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They've "virtually eliminated the COVID threat," yet at the same time half their country is in lockdown. Ooookay.
If they had eliminated it, it would be eliminated, WRNative, and you wouldn't need to "explain" to us via 1,000-word rants about how, even though it in no way appears that Australia has eliminated anything, actually they have, you're all just too stupid to see it. Words have meanings. Australia is doing something, but they're not eliminating jack squat.
Even though "tribecavsbrowns" (hereafter just "Tribe") says he has put me on permanent ignore, I want to point out the dishonesty of this post, in the event that anybody believes Tribe is making a valid point.
First of all, Tribe is correct that words have meanings (duh!). Yet Tribe apparently doesn't know the meaning of the word "virtually," and certainly didn't bother to look up its definition.
<<for the most part; almost wholly; just about:
He is virtually unknown.>>
Almost half of Australia's population lives in areas with NO reported cases of COVID. We're talking about positive test results, not hospitalizations or deaths. Just positive test results. NONE. NONE. NONE. So half of the Australian population has no immediate worry of even a positive COVID infection test result.
What's remarkable about this is that it's winter in Australia. Persons in this half of Australia are going about their daily lives, spending more time indoors due to winter weather, not wearing masks, and NOT worrying about COVID. Their kids can go to school under normal conditions and neither their parents nor the children need worry about contracting COVID, nor about developing long-term COVID side effects even if their infections are asymptomatic. We still don't know if long COVID side effects are permanent, such as from permanent lung scarring.
Older adults in this half of Australia don't have to be concerned about their vaccination immunity protection losing effectiveness, nor about the need for booster shots, especially if they have previous conditions that reduce their ability to achieve a high and adequate level of immunization.
As for the half of Australia on lockdown, surely anybody reading my posts about Australia understands that Australia locks down any community or region if even a handful of persons only TEST POSITIVE for COVID. It's not like in the U.S. where partisan opponents to mandatory mask wearing or even vaccines and door-to-door vaccine campaigns would rally once again around the ex-President Trump who famously called for liberating states by ending lockdowns even as the epidemic continued to rage in those states.
<<“The Biden administration wants to knock on your door to see if you’re vaccinated,” tweeted Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan. “What’s next? Knocking on your door to see if you own a gun?”>>
As noted in post 129, the state of South Australia locked down its 1.5 million inhabitants when only 5 persons tested positive.
As documented in post 129, Australia's political and health leaders won't tolerate ANY transmission of COVID. As a result, per capita COVID death rates in Australia are 1/50th that in Ohio (and likely much lower if excess death analyses are accepted). Case rates, and likely long COVID cases, are over 1/75th lower in Australia than in Ohio.
In the months ahead, as Australian vaccination rates climb rapidly, while the Delta variant epidemic likely continues to surge in Ohio and the U.S., the massive Australian gap between Ohio and the rest of the U.S. will widen further. In the weeks ahead, infections likely will be nil once again in all or most of Australia and all or most Australians can live normally, mask-free and with no concerns about COVID.
Rather than address the overwhelming success of Australia's robust public health efforts to protect its citizens from COVID, Tribe posts an attack on me using a fake straw man argument based on a lie.
I never said that Australia had eliminated its COVID epidemic. I said it had "virtually ("for the most part" as defined above) eliminated" its COVID epidemic. Then Tribe says I'm "too stupid" to understand what Australia has accomplished and continues to accomplish with its robust public health efforts against the COVID truth.
It's obvious that Tribe can't handle the truth (and certainly not word meanings) and is eager to engage in a campaign of deceit and IGNORANT personal insults.
All Ohioans and Americans likely will face higher health insurance premiums in coming years as a result of our poor public health efforts to mute COVID transmission, relying only on vaccination campaigns, and individuals and families will continue to be devastated by COVID infections.
<<A new study by the Commonwealth Fund asked 5,450 working-age adults between March and June 2021 about how the pandemic affected their health insurance coverage and medical debt. The headline is more than a third of insured adults and half of uninsured adults struggled to pay medical bills during the pandemic. >>
Obviously families dealing with deaths and long COVID suffer even more dire consequences. Doesn't Tribe and other like-minded posters in this thread understand or care about any of these immense and unnecessary losses???
Australian sanity and competence vs. Ohio, American craziness and incompetency
New South Wales (Sydney) currently is suffering a COVID surge (124 cases yesterday with record daily testing of over 85,000) and is on lockdown.
With a population of 8.2 million, NSW reports 118 persons hospitalized, with 28 persons in intensive care and 14 on ventilators. NSW is using contact tracing to track infections with military precision.
