In the context it was presented in (in that media watch clip) it was presented as if to say "Look at stupid Coach Cottager (TM) saying COVID isn't dangerous and serious- here is the reality!" When any idiot can see the patient "proving" their argument isn't exactly a John Everyman. Gladys saying "You could wake up in the morning perfectly fine and end the day in ICU" (or words to that effect) is another example of this alarmism.

Moralising the opposition to lockdowns is up to you, categorising thousands of peaceful protestors who want their freedom of movement and association restored by the actions of a few is blatant dishonesty.

I protested today, I am not a piece of shit, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am an educated, productive member of society. I and the people around me were peaceful and our requests are simple. I want my freedom returned. I and most other people behave sensibly in the face of evidence and instruction. We've had a year and a half to prepare to reopen, if not today then when? 40,000 cases a day in the UK, and 60 deaths. That's a death rate of 0.15%. If we're locking down for that we'll never open up again.

Well he is "Joe everyman" mate. He's 50, overweight without being genuinely fat or obese. He probably represents a significant proportion of the general population.

Protesting is just fucking stupid and the only difference it makes is a negative one. It is nothing but selfish, destructive and detrimental

If somebody doesnt like lockdown then there are proper and legal avenues to go through like with everything else in life

I dont like masks (people may not have noticed) but I still wear them and still obey the rules because any success in this outbreak requires us all doing as instructed and all being on the same page. The viral activity we are seeing is the literal result of people deciding to do different. Whatever the response teams have decided, thats the path way out. Nothing more. No matter how popular, no matter how rational, following those instructions is the only way to get things back on track

I come on here to vent and release energy and thats my way of dealing with the mental stress and anguish. Its like going into a dark cave and yelling as loud as I can. There are numbers people can ring and services people can access to help what is a difficult and unprecedented time

What an embarrassment

I understand where you're coming from. At the same time, yesterday didn't happen in a vacuum. Granted you have the anti-vax/ alternative crowd who saw yesterday as their time to shine, but there's also a lot of people who are genuinely pushed to the edge at the moment- financially, emotionally, mentally. In NSW at least, they are not being presented with any clear, tangible incentive for "doing the right thing" beyond an indefinite lockdown and accepting whatever crumbs from the table are given to them. Without a tangible point of end (or at least re-consideration) then the spectre of being locked down indefinitely- but for longer- just isn't enough of a deterrent for many.

Statistically, I disagree that he represents the "Joe everyman". If somebody like that is the norm in this country then (virus or not) that's a sad indictment on the state of our nation's health.

I agree that the vaccination program has been a stuff up but the logisitcs of it meant it was never going to be done by the end of October at the earliest even if it was absolutely perfect. How would an end of October vaccination program have prevented a lockdown in June? Its the same as these facilities which are going to take 6 months to build to stop one case a month, but wouldnt have prevented the NSW outbreak which was a limo driver. These are just scapegoats of a bigger problem

Australia doesnt have a plan for today and even NSW have started to go down the hard route. Thats why there is lockdown. No plan

When Australia was first in lockdown there was a breakdown of numbers so people could study the data and know exactly what was happening, instead of panicking over a single daily total. Thats what we need to revert back to. IMO it should be this:
. No risk / Grey - person in hotel quarantine or monitored facility
. Low risk / Green - person acquired the virus after being put into isolation (ie- household contact or exposure site who developed it later)
. Medium risk / Yellow - person directed to test and isolate and was discovered to have the virus before orders (ie- exposure site and other contact tracing)
. High risk / Red - person tested on own accord and was discovered to have virus (ie- not found by contact tracers)

If you look at NSW cases yesterday there were 12 Green, 16 Yellow and 1 Red. That means contact tracers were able to find and isolate 96% of the viral activity. So why is the city in lockdown if contact tracers are on top of things? Like I said, there is always going to be a bit of chasing the tail but its hardly an unmanageable outbreak

