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Australian & NZ Politics: Double Dipping in Luxonry

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  • plufimplufim Dr Registered User regular
    As an employee of the South Australian state government I have no opinion that I can state in public on the fact that we're opening our borders next Monday despite us only being 74% double vaxxed and it was originally stated to hinge on 80%.

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  • plufimplufim Dr Registered User regular
    AAAAHHH THE MASK COVERS THE NOSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    plufim wrote: »
    AAAAHHH THE MASK COVERS THE NOSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

    Gives a whole new layer of meaning to the phrase mouthbreather, don't it?

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  • plufimplufim Dr Registered User regular
    Clive is sending out spam again 😡
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  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    Well the Libs are courting the right wing violent extremist qanon protesters. I can see no way in which this could turn out badly.

    Oh... apart from when this exact thing happened in the UK and the US and we saw multiple murders of elected officials and attempted coups. But why bother trying to preserve democracy and civil society when you might be able to get a vote from a guy with a southern cross neck tattoo carrying a noose.

  • plufimplufim Dr Registered User regular
    To the surprise of no-one, Gladys lied when only the poorest LGAs had the toughest restrictions imposed. Channt sent an email specifically stating that all areas should be locked down equally.

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  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    I'm shocked.

    Shocked.

    Well, not that shocked.

    Also, lets watch Western Sydney completely forget about it at the polls as well.

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    -Loki- wrote: »
    I'm shocked.

    Shocked.

    Well, not that shocked.

    Also, lets watch Western Sydney completely forget about it at the polls as well.

    In any other country where most media isn’t owned by one person, you should bet they should have heard about it at least.

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Ahahaha.

    After surprise denoting Simon bridges last night in a blatant attempt to hold on to power, Judith Collins has been rolled from leadership of the national party

    Don't let the door got you on the way out

    Now to watch them continue to implode

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  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    In fairness though, she's been utterly dreadful and they were just looking for any excuse to get her by this point.

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  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    My only caution in celebrating this implosion, is watching ACT rising....

  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    My only caution in celebrating this implosion, is watching ACT rising....

    But by comparison, Labor haven't gone down much and would govern with an election today with the greens or whatever. ACT is mostly cannibalising the votes from National, rather than gaining independent ground.

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  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    ACT will implode one day. Don't worry. Small parties are fragile.

  • lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Logically I know.

    But I'm still American. So the far right rising a bit makes me nervous

  • exisexis Registered User regular
    Yeah I think the scary part of the ACT ascendance is that National will inevitably align itself more with ACT in order to get votes back.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    exis wrote: »
    Yeah I think the scary part of the ACT ascendance is that National will inevitably align itself more with ACT in order to get votes back.

    Yeah, the right wing swing is genuinely a worry. As is honestly not having an opposition that's holding the government to account.

    But right in this moment I'm just enjoying watching national spray blood everywhere

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  • MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    Logically I know.

    But I'm still American. So the far right rising a bit makes me nervous

    There's also the whole "be careful what you wish for" issue.

    "Oh, I hope Trump is the nominee, then there's no way Hilary can lose!"

    Don't be glad for something if you're not willing to live with the consequences. Because that Chinese curse sucks, and reality has a way of proving it.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Yeah, my concerns is this prompts a further rightward shift from national, doubling down on the already quite nasty divide we've got in new zealand - my biggest fear being we get another John Key and people vote for him going "Oh, let's give him a chance"

    Which...

    Nooooo.

    My hope, slim as it is, is this prompts a reforming of national that makes them a credible oppostion party that can hold labor's feet to the fire on various issues (Welfare reform, Housing! (FUCKING HOUSING), etc) and prompts good social movement. But that's a very dim hope.

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  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    I don't think it'll make much difference. National and ACT are about on par so far as "rightness" imo (definitely was ACT in the past but I'm not so sure now. Basically it's pick your flavour, Law and Order or free market woo). You're far less likely to get a Support Our Cops™ or Family Values™ party from ACT. But you'd get harmful free market policies from ACT, which... National loves those anyway.

    Besides, I doubt any voters at all are voting on ACT's policies (or could even name one). They're siding with ACT because they are somewhat stable compared to National. If National gets their act together the problem solves itself. I wonder if NZF was still in parliament whether some of the support National is losing would be going their way as a non-Labour party (or in dreamland, TOP). As is, ACT is the only option for disgruntled Nat voters.

