A massive thing that not many are talking of is not just the lack of new workers and people coming to help grow business here but skilled people leaving. 

You might think after the infection control lapses that occured in hotel quarantine in Vic the clowns in charge might have learnt something, apparently not...

Victoria authorities reveal how Moonee Valley traffic controller mystery case caught virus

Contact tracers are confident they have now linked the traffic controller’s infection to a toilet block used by both people getting tested and staff at the site after it remained a mystery case for more than a week.

“Clearly there was (an infection control breach) because we’ve never seen any transmission of the virus at any of our testing stations over almost 18 months,” he said.“At Moonee Valley there was a breach of infection prevention control.“A number of parties using a toilet block, there was an overlap and that should not have occurred.“It has now been dealt with and dealt with at all of our other testing sites.”


https://vnexplorer.net/?#victoria-authorities-reveal-how-moonee-valley-traffic-controller-mystery-case-caught-virus-er2021478646.html

I work for a multi national company and a number of expats have gone home early because of the draconian lock downs here, with some taking massive pay cuts just to escape. same situation re replacements, hard to get in, lock downs and hard to travel so they dont want to come

100% agree, countries like UK are shifting to measuring "excess" deaths whereas we are still focusing on every death with covid (as opposed to death from covid) must be avoided.

I found it ironic that during the NSW press conference yesterday, the deaths of 2x 90 YO's due to current outbreak was lamented, yet they were both vaccinated (1 had single shot Astra and other was double shot Pfizer) so theoretically they had a high risk of dying anyway if we had hit our 80% target anyway, Dont even talk to me about the other "covid" death of a 90 YO woman in palliative care from a few days ago.

We are truly f#cked!!

Interestingly I heard on the radio, counterintuitively for me, that more money flowed around the economy because of no tourism. Obviously all the money people would have spent travelling was getting pumped into renos etc but what was interesting was that their is a nett outgoing of cash with Australians spending more overseas than tourists bring in here.

Did not think that was the case.

And the traffic controller was unvaccinated. How could they be so stupid?

but he was wearing a mask! hahahaaha

I heard on the economist podcast that if jobs growth for first 6 months of this year continues, by the time international borders are supposed to open July next year, unemployment rate would be below 1%.
If the jobs growth halves, it will be below 3%.

That's factoring into my thinking of moving o/s soon until borders reopen - it will be easy as to line up a job before I comeback especially as I'll be working part time in my field while o/s.

Big business will be a driving force to end lockdowns but I still think the fear of people will still make pollies keep the borders shut. Especially if the economy is not going backwards because of it. Unemployment falls, wages rise - people will be ok with it. And if we are continuously in and out of lockdowns next year who in their right minds would move here?

I've concluded that Gladys opening up before covid zero sometime in next 3 months is only hope we have. She will have experts, media and other state premiers threatening hell but she'll have business and a fair bit of the working class on her side. If she succeeds the other states will eventually follow, abandoning zero covid. If she doesnt we are doomed to lockdowns in 2022. That means no socceroos playing in oz before next world cup, no international sporting events in oz. Local sporting comps continually disrupted or cancelled etc etc etc

Gladys was a strong premier with a balanced response until about the time she went on leave in January. Since then there have been subtle at first changes creeping in and now NSW have the same template response as the other states. People are being critical for not locking down the entire state hard and early but QLD are bouncing around different LGAs with lockdowns and Vic have failed to put a ring of steel around Melbourne so its neither here nor there. NSW have the exact same response as the other states

If you take my comment about not letting the PFA run football thats pretty much the issue here. CHOs are there for health and health only. They couldnt care less about getting kids to school, getting people to work, running events etc.. Thats not their issue. They are there to speak for the interests of health and to milk as much as they can. They dont see the bigger picture (like the consequences of driving the virus into behind closed doors) nor do they have to

The job of the premier is to take that advice, along with the advice of the educational, economics, housing (etc) ministers and make a balanced decision. Its about saying "OK you can have your extra beds and ICU units, we'll regulate social distancing in public places, but you cant have face masks in every school or work place statewide"

Until the premiers do their job this will never be a balanced response. It is simply the 80 or 90 things we can all do to stop that one extra case and it will go on indefinitely. Preemptive restrictions, outbreak restrictions, post oubreak restrictions, restrictions, restrictions, restrictions

Best article I’ve read about the costs of Australia’s lockdowns: 
excess deaths due to cancer etc  - up 5.6%
economic costs - >$800 billion 
 Mental health costs - 

too long to post but highly recommended 
https://quillette.com/2021/08/09/covid-zero-was-it-worth-it/

Great read, he comments below were a highlight as well

It's been clear for quite a while that they aren't really aiming for Covid Zero. The lockdown is about containment until vaccination rates are sufficiently high.  All quite a gamble really

How high is sufficiently high mcjules? because it wont be the 80% the govt has set? If the target is not 90-95% isnt that approaching covid zero?

As I've ranted on about - you can have all the targets you want but until the govt pulls the trigger and opens international borders then we are going after covid zero. Thats why the PM goes on and on about lockdowns and why Mcgowan and Andrews demand that Gladys doesnt open up until NSw has zero cases

Your posts seemed more reasonable earlier but sheesh.
1. If NSW don't get to 80% then it'll be some date when the entire country have had the chance to get vaccinated. That is supply issues are gone and there are no issues with getting appointments, basically where America is right now.
2. 90-95% is not covid zero. 100% vaccinated is not covid zero
3. The stated policy is that it's recognized that getting back to covid zero quickly is the best way to keep the economy ticking over until we're sufficiently vaccinated to prevent too many hospitalisations and deaths. The window for that in NSW is pretty much done with, it's too reactive and thats why its more a "lets contain the spread until people are vaccinated" rather than "let's eliminate it". The national cabinet said they had a suppression strategy for months before finally saying covid zero is the best way to suppress it.

