2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2746906 20-Jul-2021 07:10

Worth a read about the inaccessibility of MIQ. I'm sure the usual denials of any problems will come or it'll get labelled a sob story.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/20-07-2021/david-farrier-the-problem-of-returning-home

tdgeek

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#2746908 20-Jul-2021 07:15

Freedom Day in the UK. Instead of being happy that they have freedom, they seem to have found ever way to crowd together

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/300361469/covid19-virus-surge-fears-mar-englands-freedom-day-as-nightclubs-reopen-in-england

sbiddle

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#2746914 20-Jul-2021 07:42

Fred99:

Oblivian:

Petrie Dish host merry-go-round?

Now about the 40% of port workforce not done yet....

55% of that workforce on 9 July - so it's more terrible than your figure.

Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins yesterday (July 8) said he was “not even close” to being satisfied with the rate of port worker vaccination.

“The port workers have the highest unvaccinated rate for our border workforce, that is something I am concerned about,” Hipkins said.

"Concerned" isn't even close to how I feel about that.

I doubt it's because of (lack of) availability of vaccine either. The only port worker I know is unlikely to have contact with crew (office job in cargo planning). He was vaccinated months ago.

No different to airport retail workers that were not required to be vaccinated.

Anybody who doesn't believe this vaccine rollout is not a shambles really isn't paying attention. The fact so many of these things have been raised so many times in recent months and yet nothing happens shows failings on multiple levels at the MoH and from the Ministers concerned. If you're a Minister and things aren't being done you need to take steps to ensure they are. It's been clear this whole pandemic that there is a massive disconnect between the govt and the MoH with little understanding between the two.

The entire priority rollout and assessment of who belonged in priority groups, access to the vaccines for people in those groups, and followup to ensure that people have been vaccinated has been incredibly poorly managed. Yes it's easy to say that looking from the outside, but it's not like other experts haven't been saying the same thing for months.

As much as I don't want our luck to run out, it's just truly unbelievable that we can keep playing Russian roulette and winning.

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#2746918 20-Jul-2021 07:49

Handle9: Worth a read about the inaccessibility of MIQ. I'm sure the usual denials of any problems will come or it'll get labelled a sob story.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/20-07-2021/david-farrier-the-problem-of-returning-home

The Government hasn't been interested in doing anything to fix the issue despite this having been an ongoing one for 10 months or so now. The only time we've had free capacity was around the April/May/June period because they'd removed a lot of capacity from MIQ (upgrades and contract negotiations with several properties) and then dumped it all back at once.

There are multiple ways this could be done differently (and none are the perfect solution) but every single one of these is better than we have at present. It's pretty clear however there is no intention from the Government / MBIE to actually do anything to address the shortcomings despite these being made pretty clear in the MIQ review. That review suggested outsourcing all the bookings to the private sector to manage so things could be improved, but it's highly doubtful that will happen when MBIE want to keep everything in-house and the Government are just in denial that there is anything actually broken.

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#2746932 20-Jul-2021 08:36

Canada opens up

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/covid-19-coronavirus-canada-opens-borders-to-fully-vaccinated-travellers/QHAL3JW4LA6UC3AMPTBDJB2PCI/

Fred99

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#2746939 20-Jul-2021 08:49

sbiddle:

The entire priority rollout and assessment of who belonged in priority groups, access to the vaccines for people in those groups, and followup to ensure that people have been vaccinated has been incredibly poorly managed. Yes it's easy to say that looking from the outside, but it's not like other experts haven't been saying the same thing for months.

As much as I don't want our luck to run out, it's just truly unbelievable that we can keep playing Russian roulette and winning.

I'm confident that if this was investigated, then the most significant reason for non-compliance won't be limits on availability of vaccine, but vaccine hesitancy and outright anti-vax behaviours by those workers.

The only "scientific" solution would be to lay off and remove all those workers from sites. The legality and morality of doing so is a problem. Even the military has significant numbers of anti-vaxxers - who've rendered themselves useless for any offshore service - or any domestic NZ service where human contact may be needed in pandemic control. They're exempt from civil employment law. They're turfing out enlisted apprentices from training programs who haven't been vaccinated, but not releasing them from service for 12 months. :-)

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#2746964 20-Jul-2021 09:31

Fred99:

sbiddle:

The entire priority rollout and assessment of who belonged in priority groups, access to the vaccines for people in those groups, and followup to ensure that people have been vaccinated has been incredibly poorly managed. Yes it's easy to say that looking from the outside, but it's not like other experts haven't been saying the same thing for months.

As much as I don't want our luck to run out, it's just truly unbelievable that we can keep playing Russian roulette and winning.

I'm confident that if this was investigated, then the most significant reason for non-compliance won't be limits on availability of vaccine, but vaccine hesitancy and outright anti-vax behaviours by those workers.

The only "scientific" solution would be to lay off and remove all those workers from sites. The legality and morality of doing so is a problem. Even the military has significant numbers of anti-vaxxers - who've rendered themselves useless for any offshore service - or any domestic NZ service where human contact may be needed in pandemic control. They're exempt from civil employment law. They're turfing out enlisted apprentices from training programs who haven't been vaccinated, but not releasing them from service for 12 months. :-)

I genuinely don't think we're ever going to surpass somewhere in the vicinity of ~80% of the eligible population who will be fully vaccinated (and in NZ eligible population is anybody aged 12+). There are simply too many vaccine hesitant and anti vaxxers out there.

