As I understand it, there are many who have been vaccinated, but remain highly vulnerable due to suppressed immune systems (either through illness, or medical treatments such as cancer treatment, or ongoing immunosuppressant medication for organ transplant recipients). For them, although the vaccine stimulates an immune response, the response is lesser and they are at a much higher risk of developing COVID from a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Some of them are my friends, and I don’t particularly want to kill them.
So whilst I am OK if there are pockets of the population that are unvaccinated, unfortunately these people are not.
Living with the virus is going to require masks, distancing etc for quite a while.
Some months ago, when the AZ blood clotting issue first appeared and large parts of Australia were covid-free, it was rational for some individuals to compare the various options open to them eg AZ v wait for Pfizer v socially isolate whilst waiting for more evidence as to vaccine side effects and efficacy. At that stage the public health priority (what’s best for the community at large) was still for everyone to get vaccinated, but the personal/individual health decision was more complicated given difficulties in calculating the relative risks of each option.
Globally we now have delta spreading through both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Individuals now have a clear best-case option which is to get vaccinated and I have no doubt we’ll reach a high level of coverage as nothing motivates like pain and fear. But vaccination is no longer the solution to the public health crisis. Communities now need to adjust to the need for long term vaccination+boosters, continuing social distancing, new rules for business, masking, and social event and travel restrictions, as that is the only way nations can manage widespread infection and protect those that vaccines cannot.
I think this reality is too much for many and we revert to the unrealistic promise of freedom sometime in the future or the idea of opening up when we reach some magic number. Rather our safety not only depends on how effectively we implement vaccination+myriad of other measures but also what is happening elsewhere given the world’s complete inability to stop delta even at a time of full scale global alert.
I can absolutely understand that thought process. And I’m not convinced Sydney can contain it either any more, and we all know COVID zero is a fairytale with Delta. We’re all waiting for a high enough vaccine rate to live more freely ongoing. Which is why we’ve spent the last few months so angry with the botched vaccine rollout.
But if you think strict lockdowns don’t work, please look at Fairfield, which has as many barriers to driving numbers down as any other LGA, and more than most other LGAs. If you have a better explanation for why it’s working there and not elsewhere, where there are less challenges, I’m interested to know, because I have failed to think of any that sound reasonable.
There are no easy solutions. Locking down further and for longer is hard. Opening up more is dangerous. Doing nothing isn’t working, and things are getting worse. I’m worried about Sydney’s hospitals reaching breaking point before vaccinations can have their effect. We’re in a holding pattern while we wait for what is our federal government’s greatest failure in not securing enough vaccine when the opportunity was there.
I agree that that is the NSW Government course, and they seem happy to continue to drift along on it.
I think that at some point, and I nominate going over the Victorian second wave as being that, that there will be a wake up about how bad things have got and that there will be a public groundswell for more action. And that Gladys will find it hard to avoid having to do more.
She just following Scotty’s script.
“the best protection against the virus, to live with the virus, to live alongside the virus, and to open up your economy”.
The covid threads will be like the Saga thread/threads, they’ll bubble along in the background of blitz forever or until climate change comes for us all and we all have to fight off gangs of starving cannibalistic Fark Carlton supporters with improvised machetes crafted out of old ‘Stand By Hird’ signs…