Replies to post #382497 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[Zorax]

'jab' is used mostly by maga's as a negative connotation in all their conspiracy bullshit and a pet peeve by me and I'd like the lazy positive media to stop using it. Either take the second to type vaccination, shot, injection, but anything but JAB!

My injections were quick, smooth and painless totally. Nothing like a JAB.

You jab someone in the eye with an icepick, you left jab someone into the nose, you slip and jab yourself with the screwdriver deep into your thumb.
The killer repeatedly jabbed his victim with the steak knife. The tribesman then jabbed the sharp stick under his prisoners fingernails.

Nothing even remotely of the word jab brings a positive image to mind.
And since most maga's walk around semi conscience giving a life saving injection any kind of negative vibe isn't helping them.

[fuagf]

Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca vaccines and the 'impossibility' of COVID herd immunity as Delta changes the score

"NSW spikes: NSW records 681 new COVID-19 cases and another death as regional lockdown extended"

By the Specialist Reporting Team's Nick Sas

Tuesday 17 Aug 2021 at 4:54am, updated Tue 17 Aug 2021 at 8:21am


The Delta outbreak in Sydney has put greater emphasis on vaccination.(

ABC News: Brendan Esposito)

Infectious disease experts say Australia's COVID experience will become a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", as the Delta strain's high infection rate — even among vaccinated people — turns achieving herd immunity into an "impossibility".

Key points:

* Herd immunity is where a large portion of a population becomes immune to a disease through infection or vaccination

* Infectious disease experts say herd immunity is not attainable with the Delta variant

* They say it means the unvaccinated cannot rely on vaccinated people to protect them

In what experts say is already playing out in small numbers in the New South Wales .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-15/covid-lockdowns-vaccines-spreading-from-sydney/100373866 .. outbreak, unvaccinated people are being disproportionately represented in the intensive care wards across the world as the infectious Delta strain takes hold.

Current numbers from NSW show of the 66 people in ICU, 59 are not vaccinated and seven have had one dose. No one currently in ICU or requiring ventilation has been fully vaccinated.

It comes as jurisdictions across the world report increased case numbers, with US President Joe Biden calling it a "pandemic of the unvaccinated .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/joe-biden-federal-worker-covid-vaccination-push-mask-guidelines/100335878 " as parts of the US with low vaccination rates report a new wave of deaths .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-15/low-vaccine-rates-in-missouri-lets-delta-coronavirus-rip/100361880 .. amongst the unvaccinated population.

Local experts say in addition to the US example, data from multiple international jurisdictions across the world means the concept of herd immunity is now an "impossibility".

"It’s simply not going to happen," University of South Australia biostatistics and epidemiology chair Adrian Esterman said.


Epidemiologist Professor Esterman said Australia was relying on high vaccination rates. (Supplied)

"It [herd immunity] requires people getting immunity from being vaccinated and immunity from contracting COVID, and recovering.

"In the UK, for example, more than 90 per cent of people have either been vaccinated or recovered from COVID and even they haven’t got herd immunity.

"In Australia, we’re relying purely on vaccination, as we don’t have enough people who had had COVID and recovered.

"And then in Australia we have the 20 per cent of the population who don’t want to be vaccinated .. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/08/operation-covid-shield-covid-19-vaccine-sentiment-summary-august-2021.pdf ."

The Delta variant is more infectious. Now experts say it has a 'double whammy'
Experts say early data from both overseas examples and the NSW outbreak
shows the Delta strain is more severe as well as being harder to contain.
Read more > https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-03/covid-delta-danger-sees-experts-prepare-for-hospital-surge/100334558

This was backed by UNSW Kirby Institute virologist Greg Dore, who pointed to the example of Iceland to show herd immunity was "not attainable with the Delta variant".

Iceland, which has 93 per cent of the population 16 years of age or older vaccinated, reported 2,783 cases over the past 30 days — its largest wave since the pandemic began.

Yet Iceland has had no deaths for the past 30 days attributed to COVID.

"So, mass vaccination can both provide 'disease immunity' and 'herd immunity effects' [and] enhance community control, but just not complete herd immunity," Professor Dore said.

"Over the next decade, [it's] likely we will be infected multiple times. [And it's] much, much better if [the first infection] is in a vaccinated state."

Vaccination our 'best chance'

According to Westmead Institute for medical research virologist Tony Cunningham, the data suggested there was an "unpleasant lesson" ahead for Australia.

"The difficulty is that of the 10, 15 or 20 per cent of people who don’t get immunised,
they now cannot rely on the rest of us to protect them," Professor Cunningham said.

