NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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Australia is getting quite inventive to boost vaccinations..

Firstly, there's a new lottery.. :dm:

Your Jab Can Win You $1 Million Thanks to a New Lottery Hoping to Drive Up Vaccination Rates

There are a million new reasons to get vaccinated against Covid-19 – a new campaign, Million Dollar Vax, is rewarding vaccinated Australians with cash prizes and gift cards for doing their part, with a jackpot up for grabs worth $1 million. Plus, there’s another $3.1 million worth of consolation prizes being given away. Every day in October, 100 winners are being drawn to win gift cards of $1000.

The lottery is by the Million Dollar Vax Alliance, a group of corporations and philanthropists hoping to speed up Australia’s national vaccination rate so the country can fully open back up.

Full: https://www.broadsheet.com.au/national/ ... tion-rates

Secondly, the notion of a new tax.. :whip:

Anti-vax tax could be a solution to COVID policy muddle

We seem to be in a policy muddle right now, unsure what to do about the 10-15 per cent of the adult population who are likely to refuse the jab. Is it time for an anti-vax tax?

There are those who would like the refuseniks to be forcibly jabbed. Advocates point to seatbelts and bicycle helmets as policy examples. Both have been tremendously successful at saving lives, reducing severe injuries not to mention the need for hospital beds. Controversial when they started, everyone takes them for granted today. But it is one thing to require people to put a belt over their chest or a helmet on their head. It is quite another to force them to have something injected into their bodies.

Others reckon we should pay refuseniks to take their medicine. The problem with this is that it would be a huge waste of money to pay all of those who have already got the jab, while it would be mightily unfair just to pay those who are proposing otherwise to do the wrong thing.

So what might be a good alternative?

Taxation might just do the trick. And we have some good examples to follow. Think tobacco which has taken a massive hit from a whopping tax surcharge that keeps growing. Tobacco excise revenues have surged from $2 million back in 1975 to around $12 billion today, generating cash that can be put toward health promotion. Prices have more than trebled since 2004 alone, while consumption keeps on falling.

We could require anti-vaxxers to pay for their choices. The refuseniks are the ones who will be the most likely get sick or die, taking up expensive staff, equipment and hospital beds along the way. The anti-vax tax or AVT could be a surcharge to the Medicare levy, to be paid by all those without double jabs as documented by their myGov account.

Full: https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nation ... 58wc3.html
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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Even the kiwis are waking up to the delusion of eradication with Delta and they can't live in a bubble forever..

Jacinda Ardern gives up on COVID-zero

Wellington: New Zealand’s COVID-zero dream is dead. This has been obvious for some time, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her government have found it hard to admit, preferring to play rhetorical games about elimination not meaning eradication.

Much of the country has been with her. It’s hard to blame us for aiming for zero cases, with lockdowns harder than those seen in Australia. We tried it in 2020 and it paid off handsomely: we ended up with more freedoms, fewer deaths and a stronger economy.

But Delta plays by different rules as Victoria, New South Wales, and the ACT have discovered. In late-September, after five weeks of a strict lockdown in Auckland that kept cases low, the government loosened restrictions allowing takeaways and workplaces that couldn’t go virtual to restart. But cases rose again and the virus found its way into Hamilton, New Zealand’s fourth-largest city.

As the lockdown failed to achieve its elimination goal, keeping such strict controls in place became harder to justify. The whole point of going so hard in the first place was to stamp out the Delta fire, not to leave embers glowing. On Monday, Ardern announced more loosening of the rules and admitted the country had left “elimination” behind, instead favouring heavy suppression while vaccination rates climb.

Unfortunately, admitting that her strategy had failed will not mean her new one will succeed.

Full: https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/ ... 58x1a.html
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

Au is rocketing from 0 to 90-something mph in no time flat.
After a very slow start in rolling the vaxes out - they are hitting 80% first shot today. 68% double dosed.

NSW state is 70% fully vaxxed,, 86% first shot.
On these figures Australia will very soon be amongst the top vaxxed countries on the planet.
Over 90% will have been willingly vaxxed immediately they got the opportunity.

Science believers.
Near top OECD scores on all measures, especially the ones relating to democracy/the will of the people/faith in the nation etc.
(similar in NZ)

Anyway, the worst is over
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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SternAAlbifrons wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:05 am Au is rocketing from 0 to 90-something mph in no time flat.
After a very slow start in rolling the vaxes out - they are hitting 80% first shot today. 68% double dosed.

NSW state is 70% fully vaxxed,, 86% first shot.
On these figures Australia will very soon be amongst the top vaxxed countries on the planet.
Over 90% will have been willingly vaxxed immediately they got the opportunity.

Science believers.
Near top OECD scores on all measures, especially the ones relating to democracy/the will of the people/faith in the nation etc.
(similar in NZ)

Anyway, the worst is over
Do you think it may have had something to do with the recent availability of Pfizer (not sure if that's for everyone or just availability for over 60s)? I know of several over 60s who had been waiting for an alternative to AstraZeneca.
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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SternAAlbifrons wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:05 am Au is rocketing from 0 to 90-something mph in no time flat.
After a very slow start in rolling the vaxes out - they are hitting 80% first shot today. 68% double dosed.

NSW state is 70% fully vaxxed,, 86% first shot.
On these figures Australia will very soon be amongst the top vaxxed countries on the planet.
Over 90% will have been willingly vaxxed immediately they got the opportunity.
It is great to see Australia finally getting it's act together.

