Dear mhaze,

Once again with the rubbish: "It has been clear, for the better part of 18 months, to anyone prepared to dispassionately examine the data, that the lockdown was/is a disaster for the economy and large sections of the community while being essentially unnecessary."

The Western Australians for one would seriously disagree with you and the bald facts are if no lockdown were instituted in this country we would have had health services completely over run as they were in many other countries. Nothing you put can alter that obvious fact.

Now it is a race for vaccinations to take care of a failure in quarantine, a race which will cost many lives unfortunately.

Dear GrahamY,

Mate, your bloke Sharhar is a dishonourable broker at the very least.

Sure Sweden has pulled a few negative weeks, partially because of the high figures previously, but in comparison with other Scandinavian countries they did appallingly. The result of Covid saw Sweden suffer 98 excess deaths per 1000 people. Finland was 28, Denmark was 7, Norway was -14.

Sweden was the only one to go above 25% in any one week. Indeed in April 2020 there was a week that came in at 49% over expected excess deaths figures.

http://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

So when you say: “For all intents and purposes, Covid’s public health effects in Sweden seem little different from those of the flu.” and your little prof says: “Not a shred of doubt: Sweden was right” I'm afraid you are both talking rot.

One aspect of the upcoming Vaccine Passport that has not been raised anywhere as far as I know, is how does a vaccinated person fulfill the obligation of proving her vaccinated status to say a restaurant, a hair salon or airline whist maintaining the right to be able to redact data she doesn't want broadcast.

A family friend, in her 90s, is keen to see the insides of a hair salon. She is double vaccinated, but is not keen on staff knowing her full name, date of birth etc, all details visible on medicare's digital certificate.

It would be good if there was a way for the individual to be able to redact a surname and/or date of birth from the visible certificate or passport (be it on paper or on a mobile device) whilst all the data collected (as required by law) remains within a QR code or similar unique identifier attached to the certificate or passport. That way if staff have the legal right to scan the codes/certificate/passport and choose to do so, then neither staff nor management of say a hair salon, fast food outlet or airline will be able to read such information.

If such protections are not provided, there will be a great many unhappy folk.

Just my 2c.

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

Well, as for 'Everybody has a right to live however they choose so long as it doesn't harm others' is concerned, I don't think it just applies to governments vs citizens.

I think it applies to everyone, and I think there's actually 2 parts to consider.

The first and most obvious, is the 'limit's to ones liberty'.
The second, less obvious outlines when one should expect criticism from others.

When one exceeds the limits of their limity and other people are negatively and detrimentally impacted by it (harm), then those people who are harmed have both a right and a duty unto themselves to stand against said harm, whatever form it is.

Media companies have become an amalgamated bureau of propaganda.
You don't get question time, if you don't tow the line.

"Our best way of dealing with COVID as a community may have been to vaccinate the vulnerable and isolate them, and let the relatively invulnerable mix together, spread the disease and infect each other, providing a protective buffer without vaccination."

Whilst I see your logic I can't agree.
My personal opinion is that Covid came from a lab as a bio-weapon and I don't want anything to do with it.
I think its supposed to make everyone sick and if 'Long Covid' is real, then a policy to deliberately infect the population is a policy that will do a great deal of harm, and I can't support it.

My position, I don't want Covid or the vaccines, I don't trust either.
With that in mind, the only way to protect the citizens of this country would've been to lock people out of the country.
The reason I think this is necessary, is because if you don't lock people out, then the result is endless lockdowns within the country.

If our leaders had've done what was necessary and not been complacent, offshore quarantine could've been built before delta even got here.
They failed.

SR,

Western Australia was able to control the WuFlu by effectively cutting themselves off from the rest of humanity. They were in the unique position to do so, given their isolation, small population density and the fact that their sources of wealth and income were physically separated from their population centres. It was the quarantine rather than the lockdowns that allowed them to control the virus. NZ went down the same path. But they had to eventually rejoin the world and as soon as they did all hell broke loose.

Just look at Sydney or Melbourne for an explanation on how lockdowns don't work.Or look at the data I've previously provided comparing lockdown jurisdiction with non-lockdown one, to see how lockdowns ultimately fail.

"if a vaccine does not provide protection against a disease, why should anyone be coerced into using it?"

Even if it does provide perfect protection, why should there be coercion? The governments need to walk a tight-rope here. On the one hand they need to tell people that the vaccines are efficacious to try to induce them to get vaccinated. And the governments need to get a sizeable majority vaccinated in order to justify reversing course on lockdowns. OTOH, they need to maintain the story that the vaccinated remain threatened in order to not dilute the current lockdown mania or to threaten the continued use of such devices.

This is also due to simple logistics. As Berejiklian stated, in one the most disgraceful admissions thus far, they have no evidence that transmission occurs in normal outdoor interactions. Yet they maintain masks and curfews and the like because it makes policing easier. Makes policing easier!! The same would apply if they relaxed restrictions based on vaccination status - it would make policing intolerable difficult. So they continue to infringe liberties to make such infringements easier to enforce. They call themselves liberal.

Despite valiant efforts to coerce the medical community into towing the line, the fact remains that receiving the vaccine carries some risk. If there is a risk, there must be a choice. The authoritarians in our midst (and depressingly they are probably a majority) feel that they have the right to assess the risk to others on behalf of those others. I'm all in favour of education campaigns to give people a better handle on the risks, but it must ultimately be a personal choice.


On a happier note, my guess is that this too will pass. Already the more rational governments (even Andrews!!) are walking away from the zero covid idiocy. Covid will become just another virus to be managed, just like the flu. Then the pressure on the governments will ease and internal vaccine passports will become surplus to needs, allowed to quietly slip into disuse.

Graham,

"if a vaccine does not provide protection against a disease, why should anyone be coerced into using it?" the answer is clearly No.

But the vaccine though not 100% effective has been shown to significantly reduce the chances of catching and spreading the disease and dramatically reduce the severity of the disease once caught.

My 24yr old son who is slim, very fit and healthy caught the delta strain whilst working in London a week before his vaccination appointment and was so ill that he needed hospitalisation and oxygen and two months later is still not 100%.

This is not the flu.