<<New South Wales premier Gladys Berejikilian has warned Covid case numbers will continue to rise in Sydney as outbreaks emerged in three care facilities and scores of people tested positive after spending part or all of their infectious period in the community....
As many as 87 of the new cases could have been infectious in the community, with 48 not isolating for their infectious period, 22 only partially isolating and 17 under investigation....
“It is spreading like we’ve never seen before,” she said.
“We’re finding transmission in areas where people have to be where they’re at and that’s why it’s important to make sure that if you’ve been asked to have a test every three days, you do so. If you have the mildest of symptoms, do not come to work.
“Unfortunately we get recurring cases of people who have symptoms who turn up to work thinking they’re not infectious... I think people are quite shocked as to how different and contagious the Delta strain is. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before [very bad news for the unvaccinated in Ohio and elsewhere; children reportedly are more vulnerable to the Delta variant, bad news when schools reopen in coming weeks with children under 12 still not eligible for vaccination],” she said.>>
Queensland is the Australian state north of New South Wales. It reports no new COVID cases overnight and is NOT under lockdown. It's population is 5.2 million.
Queensland is closing its border with New South Wales and using mandatory mask wearing to prevent the NSW outbreak from spreading to Queensland.
<<Queensland will close its border to New South Wales and shake up its mask-wearing and social distancing rules in response to the "escalating" COVID-19 threat posed by the Sydney outbreak.
Acting Premier Steven Miles said as part of other changes, masks will need to be worn for seven more days in 11 south-east Queensland council areas but other social distancing restrictions will be relaxed.
"In order to be able to ease these restrictions, we need to close the border to the rest of New South Wales," Mr Miles said....
Queenslanders in NSW will be able to return home, but if they do so after 1:00am tomorrow, they will need to go into hotel quarantine.
Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said mask wearing has prevented community spread in Queensland:
<<"I am positive the reason we have not had community spread recently is because people have been genuinely wearing their masks," she said....
Dr. Young said if people living in the border zone head south into the wider NSW hotspot they will not be allowed to enter Queensland for 14 days.>>
By contrast the Delta COVID surge in Ohio and the U.S. is escalating with relatively no public health measures in place. Ohio COVID cases reported yesterday were 785 with hospitalizations increasing by 66 to over 300. ICU patients are approaching 100.
If Ohio and the U.S. implemented mandatory mask wearing; increased vaccine mandates for admission to public places, hospital workers, etc.; ramped up contact tracing; closed borders and imposed mandatory quarantines, Ohio and the U.S. probably could stamp out COVID within a few months, and certainly suppress the mounting Delta variant surge. As Ohio and the U.S. have much higher vaccination rates and vaccination supplies than in Australia currently, lockdowns in most areas would not be necessary.
Vaccination rates aren't going to increase in this country. There's too many people following misinformation on Facebook and "muh rights" BS in general. The education is there for those who want it, they are simply choosing to remain ignorant.
Luckily enough of us have gotten a vaccine so the healthcare system won't be overwhelmed to the levels we were 6-8 months ago, it'll be a slow trickle of the ignorant over a long period of time. So basically, unless we require mandatory vaccination, which will never happen, there's nothing more we can do about it, and it will play out as it will.
Vaccination rates aren't going to increase in this country. There's too many people following misinformation on Facebook and "muh rights" BS in general. The education is there for those who want it, they are simply choosing to remain ignorant.
Luckily enough of us have gotten a vaccine so the healthcare system won't be overwhelmed to the levels we were 6-8 months ago, it'll be a slow trickle of the ignorant over a long period of time. So basically, unless we require mandatory vaccination, which will never happen, there's nothing more we can do about it, and it will play out as it will.
Exactly. You make an excellent point. In an earlier post, roodd made a similar point. The landscape is vastly different now than it was six to eight months ago. The healthcare system is extremely unlikely to be overwhelmed today. I credit the vaccines for this. I have been fully vaccinated for some time now, and the stats tell me that I am unlikely to get very sick even if I do run into the virus. Anybody who wants the vaccination can get one. Their choice.
But WR can't help but go on endless rants about what he apparently sees as the end of civilization. I think he should find himself a hobby and quit obsessing about a germ that, like it or not, will always be with us. Time to get on with our lives.
Looks like the good citizens of Australia have finally had enough of their government's drastic COVID restrictions and mandates, and are finally fighting back. Good for them. This is also happening elsewhere in the US and around the world.
If there's a politician or public health official anywhere that thinks that returning to mandates and restrictions is going to be an easy sell, they're heading for an unpleasant surprise. I hope that Governor DeWine will be smart enough to stay out of it this time.