  • exisexis Registered User regular
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    I don't think it'll make much difference. National and ACT are about on par so far as "rightness" imo (definitely was ACT in the past but I'm not so sure now. Basically it's pick your flavour, Law and Order or free market woo). You're far less likely to get a Support Our Cops™ or Family Values™ party from ACT. But you'd get harmful free market policies from ACT, which... National loves those anyway.

    Besides, I doubt any voters at all are voting on ACT's policies (or could even name one). They're siding with ACT because they are somewhat stable compared to National. If National gets their act together the problem solves itself. I wonder if NZF was still in parliament whether some of the support National is losing would be going their way as a non-Labour party (or in dreamland, TOP). As is, ACT is the only option for disgruntled Nat voters.

    Yeah, I think a lot of these ACT supporters would have been more traditionally aligned with Winston Peters. I think part of the reason for the ACT upswing is that Seymour is in a position where he can take jabs at the government without really needing to back anything up with practical policy alternatives, which is good for him because they don't really have anything to offer. He can generate headline-grabbing soundbytes and appear relevant as long as nobody actually stops to think about what an ACT government would actually mean. I thought this was interesting and true - I can't think of the last time I heard anything from an ACT MP other than Seymour:

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Omicron, a variant of concern with potential for high transmissability and penetration of vaccines, has arrived in Australia.

    Both cases were vaccinated, so were not in hotel quarantine.

    Both Australian travellers to South Africa who came back.

    Anyone coming back from those countries now has to quarantine for 14 days because shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted is how it works nowadays. The whole plane is in quarantine at least.

    Hopefully its nothing. But also no lessons will be learned.

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  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    Lessons were learned. The government just doesn’t care.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    I think this is a bit harsh.
    I don't see much else that could have been done.

    I presume the travellers were in home quarantine.
    Aside from that, I don't see how mandatory hotel quarantine until the pandemic exhausts itself would have been acceptable when Delta was already here.

    If governments were really serious about the pandemic, we'd go back to actual quarantine and ship all travelers into government funded, presumably comfortable, quarantine facilities for a standard duration.
    But I don't see that happening anywhere.
    And if it did tourists would be somewhat unwilling to sacrifice the time and money to quarantine, leading to impacts in those industries, which would spark anger at not being able to go back to 'normal life'.

    So aside this, I'd hope that we're still doing genomic testing within our own population, so any prior Omicron cases would have been detected.
    The turnaround on the cases we've just seen (sequenced overnight by the looks of it) implies we are.
    But with the number of Delta cases we've been having, I can't be sure.

    At the moment then, I'm just taking these two cases as cases in quarantine, and I'm not going to start panicking until we see confirmed community transmission.

    And even then, I'm cautiously optimistic that Omicron might be more infectious but less deadly, which is the direction we want Covid to go.
    I'm waiting for data on the less deadly part, but there's no reason why Covid should retain lethality while becoming more transmissible, so fingers crossed it didn't.
    And the only ways I see this pandemic 'ending' are when vaccines cause transmission to drop to zero, or when less-deadly strains out-compete the more-deadly ones and we drop below some risk of harm threshold.


    Looking at the NSW travel restrictions, the Omicron cases should still have been in their three day home quarantine period.
    So if they and the other passengers on the plane have been following the quarantine rules, we may not see any follow on cases except for household contacts.

    Three day home quarantine period (and a negative PCR test) doesn't seem long enough though IMO.

    discrider on
  • AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    To be fair to everyone, if Governments wanted to deal with this they would have put as much effort into vaccinating third world countries and those behind as their own populations. Anywhere the virus can spread unimpeded lets it develop mutations and variants. This should not be an incredible surprise when it keeps happening over and over (Lamda, Delta, Omnicron etc). It's like people have forgot that viruses evolve and change, they don't just appear out of magical pixie dust. It's why just letting the virus loose has always been dumber, because you just keep increasing the chances of getting more evolved and specialized variants that are better at infecting people.

    It should absolutely not be a surprise, but it's also not something that can be stopped unless you decide to do a massive push to vaccinate everyone everywhere, which the international community has not had the stomach for.

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  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    That would be more pertinent to us if the federal government wasn't also useless at vaccinating Australians, though.

  • exisexis Registered User regular
    Yeah I think that requires a degree of commitment to handling the virus properly that no government in the world is willing to apply - and would be pretty much impossible to convince their local population that the effort was worthwhile.

    I mean in NZ we only really pulled finger and started seriously, actively pushing vaccination after Delta was on the shore. Which is pretty crazy honestly. We couldn't drum up enough political will to force the issue, even while we were watching the reality of it taking hold around the world, knowing it would inevitably be here sooner or later and that vaccination was the only viable strategy.

