Covid 19

[aro]

1 minute ago, turboplanner said:

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

You can understand why GPs etc. are unwilling to rely on the indemnification until the legislation is passed.

 

2 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

This is also routine

I'm not denying that, my question was whether it produces the best result?

[kgwilson]

Yes the keystone cops couldn't have done it better than Scotty from marketing.

[turboplanner]

59 minutes ago, aro said:

I'm not denying that, my question was whether it produces the best result?

In the short term Australia's current results are giving you the answer which is yes it does.

For the broader terms there are plenty of ABS statistics you can pull up to give you answers in various fields.

[aro]

1 minute ago, turboplanner said:

Australia's current results are giving you the answer which is yes it does

Australia's vaccination rates are amongst the worst in the world. I do not agree that Australia is getting the best results.

 

Our success more broadly has been due to people who stepped up and took action despite the risks, rather than those who would do nothing lest they be held responsible.

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, aro said:

Australia's vaccination rates are amongst the worst in the world. I do not agree that Australia is getting the best results.

 

Our success more broadly has been due to people who stepped up and took action despite the risks, rather than those who would do nothing lest they be held responsible.

Our objective is to minimise mortality, minimise the number of family members lost to the pandemic.

Australia adopted a policy of separation and contact tracing.

UK, USA couldn't get their populations to separate so they adopted vaccination as their primary policy.

The results as of June 30 were:

Australia 44th out of 174 countries

USA 159th

UK 160th

You don't need to be Einstein to work out which method was more successful.

We are now rolling out vaccinations as a secondary, exponential, policy which will make us even safer.

From a rollout start in March compared to USA and UK is not valid but that hasn't stopped people from making the apples vs pears comparison on vaccination rates.

Australia's nett mortality advantage per 100,000 people is still about the same on last night's world mortality figures by countries, so we are still light years ahead in terms of protecting families.

 

Maybe some people stepped up and took risks, maybe some didn't, maybe some people separated when they were asked to, maybe some didn't. Regardless, we have the overall result in black and white.

 

 

 

[skippydiesel]

1 hour ago, aro said:

Australia's vaccination rates are amongst the worst in the world. I do not agree that Australia is getting the best results.

 

Our success more broadly has been due to people who stepped up and took action despite the risks, rather than those who would do nothing lest they be held responsible.

I appreciate you are stating this within the context of CV19 but weirdly Australia has a very high vaccination rate in all other applicable areas.

 

All vaccinations have the potential for an unwanted reaction (even death) but somehow (Government on going miscommunication) we have received the message that AstraZeneca is particularly dangerous/risky.

[red750]

Scaremongering by the tin hat brigade. Yes there will be a few cases of blood clots. You can get blood clots for sitting too long (plane trips or long train journeys). The contraceptive pill is just as bad. People get all out of kilter simply because it's Covid related.

[aro]

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

Australia adopted a policy of separation and contact tracing.

UK, USA couldn't get their populations to separate so they adopted vaccination as their primary policy.

You are rewriting history a bit there. There was no vaccine available last year and no guarantee there would be one. The USA and UK basically adopted the Yes Minister 4 stage plan, with lip service to the idea of slowing infections to prevent the health system being overloaded (fail). Australia was far more pro-active about keeping people alive and we have had a much better 18 months than most of the world as a result.

 

That could only ever be temporary, and we were buying time to learn about treating the disease and hoping a vaccine could be developed.

 

Now we are in a much better position than other countries, if we could just get our hands on enough vaccine. Look at other vaccines - we don't wait until there is an outbreak to start vaccinating people. As the number of people vaccinated increases, infection numbers should stabilize. Stabilizing close to zero with an occasional case is much better than stabilizing at hundreds of new cases a day.

[kgwilson]

State Health Minister Brad Hazzard said on TV that NSW was awash with Astra Zeneca vaccine. My wife rang our local medical centre where our GP is and they said "We don''t have any and don't know when the next batch will arrive". I got her in at the vaccination centre when I went for my 2nd dose. They still had to have a check to see if there was enough before confirming that though. The entire process is abysmal and does not seem to be improving.