Australia needs thresholds like no lockdown until there are a minimum of 25% red cases and 50 total (excluding Grey). And lockdown ends when that drops to 5% for 3 consecutive days. A secondary threshold of % of people hospitalised

Face masks, the favourite of epidemiologists, once again have proven to be useless. Nothing should be legally regulated when there is no standard. Everything in our response to date has a standard. 14 days, 1.5 meters, testing approval, vaccine approval, PPE, venue limits and spaces, etc... Yet with face masks its just nans tired and worn cloth tokenistically applied. And thats what NSW led with for the most contagious variant the country has seen. Even Gladys had to spend 2 press conferences explaining to people that a face mask doesnt replace the other systems which is what typically happens when thats the only thing being pushed, and pushed the hardest

Everything in our response is just political squabbling and preferences instead of looking at the data in light of the suppression approach everybody seems to have forgotten we have. NSW should not be in lockdown

Protesting is just fucking stupid and the only difference it makes is a negative one. It is nothing but selfish, destructive and detrimental

If somebody doesnt like lockdown then there are proper and legal avenues to go through like with everything else in life

I dont like masks (people may not have noticed) but I still wear them and still obey the rules because any success in this outbreak requires us all doing as instructed and all being on the same page. The viral activity we are seeing is the literal result of people deciding to do different. Whatever the response teams have decided, thats the path way out. Nothing more. No matter how popular, no matter how rational, following those instructions is the only way to get things back on track

I come on here to vent and release energy and thats my way of dealing with the mental stress and anguish. Its like going into a dark cave and yelling as loud as I can. There are numbers people can ring and services people can access to help what is a difficult and unprecedented time

What an embarrassment

If we were to apply Bluebird's test for cases, what would the situation be?

Moralising the opposition to lockdowns is up to you, categorising thousands of peaceful protestors who want their freedom of movement and association restored by the actions of a few is blatant dishonesty.

I protested today, I am not a piece of shit, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am an educated, productive member of society. I and the people around me were peaceful and our requests are simple. I want my freedom returned. I and most other people behave sensibly in the face of evidence and instruction. We've had a year and a half to prepare to reopen, if not today then when? 40,000 cases a day in the UK, and 60 deaths. That's a death rate of 0.15%. If we're locking down for that we'll never open up again.

I'd wager that on the balance of probabilities, lockdowns have done more damage to Australia and Australians than covid would have, what hard evidence do we have that lockdowns have had a lesser toll than the virus? Irreperable social, psychological and economic abuse has been enacted on all of us.

Anyway obviously too few of us went today, our message is muddled and misrepresented. I want my freedom and autonomy back. I'm not going to act like a dickhead, I didn't before and I won't now. I do want to be able to work and continue to support my community, simple things I've been denied by my government for our benefit.

If that's too much, then I guess I don't belong.

Plenty of rocket scientists at those protests. Here's one.  https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/channel-7-reporter-robert-ovadia-bombarded-by-sydney-antilockdown-protesters/news-story/32b4b24a0fdc2cc7dd40d247516f2e5c

Plenty of rocket scientists at those protests. Here's one.  https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/channel-7-reporter-robert-ovadia-bombarded-by-sydney-antilockdown-protesters/news-story/32b4b24a0fdc2cc7dd40d247516f2e5c

Moralising the opposition to lockdowns is up to you, categorising thousands of peaceful protestors who want their freedom of movement and association restored by the actions of a few is blatant dishonesty.

I protested today, I am not a piece of shit, I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am an educated, productive member of society. I and the people around me were peaceful and our requests are simple. I want my freedom returned. I and most other people behave sensibly in the face of evidence and instruction. We've had a year and a half to prepare to reopen, if not today then when? 40,000 cases a day in the UK, and 60 deaths. That's a death rate of 0.15%. If we're locking down for that we'll never open up again.

I'd wager that on the balance of probabilities, lockdowns have done more damage to Australia and Australians than covid would have, what hard evidence do we have that lockdowns have had a lesser toll than the virus? Irreperable social, psychological and economic abuse has been enacted on all of us.

