![Perrottet and Hazzard](/sites/default/files/2021-12/perrottet-hazard.jpg)
Another Covid Christmas.
It’s depressing, but perhaps not surprising, that Covid-19 still holds center stage in Australia as 2021 draws to a close. Just when we were learning to live with Delta, along came Omicron.
Covid-19 hasn’t prevented the usual seasonal activities – from family Christmas dinners and BBQs at the beach, to the Sydney-Hobart yacht race and the Boxing Day cricket test. But it has had a dampening effect. There are widespread reports that people are being more cautious – going out less and avoiding busy venues.
As the headline in one newspaper put it, Sydney is “locking itself down”.
(The English cricketers have been no help. Their dire performance in the Ashes has denied Australians what might have been a temporary distraction from the pandemic.)
There is no single national mood because of the different approaches taken in the different states and territories for dealing with Covid-19. However, in the eastern states where most Australians live there is a mix of reluctant resignation and anxious optimism. Resignation that the spread of Omicron can’t be stopped but optimism that the consequences are manageable thanks to high vaccination rates and a robust hospital system.
Last week, Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said that “most Queenslanders will be potentially exposed to this virus in the coming weeks”. His message was blunt – “You all have to develop immunity and there are only two ways you can do that: by being vaccinated or getting infected”. The virus will become endemic.
On Boxing Day, the NSW Health Minister Brad Hazard said “that we would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get Omicron".
Fortunately, growing evidence internationally and in Australia suggests that while Omicron is much more transmissible than Delta, it is also milder. According to Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly - “We’re not seeing the same sort of increase in hospitalisations or ICU”.
That’s just as well given the case numbers.
These are the reported daily cases for 29 December:
NSW | 11,201 |
Victoria | 3,767 |
Queensland | 1,589 |
South Australia | 1,471 |
ACT | 138 |
Tasmania | 55 |
Northern Territories | 19 |
Western Australia | 2 |
These represent record numbers in almost every jurisdiction, and the numbers are expected to rise rapidly in the coming days and weeks.
The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the Premier of NSW, Dominic Perrottet, argue that people need to shift their focus from case numbers to the numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. Australia currently has 95,566 reported active Covid cases (and probably many more unreported ones). 1,256 people are in hospital, 129 in ICU.
Morrison and Perrottet are the key proponents of the ‘living with Covid’ strategy that is now dominant (outside Western Australia). They want to minimise lockdowns, border closures, and other restrictions. They contend this is now a viable, indeed desirable, strategy because high vaccination rates and better treatments have significantly reduced the downside of Covid-19.
When asked on 29 December if lockdowns might be used, as in Europe, as an emergency measure to address the exponential rise of Omicron, he replied “We will make our Australian way through this. We always have. The situation in the northern hemisphere is different to Australia.”
In his view, Australia has crossed the Covid Rubicon and there is no going back.
Until recently, managing the pandemic involved comprehensive government-imposed controls and literally hundreds of billions of dollars of government-funded support. Morrison and Perrottet believe that the emphasis must now be on Australians taking greater personal responsibility for their own safety. That means getting vaccinated, getting booster shots, wearing masks where appropriate, and practicing social distancing.
The principle driving the ‘living with Covid’ strategy is best summed up by Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson to The Australian newspaper – “The cost of ‘Covid-zero’ has gone up. The cost of living with the virus has gone down.”
Of course, the latter sentence assumes Omicron won’t overwhelm the hospital system. That appears credible so far, although pressure is building.
Two specific problems have emerged. First, the isolation requirement for healthcare workers exposed to Covid-19 inevitably creates staff shortages. The temporary unavailability of many doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and the like threatens the capacity of the hospital system to handle the current surge in demand. To partially address this in NSW, the original 14-day self-isolation period for a ‘close contact’ of someone with Covid-19 has been reduced to seven days, subject to receipt of a negative PCR test.
The second problem is the exponential rise in the demand for Covid tests. That rise is being driven by the rapid proliferation of Omicron, and the need for testing prior to international and interstate travel. NSW is now testing more than 150,000 people a day and there are reports of delays of up to 72 hours in receiving test results. In the case of one pathology lab, the pressure has led to hundreds of incorrect results being distributed.