 

Then there is the advice message. AZ is produced in Melbourne, then No it will be produced in Melbourne when the equipment is installed, then everything is good to go but No there are trial runs etc. Then the blood clot over reaction. First good for everyone, then not for under 60s then under 50s then under 40s then good again for anyone over 40, then over 18 with GP consent.

 

Now the latest study of 1.37 million people from Europe is the risk of blood clots is the same for both AZ & Pfizer. Not yet published in the Lancet but about to be. What then? You can bet that this information will be totally mishandled as well.

 

As I understand it the Melbourne facility can only produce 1 million doses a week so 6 months to vaccinate everyone once or a year to fully vaccinate everyone. But AZ is in theory on the way out. With all the latest data it should be ramping up. We can produce it locally & it costs about $4.00 a dose as AZ have said they are not profiting from it. Pfizer on the other hand cost $40.00 a dose. Pfizer made 19.2 billion in the last quarter, 92% up on the previous quarter. Why are we lining the US billionaires club pockets?

 

Now superhero Hunt reckons Moderna will be approved "Shortly" but with no specified timeframe but probably within 2 weeks and begin rollout mid September with a vague "Moderna vaccine should arrive in mid September". 

Edited August 8, 2021 by kgwilson

[turboplanner]

This came out about an hour ago from the Victorian Premier for Melbourne; NSW country hold up is probably because of the Sydney outbreak.

 

 

[skippydiesel]

No one seem to want to comment on my scepticism, that somehow the vaccine(s) we currently have access too will miraculously solve all our problems, we will return us to "normal" life & our boarders will open for two way traffic - a gold future!.

 

I am a vaccine believer (just waiting on my second CV jab) but the all conquering vaccine(s), being promoted by so many of our leaders, just does not quit ring true for me. Tad too much faith and too little fact/science in these proclamations.

[onetrack]

There was a report a few days ago in the West Australian newspaper that brought forth a future projections study on the virus situation, that was done for the W.A. Govt.

 

The essence of the study, carried out by numerous health experts and others with substantial qualifications, was that, even with 80% of the population vaccinated, we are still looking at a possible 1300 deaths annually, and still looking at regular lockdowns (as outbreaks of new variants of the virus appear).

It's the variants that have all the experts worried - sooner or later, a variant is bound to appear that is substantially more transmissible than any current variety, and which will be able to find its way past many vaccinated peoples immune systems. This thing really is the virus from hell.

[turboplanner]

10 minutes ago, onetrack said:

There was a report a few days ago in the West Australian newspaper that brought forth a future projections study on the virus situation, that was done for the W.A. Govt.

 

The essence of the study, carried out by numerous health experts and others with substantial qualifications, was that, even with 80% of the population vaccinated, we are still looking at a possible 1300 deaths annually, and still looking at regular lockdowns (as outbreaks of new variants of the virus appear).

It's the variants that have all the experts worried - sooner or later, a variant is bound to appear that is substantially more transmissible than any current variety, and which will be able to find its way past many vaccinated peoples immune systems. This thing really is the virus from hell.

The 80% is nonsense and as you say would commit us to a steady level of deaths.

It's pushed heavily by business people who don't care.

Right back in the Wuhan days, Covid-19 was recognised as a virus which can mutate (I can't remember whether that came from the Geelong laboratories or the WHO), and it has mutated.

The Countries who opted for vaccination have no option but to develop new vaccines as new strains occur.

We have an advantage with contract tracing and containment rings.

It would be good if someone was able to invent a vaccine which would kill the virus off, and that's still a possibility.

[Jerry_Atrick]

3 hours ago, kgwilson said:

Now the latest study of 1.37 million people from Europe is the risk of blood clots is the same for both AZ & Pfizer. Not yet published in the Lancet but about to be. What then? You can bet that this information will be totally mishandled as well.