    If that wasn't a 'real' enough threat, trying to convey the relatively abstract notion of some potential future mutation that may occur halfway around the world and eventually impact us... it's a non-starter.

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    Oh no I have to quarantine for two weeks my life is ruined this is unacceptable!

    I have no sympathy for this position.

    It's such a short amount of time ffs don't even pretend it's some big agony.

    I'm also completely unconcerned with going back to normal life. Humanity has adapted to worse problems than this but suddenly every thing just had to go back to normal as fast as possible, reality of the situation be damned, muh economy muh tourism.

    Yoyo on again off again restrictions are going to fuck that anyway. People won't be willing to travel even if it is open because they won't know when the yoyo will swing back against them.

    The whole world is still vainly trying to ram square pegs (what used to be normal) into a round hole (how things actually are whether we want it to be or not). So there's no actual serious attempt and planning for adaption to living with this new reality. Its just yoyoing back and forth from one extreme to the other. Trying to hold on for a return to normal that reality has no obligation to give us. Its the least helpful, most destructive way to go about it.

    But hey we can pretend theres nothing we can do and do the stupidest most short sighted thing possible paving the way for the worst scenario to be even more likely. It's what people usually do no need to break the streak right?

    Or maybe, sometimes, unfairly, unhappily, at cost, things have to gasp oh no change permanently. Or at least for the foreseeable future. And you have to make plans for that future instead of this wish fulfilment and desperate hope that its all going to be over just because we want it to. A hope we have no guarantee of ever getting, but we sure can actively scuttle the chances of the way we are acting with our desperate yoyos.

    And maybe hopefully one day we can go back to the old totally free normal. But we will be ok because we will have worked out how to live if that can't happen.

    But instead we won't do anything but cling to the old ways of thinking because a couple of weeks of your life is unacceptable and is "too harsh". Give me a break. I'm not asking for the fucking inquisition here.

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  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    edited November 2021
    honestly I would be perfectly fine at this point if WA's borders remained closed indefinitely

    Build some proper quarantine facilities so people can visit for compassionate reasons, or permanently relocate if required to bring families closer together, and life goes on permanently changed.

    Life in WA from March 2020 to December 2021 looks pretty much the exact same as any other 2 year period except that we can't travel. It's been hard on my wife not being able to see her side of the family, but we both feel it'd be much worse living somewhere that had to have constant restrictions, hospitalizations, long-term health effects for survivors, and deaths.

    Dhalphir on
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Oh no I have to quarantine for two weeks my life is ruined this is unacceptable!

    I have no sympathy for this position.

    It's such a short amount of time ffs don't even pretend it's some big agony.

    I'm also completely unconcerned with going back to normal life.

    I agree.
    We could have changed our entry policies ages ago, and should have had federally funded quarantine facilities set up at the beginning of the year.
    And it's shameful that we did not and had to go through the Delta wave because of this.

    But I also don't see how you convince the tourist industry to accept two weeks mandatory quarantine.
    I would not be going to another country for a holiday if I have to spend one month doing nothing.
    So I would imagine that a lot of these businesses would be hurting for customers.

    Nor how you convince PMs or other rich jerks who want to go to Hawaii.
    Presumably you chase them with big sticks until they follow the same rules that everyone else has to.

    Nor people who send death threats to Daniel Andrews.

    So even if our government had the spine to implement such measures, I have to wonder how politically viable it would be.
    I'm just ready to be disappointed by the election next year again.
    exis wrote: »
    Yeah I think that requires a degree of commitment to handling the virus properly that no government in the world is willing to apply - and would be pretty much impossible to convince their local population that the effort was worthwhile.

    I mean in NZ we only really pulled finger and started seriously, actively pushing vaccination after Delta was on the shore. Which is pretty crazy honestly. We couldn't drum up enough political will to force the issue, even while we were watching the reality of it taking hold around the world, knowing it would inevitably be here sooner or later and that vaccination was the only viable strategy.

    If that wasn't a 'real' enough threat, trying to convey the relatively abstract notion of some potential future mutation that may occur halfway around the world and eventually impact us... it's a non-starter.

    I mean yeah.
    We had epidemiologists in Aus before Delta landed saying that the level of vaccine hesitancy might only come down once it was on our shores.
    That the nervousness over AZ blood clots needed the threat of Covid, here and now, for people to re-evaluate and get to a more reasonable risk posture.