No doubt, the long queues at testing sites in NSW are discouraging many people from getting tested. Therefore, the real infection numbers in NSW are likely to be much higher than the official figures suggest.
The all-important vaccination system is also coming under pressure as the swift spread of Omicron makes administering booster shots an urgent priority. With more than five million Australians currently entitled to receive the booster, and a further four million entitled by the end of January, that means the system needs to deliver over nine million booster shots in the next five weeks. Added to that is the vaccination of 5 to 11-year-olds that commences on 10 January.
Over the last two years, governments in Australia have dramatically increased their capacity to vaccinate against Covid-19, to test for it, and to treat it. Omicron represents a major challenge to that capacity. The next few months will reveal if enough has been done.
Ross Stitt is a freelance writer and tax lawyer with a PhD in political science. He is a New Zealander based in Sydney. His articles are part of our 'Understanding Australia' series.
51 Comments
There is a hope that Omicron, which is not very virulent, may drive Delta away and will lead the way to the Corona self destructing. But before that, many may get infected with Omicron and suffer a little. Not sure whether this theory or expectation will play out. But many countries may be hoping so.
Curled up in all of that is the pertinent comment that hospitalisation levels are the key factors, and not daily new infection numbers. Over here Professor Des Gorman was saying exactly that, months ago. Our government, Robertson & Little in the main, have repeatedly assured that NZ’s health system is coping & is adequately equipped to continue to do so. Additionally the governments own vaunted nationwide vaccination target, to provide protection to both population & the health system, is virtually met and a prudent decision to introduce boosters earlier is about to go into effect. So, all said and done, by its own proclamations & policy, the government is positioned to accept the same reality & scenario, that Australia is to progress.
Evidence of risk takes years, not days. Do you not understand this is an experiment on humans. You still have zero 'evidence' of any proven benefits but many proven risks.
Vaccinating children into Big Pharma's drug program to make them clients for life. Slowly Big Pharma indoctrinates you into believing everyone should have vaccine induced (drugs) immunity at natural immunities expense. How conned have you become to believe I benefit from you getting vaccinated? Pfizer sponsored educational news outlets are working well.
And that is awesome if your vaccine induced (drugs) therapy works. The problem with the indoctrinated doctors is that they totally disregard 'kimchi and exercise', the preventative measures. Expected to dry up? Big Pharma lingo for we have the cure! You get more needless deaths from people believing the doctors are the cure all. Sad that our family doctors have become puppets of Big Pharma.
The HPV vaccine is not a therapy. Most cervical cancer and many head and neck cancers are directly linked to HPV exposure, usually sexually acquired and otherwise asymptomatic. Widespread uptake of the HPV vaccine will largely eliminate cervical cancer - as can already be seen in the UK.
You clearly are discussing areas that are outside your expertise, so I hope you have an appropriate uncertainty in your conclusions.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)0217…
Correct it is not a therapy, it is a part of your religion. You appear to be another 'expert' who knows all the answers (vaccines) and have settled the science (eliminate cervical cancer). Again my expertise is prevention, which doctors are not taught, they are only indoctrinated by Big Pharma funded medical schools of thought, that promote drugs and vaccines, for profit. Not health. Of course HPV vaccines are outside my expertise, just as prevention is outside of yours.
The HPV vaccine is prevention. There is absolutely no reason why one couldn't take the best of both these views - live a healthy life, exercise, eat well etc, and then use medicine when needed. Medicine does not replace a healthy lifestyle, but it can absolutely prolong it. You are ignoring the main cause of our significant increase in life expectancy over the last couple of centuries.
No-one will force you to use the Healthcare system - you can do what you want. But I will continue to give an opposing view in the hope that others won't be influenced and ignore the life raft floating beside them when they need it.
No, Chemotherapy is not radiation. Radiotherapy is radiation, Chemotherapy is chemical-based. Both are very capable of curing cancer - take a look at how survival rates have improved over the last few decades.
Radiation can cause cancer, but it is also the oldest and best understood cure for cancer other than surgery. It's been used for over a hundred years. Long term enough for you?
I've been involved in multiple patients who have chosen a 'Natural' treatment for their cancer, before returning for proper medical treatment. Often the delay means they are no longer curable.