 

As I understand it the Melbourne facility can only produce 1 million doses a week so 6 months to vaccinate everyone once or a year to fully vaccinate everyone. But AZ is in theory on the way out. With all the latest data it should be ramping up. We can produce it locally & it costs about $4.00 a dose as AZ have said they are not profiting from it. Pfizer on the other hand cost $40.00 a dose. Pfizer made 19.2 billion in the last quarter, 92% up on the previous quarter. Why are we lining the US billionaires club pockets?

I was reading similar re Pfizer.. And apparently, there can be other complications that aren't apparent in the AZ vaccine (yet!). These can include anaphylactic shock and some diseases I have never heard of (although extremely rare): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/997050/Temporary_Authorisation_HCP_Information_BNT162_12_0_UK_clean.pdf

 

As to why the government needs to line US billionaires pockets? Well, I don't think there is an intention to do it; the press have latched onto the blood clotting thing and pollies are creatures of the knee jerk reaction to maintain popularity (or stop the slide into unpopularity). No one was knocking Pfizer at the time... and they still don't seem to be saying it is much the muchness as AZ..

 

 

.

 

 

[Markdun]

If there is one thing you learn from history, it is that human societies do NOT learn from history.

 

Recent history....over 90% of the UK population has Covid antibodies either ‘naturally’ from having Covid or from vaccination.  Over 70% are vaccinated, over 50% ‘fully vaccinated’.  Yet with the Delta variant they are now tracking at 80 deaths per day (7 day rolling average...source Ourworldindata) with a population of 65million.  And this is after their accumulated deaths from Covid is nearly 2,000 per million (130,000).  New Covid infections each day recently peaked but it has now been stable for a bit at 400 per million per day (ie. 26,000).  That’s the bad news; the good is that with vaccination and natural immunity the death rate per infection has fallen from 3% to 0.3% (source.  Ourworldindata)

 

By my reckoning if we follow with the UK example (let it rip, it’s your choice to vaccinate, the young have the right to go out, and bugger the oldies rights...if they want to live they should stay at home) as per ScuMo and Gladys wishes, then we can be looking forward to 30 deaths per day (10,000 pa) and 4,000 new cases per day EVEN WITH 70% Vaccinated.  It seems that if we are to achieve the worst case scenario posited by the Doherty Institute modelling (3000 deaths per year...ie the same the flu) this must still involve to some extent (& probably a lot more than anyone wants to admit): quarantine, track, trace, isolate and lockdowns to prevent and contain outbreaks, ie. there is no get out of gaol card from vaccination (just a lot less grief).  
 

People should remember that in situations like this we are being managed by government propaganda and spin (oops, I meant ‘information’).  They probably honestly believe people need an ‘exit strategy’ for morale....and hence, ‘vaccine will get us out of this’, when in fact nothing will, and our current mess really is ....it’s a $&cking pandemic and we elected a bunch of fools.

 

To those that claim the low death rates in Australia are due to government action (as opposed to our isolation/remoteness and chance), I’d again say look at the history.  Morrison delayed stopping direct flights from Whuhan because of the commercial interest of a gambling corporation in Melbourne, he allowed the Covid/Ruby Princess to dock in Sydney,  early all the aged care facility deaths in Victoria were in federally regulated institutions, he refused to provide federal quarantine for inward international travellers despite the Cth Constitution (the States instead implemented ineffective self and hotel quarantine), and all the outbreaks resulting in lockdowns for Melbourne and Sydney, ONLY arose because of Morrison’s abject failure to provide quarantine and him maintaining a ‘Claytons’ closed international border for movement of people...and that is the reason we are left with lockdowns and vaccination.  Sheet the blame home where there is fault, not the victims of his incompetence.   Want a comparison....look to the east...NZ.

 

At least tomorrow I’m installing new brake cables in the Corby Starlet which will need at least one T/O and landing to ‘test’, and maybe I’ll start building the acrylic sheet oven for moulding a canopy.

[RFguy]

I got Astra a month back . I'm 50

I think the best I heard was about life-jackets : 

Astra/Pfizer comparison, like being on a sinking ship, and there are two brands of life-jacket, and one lif-ejacket is known to have a failure rate of 1 in a million.  and people are worried about the 1 in a million faulty lifejackets and wont put those on.... 