Looks like the good citizens of Australia have finally had enough of their government's drastic COVID restrictions and mandates, and are finally fighting back. Good for them. This is also happening elsewhere in the US and around the world.
If there's a politician or public health official anywhere that thinks that returning to mandates and restrictions is going to be an easy sell, they're heading for an unpleasant surprise. I hope that Governor DeWine will be smart enough to stay out of it this time.
DeWine may or may not mandate masks again. Even if he does not, every individual county or city could mandate it on their own, unfortunately.
But WR can't help but go on endless rants about what he apparently sees as the end of civilization. I think he should find himself a hobby and quit obsessing about a germ that, like it or not, will always be with us. Time to get on with our lives.
Your shameless promotion of Big Lies is getting old. Anybody reading this forum knows that I NEVER even inferred that COVID was the end of civilization. (Climate change, the most important issue facing mankind and also misrepresented and vilified by the anti-science, lying buffoons of America, does threaten earth's ecosystems and human civilization, unfortunately sooner rather than later.)
What I have said repeatedly is that robust public health measures, especially given America's plentiful supplies of vaccine, could have and still can save hundreds of thousands of American lives, prevented trillions of dollars of economic losses, preserved hundreds of thousands of families inflicted not only by death but by long COVID, and restored a public health system necessary to protect against the intentional introduction of deadly viruses by a foreign foe. See post 73 in this thread.
The rise of the Delta and eventually other variants, which I've warned about repeatedly, demonstrates that half measures will not end this epidemic. See post 96 and subsequent posts.
Looks like the good citizens of Australia have finally had enough of their government's drastic COVID restrictions and mandates, and are finally fighting back. Good for them. This is also happening elsewhere in the US and around the world.
If there's a politician or public health official anywhere that thinks that returning to mandates and restrictions is going to be an easy sell, they're heading for an unpleasant surprise. I hope that Governor DeWine will be smart enough to stay out of it this time.
Your ignorance about Australia is profound. Scott Morrison, the Australian premier, is a conservative who is only slightly less moronic than Trump and his supporters on climate change, even as Australia's Great Barrier Reef is endangered and the nation is ravaged by bushfires.
On using public health measures to suppress Australia's COVID epidemic, Morrison resolutely adheres to the science.
<<Under fire for a slow vaccine rollout, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said more vaccine supply was not going to ensure New South Wales gets out of lockdown, but what was needed was an effective, properly enforced lockdown.
"Let me be clear - there's not an alternative to the lockdown in New South Wales to get this under control. There is no other magic bullet that's going to do that," Morrison told reporters at a televised media conference.
He called the anti-lockdown protests in Sydney reckless and self-defeating.>>
The inference in the above article is that Australians were appalled by the anti-lockdown protest and that the police won't tolerate a repeat performance.
If you haven't noticed, even U.S. Republican leaders in recent weeks are changing policy positions in an attempt to mute the growing (and accurate) perception that Republicans are a COVID tolerant if not a pro-COVID party.
It will be interesting to see if the Ohio legislature uses its new authority to overturn public health orders to thwart any policy decisions by DeWine to reduce the mushrooming Delta variant epidemic in Ohio. My guess is that DeWine only will issue recommendations rather than any mask mandates. If I'm right, by year-end, such cowardliness may prove a fatal political decision for DeWine and Republicans in general, if Ohio experiences a full-blown surge in hospitalizations, infections among children, etc., as is occurring in Missouri.
Missouri Republicans are resisting a mask mandate for St. Louis County. I suspect a similar response would occur in Ohio if DeWine issues a mask mandate for Ohio, where the Delta variant epidemic has not yet reached a health crisis level as in Missouri.
Your ignorance about Australia is profound. Scott Morrison, the Australian premier, is a conservative who is only slightly less moronic than Trump and his supporters on climate change, even as Australia's Great Barrier Reef is endangered and the nation is ravaged by bushfires.
On using public health measures to suppress Australia's COVID epidemic, Morrison resolutely adheres to the science.
<<Under fire for a slow vaccine rollout, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said more vaccine supply was not going to ensure New South Wales gets out of lockdown, but what was needed was an effective, properly enforced lockdown.
"Let me be clear - there's not an alternative to the lockdown in New South Wales to get this under control. There is no other magic bullet that's going to do that," Morrison told reporters at a televised media conference.
He called the anti-lockdown protests in Sydney reckless and self-defeating.>>
The inference in the above article is that Australians were appalled by the anti-lockdown protest and that the police won't tolerate a repeat performance.
