Covid-19 Politics

[broncofan]

BTW, I'm sure you've probably seen this link but it has the rates Australia is vaccinating at daily. 140,000 shots a day is about .5% of Australia's population in a day. That is a pretty good pace, as we may have gotten to 1% at peak here but what really matters is demand once you get more coverage. At this rate, in two months Australia will have administered 8 million more shots as long as you have the supply. I imagine it's one of the two shot vaccines but still it looks like the pace there right now is good.

We noticed major effects on case levels once we crossed the 40% threshold and exponentially it seems with each 10% increase. But with only about a dozen cases a day in Australia that aspect won't be as noticeable.

https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/australias-covid-19-vaccine-rollout

[broncofan]

I know this is the third post in a row but bear with me. Australia looks like it's in good shape supply-wise. 40 million doses of Pfizer, 50 million doses of Astrazeneca, and when Moderna is approved 25 million doses, 15 million of which are their variant-specific boosters. I commend your government on having really organized information about covid. You compare that to any of our local or federal sites it's incredible how transparent everything is in Australia.

What matters is not how quickly everyone gets vaccinated but how many people are willing to get vaccinated. I hope you have better demand there than we've had here.

https://www.health.gov.au/initiative...ine-agreements

[filghy2]

Thanks for the info about Australia. I've been curious but haven't kept up with it. You guys did such a great job, especially with isolating people with covid while they recovered and keeping the case load and death toll low. 21% is not a bad start at all and maybe when you are at numbers like 50% or so, the combination of some population immunity with your good health controls will encourage your govt to open up travel again.

I'm confident we will eventually get to a higher percentage that the US, given atttitudes to the virus have not been politicised here. A lot of the vaccine hesitancy has probably been due to the small incidence of blood clots with AstraZeneca, with some people preferring to wait until more Pfizer supplies available. For most people the risk of catching Covid is low, though the recent outbreak in Melbourne may have changed some minds.

We do have some idiots here, but at least this one got stopped from spreading falsehoods. He also failed to get elected despite outspending the major parties in the last Federal election. https://www.theguardian.com/australi...reds-of-deaths

[broncofan]

I'm confident we will eventually get to a higher percentage that the US, given atttitudes to the virus have not been politicised here. A lot of the vaccine hesitancy has probably been due to the small incidence of blood clots with AstraZeneca, with some people preferring to wait until more Pfizer supplies available. For most people the risk of catching Covid is low, though the recent outbreak in Melbourne may have changed some minds.

We do have some idiots here, but at least this one got stopped from spreading falsehoods. He also failed to get elected despite outspending the major parties in the last Federal election. https://www.theguardian.com/australi...reds-of-deaths

I think not seeing covid spreading all over your communities would probably change the urgency with which people want to get vaccinated. I am sure it has an impact early in the process because people don't feel the palpable sense that they can go from feeling a constant threat to safety nearly overnight. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who aren't vaccine hesitant but also aren't updating their health links daily to find out their eligibility.

Just from looking at your government websites I can tell the process is more organized there. It also seems like age is being used as a more important qualifying criterion than pre-existing conditions. There were a lot of people who recommended we change our rubric because age IS a much more important determining factor for risk than conditions. Anyhow I wish you guys well.

In the U.S. we really have a tale of two cities phenomenon (I don't know if I got the reference right but let me have it jk). Some places have more than 60% of people have at least one shot while some places in the south barely breaking 30 percent.

[sukumvit boy]

Finally , a comprehensive ,balanced and easy to understand article on the whole "lab-leak" hypothesis. In the 17 June 2021 issue of Nature magazine entitled "The Covid Lab-Leak Hypothesis : What Scientists Do And Don't Know"

[Stavros]

Finally , a comprehensive ,balanced and easy to understand article on the whole "lab-leak" hypothesis. In the 17 June 2021 issue of Nature magazine entitled "The Covid Lab-Leak Hypothesis : What Scientists Do And Don't Know"

Thanks, Sukumvit boy, for referencing a fascinating article.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks! Nice to see you back.
I would have pasted a link to that "Nature" magazine article but my copy and paste functions have gone out on my desktop computer and I'm having the devil of a time fixing it without completely resetting my computer to factory settings.

[sukumvit boy]

In developed countries such as the UK,the US and Israel Covid is becoming a disease of the young and unvaccinated and the Delta Variant is producing hospitalizations and deaths in young people ,more so than the original strain.

[Stavros]

In developed countries such as the UK,the US and Israel Covid is becoming a disease of the young and unvaccinated and the Delta Variant is producing hospitalizations and deaths in young people ,more so than the original strain.

Agree with all except the death rate. Figures from June-

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/who-...a-variant.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/ze...s-show-1071527

[sukumvit boy]

Yes,thank you for that clarification.