"Biden's right, it's becoming a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'."

IMAGES Australia's vaccination rollout
40m 16,201,270doses given
At our current pace of 1,668,149 doses a week, we can expect to reach the 40 million
doses needed to fully vaccinate Australia’s adult population in December 2021.
Daily vaccinations First DosesSecond DosesBreakdown unknown
7-day moving average
Feb 23Aug 19200k 238.31k
Dates refer to the reporting date (usually the day following vaccination), not the vaccination date.
View the data for your state or territory

In addition to the Iceland example, Professor Cunningham pointed to a recent study from Singapore .. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v1 .. that showed the viral load of the Delta strain in an infected person's nose was similar for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people at diagnosis.

But, he said, the study showed viral loads decreased faster in vaccinated individuals.

He said the study — and the latest live data from around the world — showed it would likely be harder to prevent transmission of the virus even amongst vaccinated people.

"But the aim of vaccination has always been to protect the vulnerable from severe disease, death and long COVID [and] now we potentially have to bring children into the equation," he said.

"But our best chance is to get the highest level of people vaccinated, hopefully then you will get collective reduction and reduce the circulation of the virus."

Read more about the vaccine rollout:

* Why some people feel lousy after the COVID vaccine and others don't
https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-08-18/covid-19-vaccines-how-they-trigger-an-immune-response-body/100381186

* NSW will soon hit a milestone in its vaccination race that could slow the spread
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-20/nsw-will-reach-80-per-cent-first-doses-by-september/100389862

Delta has 'changed things'

As more Australians become exposed to the Delta variant through outbreaks across multiple states, the effectiveness of the three vaccines on offer has become a more potent issue for the population.

A Public Health England analysis of about 14,000 cases found .. https://khub.net/web/phe-national/public-library/-/document_library/v2WsRK3ZlEig/view/479607266 .. two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine was about 92 per cent effective .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/nsw-sydney-covid-outbreak-calls-astrazeneca-explained/100334138 .. against hospitalisation from the Delta variant.

That's comparable with the 96 per cent effectiveness against hospitalisation offered by the Pfizer jab. Experts say Moderna, which will be available to Australians from next month .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-08/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-explainer/100359720 , is largely the same as Pfizer.

Confused about the changing AstraZeneca advice? Here is what the data says about its efficacy
If you're still unsure about what it means for you, here's what the latest data says.
Read more > https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/nsw-sydney-covid-outbreak-calls-astrazeneca-explained/100334138

Dr Kylie Quinn, a vaccine expert from RMIT University, said it was "becoming clear" that the Delta strain did reduce the efficacy of the vaccines, or the number of vaccinated people protected from contracting COVID.

"The CliffsNotes version is 'Delta has changed things'," she said.

"There's reduced vaccine efficacy against developing symptoms, but how Delta impacts on transmission of the virus, we're still getting a grip on.

"But if you're trying to understand this benefit of vaccination, it's pretty clear that there's still really substantial protection for severe illness, hospitalisation and death for all of these vaccines against Delta."

Dr Quinn said the vaccines' ability to protect against severe illness was the "key issue" as the lack of herd immunity meant all Australians would be "meeting the virus" at some point.

"The clear message is we have to treat Delta with more caution," she said.

"And the tools we use to fight Delta are vaccines in addition to those public health measures."

VIDEO - What are the Delta and Delta Plus COVID-19 variants?(ABC News)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/pfizer-moderna-astrazeneca-herd-immunity-delta-covid-evolution/100366038

[fuagf]

We now have governing hesitancy, with Scott Morrison focused on managing the appearance of his own logical contradictions

"NSW spikes: NSW records 681 new COVID-19 cases and another death as regional lockdown extended"

Related: NSW records 1,331 new COVID-19 cases and six deaths
By Paige Cockburn 33 minutes ago, updated 9m ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-18/nsw-records-1331-covid-cases/100473180

NOTE: Change names and this article relates to America as much as it is written about Australia here.

As the debate over mandatory vaccination becomes a focus for freedom lovers of the centre-right, the prime minister is creeping away from his own interventionist instinct


Prime minister Scott Morrison has a case of governing hesitancy as the vaccine
strollout, thankfully, gathers pace. Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

Katharine Murphy

Sat 14 Aug 2021 06.00 AEST
Last modified on Sat 14 Aug 2021 15.52 AEST

With Covid-19 cases mounting because of the winter Delta outbreak, Australians are acutely aware of the public health perils of vaccine hesitancy. But this week, Australians were subjected to a different kind of equivocation: governing hesitancy.