  • McFodderMcFodder Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    discrider wrote: »
    But I also don't see how you convince the tourist industry to accept two weeks mandatory quarantine.
    I would not be going to another country for a holiday if I have to spend one month doing nothing.
    So I would imagine that a lot of these businesses would be hurting for customers.

    I've got a friend working tourism up in the north of WA, he's relatively new to it but people he's working with are saying it has never been so ridiculously busy.

    Sure, we're not getting however many tourists in from overseas, and limited number from interstate.

    The flipside is that nobody from Perth is going to Bali for the week.

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  • DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    WA is definitely a net exporter of tourism.

  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Its not really about convincing the industry. Theyre never going to be happy.

    This is the way it is.

    Tourism is big money, I know. The rest of the country is much bigger. If tourism has to change for the good of more, that's life.

    Ideally the government would support those industries to transit to alternative employment.

    Or help them transiting to attracting domestic tourism. The companies that can't survive that. Harsh. Locking down the rest of the country periodically to support an intrinsically dangerous activity right now? Worse.

    And honestly how many international tourism only focused industries are still around. Its been nearly two years....

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  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Well, WA was mentioned.
    My wife's family is in Vietnam, so she's suggested moving to Perth to be closer, pre-pandemic.
    Not that we've been back in years.

    So it's not just the tourism industry, but also convincing the people who have family overseas or who went to Bali etc, that going overseas and returning is not something that can happen without significant cost anymore.

    Which would also be good from a climate standpoint, but still.

    discrider on
  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    I havent seen my own family in 5 years so I know that feeling.

    This is one of the costs I mentioned.

    Its a significant one.

    Its one of the changes people would need to get used to. You'd need to accomodate the quarantine into your travel plans, for whatever reason you are travelling, for a few more years.

    And if this went on long enough people and society would adapt to that. Not without being upset. But they would.

    The reason people aren't adapting properly is they keep thinking there's an easy way out in a few more insert time period if they wait just that bit longer.

    My point is it needs to be made clear they shouldn't wait.

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  • MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    I havent seen my own family in 5 years so I know that feeling.

    This is one of the costs I mentioned.

    Its a significant one.

    Its one of the changes people would need to get used to. You'd need to accomodate the quarantine into your travel plans, for whatever reason you are travelling, for a few more years.

    And if this went on long enough people and society would adapt to that. Not without being upset. But they would.

    The reason people aren't adapting properly is they keep thinking there's an easy way out in a few more insert time period if they wait just that bit longer.

    My point is it needs to be made clear they shouldn't wait.

    The problem is, not everyone can do so. It's one thing to take two weeks off work to go on vacation. It's a completely different thing to take four weeks off to accomodate quarantine.

    If you've got flexible paid leave (and four weeks a year accrued), you can work against diminishing rewards by going every second year, and getting six weeks plus two in quarantine. But a lot of places won't allow that, or have a mandatory two weeks at Christmas (which is the worst time to travel), so it becomes much harder to organize.

  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    I'm *thinking* of travelling to Aus next year once we have at home quarantine. Then I would have 3 week's holiday, 1 week in Aus, 2 weeks at home (I don't have a work from home job). Not unbearable. I could get someone else to shop for supplies and I'd do some DIY. But I've also got some other plans next year so I'm still on the fence. With a potentially vaccine eluding variant I don't know wtf is going to happen next year.

  • FishmanFishman Put your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain. Registered User regular
    My wife's cousin is coming to visit from the UK while her dad is recovering from major surgery, and she works remotely 100% of the time in London anyway, so she just... keeps working remotely while in quarantine, but with less meetings cluttering her calendar.

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  • MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    MorganV wrote: »
    I havent seen my own family in 5 years so I know that feeling.

    This is one of the costs I mentioned.

    Its a significant one.

    Its one of the changes people would need to get used to. You'd need to accomodate the quarantine into your travel plans, for whatever reason you are travelling, for a few more years.

    And if this went on long enough people and society would adapt to that. Not without being upset. But they would.

    The reason people aren't adapting properly is they keep thinking there's an easy way out in a few more insert time period if they wait just that bit longer.

    My point is it needs to be made clear they shouldn't wait.

    The problem is, not everyone can do so. It's one thing to take two weeks off work to go on vacation. It's a completely different thing to take four weeks off to accomodate quarantine.

    If you've got flexible paid leave (and four weeks a year accrued), you can work against diminishing rewards by going every second year, and getting six weeks plus two in quarantine. But a lot of places won't allow that, or have a mandatory two weeks at Christmas (which is the worst time to travel), so it becomes much harder to organize.

