Australia and New Zealand go into COVID lockdown and reinstate restrictions

Another day of violent protests in Australia. It appears the authorities are starting to lose control.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/world-news/australia/in-australia-anti-govt-protests-continue-at-melbourne-against-covid-regulations.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/world/1494825/Australia-vaccine-protest-latest-construction-workers-Melbourne-riot-police-violence-VN/amp

It does look pretty tense over in Australia right now.

In the past there were riots but usually it was just a one off deal and then the rioters would quiet down for a few weeks. This seems to be a sustained action that is getting more intense and picking up more steam rather than losing steam.

What is dangerous is that neither the Australian government or the protesters seem particularly eager to back down from a fight which obviously escalates things further. Some of these videos from the past week are just showing protesters and police in hand to hand combat right in the streets.

Australia running out of money. To start withdrawing COVID disaster payments at 56% vaccination rate (right now they are at 42.8%):

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/covid-disaster-payments-could-be-withdrawn-within-weeks-will-the-economy-cope/ar-AAOWvEW?ocid=uxbndlbing

Hospitality industry in New Zealand has been absolutely devastated by lockdowns:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/covid-19-delta-outbreak-restaurant-association-unveils-roadmap-as-industry-loses-13000-jobs/RKOURIJAOVWLUCLKCCUOTPS6R4/

Understanding that vaccinations are flawed and not entirely protective against newer strains, do Australia and New Zealand have the intestinal fortitude to accept the inevitable spread and deaths that will ensue when their economically unsustainable restrictions are dropped?

joed|rtee wrote:

Australia running out of money. To start withdrawing COVID disaster payments at 56% vaccination rate (right now they are at 42.8%):

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/covid-disaster-payments-could-be-withdrawn-within-weeks-will-the-economy-cope/ar-AAOWvEW?ocid=uxbndlbing

Hospitality industry in New Zealand has been absolutely devastated by lockdowns:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/covid-19-delta-outbreak-restaurant-association-unveils-roadmap-as-industry-loses-13000-jobs/RKOURIJAOVWLUCLKCCUOTPS6R4/

Understanding that vaccinations are flawed and not entirely protective against newer strains, do Australia and New Zealand have the intestinal fortitude to accept the inevitable spread and deaths that will ensue when their economically unsustainable restrictions are dropped?

We won't be following the US model any time soon. 700k deaths and counting.

I'll speak just on the situation in NZ as I am from there - oh the absolute irony.

It's funny to me to think of the time when NZ in particular was once lauded as the global bastion of "covid-control" under the pragmatic and emphatic leadership of Jacinda Ardern. "Zero cases" - which of course wasn't true but made for a good story, NZ was the globally anointed blueprint nation. A small population (4.5 million) governed on a national (federal) and not provincial (state) level and one that is largely uninterested in opposing directions of their leadership made it all pretty easy. Again ironic that these apparently desirable traits have ended up contributing to this mess today of "levels of lockdown" just being switched on, off and enforced based on arbitrary whims of Ardern.

Fast forward 12 months and unlike the rest of the world that seems to have taken the majority of their lumps and are getting on with life making the compromises needed (such as finally getting to the sensible medium of wearing masks indoors in public spaces, getting the majority (herd) vaccinated, and just being a little more cautious with close contact interaction, NZ still waxes and wanes from extreme to extreme with no apparent plan on how to get past this.

And for NZ, a small nation that runs primarily on tourism and hospitality, the longer this goes on the more exponential damage is done. Focusing on Ardern, a leader elected primarily on "feel-good" value and a narrative of "a down to earth kiwi mum we can all relate to", sadly the one thing you can't run from in times where critical and logical thought process and decision making is required is intellect (or lack thereof). New Zealanders took a huge punt with her hoping that she was just an ordinary and relatable leader that did have the above average intelligence and intuition needed to find the right solution for this and it turns out this bet was very wrong. She, like many ultra-liberal covid "experts" claimed to function on the grounds of science when they ignored science just as much as the ultra-conservatives they loved to ram this caveat down the throats of in a wafting cloud of their own fart clouds.

NZ is not in a good place because of this, it's really not. Unfortunately not too many other people to point the finger at in this case.

Armstronglivs wrote:

joed|rtee wrote:

Australia running out of money. To start withdrawing COVID disaster payments at 56% vaccination rate (right now they are at 42.8%):

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/covid-disaster-payments-could-be-withdrawn-within-weeks-will-the-economy-cope/ar-AAOWvEW?ocid=uxbndlbing

Hospitality industry in New Zealand has been absolutely devastated by lockdowns:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/covid-19-delta-outbreak-restaurant-association-unveils-roadmap-as-industry-loses-13000-jobs/RKOURIJAOVWLUCLKCCUOTPS6R4/

Understanding that vaccinations are flawed and not entirely protective against newer strains, do Australia and New Zealand have the intestinal fortitude to accept the inevitable spread and deaths that will ensue when their economically unsustainable restrictions are dropped?

We won't be following the US model any time soon. 700k deaths and counting.

So you care more about the .2% of the population that is at risk of COVID than the 6% of your economy and population that rely on their job to live? That's nice.

joed|rtee wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

We won't be following the US model any time soon. 700k deaths and counting.

