New daily COVID-19 cases have surged to 5612 in NSW and 2095 in Victoria while hitting the hundreds in other states. Test times have blown out, with many standing in line for hours. It is getting so bad that NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet has told Sydneysiders to avoid getting tested as a precaution.
Hospital admissions are surging, with paramedics in NSW taking up to an hour to respond to calls. Restrictions have once again been introduced and many Christmas plans have been ruined.
The Omicron variant has shown to be anywhere between 15-80% less likely to cause hospitalisation, with a 70% lower risk of severe disease than the Delta variant. This is good news — but news Australia still isn’t prepared for.
So why is everything in shambles? Wasn’t this surge in case numbers exactly what was supposed to happen?
What does the modelling say?
November modelling from the Doherty Institute found 100 days after Australia’s international returns reached 40% of 2019 levels, combined with seven-day home quarantine, 80% vaccination rates, partial test, trace, isolate and quarantine measures, and baseline public health measures, new daily case numbers would be less than 1000.
Modelling provided to the national cabinet this week, leaked to media organisations, found as a worst-case scenario with Omicron, 200,000 new daily cases could be expected by late January. On the current trajectory, 25,000 new daily cases are expected.
This huge leap in case numbers, Professor of Biostatistics at the University of South Australia Adrian Esterman told Crikey, is down to two things: limited public health measures and the transmissibility of Omicron.
“Omicron has got a basic reproduction number much, much higher than Delta,” he said. “We should have delayed the easing of restrictions to find out more about Omicron, and we should have been ramping up health services.”
Where are our other measures?
Vaccines were never going to be the only solution to COVID-19 outbreaks. It’s always supposed to be vaccines and — vaccines combined with social distancing measures and isolating positive COVID-19 cases.
But with testing times blown out to days, it’s up to those infected with COVID-19 to contact their social circles to let them know about their infection.
This seems completely counterintuitive — by the time a positive test result comes back and social circles are identified, people are likely to have been infectious in the community for days.
Worse, vaccines aren’t as effective against Omicron as they are for Delta. This morning it was announced booster doses will be administered starting at four months instead of five.
Do we have a right to be surprised?
While case numbers are much higher than the modelling predicted thanks to Omicron, it’s not all a surprise. A surge in cases was always going to be expected as people start travelling for Christmas, social restrictions were eased and mask mandates were removed.
It’s not clear then why in the lead-up to Christmas so many major testing clinics have been shut down, including the Royal Melbourne Hospital, while other clinics in NSW have reduced their opening hours over the Christmas period.
Esterman said a major reason was the lack of staff, with burnt-out nurses unable to staff the testing clinics. What the government should have done, he said, was train health assistants on how to protect themselves and administer PCR tests.
“A lot of government systems are incompetent,” Esterman said. “They should have been overhauling legislation, training staff and ramping up health and testing services.”
Yesterday, Albanese called for reducing the gap between 2nd jab and booster. Hunt responded by calling him a fool, unfit for public office.
Today, Hunt announced the reduction of the gap between 2nd jab and booster. So who’s the lying fool now, Greggy boy?
And Hunt said the reduction from 5 to 4 months would apply from 3 January while the reduction from 4 to 3 months would apply from 31 January. There can only be one reason for this stepped delay – they haven’t got the supplies available. Otherwise they would have reduced the gap to 3 months from today.
Incidentally, what happened to the 51 million Novavax hits we allegedly ordered & which were due in the second half of 2021?
And why aren’t we producing our own vaccine supplies in Oz?
We were making plenty of vaccine until the lefts campaign to disrupt Morrisons rollout. eg you are more likely to die from AZ vaccination than covid [Qld health minister].
What we have observed in Australia, UK, US and lesser extent some European nations, has been the need to reinforce, beyond Covid, ‘radical right libertarian’ tropes and ideology with ‘clown car’ conservative governments to maintain ‘public choice theory’.
This is through science denial, avoid Covid mitigation measures & regulations/compliance (ditto climate), attack/threaten non right wing government via alt right et al. protests, amplify via right wing legacy/social media, while promoting beliefs, gut instincts, ‘freedom & liberty’.
Spot on Drew imo. Power no matter how many lives it costs.
Agree, and you didn’t once mention Koch/eugenics – for a change.