If you haven't noticed, even U.S. Republican leaders in recent weeks are changing policy positions in an attempt to mute the growing (and accurate) perception that Republicans are a COVID tolerant if not a pro-COVID party.
It will be interesting to see if the Ohio legislature uses its new authority to overturn public health orders to thwart any policy decisions by DeWine to reduce the mushrooming Delta variant epidemic in Ohio. My guess is that DeWine only will issue recommendations rather than any mask mandates. If I'm right, by year-end, such cowardliness may prove a fatal political decision for DeWine and Republicans in general, if Ohio experiences a full-blown surge in hospitalizations, infections among children, etc., as is occurring in Missouri.
Missouri Republicans are resisting a mask mandate for St. Louis County. I suspect a similar response would occur in Ohio if DeWine issues a mask mandate for Ohio, where the Delta variant epidemic has not yet reached a health crisis level as in Missouri.
Obviously, contrary to your belief, the anti-science loonies still wield great political influence in Ohio and the U.S., but NOT in Australia.
Australia is going to have to keep these measures forever. Covid is never going away according to science. Endless lockdowns are not sustainable. Eventually, people will rise up. So while Australia is doing well now, they wont be able to keep it up forever. Your zero covid dream is delusional. All it does is prolong the inevitable. There is no cure for covid, only mitigations.
Australia is going to have to keep these measures forever. Covid is never going away according to science. Endless lockdowns are not sustainable. Eventually, people will rise up. So while Australia is doing well now, they wont be able to keep it up forever. Your zero covid dream is delusional. All it does is prolong the inevitable. There is no cure for covid, only mitigations.
Wrong. Read through this thread. Half of Australians even now are free from lockdowns AND HAVE VIRTUALLY NO RISK OF COVID INFECTION, nor hospitalization or long COVID let alone death. The percentage of Australians NOT under lockdown is expected to soon rise to over 75 percent of Australians as the state of Victoria is close to exiting its lockdown. Over 25 percent of Australians live in Victoria.
<<Victoria has recorded 11 new cases of coronavirus. All were linked to known outbreaks and in quarantine for their entire infectious period. The state is expected to come out of lockdown at 11.59pm tomorrow night. However, restrictions of some kind are set to remain in place.>>
As noted in my previous post, officials and others are furious about New South Wales maskless protestors because they have raised the risk of increased infections and a prolonged lockdown.
It defies the current American understanding, especially among our large percentage of anti-science buffoons, that robust public health measures can suppress even the Delta variant despite Australia's highly bungled national vaccine campaign, which relied on an Australian-produced Astra Zeneca vaccine even though Australians prefer an RMNA vaccine and shun the Astra Zeneca vaccine due to reported side effects (shunning an inferior, perhaps more dangerous vaccine is more palatable in Australia given the effectiveness of its public health measures).
Australia doesn't plan to botch future vaccination efforts. Unlike even the U.S., Australia already has ordered 85 million doses of Pfizer booster vaccine for delivery in 2022 and 2023. Reportedly, these booster vaccines will be modified for greater efficacy against variants.
Because COVID tracking and enforced quarantine measures are so lacking in the U.S., we can't suppress the Delta variant despite a relatively high level of vaccination. Imagine the possibilities in Australia as COVID vaccinations ramp rapidly through H2 2021. Once children under 12 are approved for vaccination and actually vaccinated, Australia's robust public health measures will give the nation many options to live with COVID, just as in the days before anti-science crusaders the U.S. eliminated or lived with smallpox, TB, polio, and even AIDS, and, arguably even the flu despite inadequate U.S. flu vaccination rates.
The question is whether Australia will issue vaccination mandates, as increasingly promoted in the U.S. and instituted in nations such as the UK and France. It appears likely as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison already is considering a vaccine passport.
Mandatory vaccination policies are gaining increased traction in the U.S., but the Biden administration continues the Trump administration reliance on vaccines and has done too little to increase public health defenses against the COVID, and other future, perhaps more deadly, viruses.
Locally, Cleveland State University will mandate vaccinations for students living on campus.
<<In April, CSU announced it would requiring any students living on campus to be fully vaccinated before the governor’s new decree. The university — which served as the largest FEMA mass-vaccination site in Northeast Ohio — issued a statement following the governor’s signing of the bill touting its low infection rates.
“Over the last three semesters, our students, faculty, and staff have worked hard to keep our community safe. As a result, Cleveland State University achieved one of lowest infection rates among urban universities in the country,” the university said. “We continue to strongly encourage all students, faculty, and staff to get vaccinated. It’s the best way they can protect themselves, their family, and our community. All three of the approved vaccines are safe, effective, and readily available.”>>
Pressure for vaccine mandates would increase greatly if the Biden administration began to explain the increased viral load of the Delta variant and the high risk and consequences of developing long COVID.