The virus is seeded now, a lot of good work has been undone by criminally poor management by the Feds and NSW government. I don't believe in lockdowns at all costs, however it was obvious that this pandemic wasn't going away for quite a while, even with it being well contained in Australia. There was ample time to:
1. Ensure special pandemic payments were in place for longer. People need money to live, cutting off their livelihoods without compensatory payments encourages people to go to their workplaces when they probably shouldn't. While no perfect and definitely rorted by some, Job Keeper was a key part of getting us through last year. To say in March, "no more job keeper we're past that stage" when no one had been vaccinated, new variants were circulating and we were heading towards winter was ridiculous
2. Find more appropriate quarantining facilities for return travellers from overseas, now is too late but 16 months ago was the time to put the plans into place. With appropriate planning we could have been a lot safer and not ended up as prison island.

Agree mcjules. In the wash up

1. Quarantine has been botched and never sorted 
2. vaccine acquisition and the privatisation of roll out is an utter disaster. The worst in the western world by the looks of it. 

Absolutely. I also think there's a few week sweet spot where they'll be able to run the election with all the good vibes of being able to say that lockdowns are over and how good are we before the reality of what that actual means hits people. I have no doubt they'll thread the eye of the needle on that one.

Lockdowns are clearly not working in NSW- we've had 6 weeks now, plenty of time to see this is the case.

The time is now to change tack, and considering we've seen in the southern states that even having 1/10 of the current active cases in NSW is enough to activate lockdowns, the goodwill of the public has well and truly worn out that we just have to wait until double or single digit case numbers before we get our freedoms back. This has not been a plus for public health overall, in fact it has been to the overall detriment of public health- and the economy.

It's escaped the net and I don't think it can be contained. Now we fucked up our rural regions for nothing but ego. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/14/nsw-covid-update-case-numbers-entire-state-in-lockdown-as-premier-gladys-berejiklian-warns-this-is-literally-a-war

"The president of the NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association said the statewide lockdown was needed because the state’s health system “can no longer manage the alarming increase in case numbers” and “the piecemeal approach … isn’t working”.

“Doctors from across NSW are exhausted and concerned for their community,” the AMA’s NSW president, Dr Danielle McMullen, said. “Our already fragile rural and regional health system will be unable to cope with increases in cases.

”Outside of Sydney, there is acute concern for the worsening outbreak in the communities of Dubbo and Walgett, where local health services are racing to increase vaccinations and testing.

The region – with a significant Aboriginal population identified as a priority group for vaccination 18 months ago – now has a total of 42 cases.

The chief executive of the Western Local Health District, Scott MacFarlane, said the “vast majority” of the new cases were Aboriginal people, including children.

Vaccination rates among the region’s Indigenous community is barely half that of the general population.

Less than 20% of the Aboriginal population aged 16 and over in western NSW had received one dose of any vaccine, and only 8% were fully vaccinated, said Naccho, the peak body for the nation’s Aboriginal medical services.

More broadly across the region, 37% of all people have had at least one dose, and 16% of all people are fully vaccinated."

Never had a case where I live in over 400 days and we're in lockdown.

Cheers Aunty Glad.

Imagine if Dan Andrews got the Deputy premier to announce a statewide lockdown in two hours via a tweet, a feed hours after a press conference. 

Nobody can deny the double standards.

Thats true for a lot of places in regional Victoria:
. 25 weeks of home schooling
. Over 12 months of work places at 75% capacity or less
. 12 months of face mask laws including 5-6 months at all times leaving the house
.  4-5 months of stage 4 plus lockdown
. 6 lockdowns in total

Going to be a tough 7 days

In case anyone is wondering how we got the 1M doses from Poland, also note the date of the article - SloMo staying true to form

22:48 13 July 2021Post by: WBJ

Poland will sell its stock of vaccines to other countries

https:/wbj.pl/poland-will-sell-its-stock-of-vaccines-to-other-countries/post/131347

Nice find. So Poland has a population of 37m but purchase almost 100m. It's selling around 70m in excess because there is declining interest in the public (~47% vaccinated). Why didn't we buy surplus as well?

I think Israel was also selling around 700k of excess vaccine which went to South Korea. 

Feels like we're scrounging around in the markets for a sale now...

As a healthy male in my 30s, I've been the lowest priority for vaccines (and I get why). So I was finally able to get Astra on Friday - spent Friday night to Sunday morning with a severe fever (along with many other symptoms); only to wake up to find out that tomorrow morning I can get Pfizer because us Western Sydney lockdown LGAs are a concern and young people are now a priority. Wish there was some heads up - I could have got the vaccine that is the safer/recommended option for my age and avoided a horrible weekend of sickness.

What annoys me in this is that Poland (among many EU members) buys nearly 40m excess vaccines but the scumbag EU weren't allowing vaccine exports to Australia that we had legally purchased out of distribution concerns for its own members.

That pissed me off too but I don't think they do that anymore. There were two shipments to Australia which were held off. I don't think it severely impacted our rollout. We underordered to begin with. 

The EU did not stop Australia from buying pzifer. The LNP stopped Australia from buying pzifer. 

Wasn't really the point I was making. Both what you said and I said are true.