Delta R0 is between 5 and 10.... that's the problem. I'm in CBR and currently holding off my 2nd shot of astra to try and get to 7 to 8  weeks between shots  to maximise effectivness. currently I am 4 weeks in from the 1st. No COVID n canberra yet.. yet, YET  but it is creeping down the freeway, and as soon as it appears, in the next two weeks, I will pull the trigger on the 2nd shot.

 

Edited August 8, 2021 by RFguy

[Markdun]

Glen, I’m the same. 
The calculation of the risk of AZ...is the low one or two in a million of AZ.  But the risk of death from Covid is the risk of catching Covid times the risk of dying once you have it (one in five if you’re over 80, probably less than 1% for someone less than 60...it’s a log relationship to age, or an average of say 2.5%).  This suggests that it would only be wise to vaccinate with AZ if your risk of catching Covid is greater than 8 in 100,000.  And to some extent this risk depends on one’s circumstance (do you work in a high risk job say at a hospital, school, Bunnings, do you live in higher density dwellings, in a city etc) and ones behaviour (as we see in the UK where older people are hiding themselves away and young people are partying).  

So the vaccine hesitancy, particularly for people under 70 who are not working, not keen to socialise, can hide out on their yacht or bush block, is (or was) rational. It wasn’t  (isn’t?) axiomatic that the ship would sink.  But that has changed because of our ‘captains’ determination to put those life jackets to use by secretly opening the sea cocks and leaving the hatches in the water tight bulkheads open, pretending that if everyone wears a life jacket it’s back to normal, and if someone isn’t wearing one it’s their own fault.

The guys at Chaser also make an analogy of someone running a nuclear power plant leaking radiation with radiation suits being analogous to vaccines.

[turboplanner]

21 minutes ago, Markdun said:

Glen, I’m the same. 
The calculation of the risk of AZ...is the low one or two in a million of AZ.  But the risk of death from Covid is the risk of catching Covid times the risk of dying once you have it (one in five if you’re over 80, probably less than 1% for someone less than 60...it’s a log relationship to age, or an average of say 2.5%).  This suggests that it would only be wise to vaccinate with AZ if your risk of catching Covid is greater than 8 in 100,000.  And to some extent this risk depends on one’s circumstance (do you work in a high risk job say at a hospital, school, Bunnings, do you live in higher density dwellings, in a city etc) and ones behaviour (as we see in the UK where older people are hiding themselves away and young people are partying).  

So the vaccine hesitancy, particularly for people under 70 who are not working, not keen to socialise, can hide out on their yacht or bush block, is (or was) rational. It wasn’t  (isn’t?) axiomatic that the ship would sink.  But that has changed because of our ‘captains’ determination to put those life jackets to use by secretly opening the sea cocks and leaving the hatches in the water tight bulkheads open, pretending that if everyone wears a life jacket it’s back to normal, and if someone isn’t wearing one it’s their own fault.

The guys at Chaser also make an analogy of someone running a nuclear power plant leaking radiation with radiation suits being analogous to vaccines.

The problem with that theory, is that you certainly can separate, but you can't see covid and you can't control the morons who leave their masks below their noses and lean over you etc. or leave aerosol on the goods you might pick up in the supermarket, or with the Delta strain, which might blow your way in a corridor.

Edited August 8, 2021 by turboplanner

[turboplanner]

17 minutes ago, Arron25 said:

We are continuously hammered with the risk of AV , but where are the similar statistics for the others?( i often wonder "follow the money" or is it media 'bu***it burnout) I did hear Phizer has an induced heart disease problem. While all the time the media, both social and main stream, ignore that so many 'normal' activities have risks in the multiples more dangerous. Is it because these other risks are 'grandfathered' and untouchable by the less reputable  lawyer brigade

No just that there is a political below the line campaign to disrupt vaccine take up, which is a cynical and despicable thing to do, but people will stoop to do it for profit. The media gets sucked in by writing new footage or showing distraught people toget a spin on the central Covid-19 story which is relatively boring, but the side effects of drugs are printed out for you when you get a prescription, and sometimes there's almost a book of side effects in the pill carton. Not all of these side effects will kill you of course, but the starting point is Australia's TGA for our levels of medical substance safety. You also have similar decisions to make when you go in for an operation and are told the risks, particularly with anaesthetics.