Nobody would say that exercise and good diet are not important, but be aware that the approach you are promoting here can, and has, cost lives.
Nice reply, you can also add Hepatitis B vaccine preventing hepatocellular carcinoma.
The medical profession in too polite when dealing with dorks, sorry dicks. When these goons reach their position from simple ignorance, science wont sway them.
Dork, when you break a leg please refuse the propofol, sevoflurane, rocuronium and multiple antiinfectives when they plate you up. And the post op epidural with ropivacaine and fentanyl.
Have a big pharma free life. Avoid any Drs, those guys are bought by big pharma. Sheesh
This dork is Pharma 'free' and I will stay that way. Sorry I do not believe in your science, I mean religion. That is why I never bought into the Covid cult, that church is not for me. Natural immunity built on a healthy lifestyle rules but your science does not recognize that. Sure hope I don't break a leg those drugs sound nasty.
Again, this is not true. Diet and exercise and their impact on health are extensively studied. Cochrane Reviews are only performed on areas which have seen a decent number of studies published - I get ~700 hits for 'exercise' and ~400 for 'diet'.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search
Science is categorically not opposed to living a healthy lifestyle, and in fact strongly supports doing so. It merely looks for, and finds, evidence of the benefits. The same approach is taken to vaccines and medicine. If you think you have some secret sauce, I suggest a Scientific approach to proving the benefits so that the rest of humanity can assess it and adopt it.
Evidence is overwhelming, open your eyes and observe the items in peoples grocery carts in any western world store. I found the people pushing carts laden with sugar, refined flour products and processed food tend to park in the handicap spots. And the next stop is the drive up pharmacy. That is science.
I just gotta say, thanks for your patient and helpful contributions. I haven't been in this community long, but there's a heck of a lot of characters on here living in koo-koo-kah chew land.
The world's actually got some pretty big problems ahead of it, and New Zealand it's own challenges. There are some fundamental questions we need to be asking ourselves about the future, and it's frustrating so much discourse is being wasted having to re-hash what should just be accepted realities of the situation.
Anyone that's had to experience extreme discomfort or trauma will usually welcome science based medicine. I feel I need to pinch myself that we're even needing to talk about this in 2021.
Thanks for clarifying. Survival rates may have increased but so have cancers. That is the problem, we do not look how to prevent these diseases, the medical industry only want a 'cure'. We don't address the problem.
Industrial Agriculture produces nutritionally empty toxic food commodities. Consumable poison. Additives, Emulsifiers, fiber removed, sugar and dyes added, completely devoid of nutrition. Most of it is not even food anymore. Our soil genome is getting ravished, pesticides, herbicides, GMO plants, grown in synthetic fertilizers have little nutritional value. The population is sick, the environment toxic and Big Pharma can fix them! They are not the answer. And we keep spending ever more money (big pharma) to cure cancer. You don't cure cancer you prevent cancer. Who is most effected by this virus? Obese diabetics, the products of this sick environment.
Proper medical treatment is just another term for my science is right.
I agree with some of that. Processed food is likely not good for us, and I try to stick with whole foods and grow my own veggies, pretty much organically. As I've said elsewhere, eating healthily and exercising regularly to maintain a healthy weight is absolutely a good thing. Virtually no-one would disagree.
While poor diet and lifestyle cause a great deal of our health problems, they do not cause all of them. Even the healthiest will suffer from something eventually. Medicine may be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, but I'll be glad there's an ambulance there waiting for me when I inevitably need it. The multitude of societal problems we are suffering from does not mean we should discard modern medicine.
It is about quality of life and from what I see walking out of a grocery store, a lot don't have it. Even the 'healthiest' die, with little to no pharmaceutical help but no profit for Big Pharma there. Stay 'healthy' get your vaccine, take your statin, blood pressure high, need some heroin for that pain? Medicine at the bottom of the cliff, just prolongs the agony. If you prefer the 'modern' medicine route by all means have at it but I have a tough time being coerced into it. The real pandemic is the obese diabetics, but nobody wants to hear that, just give me the damn pill.
Here's one - not from 'Big Pharma'.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarr…
Based on the most recent data, double vaccination reduces age-standardised mortality rate per 100,000 person-years from ~940 (unvaccinated) to 34 (double vaccinated >21 days ago). This is for Covid-related deaths.