Having said that, the people did have the opportunity last year and the beginning of this year but were not willing to take it. Only now because of the:

. abandonment of the zero covid policy due to Delta
. commensurate push by government urging people to get vaxed
. new supplies of non AZ vaccines

OTOH with an imminent election coming up, one could take a cynical view that this is all part of Scomo's playbook (marketing man in a previous life).
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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Username Taken wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:34 am
SternAAlbifrons wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:05 am Au is rocketing from 0 to 90-something mph in no time flat.
After a very slow start in rolling the vaxes out - they are hitting 80% first shot today. 68% double dosed.

NSW state is 70% fully vaxxed,, 86% first shot.
On these figures Australia will very soon be amongst the top vaxxed countries on the planet.
Over 90% will have been willingly vaxxed immediately they got the opportunity.

Science believers.
Near top OECD scores on all measures, especially the ones relating to democracy/the will of the people/faith in the nation etc.
(similar in NZ)

Anyway, the worst is over
Do you think it may have had something to do with the recent availability of Pfizer (not sure if that's for everyone or just availability for over 60s)? I know of several over 60s who had been waiting for an alternative to AstraZeneca.
Of course that's a big factor. The govt scared the sh*t out of people with the issue of blood clots with young people taking AZ (even tho the risk was very low). They initially recommended only over 60's should take it (which effectively meant no one wanted it) and then did a back flip and said it was now OK for young people to take it. Political pragmatism coz they fcuked up the vaccine choice roll out?
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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NSW are looking at bringing in a law that makes employers responsible for any illness or death from COVID.
Not sure if it’s actual law now but there was a recent case of an employer being held liable for damages from a death of an employee due to Covid.
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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clutchcargo wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:25 pm I sense a whiff of election in the air

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PM Scomo: G'day everyone and thanks for your sacrifice expat Australians.. :clap:

Australia international borders opening, but travellers and expats should not forget how they were treated

OPINION

Finally. Finally, this could be the beginning of the end for Australians trapped overseas. Our "stranded Aussies" might be set to come home.
We discovered that there are two tiers of Australian citizenship: "us", who are here, and "them", who aren't.
That's certainly the idea behind Prime Minister Scott Morrison's announcement last week that Australia's outbound travel ban will be lifted in mid-November, with hotel quarantine set to be scrapped for vaccinated arrivals, replaced by seven days at home. That, we assume, would mean the tight arrivals caps would also be ditched, paving the way for those tens of thousands of Australians who are still trying to get back into the country to begin arriving in earnest, so closing one of the more shameful chapters in our history.

There's scepticism among the #strandedaussies communities online, as you would expect. They've been burned too many times. Too many government announcements that are spare on details and lead to nothing. Too many exciting new Qantas flights that just never take off. And it's true that there's nothing concrete in this latest declaration.

Still, this does feel like the beginning of the end. Vaccination rates here are soaring, particularly in NSW and Victoria (Australia has now overtaken the US on the percentage of the population that has had at least one dose). At the same time, COVID-19 is settling in our communities, its spread unaffected by international travel. There's also a hunger among Australians based here to leave, to reconnect with the world, and the knock-on effect of that is more will be able to return.

It may not happen in mid-November, but it will happen before the year is out.

So where does that leave us? How will we look back on this episode once it's finished, how will we judge this time in history? I think there are elements of this pandemic that Australians will look back on with justifiable pride: the work of Melburnians fighting off the first wave; the collective will across the country to follow rules and care for communities and generally just do the right thing for the greater good.

I also think, however, that there are some elements we'll look back on and acknowledge that fear got the best of us, that things went too far: the rabid state-based parochialism; the acceptance of draconian laws that took so long to be removed; and the cold rejection of stranded Aussies.

One thing I'll never forget about this pandemic is how a supposed nation of travellers turned on anyone who had the gall to actually be travelling, that fear won over any duty of care to our fellow citizens, our fellow Australian travellers. We discovered that there are two tiers of Australian citizenship: "us", who are here, and "them", who aren't.

This episode changed everything for travellers, even those of us who weren't stranded. The story we all liked to tell ourselves, that if everything went wrong we could always just go home, was shown to be a lie. When the going gets tough, you're on your own out there. And you'll get no sympathy for it.

Australians have been and continue to be locked out of their own country. People here will shrug and say, well, they should have come home when they were told to – but the truth is they were never told to. Back in March of last year, Australians based overseas were advised to shelter in place if they felt safe, to wait in their adopted homes while Australia flattened the curve and readied itself for their safe arrival.

As we know, that never happened. And so you had these awful situations, people in danger, people in distress, just hung out to dry by their own country. People whose relatives were dying, people whose families were growing up without them, people whose relationships were drifting apart, left with no right of return or reconnection. "We're keeping you safe," the government repeated. (That's the "you" living in Australia, you understand, not the "you" based anywhere else.)

Full: https://www.traveller.com.au/australia- ... ted-h1yzqo
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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clutchcargo wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 6:20 pm Australians have been and continue to be locked out of their own country. People here will shrug and say, well, . . . .
Chatting a fews weeks back with a Kiwi woman resident in Australia, I mentioned that there were tens of thousands of Aussie expats stuck abroad who can't go home.

Her reply was that expats choose to live abroad, so that's their problem.

:facepalm:
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Re: NZ, Australia - into winter with Covid-19

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Username Taken wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 6:45 pm
clutchcargo wrote: Wed Oct 06, 2021 6:20 pm Australians have been and continue to be locked out of their own country. People here will shrug and say, well, . . . .
Chatting a fews weeks back with a Kiwi woman resident in Australia, I mentioned that there were tens of thousands of Aussie expats stuck abroad who can't go home.

Her reply was that expats choose to live abroad, so that's their problem.

:facepalm:
Yes, and there's probably another mob that say: 'Traitors! Why do you travel overseas and spend your money there instead of in Australia'

Us and 'them'

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