This story about Boris and his handling of the covid thing is amazing.

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/uk-politics/boris-johnsons-former-chief-adviser-dominic-cummings-slams-him-in-parliamentary-hearing/news-story/be90c51f9253cee29e6b9e583bc06590

It still blows my mind that people are arguing against our response.

Lol. Your response is just as tokenostic

Hotel quarantine with a well over 99.99% effectiveness rate has limited deaths and viral activity. Social distancing and contact tracing has done the rest. THere is no need for anything else

Whether the states overreact or not doesnt make a difference in the scheme of things. Lockodwn doesnt reverse transmission. If there were 15-20 cases uncovered during lockdown then there could be an arguement lockdown may have prevented it from being 50 or even 100. But when not a single case turns up outside of contacts already in isolation then its needless

If Australia doesnt outgrow this tokenistic response then some of the states are going to fall behind when international border open, particularly if some do and some dont

It seems the older you are the less severe the flu like symptoms, or at least that's been the report back from my wife's work. Over 90% of the lab have had the jab voluntarily and only a couple of ladies in their late 20s really had more than a day or two of feeling fluey...

Bloke I play soccer with said he got it in the morning and they said by 10 o'clock he'd be feeling shithouse. He said he had fevers and chills but just pumped ibrofuren and Panadol and was ok.

My Mrs got the AZ a month ago and waiting for 2nd jab... you'll be fine... sore arm for a day or so apparently and that's it....

Getting mine next week.  Had to wait 2 weeks after getting the flu shot.  AZ baby.

If I don't post after the 25th May then put me up in the RIP thread.

The tokenistic response that has limited deaths and allowed us as an economy to return to normality much quicker than most other places. 

Moderna announcing that they've signed up to send Australia 25 million doses, with 10m to come this year and the rest next year.

Hey there's a surprise. A 3 day lockdown and masks to combat a single case. Followed no doubt by 11 days of mask wearing to cap off the 14 day cycle

It seems Australia is never going to move beyond this tokenistic template response

My son's wife is a nurse. she has had the vaccine - he hasn't. One of my daughters is a nurse, no idea when she is likely to get it.       

Our neighbour who both my wife and i have know for 20 years,  first 10 was mutual friendship,  she is 33, no health issues,  no family with health issues, she doesn't, nor does any of her family work in health care.  She got a pfizer jab a week ago. 
She just got a call one day to get it and there you go. Very strange, she didn't even think to question it at the time because last few weeks had been so confusing as to who's turn it was. 

Not better than the Pfizer one but it's fine. I'd take it too if it went through TGA approvals. 
My sister lives in the UAE and has had one of the Chinese vaccines, no issues with that one either.

There's also the case that because the vaccine is being distributed in multi-dose vials and that once they've been taken out of cold storage they have to be used, if there's any left over they're supposed to give it to whomever is available to prevent wastage.

Old mate on the radio this morning. 'We're relatively unaffected, we don't need to hurry, what's the rush etc etc'.

Ask the people at the Byron Bay Bluefest or the next event or lockdown why we need to hurry up and get our finger pulled out.

I was prepared to give Scomo the benefit of the doubt but my patience is wearing out.

This other flog on the radio today 'nobody would want the Russian vaccine'.  And exactly why mate?  If it's safe, and our TGA passes it and they can get it here quicker than the Pfizer and AZ one then who gives a shit.  By all accounts it's actually better than both the Pfizer and AZ one. 

Partner visited a colleague yesterday and was surprised to learn she has been vaccinated. This is a 25 year old German woman who is completely healthy but her pregnant friend was allowed to nominate two other people regardless of status to get vaccinated. I feel the sooner anyone and everyone gets it the better we'll mostly be. I do wish Germany had targeted the 20-50 age bracket with 30% of the available vaccines to balance it out a bit.

Yeah family of health officials will get vacced as well.

-PB

My new boss just got a pfizer shot on the weekend because his wife is a nurse in Canberra. He is 44, no health issues and no reason to jump the queue. I guess this is probably happening everywhere around the country but when stories like this start appearing in the news, the shit will hit the fan politically.

One of the experts in the ABC news today saying we wont open our borders now til May-June next year. Yet I can see people being vaccinated this year like my boss being able to travel o/s when he wants with a vaccine passport and no HQ on the way home.  Am I just jealous or do others think this is going to cause problems.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-12/victoria-pauses-covid-19-astrazeneca-rollout-vaccine/100062620

"front of the queue"

The problem is, he can say anything and get away with it. 

Scott Morrison....'I'm not blaming the EU"...then goes on for ten minutes blaming the EU.

Interesting the EU has come out and said they haven't blocked the doses

More spin that we "don't need mass vaccination sites because because we are rolling out the system effectively"
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2021/04/06/mass-vacination-australia/
The truth is that we don't have the supply yet to do it, why not be honest about it? 
The only way we're going to get the sort of numbers vaccinated we need will be by using this sort of methods. SA is already using the Wayville showgrounds to mass vaccinate emergency service workers as part of phase 1B so its clearly going to be part of the strategy.

