Pollyana

You only have to look at their priorities when granting exemptions to travel. Far more grants for business trips than for compassionate or personal (eg family migration out of Aus) reasons. Equally they talk of allowing skilled migrants on newly granted visas, temp skills visas, and international students all to be allowed a higher rate of entry than people returning for compassionate and personal reasons.
The ordinary person is at the back of the queue. Humanitarian reasons count for nothing with this government.

themerlin

No I think most of the anger now is directed towards Scomo.

Beoz

Yes but why? I hear people say he screwed up the vaccine roll out, but I have never heard anyone give a decent reason without using hindsight.

Amazulu

Agree. Decisions were made on vaccines based on what was known at that time. Saying that, he was wrong to say that Australia was at the 'front of the queue' for vaccines when we weren't. He should have gotten every vaccine he could have got his hands on - damn the cost. It was known a while ago the mRNA were going to be a way forward and he should have immediately taken steps to get onshore manufacturing capability for them. We would be making them here by now. The same with quarantine facilities. We could have had 3-4 centres up and running that don't rely on hotels - instead we have one. Or they could have upgraded Howard Springs to 8k capacity and bring all arrivals through there. Unfortunately for him, many voters are sheeple and only remember the negatives when it comes to election time. His saving grace though is that Albanese is virtually unelectable - and rightly so

themerlin

I would say people have short memories, look at Boris, he takes the credit for the UK vaccine rollout and people seem to have forgotten about all the other screw ups thats have cost lives.

themerlin

Putting all his eggs in one basket?
New Zealand also has a low vaccination rate, but people don't attack Ardern in the same way.

Amazulu

Morrison is between a rock and a hard place on this. He's criticised for being slow on the vaccine rollout yet many are reluctant to get vaccinated

I guess his can be a tough gig at times but that's what he signed up for

Beoz

Also he shouldn't have said "it wasn't a race". That was also wrong.

However

I am not sure creating a mRNA manufacturing capabilities is that straight forward. You need to partner with one of the pharmaceuticals. I believe we are doing that now with Moderna. Singapore is doing that with Pfizer. Both countries are projecting 2023 for mRNA manufacturing capability. Which is the reason why we went for the 2 options at the beginning in the Queensland University one and AstraZenca. Both had the ability to turn around local manufacturing very quickly - local mRNA manufacturing is a couple of years off. I think we are as far in the queue for the mRNA vaccines as we could possibly expect to be. I don't believe there was any justification for Australia to be ahead of the Europe or the USA on so many levels, especially given our mostly successful zeros policy. Obviously now with the Delta strain that has all changed but the crystal ball wasn't available last November when were all running around COVID free, borders up and for the most part, quarantine working.

Hotel Quarantine for 99.97% of the time is successful. I think its the reaction of premiers to any hotel quarantine leaks which is the problem, expect for the Melbourne worlds longest lockdown leak. Other than that, the major outbreaks have not come through hotel quarantine. Avalon they have no idea where it came from, the current Sydney one was from a driver transporting freight staff. I don't think there is much common sense justification for outback quarantine centres. But yes you are right, people are sheeple, and if Albanese can use this as a political weapon then so be it.

Speaking of sheeple, they keep bleating here in Sydney about non essential retail still being open or why can you exercise more than once a day or this one is a beauty "Melbourne had a very successful ultra hard lock why aren't we doing it here". (Melbourne had 800 deaths, hardly successful). The point is, the virus is not transmitting in non essential retail in Sydney - its transmitting in Supermarkets, GP's and Pharmacies - all essential or in people homes. I have never heard of anyone contracting Covid from exercising, being on the beach or playing golf. The sheeples are looking for the easy answers.

Beoz

There were multiple baskets. There are about 5 baskets. We just can't get up in the queue.

They will attack Adern when they get the inevitable delta outbreak. If this happens while vax rates are low, good luck to her

This is why it was a mistake for Morrison to say "Its not a race"

And when dickheads like Janette Young come on and say "I don't want 18 years olds dying from blood clots" that shit is a disgrace. She should be strung up for that.

