Sorry for the delay Frankie. Been a busy week and I didn't just want to give you a flippant two-line reply.
MT I feel when it suits it’s about Australia and when it doesn’t it’s all about the world. You put up costs of rats and included countries that have far lower wages than us. Lack of rapids is a world wide thing which probably doesn’t suit your position, but it’s a fact. Cost of rapids may be more expensive here but we also get paid a lot of more than other counties, some of which you have mentioned.
The UK had a bit of a shortage last week but released a "flood" (UK doctor's words) of RATs this week. They haven't had the long-term RAT shortages and empty shelves of basic items like us either. In the USA, you can order 4 free RATs from
https://www.covidtests.gov/ that take a week or two to arrive. In Holland, they have vending machines that sell RATs.
Just on the wages comment, our cost of living is higher here too though. Essential workers are also more likely to be casuals not on a high wage. Add to that our population is much smaller than most of those other countries. We also have our own manufacturers who produce RATs but these RATs are sold overseas rather to us Aussies because they weren't and still haven't been given approval here. We have to wait until the State governments do Morrison's job for him and their orders arrive from overseas.
Morrison and the Feds publicly around August last year spoke about the need for RATs as part of eventually opening up and "living with covid". But as usual it was just another announcement that didn't turn into reality and has lead to another crisis. Morrison in his media conference the other day tried to blame the lack of ordering of RATs last year on the priority to chase after Pfizer during the delta wave. However, that was his own fault too because he didn't order and rollout the vaccine in the first half of last year. Morrison just compounds his mistakes through his own incompetence. IMV, the reason why he always stuffs up all the time was in that recent Age interview when he stated he governs "for today". There's no forward planning because he just doesn't believe in it and subsequently he fails as a result.
Your stats on the unvaxed clogging the system now well maybe but how can that be true if 95% of the pop has been vaxed and we are getting 30,000 cases a day. 52% of hospital admissions weren’t double dosed so that means 48% were what exactly??? As for ICU beds why should anyone care when Andrews didnt built the extra beds he said he would instead of lying about it. Again probably doesn’t suit your position. Isolation is a complete waste of time as is case counting. Protect the elderly, wear a mask indoors, and for those that are scared cover yourself in plastic and stay home if you don’t want to catch covid, and let the thing rip through to give us immunity. I suspect that is exactly what that’s really doing and this will be over very soon.
Can you digest these numbers in the link for me please especially the covid monitor ones. Seems like the majority of hospital admissions are overwhelmingly double doses and icu beds tracking pretty even. What a surprise.
https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/critical-intelligence-unit
The best way to answer this is via this diagram:
The unvaxxed as a proportion of their now small population are signficantly over-represented in ICUs. So in NSW we've got just 5% of the population who are unvaxxed contributing to at least half the ICU admissions. That's a factor of 10x! Dr Chant mentioned today that 28 of the 46 deaths were under 65. Of those half were unvaxxed and of the 4 that didn't have any underlying health problems 3 were unvaxxed. While the covid vaccine isn't a cure (its efficacy isn't 100%), the evidence is overwhelming that they work.
Not sure why mention '4000 ICU beds' when we currently have 121 covid patients in ICU. This issue right now isn't capacity but lack of available hospital staff due to covid furloughing hence the health system's self-imposed "code brown". It would be a waste of resources and hospital staff having so many ICU beds standing idle when they aren't needed and hospital staff are at a premium at the moment with 4000 off work either with covid or as a close contact.
Letting it rip without any control measures would bring about even more chaos and shortages. We'd have even more people sick at once and furloughed. The choice over opening up wasn't binary between going back into lockdowns or just letting it rip. Managing this reopening up properly was what was required. That hasn't happened given the lack of RATs.
As for deliberately giving yourself covid, that equals needlessly risking your health especially if you're unvaxxed.
Hana Horka: Czech singer dies after catching Covid intentionallyhttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60050996Getting vaccinated plus the booster is the optimal and safest strategy against covid.
There's no evidence either to support that people gain long-term immunity from catching the coronavirus. Lucky if it gives you 3 months worth of anti-bodies. If someone caught the alpha or delta variant then it doesn't protect them against omicron. Who knows if there will be another mutation and variant going forward either. However, there are studies reflecting the effectiveness of the booster shot:
Bottom line is I couldn’t care less if someone who is vaxed or unvaxed is using the hospital system, just like I don’t care if someone was smoking for 40 years who is in there fighting cancer.
I agree with you as far as treating everyone without bias who presents to hospital. However, that doesn't mean we don't take strong action to try and lower disease and presentations to our hospitals. Using the smoking example, smokers who want to light up are excluded from most public spaces these days as they pose a health threat not only to themselves but to others via secondhand smoke. If you want to work, eat, go to the footy, etc ... then you can't smoke.
Regarding Novak, Scomo has completely butchered it up to the point it has the whole world laughing at our state. To save face and his career has no choice but to boot him out today. Border protection is his one wood and to date he has stuffed up. To get that hand back Joker is gone.
Yep, the correct decision was made in the end. Still odd though they they went down the 'Novak would encourage anti-vaxxers' route to deport him when they could have got him simply got him on not filling out his documentation correctly and honestly. I bet the average punter who arrives at our airports and is caught with false info on their documents would be straight on the next plane home. It also shows Morrison and the Feds are hypocrites who have different rules for their own MPs like Christensen and co. who are blatant vocal anti-vaxxers.
