Covid 19

[Mewp]

I'm vaccinated so don't really care about those who don't wish to be. The virus will not be controlled by vaccination but vaccination protects those of us who are vaccinated from falling gravely ill, (in most cases). So if I come in contact with the virus, either from a vaccinated or non vaccinated carrier I have the best chance of survival. When the majority are protected we will see the economy very slowly open up again and good luck to those who refuse to have the jab. That said, I feel for those who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated.

[nomadpete]

My rant....

Our federal government seems to have failed us. Early on they assured us that they had "secured" millions more doses of vaccines than we needed. We all thought that our government had got us the vaccines.

 

Now we find that they played us.

 

"Secured" didn't mean those doses were on their way, didn't mean we had a delivery date, didn't even mean they exist.

 

So far there hasn't been a politician brave enough to tell us:-

 

"This virus is here to stay. Forever. As such we can expect everyone to come in contact with it sometime in your life. Each of us can take the significant chance of serious illness causing permanent damage (or death). Or we can choose to have a vaccine that has been shown to massively reduce the effects of covid-19 when we catch it."

 

So far, the PR has tried to make out that covid is just a passing thing that will go away after a couple of annoying lockdowns. And that's just not true.

 

(Responses on the 'Off Topic" forum please)

Edited August 7, 2021 by nomadpete
Proof read it after posting!

[turboplanner]

18 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

My rant....

Our federal government seems to have failed us. Early on they assured us that they had "secured" millions more doses of vaccines than we needed. We all thought that our government had got us the vaccines.

 

Now we find that they played us.

 

"Secured" didn't mean those doses were on their way, didn't mean we had a delivery date, didn't even mean they exist.

 

So far there hasn't been a politician brave enough to tell us:-

 

"This virus is here to stay. Forever. As such we can expect everyone to come in contact with it sometime in your life. Each of us can take the significant chance of serious illness causing permanent damage (or death). Or we can choose to have a vaccine that has been shown to massively reduce the effects of covid-19 when we catch it."

 

So far, the PR has tried to make out that covid is just a passing thing that will go away after a couple of annoying lockdowns. And that's just not true.

 

(Responses on the 'Off Topic" forum please)

 

[turboplanner]

36 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

My rant....

Our federal government seems to have failed us. Early on they assured us that they had "secured" millions more doses of vaccines than we needed. We all thought that our government had got us the vaccines.

Now we find that they played us.

So far there hasn't been a politician brave enough to tell us:-

 

 

The Prime Minister told us around April last year that orders had been placed for Pfizer, AstraZeneca and I think a third brand for about three times the size of our population. At that time no vaccines had been developed, so as much as that seemed expensive, it allowed for some development failures, and TGA problems. At that time he estimated from Manufacturers advice, and the advice of the TGA who required a full test programme, that the rollout in Australia would start in March this year.

The rollout started in March:

I had my first AZ vaccination on March 31, waited the 12 weeks and had the second one on June 23, but noticed a lot of people weren't bothering to vaccinate.

 

So you could have had a vaccination right on the original timeline if you'd booked in like I did.

[cscotthendry]

The vaccine was never promoted as preventing us from getting the disease. It was always a mechanism to prepare our bodies' immune system to deal with it and reduce the effects.

Each year, I get a flu shot and fairly regularly, I still get the flu. As more and more people get resistance to COVID by either vaccine or by having the disease, this virus will become like most of the other viruses that we are exposed to and get infections from.

The COVID-19 virus is from the same family of viruses that cause the common cold. It mutates like the cold virus and we will still have to deal with it going forward. It is here to stay. But hopefully soon, its significance an lethality will become like the common cold and flu viruses, and then life can go on as before.

What rankles me is that the people who refuse to get vaccinated are walking petri dishes for new and possibly more infectious and lethal strains of the virus and that is keeping the danger level high and as a result, the governments are keeping things locked down to try to stop the spread and reduce the contagion. I also object to paying (through my taxes) for intensive care for these people when they get seriously ill from a disease they could have done something about.

 

[nomadpete]

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

So you could have had a vaccination right on the original timeline if you'd booked in like I did.