<<The researchers also measured the viral loads when SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in the PCR tests. They found that the viral loads in the delta variant infections were 1,260 times higher than that of the original virus infections. This suggests that the delta variant can replicate in the body at a faster rate than the original virus.
"These data highlight that the delta variant could be more infectious during the early stage of the infection," the authors wrote. That, in turn, suggests that the person would shed more viral particles, making the transmission risk higher. >>
Former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb, who appears daily on CNBC, MSNBC, or NBC, as well as other news networks, is warning about the inept, clueless U.S. response to the Delta variant.
<<“For the week ending August 14, CDC estimates there will be either an average of 10K infections a day, or more than 100K. Either the infection wave will be largely subsiding, or will be raging out of control. The CDC isn’t sure,” Gottlieb added.
Gottlieb called this “another symptom of a more systemic bureaucratic disease,” which is a “retrospective mindset.” According to the former Trump administration official, either the CDC or a new agency should be geared more towards responding to and solving problems.
“We lack an organized infrastructure to mobilize a response to public health crisis,” lamented Gottlieb.
The seven-day average for recorded COVID cases per day was nearly 50,000 on Friday, an over 170 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalization and death numbers have seen upticks as well, albeit much smaller ones.>>
As a higher percentage of elderly Americans are vaccinated, the Delta outbreak mostly impacts younger Americans, and increasingly children, even before schools reopen.
<<“The infection rates are highest among young people, 15 to 45,” Andrew Pavia, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Utah, said about the recent increases in Utah. “The hospitalization rates are much higher in those age groups than they were earlier in the pandemic. And the rates of infection and rates of hospitalization are highest in the rural areas, and it should be no surprise to anyone that those are the same areas that have very low rates of vaccination.”
Just how many deaths will occur as a result of the recent uptick in transmission is still unclear. Even if they die at lower rates than older adults, some of the younger adults hospitalized in recent weeks will still die. But cases only started rising in the past few weeks, and it can take people with Covid-19 that long to die, and another few weeks for their deaths to be recorded.>>
<<Young, unvaccinated people are showing up at hospitals with Covid-19 — in some cases being admitted to intensive care and put on ventilators — in disturbing numbers, health officials across the country have warned.>>
Concern about breakthrough Delta infections among the fully vaccinated. As with long COVID in general, the federal government doesn't discuss the probability of long COVID among individuals who suffer breakthrough infections.
<<Even though COVID-19 vaccines are more than 90% effective at preventing serious illness, millions of vaccinated people will likely have a breakthrough infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the cases so far have been mild, with few or no symptoms. Out of more than 160 million fully vaccinated people in the U.S., the CDC says 5,500 — mostly the elderly and people with underlying health conditions — have been hospitalized or died.>>
<< If you want to add an additional measure of protection, if you're in a high prevalence environment where there's a lot of infection a mask can still be helpful against this new variant. The physical characteristics of this virus has- has not changed. The reason it's more transmissible is that there's simply more of it. When people get infected, they get more virus, higher viral levels and they exude more virus, so they're more contagious. But the characteristics of the virus haven't changed as far as we know. So it's not more airborne. It's not more likely to be permeable through a mask. So a mask can still be helpful. I think, though, if you're going to consider wearing a mask, the quality of the masks does matter. So if you can get your hands on a KN95 mask or an N95 mask, that's going to afford you a lot more protection. Initially at the outset of this epidemic, we were encouraging people not to use N95 masks because there weren't enough of those masks for medical workers. Now there's plenty of masks....
DR. GOTTLIEB: Yeah, look, what we know is that the virus levels that you develop early in the course of the infection are significantly higher with this Delta virus than with the old strains. And that's why people are more contagious. That's why this is spreading more rapidly. But the other thing we know about this is that those virus levels go up very quickly. And that's why we think that the virus is more- it's easier for this virus to overwhelm the immune system. So, for example, if you have a vaccine that you got seven or eight months ago and your antibody levels are declining, if you get this new Delta variant, it's easier for this Delta variant to overwhelm low antibody levels. And that's why we- we're considering whether or not some people might need booster- boosters to increase their antibody levels. So we know that you have more virus onboard earlier in the course of the infection. We know that you're likely to shed more virus that makes you more contagious. It also makes it more likely that you're going to develop an infection from this new variant.>>
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Australian sanity and competence vs. Ohio, American craziness and incompetency
