other states and general outrage—especially from Victoria, which eliminated our second wave with a four-month lockdown—forced a retraction pretty quickly. (FWIW Victoria waited much longer than it should have in the second wave; subsequently we’ve been fine with 3-10 day lockdowns when cases are detected. It’s just the NSW government peddling the usual rubbish about business vs health trade-offs)
Prime Minister declares that meeting vaccination targets wouldn’t have helped avoid this outbreak. Personally I think having 50+ instead of 10% of the population vaccinated would in fact reduce R0, and that vaccinating the driver who passed it out of quarantine might also have been sufficient. Or even mandating that drivers transporting people to quarantine should wear a mask!
I am so tired of this. Please don’t attribute Australia’s success to consistently good epistemology; we just did enough right early to locally eliminate it at higher than necessary cost. We got lucky with the virus, we got some lucky policies, and I can only hope our luck hasn’t yet run out.
The state government in Sydney extends the lockdown for one more week (and potentially more)
In QLD, a snap lockdown of 3 days (extended to 4) has managed to successfully control the epidemics so far. There are some restrictions for a couple of weeks (wearing masks, more strict QR compliance, etc), but nothing more. Extremely effective contact tracing.
International flights slashed to half.
I don’t think Australia got everything right, but they got most things right, and the results are there. “Australia ’s epistemology” might not have been 100%, but I would score it very high. Extremely low numbers of deaths compared to most other countries. Business running normally 90% of the time. The possibility of carrying normal lives where masks are not needed (most of the time). Saying that the success of Australia is due purely to luck is a profound misjudgement.
I am not Australian (but I have the chance of living here) and I have followed very closely how they handled the pandemics in Europe, where my family and friends live. Most Australians would not believe the total absurdity of most measures in Europe (many of those measures do not transcend to the news, sometimes not even to the national news). I feel living in two very different worlds when I hear the news in Europe and in Australia. It is also sad: in Australia, many people do not realize how well they are. In Europe, many start to believe that things couldn’t have gone in a better way and that the best measures were adopted.
NSW should have gone into hard lockdown (NZ style) as soon as the superspreader event was discovered. Qld, Vic and WA went early and eliminated quickly. Delaying lockdowns and doing them half-heartedly just means they gone on for longer and longer, doing far more economic damage than a short, sharp lockdown. It is very depressing to hear that large nos of new cases have been out and about community while infectious.
Yes, I agree with this. I also think that many people in NSW are not taking very seriously the lockdown, which is really bad. However, if you look in other parts of the world, the discussion was not lockdown now or lockdown in two days. In Europe for instance, when a new variant appeared in the UK in December, some countries took days to close the borders with the UK… for 3 days, to continue later as if anything happened. Two different worlds.
My point is precisely that you should not infer from this that our policies have been mostly good; instead they have been barely adequate to the task. Fortunately for Australia, if you maintain zero spread and crack down hard and early (on single-digit cases), the other details really don’t matter so much. What we’re seeing now is what happens when you don’t crack down so early...
I don’t see how policies that are barely adequate to the task can result in an excellent outcome. I wouldn’t call them that way at least, I would call them appropriate policies.
if you maintain zero spread and crack down hard and early (on single-digit cases), the other details really don’t matter so much.
Yes, I agree too, but I would rephrase it: they got right the most important thing that they had to get right, and that’s what counts
I don’t see how policies that are barely adequate...can result in an excellent outcome
Because spread is exponential? “barely adequate” sounds slightly exaggerated to me, but if a country acts early and quickly, quarantining every case, they can mess up in other ways (so that R0 is well above 1) but still not have any Covid cases. I figured this was how Covid was controlled in Australia, NZ and SK (I still don’t get what happened in Japan tho).
In Australia:
the Delta outbreak in Sydney continues to grow (slowly) despite lockdown; state government contemplates giving up after two weeks of half measures
other states and general outrage—especially from Victoria, which eliminated our second wave with a four-month lockdown—forced a retraction pretty quickly. (FWIW Victoria waited much longer than it should have in the second wave; subsequently we’ve been fine with 3-10 day lockdowns when cases are detected. It’s just the NSW government peddling the usual rubbish about business vs health trade-offs)
Prime Minister declares that meeting vaccination targets wouldn’t have helped avoid this outbreak. Personally I think having 50+ instead of 10% of the population vaccinated would in fact reduce R0, and that vaccinating the driver who passed it out of quarantine might also have been sufficient. Or even mandating that drivers transporting people to quarantine should wear a mask!
I am so tired of this. Please don’t attribute Australia’s success to consistently good epistemology; we just did enough right early to locally eliminate it at higher than necessary cost. We got lucky with the virus, we got some lucky policies, and I can only hope our luck hasn’t yet run out.
Also in Australia:
The state government in Sydney extends the lockdown for one more week (and potentially more)
In QLD, a snap lockdown of 3 days (extended to 4) has managed to successfully control the epidemics so far. There are some restrictions for a couple of weeks (wearing masks, more strict QR compliance, etc), but nothing more. Extremely effective contact tracing.
International flights slashed to half.
I don’t think Australia got everything right, but they got most things right, and the results are there. “Australia ’s epistemology” might not have been 100%, but I would score it very high. Extremely low numbers of deaths compared to most other countries. Business running normally 90% of the time. The possibility of carrying normal lives where masks are not needed (most of the time). Saying that the success of Australia is due purely to luck is a profound misjudgement.
I am not Australian (but I have the chance of living here) and I have followed very closely how they handled the pandemics in Europe, where my family and friends live. Most Australians would not believe the total absurdity of most measures in Europe (many of those measures do not transcend to the news, sometimes not even to the national news). I feel living in two very different worlds when I hear the news in Europe and in Australia. It is also sad: in Australia, many people do not realize how well they are. In Europe, many start to believe that things couldn’t have gone in a better way and that the best measures were adopted.
NSW should have gone into hard lockdown (NZ style) as soon as the superspreader event was discovered. Qld, Vic and WA went early and eliminated quickly. Delaying lockdowns and doing them half-heartedly just means they gone on for longer and longer, doing far more economic damage than a short, sharp lockdown. It is very depressing to hear that large nos of new cases have been out and about community while infectious.
Yes, I agree with this. I also think that many people in NSW are not taking very seriously the lockdown, which is really bad. However, if you look in other parts of the world, the discussion was not lockdown now or lockdown in two days. In Europe for instance, when a new variant appeared in the UK in December, some countries took days to close the borders with the UK… for 3 days, to continue later as if anything happened. Two different worlds.
Our outcomes have been mostly good.
My point is precisely that you should not infer from this that our policies have been mostly good; instead they have been barely adequate to the task. Fortunately for Australia, if you maintain zero spread and crack down hard and early (on single-digit cases), the other details really don’t matter so much. What we’re seeing now is what happens when you don’t crack down so early...
I don’t see how policies that are barely adequate to the task can result in an excellent outcome. I wouldn’t call them that way at least, I would call them appropriate policies.
Yes, I agree too, but I would rephrase it: they got right the most important thing that they had to get right, and that’s what counts
Because spread is exponential? “barely adequate” sounds slightly exaggerated to me, but if a country acts early and quickly, quarantining every case, they can mess up in other ways (so that R0 is well above 1) but still not have any Covid cases. I figured this was how Covid was controlled in Australia, NZ and SK (I still don’t get what happened in Japan tho).