So you care more about the .2% of the population that is at risk of COVID than the 6% of your economy and population that rely on their job to live? That's nice.

He is almost 70 and scared of dying. Fvck the rest, is his attitude.

Australia has been in the news more lately because of all their extreme civil unrest but New Zealand is starting to struggle as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/29/covid-new-zealand-reports-jump-in-cases-as-opposition-calls-for-opening-up

Abba it goes wrote:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/11/australia/coronavirus-queensland-lockdown-intl-hnk/index.html

How long until Queensland locks down again? Few more weeks maybe?

Qld have an outbreak. They’re just not testing and not checking in so they can’t contact trace.

They’ll try to stay in denial until they get their vaccinations up.

Chip off the old block wrote:

It does look pretty tense over in Australia right now.

In the past there were riots but usually it was just a one off deal and then the rioters would quiet down for a few weeks. This seems to be a sustained action that is getting more intense and picking up more steam rather than losing steam.

What is dangerous is that neither the Australian government or the protesters seem particularly eager to back down from a fight which obviously escalates things further. Some of these videos from the past week are just showing protesters and police in hand to hand combat right in the streets.

A week ago now but it wasn’t that tense except in the city - where no one was because of lockdown. Hard right wingers wanting to take on the cops, using this as an excuse.

How convenient.

Do what you are told. No protesting or we will say cases are going up.

Time to toss these puppets of Big Pharma, Wall Street, the weapons makers, the insurance companies, and the Israel lobby out on their behinds

No freedom left in Australia..china invading them would probably improve their freedom nowadays. Lul

They had a bump in cases in Australia the other day because people met up in their homes to watch a soccer game:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/covid-cases-spike-australia-victoria-government-people-watching-sports-football

Looks like another month of lockdowns is on the horizon.

The Unkle wrote:

How convenient.

Do what you are told. No protesting or we will say cases are going up.

Time to toss these puppets of Big Pharma, Wall Street, the weapons makers, the insurance companies, and the Israel lobby out on their behinds

Exactly - and they don't need to even really lie about it. As they do here in the US, it's easy to just manipulate the way actual data is reported (so it can be construed as fact) and hope that people just ignorantly swallow up everything they are told which our lazy "can't think for ourselves anymore" society just love doing.

For example, it's the same way that covid-case numbers here are reported as "active" with a very loose and arbitrary definition of what "active" is. Turns out "active" can not only entail people in hospitals getting treatment but also people who are asymptomatic carriers quarantining themselves (and therefore no risk to anyone) and even fully recovered people that were sick but aren't anymore. I didn't make that up there is a thread here with a zoom call recording of North Carolina hospital administrators talking about how they have done exactly this and you would have to be a fool to believe this practice hasn't been adopted across more than one hospital in the US.

When the "delta" variant came to prominence I distinctly remember asking how it was possible the reported case numbers were so high because at least where I live all the testing facilities were completely shut down. I live in a place with a high vaccination rate (70% full v) and the people that don't want vaccinations usually aren't the people who bother to get tested. How we were getting such high numbers reported didn't make sense because this logic can be applied across the continent.

So like you said, as soon as people step "out of line" it's a quick press release about how we are all on the edge of apocalyptical death at the hands of the flu and everyone can wear their masks to bed again.

oh and in case you thought I was making anything up, this is a fun watch in case you haven't seen it.

https://www.wect.com/2021/09/10/novant-health-issues-statement-leaked-internal-discussion-covid-19-patient-numbers/

farewell Gladys, you will be missed.

https://youtu.be/wLTGXblgUoc

Despite Australia covid cases spiking (10% up from last week, averaging around 1,600 new cases a day and 13 deaths a day) it appears the anti-lockdown protests are working and the Australian government is backing down/losing control.

They are still a long way from being a free society again but if Australians keep pushing they will get there.

439 wrote:

joed|rtee wrote:

So you care more about the .2% of the population that is at risk of COVID than the 6% of your economy and population that rely on their job to live? That's nice.

He is almost 70 and scared of dying. Fvck the rest, is his attitude.

Well we know f*ck the dying is your motto.

The government whose approach you seek to discredit is at 43% in the polls, which is more than twice that of the main opposition party. We can see whose policies remain more approved of by the public.

The "on-again/off-again" approach that you mischaracterise is in fact a response to an outbreak of a Delta, which is a particularly virulent form of the virus, as a means to try to maintain a policy of elimination in the community, an approach that since the pandemic began has resulted in one of the lowest death rates of any country (27), the preservation of the health system, and freedoms that very few other countries have enjoyed. This has not been at the caprice of a popular prime minister but is the result of the best public health advice we have available to us. No one has come up with a more credible alternative.

As for those other countries you say are simply "getting on with their lives", they are also getting on with dying and their economies are hardly flourishing. That is the reality of this disease. There is no normal life with Covid.

Auckland is the epicentre of our latest out-break and has so incurred the most restrictions. These will not be permanent but until vaccinations approach 80% of the community we have no alternative. In a small community like ours there is no life that co-exists with Covid; it would spread everywhere, our health system would be quickly overwhelmed and deaths would skyrocket. I meanwhile write this from our capital city where business freely continues and I enjoy a cup of coffee in a local cafe. We hope Auckland will shortly join us. Like many now, I have had my vaccinations. That is the only road out of restrictions.