The rhetoric needs to change. And I’ll give the NSW premier points for pushing that.
Realistically, we just need to stop testing. If someone presents to hospital, test and treat. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time and resources.
At some point that will occur. At this point COVID ain't nothing new. Those of us who are high risk know to take extra precautions. At the same time, we've got vaccines to prevent severe illness and a number of excellent treatments that make the prospect of hospitalization a very remote possibility indeed.
As Donald Trump once famously said, "if you test more, you'll get more cases!" The question now isn't whether or not you got infected with COVID, something that we all must accept will happen to all of us at some point, it's how we deal with the illness. Based on the data we've got so far, those of us fully vaccinated are
unlikely to be hospitalized from Omicron. And those of us
lucky enough to get a booster may not even notice we got Omicron.
No state or country should "accept deaths" they way you are saying, although deaths were part of the pandemic. Yes, COVID will come to Western Australia, we will wear masks, positive cases will initially keep increasing, and some vaccinated people will become ill. I certainly do not expect there will be masses of "deaths coming in"! Not even sure what you mean by that?
Will more people die from COVID in Australia? That's a certainty. What matters is what we've done to minimize that risk. Remember, even during the harsh lockdowns of Melbourne and Sydney there was still death, sometimes in the double digits every day. At the end of the day it's all a balance between risk and recovering from the economic, social and other harm caused by these lockdowns. Remember, many Australians die each and every year from the flu and we don't lock the country down when that happens.
I agree. I think the narrative is changing and only an overwhelming number of hospitalisations / deaths would cause that date to change at this stage. A lot of what is being said now is simply doubling down on things said earlier.
The one wildcard would be if we see many young children hospitalised or worse. I believe the community would not accept that, and restrictions would follow.
The big wildcard has always been a crazy variant that arrives. Hopefully we don't encounter that, or we get a vaccine that puts us ahead of the threat. The science so far seems to suggest that new variants will favour greater spread over increased severity, particularly if future variants are based off of Omicron. If this trend continues we may be in the very fortunate situation where future variants render nothing more than sniffles for most, which is the case for many garden variety rhinoviruses.
Haven't seen many posts about AFFers flying into Tassie despite the record number of flights since the borders opened, two of our team flew in from Melbourne, vaccination status and covid neg test were not requested to be sighted by bio sec Tas staff - they just had to scan their QR code 'permit'. Just an FYI.
So they aren't screening every flight - which isn't a surprise, as they communicated as much.
I've flown a number of times now to Melbourne and there is no vaccination check either. The real risk of having an unvaccinated person on the flight is they end up getting really sick and costing the health care service in the state they're travelling to money. The vaccines do help slow transmission but it's a drop in the bucket compared to how infectious Delta and this new Omicron variant are.
I made it to QLD (via road). 100% of cars being checked. I had to show border pass, vax certificate and test results. Wasn’t too busy though so only took about 10 minutes.
Hopefully the border officers were friendly. Did they ask you where you were coming from? Did you need to show your passport and Queensland visa?
All this bureaucracy, the millions spent and 18+ months in the making and they can't even send an e-mail right.
Any wonder distrust of government fosters over time.
Try billions! New South Wales
has easily spent billions on testing, track and trace, and still can't get it right. Meanwhile UPS can track and trace a parcel several continents over for next to nothing and have been doing it for many decades now. Tells you something about the efficiency of government, eh?!
At this point, apart from Tas its all academic anyway. May as well make them all "extreme" until Feb 5. At least wouldnt have to endure any press conferences then!
In fairness though, I suspect there are many South Australians and Queenslanders who are excited to travel to mystical Western Australia. They've got their passports renewed, applied for their Visa and are willing to quarantine for 2 weeks.
-RooFlyer88
www.abc.net.au