Maybe you could. But at that time, I couldn't. Neither could any of my 4 extended families members, due to lack of supply available.

Yet all the while, SFM and premiers are constantly telling public to rush out and get their vaccine. Yes, it's true that availability has improved a lot recently, but there is a lot of urgent reallocating going on, that has caused cancellation of vaccinations that had been arranged last fortnight. That indicates that we still don't have enough available for everyone to simply line up and get a jab.

[turboplanner]

57 minutes ago, nomadpete said:

Maybe you could. But at that time, I couldn't. Neither could any of my 4 extended families members, due to lack of supply available.

Yet all the while, SFM and premiers are constantly telling public to rush out and get their vaccine. Yes, it's true that availability has improved a lot recently, but there is a lot of urgent reallocating going on, that has caused cancellation of vaccinations that had been arranged last fortnight. That indicates that we still don't have enough available for everyone to simply line up and get a jab.

Problem is now you're competing with about 19 million others who were leaving vaccination centres empty a couple of months ago.

[walrus]

Latest rumour is 28 days lockdown - Victoria

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by walrus

[aro]

It seems very early to make those sort of predictions, so my guess is that the rumour was made up.

[spacesailor]

SWAP ..

spacesailor

 

[Flightrite]

Knowing the grubby head lunatics reputation 28 days would be conservative! It's not so much the duration but the threat that there will be more for as long as the foreseeable future!

[aro]

Keep watching NSW to see why we are grateful for the efforts of Dan Andrews. I have no pleasure in that observation, I genuinely fear what the next few months will look like in Australia - Sydney in particular.

[pmccarthy]

I think the horse has bolted this time.

[NT5224]

Hi folks

 

This morning over brekkie  I read an interesting article on the BBC website that cited British and US studies that found that there were now  roughly equal proportions ( if you weighted population sizes) of  fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people in hospital for severe illness arising from Delta Strain COVID. I believe the proportion was about 34%.

 

The conclusions they drew were twofold. First,  full vaccination doesn't  protect you from severe illness in the Delta strain and second,  vaccination doesn't reduce transmissibility with Delta COVID.

 

All this was couched in very scientific language so I may have misunderstood.  

 

I strongly believe everybody needs to be vaccinated. I get my second AZ next week, but these studies are not confidence inspiring!

 

Cheers 

 

Alan

[tillmanr]

Tonight the total deaths for the current outbreak in NSW were shown and the statement was made that none of the deceased were vaccinated.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I was impressed that AZ was $4 a shot and Pfizer was $40. This was because pfizer was making billions from the stuff but AZ was not.

Personally, I want rewards for people who have had the shots, like exemptions from lockdowns. 

[turboplanner]

16 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

I was impressed that AZ was $4 a shot and Pfizer was $40. This was because pfizer was making billions from the stuff but AZ was not.

Personally, I want rewards for people who have had the shots, like exemptions from lockdowns. 

They'll probably leave you till last, and if you survive six burly guards will come along, sit on you and a great big Russian woman will bring her arm back then throw the syringe into your arm up to the hilt, then realise she forgot to put any vaccine in it, so it will all start again, then you'll remember you are allergic to peppers, and they'll try to get the vaccine out of you again.

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by turboplanner

[Jerry_Atrick]

4 hours ago, NT5224 said:

Hi folks

 

This morning over brekkie  I read an interesting article on the BBC website that cited British and US studies that found that there were now  roughly equal proportions ( if you weighted population sizes) of  fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people in hospital for severe illness arising from Delta Strain COVID. I believe the proportion was about 34%.

 

The conclusions they drew were twofold. First,  full vaccination doesn't  protect you from severe illness in the Delta strain and second,  vaccination doesn't reduce transmissibility with Delta COVID.

 

All this was couched in very scientific language so I may have misunderstood.  

 

I strongly believe everybody needs to be vaccinated. I get my second AZ next week, but these studies are not confidence inspiring!

 

Cheers 

 

Alan

Hi Alan,

 

Do you have a link - I was on the BBC website and couldn't find the article.