Even shows up in the all cases mortality data quite clearly - reduction from ~2400 to 850.
Note this relates to pre-Omicron variants - Omicron clearly looks like a much less dangerous disease but I expect vaccination will still be a significant benefit.
I can only comment on the US where a mild cold virus was circulating, hospitals were not full and any death that occurred in a hospital was reported as a Covid death, preferably unvaccinated. The quasi private/public CDC do a good job of upholding their paradigm and if it does not fit the narrative then change the definition or disregard the contradicting evidence.
Hospital admissions in London appear about 50% lower with omicron relative to case numbers. Obviously there are all kinds of caveats - eg case numbers are way understated, most people in London have natural immunity *and* vaccination. I think going for unchecked spreading seems a very reckless strategy. We will know in a few weeks I guess.
Don't worry, we won't even know COVID is a thing when we are distracted by the amazing wedding at the billionaires homestead and with Lorde doing her thang! Funny how billionaires and Lorde have been so looked after and treated better than the rest of us during COVID? Its almost as if the elitist 'Labour' government scratches elitist backs and then have their backs scratched in return?
Getting tired of how many number cases are being reported. It's as if higher the number the worse it is. Govt here and overseas hide detail. Cases in hospital who were vaccinated single/double, comorbidity and their ages, not average or median. Similarly for ICU and ventilation units
Case of the 7x year old who died about a week ago. No detail released, or at least if its available MSM don't report it. Perhaps interest can put in some OIA requests to MoH. This data must be readily available to them, or at most within two days of the DHBs recording the data.
I don't bore down into govt/MoH website to see if its there.
A lot of the deaths (such as the child) are referred to the coroner for a final determination of cause of death.
They don't give out specific details of people who have been hospitalised or died, only averages, to protect privacy because the numbers are fairly low and the people easily identified.
So far it looks like we still have had more problems with the vaxx than covid
mfd - seems we have a case of tragedy of the commons?
Individually, while Covid wasn't here, we were safer not getting jabbed. But the moment it arrived(s), we're many orders of magnitude better off being double-vaxxed; both as a nation and individually. So far so irrefutable.
But we are members of a species in gross overshoot - perhaps more so than any before us (thanks to leveraging/depleting resource stocks, perticularly fossil energy. Coming at it from the back end, the planet could perhaps support 1-2 billion, depending on desired per-head consumption. And that readjustment will be complete before we've traversed one more human lifetime (meaning the chances of a soft landing are zero.
Is the medical profession considering this? Or is is conitively-dissonantly, Hippocratically, avoiding the uncomfortable? Individually, I welcome medical attention, got jabbed willingly - but existentially, my grandchildren haven't better than a 1:8 chance of survival - and zero that the current financial/pharma-supply system will remain intact.
I'm betting it's taboo, right?
This.
“NSW Health Minister Brad Hazard said “that we would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get Omicron".
Pity the NZ govt cannot admit this obvious fact of life for all NZers. NZ is still trying to run some sort of elimination strategy alongside a small degree of pragmatism given that everyone who wanted to be vaccinated now is. Rolling out the Jacksons and the Wiles trying to keep the fear factor up high.
Notice Stuff removed their story of the BBC professor/doctor explaining that Omicron will be just like the common Cold and everyone will get it.
Worldometer has shown that the total critically ill or seriously ill with cv19 in past 3 weeks has not increased a jot and stands at 89,500 in the whole world of 7.8b people.
Meanwhile deaths per day standing at 6000.
Previous high for deaths per day was 10,000 and prior to that last high was 14,500
Clearly, and with no help from MSM we can see that cv19 is becoming less deadly, esp due to vaccination.
Omicron panic is just that. South Africa peaked in 7 weeks. Virus infections and deaths have followed a 7-9 week up and down for 18 months now. Next peak for infection will most likely be 2 weeks after New Year's Day after which the whole edifice of panic and drivel will subside again. Notice Fauci today admitted children in hospital admitted and then testing positive for Omicron, not admitted BECAUSE of it.
Media NEVER say a word about total deaths per day going down because fear sells. Pathetic.
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