Your skills of desynthesis have left you, ‘public choice theory’ is James Buchanan and was adopted by the Koch Bros., while all the elements cited are promoted by Koch and/or Tanton (ZPG/eugenics) Networks, including in Australia using ‘conservative’, and many ageing left, voters.
As DeSmog UK highlighted (the same has database of ‘usual suspects’ inc. Australian climate science deniers who are not highlighted locally), the Anglosphere Covid science denial and conspiracy theories are joined at the hip with climate science denial. This has been promoted by Koch Network think tanks e.g. Heartland, AEI etc. through their Atlas Network (inc. locally) and using Tanton’s alt right extremists in ‘freedom protests’ for threats to liberal democracy while promoting the ‘great replacement’, aka ‘eugenics’ (locally via immigration/population growth); supported by media from News through Spectator and Spiked (seeded by Kochs).
This is to reinforce science denial, avoidance of regulation and freedom of speech for trashing of democracy. How embarrassing that Australians do not seem/want to recognise the same?
According to Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor of cognitive science at University of Bristol:
‘“I think COVID is just climate change on steroids in a particle accelerator,” he says. “The same forces are happening: you have the inevitability of a virus which is the same as the inevitability of the physics. And opposing that you have politics which motivates some people to deny the inevitables and instead resort to bizarre claims.”’
https://www.desmog.com/2020/08/10/how-uk-climate-science-deniers-turned-their-attention-coronavirus-covid-19/
There you go, talk about idée fixe!
Ignorance is bliss for most Australians 🙂
Somehow, there has been a “give up” we are all going to get it and it’s not too bad!
Thanks to Dominic Perrottet, the sacrifices we have all made in the last 2 years have been swept away in 10 days by his ridiculous call for “Personal Responsibility” in the midst of a pandemic.
The concept of personal responsibility would have been a little more rational before social media. but not much.
Didn’t I hear a Brazilian dictator claim that Covid19 was a “little flu”, just recently, as millions of the peasants were being buried?
The new Queensland Chief Health Officer seems to have forgotten (or never really understood) that catching Covid19 does not give you immunity, merely sets you up for the next Covid19 infection.
The NSW premier and the Prime Minimal for NSW, both Trump supporters, along with all that entails, have an “evangelical agenda” and that it is not good for the general population.
Be very aware that the majority of people who have died in the US, have died because they “believed” Trump was sent by god and that vaccines didn’t work/ made you sick/ Bill Gates puppet, Ivermectin in other words horse worming paste supposedly works and the loony tunes keep rolling………….
We all know that the track record of this irresponsible government is not good as far as,ordering, purchasing and distributing vaccines are concerned. This can be contrasted with the efficiency of their ability to turn our money into their friend’s assets and career enhancements and favours owed.
My questions are fairly basic, really.
What do you think will be the outcome, when the next mutation takes Covid19 around all the current vaccines?
The federal government was quick to snatch back research funding given to the University of Queensland quietly working on a “clamp technology” which will effectively be an immunization.
The Queensland government has funded this research ever since Labor came to power in 2015.
How many headlines will the Murdoch press give Smirko,thus allowing him to claim it is his own?
Will Long Covid be covered by the NDIS/ Sickness benefits which even the terminally ill mostly can’t access?
Or as the Arsehat of the year, Smirko kept insisting “We have a national plan and I expect the premiers to stick with that plan” designed by the Doherty Institute before Delta existed.
Even the Doherty institute’s lead researcher Sharon Lewin has been distancing herself and the institute from that rigid adherence to the “National Plan” as described by SMirko, mostly because the federal government is not prepared to fulfill all the pre-requists described in the plan.
“Oh we didn’t see that new out break of something really bad coming?”
“Re-elect us and we will do better (at looking after our mates)”.
Well, 2022 will be a gauge of just how far down the worm hole our democracy has slipped.
Re: everybody but us stick to the National Plan there seems to be a pattern of projection, ie accusing others of what one is doing. The Dems are stealing the election! The Labor states aren’t following the National Plan and on and on and on. Scary times. Praying we escape the wormhole.
I be afeared that the worms have set the controls for the heart of the dark sun on the Good Ship Australia Haggunenon.
Of course the numbers are worse than expected as modeling – and the National Plan – are predicated on inclusion of restrictions whether light, eg masks, or lockdowns which are included in Phase C (over 80% of over 16s fully vaxxed) of the Plan. Perrottet is my nomination for Arsehat of 2022 as this mess and is his doing.