 

Over here, the reports are the vaccine is less effective against Delta, but there is evidence it is still quite effective: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/delta-variant-vaccine-covid-uk-b1898190.html

"The vaccines have been shown to provide good protection against severe disease and death from Delta, especially after two doses, but there is less data on whether vaccinated people can still transmit it to others.

"Some initial findings ... indicate that levels of virus in those who become infected with Delta having already been vaccinated may be similar to levels found in unvaccinated people," PHE said in a statement.""

This indicates that the vaccines still reduce the effects, but may be as transmissible as without the vaccine.

 

This article states the effectiveness against the delta variant is less effective, but inline: https://inews.co.uk/news/health/delta-variant-patients-hospitalised-covid-strain-fully-vaccinated-1139140

 

Have to remember with these stats (55% unvaccinated, and 35% vaccinated) is against an increasingly higher proportion of the population that is vaccinated; therefore if greater than 50% of the population is vaccinated (which it is), there will be statistical skew because of the comparison of different numbers of the population. In other words, there are many more people here vaccinated than not; therefore the number of hospitlaised is likely to be over-represented. To correct this, they should state the numbers should state that 35% of the hispitalised cases represents x% of the vaccinated population; while 55% of the hospitalised cases represents y% of the unvaccinated population. And probably further qualify it by age group, as the under 40s have a lower proportion of their population vaccinated as opposed to oldies in my age group.

 

Of course, they could look at underlying health issues and other characteristics with correlations of the vaccinated hospitalisations to try and work out what the likely comorbid causes are so people can take further protection.

[Jerry_Atrick]

12 hours ago, Flightrite said:

Knowing the grubby head lunatics reputation 28 days would be conservative! It's not so much the duration but the threat that there will be more for as long as the foreseeable future!

Got the jab, yet? If so, take comfort that once the magical number (is it 80%) have, they are likely to stop the lockdowns and life will get back to normal - more or less. We did it at 65% and to be honest, when they lifted the restrictions, I thought they were nuts, but apparently the hospitalisation and deaths numbers are much better than the modelled numbers despite the increases in infections.So, if you know people who are uhmming and ahhing over it, encourage them to do it.. Also over here, to get younger people to do it, the government is looking at providing incentives: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58044088

(The Department of Health said other incentives could include "vouchers or discount codes for people attending pop-up vaccine sites and booking through the NHS, social media competitions and promotional offers for restaurants".

 

If you haven't got the jab, get it.. you're holding up the process.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Jerry_Atrick

[turboplanner]

Just did a quick check this morning on the latest:

 

State/Territory	New Cases	Active Cases
Victoria	29	97	Control rings
New South Wales	321	4232	Starting to transfer patients to Regional Hospitals
Queensland	13	132	C-19 being spread by school children
Australian Capital Territory	0	0
Northern Territory	0	7
South Australia	0	7
Tasmania	0	0
Western Australia	0	7

 

Victoria’s control rings have been possible due to the software bought last year which is giving us contact tracing on steroids compared to 2020.

 

The Queensland contact tracers have done brilliant work identifying movements by school children where a family cluster may have a young child attending a common primary school with other families, an older boy going to a boy’s school in another suburb, an older girl going to

a different suburb, which shopping centres they congregate in with friends, which sporting teams they play with and congregate with, which allows them a much faster ability to identify where outbreaks are likely to spread before they do.

 

Johns Hopkins University of Medicine	Data on August 7/2021
Country	C-19 Deaths	Deaths per 100,000 people
UK	130,482	195
USA	616,493	187
Canada	26,611	71
Japan	15,272	12
Australia	939	3.7
New Zealand	26	0.5
Comparison	Data on June 30, 2021
UK	128,367	189
USA	604,115	183
Australia	910	3.6

The Australian totals include the 820 people who died in aged care facilities, where legal action is currently in progress.

 

The Australian TGA has just announced that the Moderna Vaccine is likely to be approved soon.

The Leader of the Opposition in Japan says Japan should adopt Australia’s Covid-19 strategies.

 

Australia has achieved its results primarily by contact tracing and lockdowns, relying on vaccines as a secondary reduction.

The UK and USA have not been able to use contact tracing and lockdowns successfully so are reliant on vaccines.