Anyway obviously too few of us went today, our message is muddled and misrepresented. I want my freedom and autonomy back. I'm not going to act like a dickhead, I didn't before and I won't now. I do want to be able to work and continue to support my community, simple things I've been denied by my government for our benefit.

If that's too much, then I guess I don't belong.

We are 18 months on and lockdowns seem to be the only thing that works

I hate the bullshit of comparing cases to deaths, that's not all that happens. My wife's best mate is a physio in a hospital in London, she got covid in September last year,  she's 34, fit, no underlying health issues.  She was hospitalised for 3 weeks,  lost her sense of smell and taste for 4 months,  she still has issues breathing, gets exhausted easily and still hasnt been able to return to work full time. 

She said she has had heaps of work colleagues and friends that have had covid,  some had no symptoms, alot had what was described as a solid cold, others bad flu, and she knows quite a few who still have the effects 9-12 months on, not to mention those patients she worked with that were compromised with age or health conditions that actually died. 

I know that I wouldn't want to be getting sick with something that effects me 12 months on and then hear morons says oh its only a 0.15% death rate. 

We are 18 months on and lockdowns seem to be the only thing that works, simply because morons in Canberra thought it wasn't a race.  

It's a fuckin race. 

How will we cope when fully vaccinated people start dying here

Rates of double-jabbed people in hospital will grow – but that does not mean Covid vaccines are failing

Several factors, including the portion of those at highest risk among the double-vaccinated and antibody levels, account for the data

But Covid jabs are not a perfect shield. They slow the spread of the virus, help prevent disease, and reduce the risk of dying. They do not bring all this to an end.

In the months ahead many thousands of people will be in hospital with Covid. What may seem more troubling is that ever more will have received two vaccination doses.

Public Health England data from early July bears this out. Of 257 deaths from confirmed Delta variant infections between February and late June, only two of the 26 deaths in those under 50 were double jabbed. That compares with 116, or more than half, of the 231 deaths in the over 50s.

“If fully vaccinated, the risk of being hospitalised falls by about 90%,” said Prof David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, at Cambridge University. “But it doesn’t disappear, and as a large proportion of the highest risk people are now vaccinated it’s inevitable they will start to form the majority of the people with Covid in hospital, particularly as most of the unvaccinated people are young and therefore at low risk. Indeed, being young reduces the risk even more than being vaccinated.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/22/rates-of-double-jabbed-people-in-hospital-will-grow-but-that-does-not-mean-covid-vaccines-are-failing

but but every political leader and CHO tells us that vaccinations will end lockdowns!!!!

Vaccines are second to face masks and the key to ending lockdowns as far as CHOs are concerned. Grab a cloth, knit on a few straps, make some kind of effort to wear it, no more Delta variant

Not just CHO's, I had a really interesting discussion with a Covid-nazi about masks and their benefits last week, he was fully on board and wore his everywhere. When I asked him how often he washed his mask and what precautions he took when handling it during the day (ie eating) he couldn't answer. Considering majority of people are the same, including everyone on here I would guess, may as well replace your mask with a safety blanket as they provide the same amount of placebo

But the vaccination rates are interesting. The PM said within two weeks the Doherty Institute will release the modelling of the magic numbers of what % vaccinated we need to open up. I'm sure it will be significantly higher than 60-70% and a number we are unlikely to reach within 6 months. I expect this number will become the biggest political football of our time. Different premiers will say its too high or too low. There will be massive disagreement within political parties. There will be as many different expert opinions as their are experts but I predict most of them will say the numbers are too low and will lead to deaths. The Business lobby will scream blue murder as saying they are unachievable and this will cause incalculable economic damage. The media will be split between running two doomsday scenarios: hospitals overrun when we open up vs economy destroyed if we stay closed down. If you think we are in a political quagmire of warring politicians and confused and feed up public now, you havent seen nothing yet.  Have your popcorn ready for the day those figures are released.