They still have to pay for repatriation flights (In fact the Australian government has been paying Qantas to perform such out of Chennai and Delhi for months now), while these are significantly cheaper than navigating available commercial flights theyâre not free.
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No but they are not payable straight away.
Thatâs a problem on the ground in India, The numbers that are relevant to the threat to Australia is deaths and cases per capta and test positivity. none of which is as bad as UK/US/Brazil for long stretches of the last year.
Iâm not saying we shouldnât ban flights, I think we should have been doing it for extreme hotspots this whole time. If we banned uk flights we could have avoided 3 lockdowns.
That is fucked⌠seriously?
https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-update-victoria-27-april-2021
Victoria has been notified of 4 new cases of coronavirus since yesterday, in returned travellers in hotel quarantine
The cases are a male and a female in their teens, a woman in her 20s and a man in his 30s.
This is the 60th day in a row that no new cases have been acquired in Victoria.
Update: contact tracing
Work continues to test, trace and isolate individuals associated with the interstate acquired case announced Friday.
The individualâs 4 household and social contacts have tested negative.
All passengers, air and ground crew of interest to Victoria from QF778 have returned a negative result.
The remainder of the flightâs passengers are in other states and have been formally referred to the relevant health authorities for their ongoing management.
All people in Victoria linked to WA exposure sites have tested negative.
Over 2000 red zone permit holders have been advised of their obligation to get tested and quarantine for 14 days. 837 have to date returned a negative test.
Over 9000 orange zone permit holders have been advised of their obligation to isolate, test and stay isolated until negative. 2,989 have to date returned a negative test.
Itâs âgoodâ âpublicityâ for the governments to vaccinate high profile (well, some) sportspeople before going to the Olympics. Remember how much of a cushy ride celebs got in doing home quarantine instead of hotel quartartine like everyone else?
Iâm in group 1B and I havenât gotten my vaccine yet. Iâll probably have to wait until the Pfizer vaccine is more widely available.
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Seems sensible to me, olympians traveling to Tokyo would have to be in one of the highest exposure risk categories.
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Should anyone really be surprised that Olympians & Paralympians are amongst a sports-mad countryâs top priority vaccination group?
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also today is victoriaâs 60th day of 0 local cases
Why is anybody shocked by this? The Olympics are a few months away, thereâs essentailly no chance theyâll be cancelled and several major cities in Japan, including Tokyo are currently in State of Emergency⌠would you rather our participants go without the vaccine?
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Well they donât need to announce it. Keep it on the down low, people are getting shitty about the vaccine rollout.
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Transparency is better than being shady.
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Youâre talking about the states and federal governmentâŚwhen they attempt to the transparent theyâre still shady, and when theyâre shady itâs as clear as day that they are.
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Yeah but donât ask them to be even shadierâŚ
They donât need to be asked to do that⌠
I disagree. Given they are in the high risk exposure categories, Tokyo should not be going ahead with it at all. Why risk athelets health for a sporting event? Itâs not worth it in my opinion. And besides the elderly and the sick should be getting vacinated first in my opinion. Iâll have to re-find an article but I am sure I read an article that the elderly in nuring homes havenât recieved vaccines yet.
Sports stars and celebrity in my opinion should never be the front line of the cue of anything. Let alone a vacine during a pandemic. They fucking have millions dollars ,they can live in their shiny big golden houses.
Iâm not shocked just as â'mad as hellâ. 
I feel like this privledge gets you everything while everyone has to suffer. Do we need that sort of crap in a pandemic?
I live in the UK it was scary thought that we were going to end up like the US. Seeing it happen to India just really makes me appreciate what I have. Unfortunetly the US well they are doomed⌠(lol) Trump was always going to screw up their pandemic response. But heâs not in power now , Biden is, and he has a lot to do with this pandemic to get his country back to normal. Which given the rate how fucked their situation is politically, not going to happen for a long time.
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I agree, but sadly thatâs pretty much how the whole world (not just Australia) worksâŚ
Sadly what you ay is true but you would think given the pandemic these celebrities and athletes and Tokyo government would think of the bigger picture.
Thanks for letting me vent guys 
I feel better. Iâm still too scared to leave my house lol. I do have some friend and community workers who help out with my shopping and medical/counselling appointments and I do pay my bills online etc. But the way this pandemic is shaping, I donât think normality is going to happen for a while and despite coming out of lockdown, Iâm still anxious its too soon. I realise thats naive thinking, but I canât help it, but I feel UK could end up being struck with the Indian variant of the COVID-19 virus if we are not too careful.
Iâm stroking my beer bottle (itâs empty) as I write this. (I am proud to say I haventât touched a drop since new years eve) 
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