2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2692895 14-Apr-2021 20:21

vexxxboy:

i dont know why this is such a thing to be upset about , so he wasn't tested for 6 months ok he should have been but what happened last week still would have happened even if he had been tested weekly, the main problem is that he wasn't vaccinated and no one knew . They need to sort that out first.

Big issues were uncovered, they are worth getting upset about

There was no system to ensure that workers are getting tested at the level required, and the level of testing that the public was told would be undertaken wasn't actually being done.
There was no system to ensure all border workers are fully vaccinated in a timely manor, and to prevent non vaccinated workers from being in these roles.

With regards to the first bullet point, this is the second time we have been on this position. I'm quite upset about this.

With regards to the 2nd bullet point, it just defies common sense. We had the opportunity to have a cira 95% reduction in infections in border staff, and have had the doses and vaccination available to do so for several weeks. I can't see any reason we didn't take full advantage of this. A deadline for border workers needing to have had a single dose & to be fully immunized should have been set as soon as we received enough vaccine to do this (the first shipment).

Hopefully the media drama around this has driven actual change, but somehow a deadline for requiring all border staff to be fully immunized has yet to be set.

Fred99

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#2692896 14-Apr-2021 20:25

<sigh>

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/124839468/covid19-denier-boasts-about-flying-without-a-mask-with-special-exemption-card

She told multiple people on social media how to print the exemption and advised them on how to use it.

What a thoroughly disgusting person.

Fred99

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#2692898 14-Apr-2021 20:31

Scott3:

We had the opportunity to have a cira 95% reduction in infections in border staff, and have had the doses and vaccination available to do so for several weeks. I can't see any reason we didn't take full advantage of this. A deadline for border workers needing to have had a single dose & to be fully immunized should have been set as soon as we received enough vaccine to do this (the first shipment).

It's actually worse, as complete freaking idiots like the infected worker have almost certainly bought in to irrational CT surrounding C-9, the basket of lunacy is packed with all kinds of myths including "it's only the flu" or similar or worse. They will be far higher risk *to everyone else* than any who "missed" vaccination or testing for legitimate reasons - not that there should really have ever been any allowed to work in high risk environment anyway.

kiwikurt

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#2692912 14-Apr-2021 21:17

frankv:

You missed the point. He said that international pilots are queueing up for the vaccine. But, for a domestic-only pilot, there's little in the way of benefit, and some immediate risk. This doesn't mean that they've bought into anti-vax CT, just a basic risk/benefit analysis. And presuming a generous income, let alone generous income protection insurance, for domestic pilots (especially those not captaining jets) is, well, presumptuous. Airline pilots on small regional airlines are not well paid.

As a domestic-only pilot I disagree and much of what empacher48 says doesn't apply to regional turboprop pilots. A blood clot does not in of itself mean a permanent suspension of a pilot medical. There is definitely utility in the domestic pilot workforce having the vaccine and I would be very disappointed to hear of any colleagues refusing it.

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#2692914 14-Apr-2021 21:27

empacher48

The article was about NZALPA members not the entire pilot population of NZ, of which about 1000 members of NZALPA are international pilots. (Approx 800 from AirNZ Jet, the rest from Jetstar and Jetconnect - QANTAS’ NZ operation). The rest of the pilots who are ALPA members come from anything from regional turboprop through to flying instructors, helicopter pilots and scenic pilots.

There are about 2000 NZALPA members, so only half have been eligible to receive the vaccine. I can only speak for where I work and we were eligible to receive the vaccine four weeks ago and we have 98% of people with a first dose and 67% completed a second dose.

There was nothing specific in the article other than vague words like “many members have not received the vaccine”, however about 50% of members are ineligible! There were other non-specific words like “some are waiting for more information” and “a few are anti-vax” no numbers, just vague statements.

However people have jumped from vague words such as “some” and “few” to mean it’s the majority.

A lot of regional crew have completed their second doses and were included in the border worker rollout because of proximity to the border and the desire to have a protected workforce which has been defined as essential.

Handle9

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#2692917 14-Apr-2021 21:30

Fred99:
<sigh>

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/124839468/covid19-denier-boasts-about-flying-without-a-mask-with-special-exemption-card

She told multiple people on social media how to print the exemption and advised them on how to use it.

What a thoroughly disgusting person.

Yes. The police should be investigatibg her for fraud and Air NZ should ban her from flying.

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Handle9

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#2692918 14-Apr-2021 21:33

Fred99:
Scott3:

We had the opportunity to have a cira 95% reduction in infections in border staff, and have had the doses and vaccination available to do so for several weeks. I can't see any reason we didn't take full advantage of this. A deadline for border workers needing to have had a single dose & to be fully immunized should have been set as soon as we received enough vaccine to do this (the first shipment).

It's actually worse, as complete freaking idiots like the infected worker have almost certainly bought in to irrational CT surrounding C-9, the basket of lunacy is packed with all kinds of myths including "it's only the flu" or similar or worse. They will be far higher risk *to everyone else* than any who "missed" vaccination or testing for legitimate reasons - not that there should really have ever been any allowed to work in high risk environment anyway.

Just as likely is complacency and pcrs are kind of horrible things to have.

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#2692929 14-Apr-2021 21:55

Fred99:

<sigh>

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/124839468/covid19-denier-boasts-about-flying-without-a-mask-with-special-exemption-card

She told multiple people on social media how to print the exemption and advised them on how to use it.

What a thoroughly disgusting person.

"Pomare was the Papakura candidate for Advance NZ at last year’s election. The party was sanctioned by the Advertising Standards Authority for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 death rates and vaccinations."

Yep, idiot.

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#2692955 15-Apr-2021 07:10

Fred99:

Everywhere the whole system has been reliant on voluntary compliance thus open to abuse everywhere, especially including in the general community.