Amazulu

There's a current Pfizer plant in Perth, that's closing in 2023/4 that has been proposed as a kung flu mRNA vaccine production facility. I was reading that a mRNA plant could be up and running in 6-9 months if everything is thrown at it, but 12 months is more realistic - so just about now if decisions had been made last year, but they weren't

Hotels are not quarantine facilities - end of, and the hotels where outbreaks occurred were older hotels with inadequate ventilation and AC systems. We have remote facilities in this country - immigration detention, army bases etc - that could easily and relatively cheaply be converted to quarantine camps - like Howard Spring has been. We build mining camps continuously here (I've been involved in designing them) and have the onshore capability and knowhow to do this quickly and efficiently if the money is there

Beoz

12-18 months is what I read and thats at a push. Say it was 12 months, the plant wouldn't be ready yet. It looks like they are going ahead with it anyway so it would have no impact on the immediate needs. Boosters yes.

I think the guarantee here needs to be 100% effective. Taking the risk from 99.85% to 99.95% is better but is it worth moving to outback style quarantine. This is why it is a joke on the cap reduction number. All we are doing is reducing the risk, not eliminating it. The staff in any outback purpose built quarantine facility need to be sourced from somewhere, they will also need to travel home. They could carry it back. This is a risk if we are only reducing the risk by a very tiny margin.

Then in 6 months we are looking at home quarantine anyway when enough of the population is vaxxed. It would have been a short, no guarantee shelf life.

Given the source of hotel leaks is staff, and staff will have to be placed in both a hotel or quarantine facility the room for error still remains, and to make it viable its really got to be 100% effective which is can't be.

abner

And rightly so.

He (and his minions) screwed up the vaccine acquisition mission early on, compared to similar countries like Canada, who spread their bets widely and early, contracting for something like 5X over-coverage of their population, from a variety of suppliers. Or Israel, which went hard and early after supplies of the most promising option emerging from early clinical trials (Pfizer/BionTech), and had Netanyahu making dozens of calls to Bourla (CEO of Pfizer) to get priority for early supply.

But here in Australia, we had the f**king bean-counters in charge, trying to acquire Pfizer doses at discount prices, at a time when Pfizer was willing to offer heavy supply (at full price, no doubt) to Australia, to create the next success story after Israel. And there was no sign of ScoMo on the phone to fix things, with Pfizer, when negotiations fell apart.

What price did we end up paying, in terms of lockdowns in both VIC and NSW, from the feds' bean-counters efforts to save a few dollars per dose on the Pfizer jabs, many months ago??? Billions per week, for each major state lockdown. (Frydenberg has given a figure of $700M per week to support the current NSW lockdown, but that it just the federal portion, not including the state or private-sector impact.)

Beoz

Man up and take the AZ and this essay becomes irrelevant.

Amazulu

Nope

Engineers show you how to do things

Non-jobs (everyone else apart from a few exceptions) tell you why you can't

You underestimate what people can do when they put their mind to it and they have the cash

The P-51 Mustang flew 149 days after pen was first put to paper at a time when other planes like the Spitfire took over 1000

HMS Dreadnought - the world's first true battleship and the most complex ship ever conceived at the time - sailed one year after the first metal was cut in 1906 because Britain was in a naval race with Germany and wanted to win it - and they did. Other ships took 3 years to build minimum

etc

With a mRNA plant, an existing design could be used with minimal changes required and an existing facility (such as the Pfizer plant in Bentley) converted. The equipment used is being cranked off the assembly line. A decision made last year meant that we would be producing vaccines now

Alas the decision wasn't made and here we are today

Beoz

I don't doubt for a second if engineers were pulling this together we would be up and running now, and the addition of bureaucrat adds double if not triple the time to the process.

No debate there.

Sadly, no matter who is in power or who pulls this together, bureaucrats will not be thrown in the bin, therefore those who can't get Pfizer should be taking AZ now.

Scomo, Albanese, and every other muppet here calling the shots, especially those so called experts in academia, are just getting in the way.