia, etc. Look at Auckland – they found hundreds of circulating cases, but compliance with very strict procedures has reduced spread to close contacts of known cases and just a handful of surprise cases a day. Elimination will probably be attained again – and meanwhile, the other 3M folks in NZ get on with safe, mostly normal lives.
Very few people want to live that way, permanently.
The issue is that in the US, there will never be enough compliance to make lockdowns worth it. The downsides will always be there, and there won’t be a high enough compliance rate for us to see any long term benefit.
It'd be one thing if they said 'we're locking down until we have enough people vaccinated', but I don't understand what their end game is.
Exactly. Even if NZ gets 100% people "fully vaxxed" it obviously won't significant curb transmission of the virus and they will have a massive spike in the virus which could overwhelm their hospitals just like Israel. I think the politicians don't have an end-game so are flailing, and it's a case of "Do something......ANYTHING!"
Whoa hey now, I don't think we know this for sure. Yes, I'm aware of the data coming out of Israel, but has not been the case universally in other countries with high vaccination rates.
Iceland had a high vaccination rate, but their hospitals did not get overwhelmed. Canada is in the same boat now. Rising infections sure, but not overwhelmed hospitals.
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Why do we think that breakthroughs in the virus in Israel despite high percentage of vaccinations won't apply to other countries? My point is that using vaccination as an end-point to stop lockdowns is likely futile and unnecessary.
Because that’s not what’s happening in other countries? In fact, the opposite is, so we can’t say that strategy is futile…
I'm mistaken then. Lockdowns for everyone!
Israel has also found that a booster significantly reduces hospitalizations/cases in general. Vaccination works well just not for as long as was hoped, though about the same duration as the flu vaccine so we shouldn't be surprised.
I don't disagree with that point. A lot of countries still seem to think they are going to prevent widespread infection. Vaccines or not, that doesn't seem realistic.
I'd say some countries can. NZ had like 5 months with no cases and a pretty much open country (closed borders but open within the country). The vast majority can't.
The rest of us need this to be like the flu - vaccinated can catch it but pretty mild, hopefully soon the number of unvaccinated/un-previously infected will be low enough to not utterly swamp the hospitals.
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When something sOUnDs cRAzY, it probably means there's more to the story.
NZ is obviously not going full fortress + repeated lockdowns + never COVID.
They have decided, since the opportunity presented itself, to maintain elimination until they can get the maximum population vaccinated as possible, followed by as flat a curve of COVID cases as reasonably feasible to spare the health system. The goal is to have one COVID wave with a low hospitalization peak across 2022 and then COVID will be endemic, like influenza.
For all the hot press Israel gets as a "vaccinated" country, they actually aren't. They were the earliest to get vaccines deployed, but they levelled off.
Better models for where NZ is headed are Denmark and Iceland.
Six beer limit for homes in hard lockdown
Residents in apartment blocks locked-down by NSW Health are having their alcohol deliveries policed as part of a policy to limit the number of drinks being consumed each day.
www.news.com.au
I would seriously die....in less than 48 hours. Alcoholism is the only thing that got me through our limited lockdown with even a shred of sanity......
To summarize: The government is literally going through people's home-deliveries to make sure they aren't getting too much alcohol. Any excess is "confiscated".
It may or may not be depending on a variety of factors. Israel data suggests a third dose gets you back to 95% effective at reducing infections. Will that last or just be a blip after getting the shot? Don’t know yet. Likewise Delta came and blew previous projections/plans to hell. Will their be a similarly infectious strain that evades immunity/vaccines in the future or is Delta it? Also unknown.
the short answer is the NZ plan of limiting entry until the populace is vaccinated will at worst lead to very few deaths, and at best lead to very few infections.
Australia is another story. It is unclear if widespread lockdowns will stop an already raging delta; which is just so damn infectious. I’d guess not; and it’s gonna be quite the reckoning in that country.