Humans are always the weakest link - they lie, can be lazy, and are forgetful. That's why we build systems we ensure checks and balances are in place to pick up the failings of human nature.

It seems that nothing we're doing is factoring this in, and that once again out border failures are only being picked up when we get new cases. The simple fact is somebody needs to be accountable for the systemic failings of our systems that continue to happen, but nobody is.

We seem to have inquiry after inquiry and are told continually that systems are being reviewed, but it's pretty clear now that if we can't spot basic failings like the fact there existed no centralised record of test results from every border worker that we clearly have the wrong people managing these systems. MBIE are certainly starting to look like the weak link here.

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#2692956 15-Apr-2021 07:20

Fred99:

If it's a double-blind trial, there'd be a potential difficulty as for example the Pfizer vaccine is a off-white colloidal suspension. Trial data says they used "saline". I could tell the difference and would know if I looked, that would probably affect my post vaccination risk behaviour. Whoever would be administering the vaccine would know too, so I don't know how they got around that. The "double blind" nature of the trial was probably a little bit compromised anyway - many people have some reaction to the vaccine, they'd "know" they didn't get saline. At least any error from this would give a "safe" bias, indicating efficacy wasn't quite as good as it may prove to be, rather than exaggerating efficacy.

I posted a link in here months ago which was fascinating to read an article a few month ago about the limitations of placebos in the vaccine trial. I also had a friend in the UK who was a volunteer late last year and believed they'd had the vaccine simply because of the side effects.

The simple fact was researchers were concerned that people knew whether they had the vaccine or a placebo simply from talking to each other - it was pretty clear many having the vaccine were developing an immune response and suffering from symptoms (regardless of how minor) whereas those with the placebo weren't. The problem with this was they had no way of knowing whether it resulted in different human behavior afterwards such as those who believed they had been vaccinated taking additional risks, and those who felt they'd had the placebo taking additional precautions. When efficacy data was only being compiled for groups of say 15k-20k of each then it had the potential to be quite significant.

sbiddle

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#2692957 15-Apr-2021 07:26

vexxxboy:

i dont know why this is such a thing to be upset about , so he wasn't tested for 6 months ok he should have been but what happened last week still would have happened even if he had been tested weekly, the main problem is that he wasn't vaccinated and no one knew . They need to sort that out first.

It's upsetting because it shows that after 16? border breaches that it's pretty clear we're still not learning, and that the constant reviews we're being told are happening are clerarly being undertaken by the very same people who are clearly unable to look at the bigger picture.

We should have systems in place that ensure failings due to human nature can't happen. We don't. End of story.

The many interviews from Professor Des Gorman in the past week or so have been very enlightening - particularly his "can't learn won't learn don't learn" comments based around the fact we think we've beaten Covid and are the best in the world at this and are therefore incapable of accepting our failings and limitations and learning from these to ensure they don't keep happening.

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sbiddle

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#2692960 15-Apr-2021 07:37

Handle9:
Fred99:

It's actually worse, as complete freaking idiots like the infected worker have almost certainly bought in to irrational CT surrounding C-9, the basket of lunacy is packed with all kinds of myths including "it's only the flu" or similar or worse. They will be far higher risk *to everyone else* than any who "missed" vaccination or testing for legitimate reasons - not that there should really have ever been any allowed to work in high risk environment anyway.

Just as likely is complacency and pcrs are kind of horrible things to have.

It's why we need to be moving beyond nasopharyngeal swabs for PCR testing. The rest of the world has moved on and saliva and other 15 min rapid tests are the way forward - and why countries such as the UK are issuing 2 x free tests weekly to everybody to use.

All we care about is that no staff at a MIQ facility are infected at the very point in time that the test is taken, and for that we don't need an incredibly sensitive test. We should be doing rapid testing every 2-3 days to supplement nasopharyngeal swabs but we chose not to because while we have many of our health experts calling for it, we have the MoH who don't believe in it. Australia moved to implement daily testing of staff because they saw this as the only robust solution moving forward.

I just can't wait for Australia to finally realise it no longer wants NZers to be roaming around quarantine free because we're posing too much of a risk to their country..

invisibleman18

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#2693011 15-Apr-2021 08:06

May have missed it but has someone answered the question as to why proof of a test result is not required for MIQ employees and "yeah bro I've had a test" is enough? And why is it up to the employee to go and organise the test rather than everything being supervised?

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#2693015 15-Apr-2021 08:13

networkn:

One would assume that the article refers to people who 'should' be getting vaccinated now, otherwise, what is the point of the article?

Clickbait.

Fred99

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#2693026 15-Apr-2021 08:45

sbiddle:

Handle9:

Just as likely is complacency and pcrs are kind of horrible things to have.

It's why we need to be moving beyond nasopharyngeal swabs for PCR testing. The rest of the world has moved on and saliva and other 15 min rapid tests are the way forward - and why countries such as the UK are issuing 2 x free tests weekly to everybody to use.

I thought they had already moved to use sputum test for some routine MIQ staff testing alongside swabs How well that works depends on ability of the patient to hocker up a good sample from deep in the lungs. If "not well enough" then you'll get more false negatives - not a good outcome. If you want a more failsafe method than the way we're collecting swabs now, then bronchial lavage is probably it - but that's "unpleasant" on a whole different level.

The rapid tests being used in the UK might be ok for mitigating spread while they've got widespread CT, but not fit for purpose for NZ where continuing full containment is the goal. IOW most of the "rest of the world" has a completely different situation to deal with.

So nope. The nasopharangeal swabs / PCR test remains the "gold standard" for NZ's needs.

Criticise the failures in MIQ etc as much as you like, I'll agree with that there's been some inexcusable failures. But the methodology here in NZ is very sound - if it's adhered to.

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