 

Victoria opens a production line drive through vaccination centre in Melton this morning which takes 12 cars at a time, and includes the medical advice and consent process for AZ.

[RFguy]

WHat IS interesting is the realization that instead of pushing pfizer etc vax on the 40-50  yo, they should have concentrated first on the risk takers , the 20 to 30 yos, they're the ones responsible fo rmuch of sydney's problems. first.  the 40+ yo will comply with lock downs in general. and in general will be more risk adverse, less likely to contact or pass (unless in   the line of fire like say a pharmacist)

 

[Markdun]

I agree with you Turbo....particularly in relation to morons leaving the doors (international borders open) and despite having over 18 months, failing to build an effective mask (quarantine) for those that come through the open door.  But my point was, that you can do still do stuff to reduce your risk of getting infected and for some people being slow to vaccinate (hesitancy) is or was rational, not loopy.  My plan, given that WHO has only given the vaccines ‘emergency approval’, the virus and vaccines being novel, the moral idea of greater need for vaccines in other countries (remember it’s a global issue) and my trust in the Australian government approval is zero, I wanted to wait and see how it played out for those willing to be guinea pigs...planning to get vaccinated in October.  I do have a yacht and bush block to go be a hermit.  However, because someone (we control our borders) left the door open (or the sea cock open) and someone else (McGuire’s mate) didn’t do the track, trace, isolate effectively, I re-computed my considerations and brought getting vaccinated forward......still made me exceedingly cranky because had the two someone’s done their job the vaccine that went into my arm could have gone to a doctor or nurse in PNG, Timor or Indonesia, where Covid is doing much more harm than here.

Arron....you are on to something.  Look at the USA where they have not approved the ‘EU’ vaccine (AZ) but have approved the US vaccines.  You would be surprised how commercial interests are able to promote and ‘market’ a research paper without being seen to be doing so when that research benefits that company.  Too often scientists are ignorant of this.  There is a great book titled ‘Manufacturing Consent’ that deals with this.

[Flightrite]

This circus guessing game will continue for a very long time! The lunatics in charge are on a mission, to divide & conquer, you see it in every social media platform & forums etc! Them & us, class division is rife! Friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, work colleague against work colleague, it's ugly & tragic-( The grubby media love it, the division sells newspapers!

[spacesailor]

Again

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 '. 

And a nephew has said no to the vaxination

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

spacesailor

 

 

[poteroo]

18 hours ago, onetrack said:

There was a report a few days ago in the West Australian newspaper that brought forth a future projections study on the virus situation, that was done for the W.A. Govt.

 

The essence of the study, carried out by numerous health experts and others with substantial qualifications, was that, even with 80% of the population vaccinated, we are still looking at a possible 1300 deaths annually, and still looking at regular lockdowns (as outbreaks of new variants of the virus appear).

It's the variants that have all the experts worried - sooner or later, a variant is bound to appear that is substantially more transmissible than any current variety, and which will be able to find its way past many vaccinated peoples immune systems. This thing really is the virus from hell.

Every organism has a determinable mutation rate, and the probability of a new variant appearing is very much due to the total numbers and severity of the disease. Unvaccinated and travelling population, living cheek-to-jowl, both in/out of doors = higher probability of a mutation. A bad 'flu ' season in the N.Hemisphere probably means our vaccine will need changes to cover us before our winter.  The 'normal ' flu vaccine which we receive takes into account as many of the previous years variants as possible, and our future is going to be one where our Covid jab does the same.  Probable that they can all be covered by a single shot?

[danny_galaga]

3 hours ago, turboplanner said:

The problem with that theory, is that you certainly can separate, but you can't see covid and you can't control the morons who leave their masks below their noses and lean over you etc. or leave aerosol on the goods you might pick up in the supermarket, or with the Delta strain, which might blow your way in a corridor.

I was one of those morons 😕

 

I got with the program though 🙂