Back To Lockdown

[aggienaut]

   Things are now the worst they've ever been here in Australia. I quite rather I told you so about this facepalmably preventable circumstanes in light of there being a vaccine and all. The current outbreak is almost entirely in the state of New South Wales, which is Australia's most populous state (and 65% of its population live in Sydnay).



   The political leader ("Premier") of NSW, "Gladys" Bariunpronouncable, has spent most of the last year saying the state I live in, Victoria, was too heavy handed in its lockdowns, and in this anti-lockdown spirit she was then far too slow to put into effect meaningful lockdowns to stop this outbreak.



   As you can see in the above chart, we had the biggest previous outbreak in Australia but we turned it right around with heavy lockdowns, I really don't think this new outbreak is going to reverse course the same way since I think they let it get too bad there before doing anything about it. As you can see we have a very small bump here, almost entirely from incursions from NSW (though I think they've closed the border but enough people still have excuses to come through that they keep bringing cases in). Easlier in the week I think Melbourne went into lockdown (where 70% of this state's population live) but the rest of the state ("regional" victoria) was just under the usual mask mandates.
   As of Saturday morning we (my friends) were expecting regional to go into lockdown at midnight, and thus the lads were discussing doing something like going bowling while they still could, though it being for once a nice day where I felt I could go outside without dying of cold, I was intent to do some beekeepinh. But then at around 11am there was apparently a "pressie," (press conference) in which it was announced the whole state would go into lockdown in just two hours (!!). I wasn't watching but this was suddenly being commented on everywhere. I had already been planning on going to the hardware and some other stores so I headed out to do that before they closed.
   I live about an hour from town so it was just shy of an hour till lockdown when I got off the highway into town and immediately I saw something bizarre -- traffic was backed up right into that roundabout, which never even comes close to happening.



   While stuck in this traffic I sent a voice message to the standing facebook chat-group of my friends exclaiming about the traffic, and one of them happened to take and send a screenshot of the traffic which is convenient now for a visual aid. I had just come up the M1 "Princes Highway" coming up from the south there and gotten on to what is labeled as "Waurn Ponds Dr" but is actually still sign posted under its old name as the A10 "Princes Highway" (as in you get off the Princes Highway onto Princes Highway, which confused the hell out of me the first time I tried to go into town, and caused me to accidentally get right back on the M1 highway instead of going into town). I quickly abandoned all hope of going to the shops because that appeared to be where all the cars were going -- inbound into the city other than turn lanes into the shopping center were still free, but I kept looking nervously at the outbound lane thinking "how am I going to get back out of the city???" -- if you look at the above map and keep in mind we drive on the left, you'll note the traffic on the outbound side there. I ended up hanging a right past hte shopping center there and was able to proceed out the east side of town, but I was just amazed and flabbergasted by the several-kilometers worth of completely backed up traffic.
   Obviously with the two hours lockdown notice everyone in town had thought ot rush to the town's biggest shopping center ... no doubt to completely ransack the toilet paper (or "bog roll" as they amusingly informally call it).


   Anyway, so yeah now we're in heavy lockdown ... which barely effects me really. Only allowed out of the house for permitted reasons, but essential work is one of them and as an agriculture ("primary production") worker I'm essential, but I do have to carry a work permit with me at all times (which I issue myself, though John Edmonds the other beekeeper I've been working for half time will presumably also issue me one).

   In other news I got my second vaccination dose two weeks ago or so, so there's that.

   I really don't know when this lockdown will ease -- I frankly don't think they'll get the lid back on this outbreak, I think it's already too out of control in NSW. Up until now Australia did not have continous community transmission, just a steady flow of people coming in from abroad and sitting in quarantine with it, and occasional outbreaks from things like taxi drivers who had driven quarantinees or air crews, which were quickly got under control. But I think now it's gone out into the community to an extent that won't be stamped out.

   And vaccine hesitency is, I think, even stronger here that America even. Big protests today in Melbourne and Sydney about the lockdowns, like god forbid the government even try to stamp down on this lethal plague...

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been keeping up with all the lockdown issues via my Aussie friends and also from what I'm seeing, Australia has a very low vaccination rate in general. It just seems like a very sluggish program. And with Delta, you're late to the party so to speak. It's all really sad.

But I sure wasn't aware of that much vaccine hesitancy in Aus!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I read awhile ago that the kind of bike sharing program that works everywhere else in the world has consistently failed in Australia because Australians are tooooo independance-minded and couldn't be persuaded to return them consistently enough. This independant mind-set coupled with Covid having not really been "that much of a problem" for most Australians because it had never got off the ground, means a very large number of them don't want to "trust the government" and don't feel community minded enough to get the shot for other's safety and/or stuff like that that all adds up to vaccine hesitency. And there's a wag-the-dog effect where a lot of politicians don't want to lose votes by emphasizing the importance of strong measures and vaccines, but then a lot of these people are hearing messages from the top that are playing it down aaand... so it's a feedback loop of the politicians being too afraid of being out of step with the lizard-brain electorate. I'm really thankful that the premier of my state ("Dictator Dan" as his detractors have labeled him) hasn't been afraid to absolutely put his foot down from the start. I don't generally follow Australian politics and didn't know his name when this started but he's really won my respect — he didn't take a single day off, like literally not even one day of a weekend, for over four months during the worst of last year.