In NZ there are around 4 million aged 16+ and 265,000 aged 12-15 so 80% will still leave well over 1 million people unvaccinated. That is still a lot of people who could become sick every year from an endemic virus. Hopefully in the coming years once we open up as people do become ill (and unfortunately some will die) from an endemic virus that figure may rise slightly further.

Whether children globally under 12 are vaccinated is going to be an interesting development. There are trials, but that doesn't mean it will end up being recommended. There is a lot of data at present showing it's not recommended.

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Fred99

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#2746965 20-Jul-2021 09:31

Handle9: Worth a read about the inaccessibility of MIQ. I'm sure the usual denials of any problems will come or it'll get labelled a sob story.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/20-07-2021/david-farrier-the-problem-of-returning-home

I thought that the MIQ portal was supposed to have been changed a few days ago to address the problems identified in that article. (ie portal sessions can now be saved).

sbiddle

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#2746977 20-Jul-2021 10:00

sbiddle:

Whether children globally under 12 are vaccinated is going to be an interesting development. There are trials, but that doesn't mean it will end up being recommended. There is a lot of data at present showing it's not recommended.

I was just trying to find the actual number of people aged under 12 in NZ but can't see a current figure. This would appear to be around 750,000 right now, so that means it's simply impossible to get beyond ~85% of our total population vaccinated if as many expect that vaccinations will not be given to children under 12 and every single person aged over 12 was vaccinated.

So if we factor in that we may get ~85% of the adult 12+ population vaccinated realistically we're probably unlikely to see much beyond 70% or 75% in a best case scenario of total population who will ever be vaccinated.

Fred99

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#2746980 20-Jul-2021 10:10

sbiddle:

I genuinely don't think we're ever going to surpass somewhere in the vicinity of ~80% of the eligible population who will be fully vaccinated (and in NZ eligible population is anybody aged 12+). There are simply too many vaccine hesitant and anti vaxxers out there.

I agree - I doubt we'll get to the 80% level.

The R0 of delta variant combined with decrease in efficacy of all vaccines (incl mRNA) means that the hypothetical "herd immunity" levels won't be able to be reached even if we do get to >80%.

It's also inevitable that further mutations to delta will result in an even higher R0, unknown if that will also again increase virulence - but that generally seems to be the way it's been going, probably because the mutations to the spike protein increase the viral count as more cells can be infected more rapidly, but also the ability of the virus to bind to and invade different human cell types. The significant change in symptoms between delta and earlier variants is evidence of that latter change.

BUT - the vaccines do work incredibly well to save lives and reduce disease severity and probably long term or permanent damage - they are a no-brainer.

We're still going to have to deal with the consequences of anti-vaxxers, to support them through possible life-long consequences of the severe infections many of them will get, and to somehow protect those in our community for whom the vaccines can't be used or wont work.

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#2747077 20-Jul-2021 11:37

Wallabies game implicated in covid spread

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300361573/covid19-close-contacts-top-15000-as-superspreaders-spark-new-stadium-cases-in-australia

KrazyKid

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#2747126 20-Jul-2021 13:38

SA has increased it's lockdown to level 4 status and committed to a week of lockdown.

Victoria has just extended it's lockdown for another week.

QLD has a new community case - a uni student up from Melbourne - initially tested negative when advised she had been in a Melbourne Covid site 5 days prior so was allowed to move about.
She then dined out and flew from the Sunshine coast to Cairns in the period before symptoms appeared.
She has now tested positive.

Sounds she did the right things and it still went wrong.

wellygary

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#2747128 20-Jul-2021 13:45

KrazyKid:

QLD has a new community case - a uni student up from Melbourne - initially tested negative when advised she had been in a Melbourne Covid site 5 days prior so was allowed to move about.
She then dined out and flew from the Sunshine coast to Cairns in the period before symptoms appeared.
She has now tested positive.

Sounds she did the right things and it still went wrong.

Apparently she is also fully immunised (Double pfizer) ... so this should be a interesting datapoint to watch...

One presumes she is studying health or similar as its still pretty hard to get immunised in the 20-30 group in OZ..

trig42

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#2747129 20-Jul-2021 13:47

wellygary:

KrazyKid:

QLD has a new community case - a uni student up from Melbourne - initially tested negative when advised she had been in a Melbourne Covid site 5 days prior so was allowed to move about.
She then dined out and flew from the Sunshine coast to Cairns in the period before symptoms appeared.
She has now tested positive.

Sounds she did the right things and it still went wrong.

Apparently she is also fully immunised (Double pfizer) ... so this should be a interesting datapoint to watch...

One presumes she is studying health or similar as its still pretty hard to get immunised in the 20-30 group in OZ..

I wonder if she might turn out to be a false positive, or a low viral load so hopefully not infectious (like the bloke who visited Wellington - we got a let off there).

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#2747134 20-Jul-2021 14:05

trig42:

I wonder if she might turn out to be a false positive, or a low viral load so hopefully not infectious (like the bloke who visited Wellington - we got a let off there).

yes keen to follow the development. double pfizer => ??

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