Here is my take on this…So what is the deal with this new variant?
Get told is super bad borders shut everywhere quickly
Reading symptoms are more mild in healthy people
Reading elderly with co-morbidities most at risk
Get told resistant to vaccine - reading mild symptoms in those vaccinated and or healthy
Stock market suffers from the announcements
We were getting told that borders are opening and no more lockdowns for the borders to snap shut and talk of lockdowns
Sigh - I think I preferred when Cricket was Sexting and the headlines cared more about that than covid!
None of our governments have had a clue when it comes to dealing with covid or formulating plans. I would argue that the Feds have done the worst job since there were only two parts they had control over and fucked both.
Some states like us have been incredibly lucky and some similarly unlucky and I put Vic in that category, nothing seemed to work in Vic’s favour and I will ignore the fucktards who were more important than the rules, they were everywhere. Tas has had the benefit of a big isolation zone and WA and SA the benefit of population density and ‘why would anyone go there’ (sarcasm font).
The opening up seems to be knee jerk from everyone and I don’t know if it is simply because Gladys let the dogs out and therefore no one had any control any more or it was just fuck it close enough. NZ showed that elimination is not practicable.
Just about everyone I know is of the opinion that we are all going to get it one way or another so vax up. Interestingly I had some different feedback from the UK from friend’s daughters and their partners (all vaxxed). They are being careful to mask up and avoid crowds etc more in the hope that they don’t pass covid onto aged relatives than selfishness.
The decisions on Omicron are no different, fuck it is in South Africa let’s lock them out and continue on our merry way. Omicron won’t get here. But it was here already before the Feds had that brain fart. Data this morning suggests that the initial fears of Omicron and the vax were unfounded but what is it? 5 days? Time will tell. Having said that there was no way that the governments here were going to back track on their commitments to open up. Looks like the Toowoomba facility might actually get some use though.
As for us, we expect the cases to rise after the grand opening and expect that things will get ugly. Uglier even. You only have to compare what is happening in other countries with similar vax rates and open slather on travel. UK has a more dense population (!) but there are similarities with density in cities. New cases and deaths are an indicator of what we are going to see. Other countries too will show things can still get out of hand quickly and that is without Omicron or Lambda or Zeta etc etc.