Barnaby Joyce gave us the starkest examples. Australia’s deputy prime minister told the ABC on Wednesday governments don’t formulate climate policy, and he couldn’t possibly share what his own position might be until a “competent” authority, possibly the CSIRO or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told him what to do .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/11/scott-morrison-contradicts-barnaby-joyce-on-coalition-plan-to-reach-net-zero .

This honesty binge continued the next day .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/12/barnaby-joyce-on-george-christensen-dont-prod-the-bear , when Joyce returned to the ABC to say he didn’t agree with his colleague George Christensen’s public campaign against lockdowns, but he didn’t intend to pull him into line either, because that might trigger a byelection. Joyce noted the Coalition governed with a “thin margin” and if you “start prodding the bear .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/12/barnaby-joyce-on-george-christensen-dont-prod-the-bear , you’re going to make the situation worse”.

Fear and loathing in western Sydney: how NSW’s Covid response failed migrant communities
Tough policing, constant rule changes and health messaging that isn’t cutting through have
created a perfect storm of misinformation and paranoia in Sydney’s most diverse areas
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/13/fear-and-loathing-in-western-sydney-how-nsws-covid-response-failed-migrant-communities

Joyce’s perplexing reluctance to lead, having returned to the position of Nationals leader (hint is in the title) begs a blindingly obvious question: why didn’t he stay on the backbench?

If the Nationals leader doesn’t feel competent to make decisions law-makers are called to make, like whether Australia needs to finally manage the risks of global heating after buggering that up for more than a decade, or whether consistency in public health messaging matters during a pandemic, why doesn’t he make way for someone who is competent?

I’m not intending to be gratuitous. These are serious questions, questions Joyce largely avoids because he seeks to play by different rules.

Australia’s deputy prime minister floods the zone with feelings, and that can be confounding for fact-checkers. But leadership isn’t just a title and a salary. It carries a clear set of obligations that were non-negotiable last time I checked, even in an era where populists are sometimes cynical enough to actively foment distrust in institutions from the comfort of the institutions they happily occupy.

[INSERT: Yep. Murphy would not only be thinking of Joyce and Australia when she wrote that.]

Threaded through Joyce’s profiles in pandemic courage this week was a discussion about vaccinations, and whether or not they should be mandatory for high-risk workers.

Australia is mulling these conundrums now because we’ve reached the point where people are beginning to realise the crisis we are living through doesn’t have a definitive endpoint.

This threat will retreat in stages. Vaccination rates will increase (and fortunately the strollout is picking up velocity now). That helps. But living with a dangerous virus requires rules and social contracts formulated to save lives and livelihoods – assuming that remains Australia’s shared objective.

Given that’s the national epiphany, frustration has been building up among the freedom lovers of the centre-right. Philosophical divisions in Gladys Berejiklian’s government have been very obvious during this current lockdown, and the political atmosphere has also become significantly more fraught for Scott Morrison. Last weekend, I mapped the fault line reopening in centre-right politics .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/06/as-some-coalition-mps-court-constituents-who-think-the-pandemic-is-a-beat-up-scott-morrison-remains-elastic .. prompted by Delta outbreaks plunging millions of people back into lockdown.

A few weeks back, Morrison shared a prophesy at national cabinet. He told the premiers any lockdown that went on for longer than a week and wasn’t seen to work would undermine support for public health restrictions, and that, the prime minister said, would turn into a “shit show” .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/23/the-feeling-around-the-national-cabinet-table-these-days-is-gladys-berejiklian-succumbed-to-hubris .

Roll on a few weeks, authorities say deliberate non-compliance is a significant problem in Sydney. In the world of politics, we can also plot the component parts of Morrison’s still developing “shit show”. Last weekend, the former Queensland premier Campbell Newman bagged “heavy-handed” measures destroying people’s “livelihoods, jobs and freedoms” and flagged a Senate run .. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-08/campbell-newman-to-seek-federal-election-with-liberal-democrats/100360050 .. for the Liberal Democrats.

Sensing an on-brand scrap, Pauline Hanson [far-right] perked right up this week – and with the deputy prime minister signalling he had no intention of asking for internal discipline, George Christensen [idiot misinformation spreader] got out the loud hailer on lockdowns, and Matt Canavan argued when it came to mandates, the “default should be in favour of personal freedom”.

