Who gives a stuff about cases, open the state and country up.
You can't ignore cases (and especially the exponentially rising cases in NSW) when the vast majority of the population is still unvaccinated. More unvaccinated cases equals more hospital admissions and more ICU beds taken up. The health system would be overrun if we just "opened up" now
. In NSW, hospital and ICU admissions have doubled in a fortnight. We are already seeing Westmead hospital in Western Sydney struggling to cope given the rising cases up there. They've had to put a pause on new arrivals with covid for 24 hours given the hospital is already handling 1500 in the community, 121 in the wards and 23 in ICU. This is the real world!
The damage is profound and mental impact is real just ask the girls who tried to suicide this year.
Correlation isn't causation. The reasons for mental illness and suicide are complex. Not trivially down to just one issue. Suicides with respect to boys has actually reduced and the total number of suicides amongst men and women is lower than pretty much any of the previous 4 years.
Most kids are tougher than what people think. The Naplan results published today demonstrate this.
No one is saying this isn't tough to go through. However, good parents understand and reassure their kids. Generations of the past didn't have things like the internet and Xboxes to entertain themselves and communicate with their friends. You had to use your own imagination to entertain yourself. You should hear my 64 year old cousin. In the 70s, times were so tough her then husband had to go away and drive trucks to earn money while she was left to look after two kids as well as run their farm in the middle of nowhere in rural Queensland. She let rip on the phone the other day at the current "me me me" types as being too selfish, spoilt and soft
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Issue is no premier can be trusted to adhere to a strategy. Already we have seen some do or say as they please.
Given the lack of leadership and lack of action over the ordering and rollout of vaccines, not building purpose built quarantine facilities, the flip flopping over supporting & rejecting lockdowns, and new 'plan' after new 'plan' from Morrison and the Feds, I'm not surprised many of them don't listen anymore. We wouldn't be in this lockdown in the first place if Morrison hadn't avoided responsibility and stuffed up. But hey, 'it wasn't a race' to get vaccinated in the six months before winter
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The remained of the year is going to be about balance and each state will have to weigh up what is best for them. The required % of the population need to be vaccinated is proportional to the infectiousness of the virus. The Doherty report claims 70-80% is required with existing community cases before we can even begin to start to open up and not swamp our health system. There's still going to be some restrictions especially for the unvaccinated to control hospitalisations and deaths. With all that, 80% according to their modelling will result in 1200 deaths nationwide which equates to a bad flu season. That's manageable.
Ideally once we reach that figure in October/November, we will continue to strive to vaccinate even more people (hopefully the kids as well if they are allowed to) to reach 90-95% which is the level for highly infectious diseases such as Measles. Things like wearing masks on crowded PT may still be recommended and a culture of 'politeness' similar to some eastern Asian countries may develop but at 95% of the total population we should able to open up completely (OS borders, etc) IMO as you're effectively crushing covid at that level.
As for states like WA, SA & Qld who are effectively fairly open already internally, they'd be asking themselves why follow a federal 'plan' if other states have a large number of cases and it would make things worse for their state and citizens than it is now. They're not put into power to appease Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne and may think it would be better for them to wait until they reach that higher 90-95% vaccinated target before opening borders and letting covid in.
There should be no more reporting of covid cases IMO, and let everyone live.
Hello censorship
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The sooking minority who are refusing to get vaccinated can't whinge about lack of "freedom" when they are deliberating acting against what is needed to be done to get to that "freedom".