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry to see what's happening in Australia. But you've got the Australian version of stupid Americans who would rather take a horse de-wormer than a vaccine that's been tested.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Indeed, indeed!

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[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Sydney resident here & let me start by apologising on behalf of our state Government!!

Yes — we should have locked down much earlier & harder, but because this outbreak started in the 'affluent' eastern suburbs, nothing was done until it started showing up in the 'poorer', ethnically-diverse south-western suburbs... who all vote Labor anyway, so it's okay for a Liberal government to lock 'em down. That's an overtly cynical view, but one that's hard to disprove. How it spread from here into the other States is a mix of the Delta variant's higher contagion & the usual stupidity & bloody-mindedness of the kind of idiots you'll find in any city, anywhere... though, to be fair, because this variant spreads so early, so quickly, you may not even know you have it when you inadvertently spread it 'round

But, in my city's defence, the Delta variant came here first because we take nearly all the international arrivals — certainly the ones who fly in. Melbourne has limited international flight capability & the other, smaller capital cities have none, so of course the damned Delta would show up here first. I do think we were as unprepared as any other place in the world for its aggressive spread & it certainly exposed the fallibility of the hotel quarantine system

As to the national vaccination rate, or lack of one really — that's what you get when you put the Marketing Department in charge of Logistics. Our Federal government is more concerned with political point-scoring than policy & much better at blame-shifting, than practical delivery. Unlike the glory days of politics, when vision was more important than appearances & before the media became more important than the Nation, the buck doesn't seem to stop anywhere — just gets passed around & around until it's completely devalued

I'm fully Pfizered &, as an essential worker, I have to get tested weekly in order to go about business — not because I live in one of the 'hot-spots', but because the company I contract to seem to be one of the sensible ones who won't let you work without a negative test & indeed, that's been their policy most of this year, well before the latest outbreak & eventual lockdown. So, standing on the other side of the vaccination divide, it's frustrating, infuriating & a whole lot of other negative emotions, seeing a life-threatening situation being treated as just another political football & also seeing the rise of the dis/misinformed mob mentality. I thought we were supposed to be the Clever Country...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah thanks for the comment on the Sydney perspective!

I'm rather surprised there haven't been more outbreaks in QLD since Brisbane isn't remote like the NT and WA and people are always saying they're "the Florida of Australia." I don't know if we're getting it here because Melbourne has a more transborder traffic (?) or we're just unlucky. :-/

Added you because I have relatively few Australians on my friends list and we seem to have common interests in general (:

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

Wait, you mean some other country has more anti vaxxers than the US? Wow. Also sad.

[lab-jazz.livejournal.com]

I watched the protests on the T.V., and shook my head at the idiocy of it all.

The NSW Government should be hanging their head in shame at how they have completely stuffed up their outbreak.

I'm very fortunate that I live in Perth, but it's still only a matter to time before we get another outbreak. I'm starting to wonder is I should start stocking up on things like dried legumes and tinned tomatoes. I realise that the supermarkets stay open but I don't want to have to go there during a lockdown or get groceries home delivered.

[blue-eye.livejournal.com]

Kudos for the word, "facepalmable." I didn't realize that Australia was vaccine resistant as well. I don't understand it.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

It's a good word isn't it! (: Hmmm now I'm tihnking of seeing what latin for face and palm are and see if I can make a really fancy looking version of it ahahaha

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

edit: damn latin for face and palm is faciem palmam so i will look like fake latin ahaha

[tellshannon815.livejournal.com]

My childhood neighbour is now living in New South Wales, and when I saw her mother recently she said there had been a lot of hesitancy, but I hadn't realised until recently that the hesitancy was quite that bad! Here there hasn't been a lot of hesitancy although apparently there's been fewer younger people getting the jab.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely curious to see if the recent upsurge in cases scares more people into going and getting it / the government making it more available.

[cazzicles.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd say that vaccine hesitancy is necessarily stronger here than in the US — we have very different supply issues, and very mixed messaging about the only vaccine that has been *widely* available until now, so I think a much fairer way to judge will be in a few months' time, after the majority of the population has had access to a vaccine that has not been publicly pummeled as AZ has been. The protesters must actually really love lockdown, as that's where they're ensuring we will stay! Sigh.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

The protestors here and in America and anywhere they occur, they make me understand how ignorant mobs could have burned witches in the past.