[conix, It's hilarious seeing some of you American conservatives being so critical of Australia's efforts to save Australian lives from this latest coronavirus. Remember you and others as you telling me to mind my own business, now look at you. hahaha
P - It may help if you understood there has been, and is, an ongoing, very healthy debate about mitigation methods here. Most agree with measures taken. A relatively minor few don't. Most all of Friedersdorf's legitimate observations have been made by Australians against Australians here.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=165931416]

People with good memories will recall Morrison hit political headwinds .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/20/scott-morrison-insists-vaccine-passport-key-to-unrestricted-domestic-travel-despite-states-criticism .. a little while back both internally and externally when he floated the idea of a vaccine passport – even though polling suggests a majority of Australians support the idea .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/03/most-australians-comfortable-with-vaccination-passports-for-domestic-travel-and-venues-poll-reveals – and it seems obvious that’s where things will land.

After this Friday’s national cabinet meeting, Morrison delicately referenced the subject, noting leaders had discussed “exemption arrangements for vaccinated persons in Australia” (which sounds a lot nicer than rules to stop unvaccinated people travelling). He stressed there were “no decisions”.

Pressed further on whether vaccination may end up being a requirement for interstate travel, Morrison eased around the sticky paper by arguing the objective of getting to 70% and 80% vaccination rates was to end border restrictions, so the point was moot.

Matt Canavan and the ‘bad show’: ABC defends Q+A panellist pick
Amanda Meade
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/aug/13/matt-canavan-and-the-bad-show-abc-defends-qa-panellist-pick

Then there’s the debate about whether or not vaccinations should be compulsory .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/12/fair-work-ombudsman-suggests-australian-employers-could-force-certain-workers-to-get-covid-jab .. for workers. Obviously making a vaccine compulsory is a significant step. Personal freedom is a central tenet of any democracy worthy of the label, and because I value freedom, my natural default is persuasion rather than compulsion.

But there are actually competing freedoms for governments to balance: namely, the freedom for people to choose not to have a vaccination that might save their life, and the freedom for citizens to be safe from the harm caused by the more laissez-faire inclinations of others.

Generally, the level of risk informs where these boundaries are set, which is why the prime minister has already waded into mandatory vaccination territory. It was Morrison who demanded that it be compulsory for aged care workers to get vaccinated. The reason Morrison did this was because aged care workers were bringing Covid infections into residential aged care, and elderly people are at high risk of dying from this virus. It’s why there are similar arrangements for quarantine workers.

But as the debate around mandatory vaccinations becomes a fully-fledged freedom proxy, and the conversation gets politically hotter as actors on the centre-right compete more theatrically for the attention of voters who don’t trust governments or institutions, Morrison is creeping away from his own interventionist instinct.

After Friday’s national cabinet meeting, Morrison found himself, rhetorically, uncomfortably astride the barbed wire fence. The same prime minister who mandated vaccinations for aged care workers in full view of the Australian public declared he was absolutely not a mandator (except when he was, but that was different, and that was OK).

Just so we are clear. Major business groups have asked the government to do two things .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/09/business-wants-states-to-mandate-covid-jabs-for-staff-after-scott-morrison-vacates-the-field : show some leadership in nominating specific sectors where mandatory vaccinations are desirable for public health objectives; and potentially indemnify employers in the event they, with government backing, impose compulsory vaccinations, and God forbid, an employee suffers an adverse reaction.

This is the same principle as indemnifying general practitioners and pharmacists who administer Covid vaccinations (which the Morrison government already does).

But on Friday, Morrison (who very obviously wants to avoid any appearance of compulsion by “stealth” .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/09/scott-morrison-rules-out-intervening-in-vaccine-mandates-for-workers-as-moderna-approved-for-use-in-australia – a damaging trope that will fuel fresh Facebook conspiracies) actually flagged the opposite issue.

The prime minister flagged protecting businesses that might face legal action for not mandating vaccinations.

In foreshadowing this protection for the non-mandators, Morrison noted it was “not reasonable that an employer may feel they have to put some sort of mandate in place to protect themselves potentially from [the reach of] some health and safety laws”.

Fair enough. But Morrison was stone cold silent on the other equally pertinent question: is it reasonable that employers mandating vaccinations to protect their workers and the broader public then face the risk of legal action?

Tracking back to where we started, with this strange phenomenon of late pandemic governing hesitancy – the mixed messaging on Friday evening was unfortunate.

Morrison looked like a prime minister more minutely focused on managing the appearance of his own logical contradictions than grappling with the complex needs of the moment.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/13/we-now-have-governing-hesitancy-with-scott-morrison-focused-on-managing-the-appearance-of-his-own-logical-contradictions