COVID-19: Discussion of Impact 😷

Didn’t they drop that bad some time ago?

No. They allowed people to come in from New Zealand but Australians still had to apply for a permit to leave Australia in order to travel to New Zealand.

Otherwise people would have just flown to NZ, done their two weeks in a hotel then been free to travel wherever they wanted.

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I see what you are saying

what was droped 6 months ago was new zeland being able to come to Australia and from april 28th the International border from australia to New Zealand will be opened

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and regarding back to my post i did hear on the radi o a question on why australia didnt choose a 2nd or 3rd international supplier of the covid-19 vaccine and not just realy on Pfizer vaccine ??? say like the moderna vaccine. other wise we wouldnt even be in the mess we are in today. and morrison did say its no long a million a week its now something like 880,000 a week target

But they did, it’s just that that particular vaccine (UQ / CSL) didn’t work out, and the other that has been ordered (Novavax) is only just about to finish its Phase III trials.

When they were ordered there was no information on which vaccine was going to be most effective, let alone if any of them were going to be effective at all. Pfizer/Moderna are both mRNA and would not be able to be manufactured in Australia, so even if Moderna was ordered as well it likely would have had similar supply problems to Pfizer. Other vaccines that have since been approved elsewhere (e.g. J&J) weren’t even on the table when orders were placed.

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im glad the targets have been lowered. its no longer 1million a week but something like 800,000 a week

the arrivals will be from : colombo, singapore ,doha,abu dhabi,and dubai

I got my first shot of Moderna’s vaccine on Friday. Second shot at the end of this month. It knocked me around a bit and that wasn’t how I planned to spend my long weekend but I’m not complaining and I am all good now.

Despite all the bullshit that goes on in the US the vaccine rollout seems to be going ok for the most part. Depending on who you talk to they will credit that to Trump or Biden (everything always comes back to politics) but I don’t even care. I am just happy to finally have something.

Australia needs to follow. The quicker these supply issues are resolved and you lot get vaccinated the quicker I can come home to visit. At least Australia doesn’t have cases running rampant so there is time to get these issues sorted.

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Why not?
This question was discussed on Coronacast last week; the necessary skills are here (e.g. CSL) and the equipment outlay wouldn’t be that much.

The Oxford vaccine (from AstraZeneca) is likely to not have a long life because our immune systems react to the vector (a chimpanze adenovirus) used to deliver the spike protein, so the Australian Government should have already been looking to switch to producing mRNA vaccines anyway.

Lowering the vaccination rate is bad news. It delays how soon we can return to normal and gives the virus more time to mutate. Although we’re not in as bad a situation as many other countries, we should want to vaccinate as soon as possible.

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Looks like Victorian hotel quarantine residents will be granted exemptions to temporarily LEAVE confinement on compassionate grounds, if they meet strict eligibility requirements.

At that rate, if heard immunity is 85% and our population is 25mil and we need 2 doses, that’s 42.5mil doses needed which will take 53weeks. We will reach heard immunity mid April 2022, assuming everything works like clockwork. I don’t think that’s good, there will be 3rd world nations 10 months ahead of us.

All the bragging rights our country has earned during covid until now will be long gone by then.

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You’re forgetting that COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 isn’t like the measles; the vaccines don’t last forever (it’ll be more like the flu vaccine, which only lasts 3 - 4 months).

At this slow rate, Australia will never finish vaccinating.

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Are australia even giving the Pfizer anymore? Apparently no one can get it anymore as there is no more available. Seems like mr Morrison and other politicians got it but regular Australians need to get the cheap astrazeneca. Was talking to a doctor today and they were saying Astra only costs $5 to make per dose whereas Pfizer costs $20 per dose.

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Yes I think Pfizer has been exhausted but there’s another 10 million or so doses due to us but haven’t come through.

I was at the doctors today and people were coming in and asking the receptionist for the Pfizer and she was saying we only get Astra Zeneca at this practice.

We are taking far too long with all of this.

Novavax still not approved and we’ll have 50 million of that probably for round two vaccinations next year. Clearly these other ones will wear out.

You do get some level of protection after the first dose so you need to counter that in. Everyone doesn’t need to have had the two doses for us to hit a reasonable level of protection as a whole.

Also do you really think 85% is a realistic goal? I would say 60-70% is a more realistic percentage that will be willing to uptake a vaccine at least in the coming months. There will always be people that refuse to get it, people that just won’t bother with it and those that say they will wait a bit before getting it (a lot of my friends fit in this category, the only benefit they see at this stage is if they need to travel). I also think the media scare campaigns on blood clots will scare some people off too.

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The man was transported from PNG to Queensland on March 28 “as his condition was worsening”, the health authority said in a statement.

“Since that day, he has been in ICU at Redcliffe hospital and unfortunately passed away yesterday,” the statement on Tuesday read.

The man was a dual PNG-UK national.

This is one of the big unknowns about the vaccines at the moment and we probably wont have decent data on this for a little while yet.

We signed a deal for AZ because we were able to get an agreement to manufacture it here (which as it has transpired has turned out to be a good thing) - at that time the effectiveness of the vaccines was a bit of an unknown.

Dont forget the Pfizer vaccine poses logistical challenges to ensure it remains in the required temperature range during the logistics chain (and we arent well equipped for it)

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85% seems high and I’m beginning to think even 70% is optimistic.

There are many people who want to wait and see. I don’t understand why they don’t trust the science but at least they’re not saying no they won’t get it. The wait and see approach is fine while there are supply issues but once that is solved I hope everyone goes for it.

The anti-vax crowd is always a problem. There’s nothing that will change their mind and they will remain the weak link in all of this. Governments are too afraid to force this but once enough time has passed things will become harder or impossible to do for those who are not vaccinated.

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My 95 year old grandmother who’s in aged care (Melbourne) still has not received her first shot, along with the other 60 residents in her care centre.

This is becoming a bit of a joke now.

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