This gives Australia a further advantage should new mutations of C-19 emerge

Edited August 7, 2021 by turboplanner

[aro]

5 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

If you haven't got the jab, get it.. you're holding up the process.

The vaccination rollout here has been a bit of a debacle... we do not yet have enough vaccine for the people that want it.

 

Last year, Pfizer offered the Australian government enough vaccine for the entire population with priority access to serve as a model for vaccine rollouts worldwide. The government negotiated them down to 10 million doses and no priority.

 

Meanwhile, the government placed their faith in vaccines that could be manufactured here: Astra Zeneca and a vaccine being developed at the University of Queensland. Unfortunately the UQ development was discontinued because trials showed it caused false positives in HIV tests.

 

Then the issue of blood clots with AZ raised its head. Never mind that the risk is miniscule compared to the risk from COVID, the government said it's not a race and recommended that people under 60 do not get the AZ vaccine but wait for Pfizer.

 

Then Delta COVID cases started to crop up and the urgency of vaccination started to become more obvious. AZ is the vaccine we have, but the government don't want to be blamed if people get blood clots so they told people to get advice from their GPs. The GPs aren't happy because they don't want to be blamed either, and anyway their ethical obligation is more to the patient in front of them at the time rather than the population as a whole.

 

So now we have millions of people lining up to be vaccinated with Pfizer vaccines we don't have, and a government complaining about people who don't want to be vaccinated with the vaccine the government told them they should not take.

 

[spacesailor]

BUT !.

How do we get those youngsters to ' stop our sadness ' if they die from the covid.

My grandson has flatly refused to think about the aftermath of his ' Inaction '. 

I seem to have come to the conclusion the those ' deaths by clots ' Are less than ' deaths by covid19 ' .

spacesailor

 

 

[turboplanner]

2 minutes ago, aro said:

AZ is the vaccine we have, but the government don't want to be blamed if people get blood clots so they told people to get advice from their GPs. The GPs aren't happy because they don't want to be blamed either, and anyway their ethical obligation is more to the patient in front of them at the time rather than the population as a whole.

 

On this site we have discussed public liability and duty of care many times, including the necessity to issue a warning if there is a risk (data plaques on RA aircraft). What happened with Astrazeneca is that when blood clotting emerged there were zero cases of people over 60 getting clots, so the Health Departments took the precaution of limiting AZ to over-60s (duty of care action). As it emerged that the side effect of clotting was minute by the standards we accept the Departments released it to younger and younger age groups, and the Commonwealth Government opted to accept the Public Liability Risk, and exonerate vaccinators from lawsuits, provided the customer/patient received medical advice (the warning plate of the dash) from a qualified person (GP) before being vaccinated. Just routine risk management.

 

 

[aro]

According to GPs, the government announced they would indemnify GPs but have done nothing to put that into effect. There are GPs that will give under 60s AZ because they believe it is the best balance of risks despite the potential liability, and there are GPs that will not.

 

But here is a public liability conundrum: You can give people a vaccine and perhaps become liable for the 1 in a million people who dies, or do nothing and (legally) bear no responsibility for the 1 in ~300 people who dies as a result.

 

Does our system produce the best result?

[turboplanner]

9 minutes ago, aro said:

According to GPs, the government announced they would indemnify GPs but have done nothing to put that into effect. There are GPs that will give under 60s AZ because they believe it is the best balance of risks despite the potential liability, and there are GPs that will not.

a) The public is not likely so see any details of the indemnification until the legislaton is passed.

(b) The reference to GPs was mainly to allow vaccination centres public and private to operate with indemnity - it's a non-issue.

9 minutes ago, aro said:

 

But here is a public liability conundrum: You can give people a vaccine and perhaps become liable for the 1 in a million people who dies, or do nothing and (legally) bear no responsibility for the 1 in ~300 people who dies as a result.

 

Does our system produce the best result?

This is also routine, and like the Murray River diving case. The Murray River has flowed for thousands of years and people who want to be free can swim and drown in it, but when a Council developed a section and promoted it for swimming they attracted a duty of care.

 

If you stick someting in someone's arm you have a duty of care; informed consent is a routine process.