I'm sure the fact that it was in the anti-vax capital of Australia weighed on the experts' decision. Much more chance of people signing in for contact tracing and obeying social distancing rules at a sporting event in Melbourne than a music festival in Byron.

Definitely the right call at the time. 

I still think the reaction by the NSW Government in shutting down Bluesfest, was quite contained and targeted. It wasn't a State-wide shutdown, but something focused on a region which they had some unknowns.

I dont think you understood the point. I was saying if the Coronavirus didnt have any noticeable impact and could operate entirely behind the scenes without being noticed then there wouldnt be an issue. But that isnt the case. 20% of people will experience definitively noticable symptoms and 5% will be hospitalised. Thats not something that can operate under the surface

The fact is if there is an outbreak we'll know pretty quickly when the numbers are small and manageable

Usually your posts on this matter are well-argued even if I disagree, but that's outrageous. We all saw the mass graves in other parts of the world. We've got almost 3 million reasons to worry about it.

I understand your point. But sporting events are also nationally attended. The Blues Festival carried no more risk than any sporting event

The thing about the Coronavirus is that if its entirely invisible with no symptoms then what are we worried about? The reality is at least 20% will experience rough symptoms and 5% will need to be hospitalised. We are also testing front line workers, the only real source, every 1-3 days. This virus has always been discovered within 7-10 days of somebody being infected. Even last year in Victoria they knew early June about the infections from the end of May

If somebody walks into the hospital tomorrow in South Australia with the virus, you are right, you won't know the source. But you can contact trace around them and isolate their secondary and tertiary contacts and snuff out that source. If you then find out they were in NSW at a festival, then you can issue alerts for everybody at the festival, and test around them. A break in the chain doesnt mean 100,000 cases we don't know of

NSW managed to get to 200 cases in total and it was never too big to manage. Even when they reached about 400-500 last year in winter it was never too big. We're not like the other countries where every day they are loading vehicle after vehicle of infected people into their country and letting them disperse. We have a single branch stemming from one patient zero and a natural 0.3 reproduction rate. The Ruby Princess was national but even that capped out at about 800

Victoria were the exception, not the rule. Our shorelines are shut and the impact of the initial 4000 people we let into our country has long been eradicated. Everything from this point on is pissing out spot fires. If we acknowledge that this virus is an evolving beast then its also critical our responses change too as our circumstances do. Trying to beat this to death with lockdowns and facemasks has seen 5 or 6 needless "precautionary" lockdowns in as many months. And we have 6 months to go before ~70% of people are vaccinated. It just means no resources when there is a real outbreak, a different disaster, or compliance fatigue

Everything from here on out should be managed with SMS alerts for impacted regions and isolation / testing of key contacts. Australia discreetly switched to an elimination approach which has proven to be a failure and its time we shifted back

BluesFest attracts people from all round the country so region to region transmission is a real risk. The point is not the length of time of contact (yes that is a consideration in whether you do get infected). The point is that it makes it virtually impossible to contact trace.  

This virus doesnt operate like a video game. Its not like one piece touches another piece and then you have an infection

Look at the sheer number of venues infected people visit, yet we dont see 10-20 people per venue infected which is what we would see if that were the case. In fact the WHO even said planes are safe, its what happens when you get off the plane. The reason why Adelaide overreacted last year was because they thought it had been transmitted via a pizza box which was a game changer, but that was false information

Early estimates were 15 minutes of close contact for 2 hours and even with the new variants we still dont have a super bug. They still havent reported how 20 people walked into an alcohol store and ended up infected. Italy's main infection came from a football match in Spain where there was lots of hugging etc... Weddings and parties are also a primary infection source (Yet Australia are still targeting shops and public transport, as well as using face masks as its primary tool)

Big events are an issue because they arent localised and involve lots of strangers. The absolute worse thing for this virus is region to region transmission. But big events when done COVID safe (break up families, no mosh pit, social distancing etc...) in a country with minimal to no infection it just means at worse we have a few seeded outbreaks like we saw in NSW last year. Hit it with a team of contact tracers and its gone after 4-5 weeks

I would argue sporting events are worse because you are seated next to a stranger for more than 2 hours breathing in the same oxygen. But as I said, we dont have any real cases and the damage done in the event of a case is just a few weeks of being on high alert

NSW last week managed to get as close to pre-COVID conditions as any state has managed and set up a framework for the next 12 months at least. Every thing from that point should have been about numbers hospitalised and isolating 2nd or 3rd tier contacts in the event of an outbreak. Other countries are being overwhelmed by this because they have repeat sources of infection and an exponentially high number of cases that stems from infections being seeded nationwide for several months. We arent there yet

I have to disagree. I love Bluesfest but you are comparing apples and oranges. A sporting event where you sit in one seat is akin to going and watching something like Hamilton. Cleaning of the venue is done between performances. Bluesfest has thousands of people wandering from stage to stage continually.

Feel sorry for the businesses that were looking for the last big week before the quieter season.