170 cases in one day and the army is deployed to enforce lockdowns.<p>In my country we had over 10,000 cases yesterday and I will be going out for after work drinks at the end of this week to socialise.<p>Does Australia just overspend on its military budget or am I misunderstanding why Australia is going to these extremes?
Nine deaths in June led to military deployment. How many deaths from depression, overdose or another mental health problem happened in June and will happen due to lockdown hysteria. And why not put more resources into vaccination rather than enforce lockdown by military.
The government completely messed up the messaging for the Astra Zeneca vaccine, a lot of people think it is very risky due to the reports of blood clotting (which are actually lower than for most common medicines!!). It doesn't matter though because even the AZ vaccine is hard to get, you need to be over 40 or have medical reasons and even then you need an appointment.
EDIT: And you can't even leave the country without government permission so its not like you can fly a country with vaccine availability to get it.
The Australian government bet on a single brand of vaccine: AstraZeneca. We also had some Pfizer stock but not enough for the entire country.<p>This would have been fine until reports of clotting disorders started coming in. The official advice was revised so over 50s and then over 60s should get AZ. Technically you could still get the AZ if you wanted to, but due to the advice, no one did.<p>Meanwhile, only 40s and over and at risk demographics below 60 could get Pfizer. And by now they did such a good job trashing AZ, no one wanted it. Then Delta hit and no one wants AZ. So here we are.<p>Reports are Pfizer offered our government a deal last year, and they could have locked in enough doses for the entire population. But they declined.
For those wondering why Australia deploys the army in such events: it's because soldiers are public servants and have been deployed in the past for different reasons including natural disasters.<p>They won't carry weapons, because they're jobs aren't just killing people unlike other armed forces of other nations.
From the ABC <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arrive-in-sydney-covid19-lockdown/100336124" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arriv...</a> , ADF is assisting police who are checking on those who are infected are actually staying home. Instead of 2 police knocking on your door, there is 1 police and 1 ADF.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/what-happens-if-youre-diagnosed-with-covid-19-in-australia" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/what-happens-i...</a> has some detail on what each state does. In Queensland if you get Covid you are taken to a hospital. (not in article:In other states the case numbers are much lower so people are sent to medical hotels to ride out the disease and make also sure they don't infect anyone else) In NSW there are 2500 cases so they don't have that luxury and rely on infected people actually staying home. Hence the need for random checks to make sure the sick people aren't out roaming.
The replies to all these Covid articles about non-US (and non-european) countries are just surreally out of touch. Some corrections for the common incorrect or silly comments:<p>> lockdown for only a few hundred cases???<p>Australia essentially eliminated covid, and never had a widespread pandemic, so there's both a desire and ability to eliminate it again and no immunity at all in the community.<p>> the army???<p>Australia is a poorly governed country and the Army gets called out to assist with government logistical failures (fire, flood) fairly often and it's sometimes just done so it looks like the government is Taking It Seriously. also, there's insufficient financial support from governments who are asking people to lock down, and insufficient seriousness from the government about it in general via inconsistent rules and application of them. there also appears to be a concerted foreign disinformation campaign (as well as the usual domestic disinformers) that culminated in a massive protest about...lockdown during lockdown.<p>> why don't they focus on vaccinations????<p>the Australian federal government deeply fucked vaccines up. they bet too hard on a domestically developed one that got cancelled, then didn't secure sufficient supplies from overseas (ie did not order enough Pfizer and Moderna for the population in May last year), then let old people *choose* what vaccine they got, then sowed fear about AZ, then fucked up logistics - until *this week* you needed approval from your GP (via an appointment) to get AZ if you were under 40, and it's only very very recently become possible to easily access it.<p>the government keeps cancelling it's own vaccine forecasts due to the absolute shambles they'ver created, but it's unlikely there will be 80%+ fully vaccinated before the end of the year.<p>tl;dr there aren't enough vaccines or capacity to inject them in the next few months<p>> but what about deaths from suicide etc from lockdown???<p>there's no evidence this happened in Australia, presumably due to social and cultural and welfare reasons. not everywhere is the USA, folks!<p>> why aren't people rising up against this huge injustice!?!?!<p>it's not an injustice, it's concerted community effort to achieve a goal for society. not everyone is happy about it but almost no one considered it to be some huge crime against human rights, and it's...week five of a not particulary strict lockdown. again, not everywhere is North Dakota or whatever.
Meanwhile the earliest appointment to get the Pfizer vaccine in the area I work in (Western Sydney ) is November, because of our Prime Minister's incompetence.<p>( Pfizer Vaccine: Risk of myocarditis 55 - 450 / 1000,000 )<p>The AstraZeneca vaccine is available tomorrow, but the Prime Minister's flip flopping messaging means that laypeople are terrified that they will get blood clots and so refuse to have the vaccine. The PM's vacuous and incompetent messaging has even managed to get some physician collegues of mine terrified of this insignificant risk.<p>( AstraZeneca Vaccine: Risk of thrombotic thrombocytopenic syndrome with cerebral venous thrombosis 33 / 1000,000 )<p>We have an election coming up soon and our politicians are desperate to impress the median voter. That is why we have ridiculous stunts like this.<p>Even worse, some of our politicians are still distributing COVID denial and vaccine denial pamphlets, in order to attract votes from the lower end of the bell curve.<p>See: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/30/clive-palmer-disregards-tga-call-to-stop-spreading-misleading-vaccine-material" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/30/clive...</a><p>Clive Palmer disregards TGA call to stop spreading misleading vaccine material<p>"Clive Palmer is defying a call from the Therapeutic Goods Administration to stop spreading “misleading information” as his new pamphlet containing disputed claims about the impact of vaccinations is being distributed across the country, including to residents in greater Sydney.<p>It quotes figures published by the TGA on post-vaccination deaths and adverse reactions out of context, criticises the body for not ceasing the vaccine rollout, claims there is no pandemic in Australia, and accuses the TGA and the government of spreading misleading information.
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There’s a fair bit of context absent from this article. The military aren’t being deployed to enforce a lockdown so much as they’re providing some extra manpower to augment the local police force. NSW Police have part of their workforce isolating due to exposure to infected people, coupled with extra patrol requirements, and they need some more bodies.<p>The military personnel will be unarmed and will be accompanied by police. The army doesn’t actually have any powers in this scenario, so it’s up to the police to actually issue fines, make arrests, move people on, etc.
Why is Australia doing so bad in term of vaccination? It sounds backward to have all these restrictions and at the same time not bothering to vaccinate people. Do they hope covid will disappear from earth?
I'm not sure whether military intervention is right or not, but for everyone making comparisons based on absolute numbers, please note that the population in Sydney is tiny. If you take the lower population <i>density</i> into account, all of a sudden ~200 cases no longer appears to be a trivial number.<p>I see people constantly breaking lockdown restrictions outside of my window here. It's pretty damn frustrating for those who are obeying the restrictions.