    Which is some of the things that have to change. Annual leave arrangements. Changed. Legislated if need be. Expectations of holiday length. Reduced. Ways of working, changed to accomodate working from home in quarantine.

    And yes for some people they can't. I acknowledge that. If family is that important to them theyll have to reevaluate their life choices, where they live, and so on. Yes that's horrible and cold and it has to happen anyway.

    That is the cost, because its not going away just cos we want it to. It does. Not. Care. About. Our. Feelings.

    You start with "this has to change" then you work out how.

    If you start with this can't change, welcome to the infinite yoyo, where you still can't visit your family anyway and get your flight cancelled and have huge trouble getting a refund if you get one at all. And possibly get covid ripping through your country so your time at home is just as miserable.

    Change first. Then you fix the problems that result.

    This will be my answer to every but what about.

    Anything else leads to the yoyo.

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  • asurasur Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    MorganV wrote: »
    I havent seen my own family in 5 years so I know that feeling.

    This is one of the costs I mentioned.

    Its a significant one.

    Its one of the changes people would need to get used to. You'd need to accomodate the quarantine into your travel plans, for whatever reason you are travelling, for a few more years.

    And if this went on long enough people and society would adapt to that. Not without being upset. But they would.

    The reason people aren't adapting properly is they keep thinking there's an easy way out in a few more insert time period if they wait just that bit longer.

    My point is it needs to be made clear they shouldn't wait.

    The problem is, not everyone can do so. It's one thing to take two weeks off work to go on vacation. It's a completely different thing to take four weeks off to accomodate quarantine.

    If you've got flexible paid leave (and four weeks a year accrued), you can work against diminishing rewards by going every second year, and getting six weeks plus two in quarantine. But a lot of places won't allow that, or have a mandatory two weeks at Christmas (which is the worst time to travel), so it becomes much harder to organize.

    Which is some of the things that have to change. Annual leave arrangements. Changed. Legislated if need be. Expectations of holiday length. Reduced. Ways of working, changed to accomodate working from home in quarantine.

    And yes for some people they can't. I acknowledge that. If family is that important to them theyll have to reevaluate their life choices, where they live, and so on. Yes that's horrible and cold and it has to happen anyway.

    That is the cost, because its not going away just cos we want it to. It does. Not. Care. About. Our. Feelings.

    You start with "this has to change" then you work out how.

    If you start with this can't change, welcome to the infinite yoyo, where you still can't visit your family anyway and get your flight cancelled and have huge trouble getting a refund if you get one at all. And possibly get covid ripping through your country so your time at home is just as miserable.

    Change first. Then you fix the problems that result.

    This will be my answer to every but what about.

    Anything else leads to the yoyo.

    Didn't this strategy stop working with the advent of Delta? I thought that was the entire reason NZ switched from Covid Zero to vaccination and the traffic light system. Auckland has been locked down for three and a half months and failed eliminate the Delta outbreak.

    asur on
  • exisexis Registered User regular
    asur wrote: »
    MorganV wrote: »
    I havent seen my own family in 5 years so I know that feeling.

    This is one of the costs I mentioned.

    Its a significant one.

    Its one of the changes people would need to get used to. You'd need to accomodate the quarantine into your travel plans, for whatever reason you are travelling, for a few more years.

    And if this went on long enough people and society would adapt to that. Not without being upset. But they would.

    The reason people aren't adapting properly is they keep thinking there's an easy way out in a few more insert time period if they wait just that bit longer.

    My point is it needs to be made clear they shouldn't wait.

    The problem is, not everyone can do so. It's one thing to take two weeks off work to go on vacation. It's a completely different thing to take four weeks off to accomodate quarantine.

    If you've got flexible paid leave (and four weeks a year accrued), you can work against diminishing rewards by going every second year, and getting six weeks plus two in quarantine. But a lot of places won't allow that, or have a mandatory two weeks at Christmas (which is the worst time to travel), so it becomes much harder to organize.

    Which is some of the things that have to change. Annual leave arrangements. Changed. Legislated if need be. Expectations of holiday length. Reduced. Ways of working, changed to accomodate working from home in quarantine.

    And yes for some people they can't. I acknowledge that. If family is that important to them theyll have to reevaluate their life choices, where they live, and so on. Yes that's horrible and cold and it has to happen anyway.

    That is the cost, because its not going away just cos we want it to. It does. Not. Care. About. Our. Feelings.

    You start with "this has to change" then you work out how.

    If you start with this can't change, welcome to the infinite yoyo, where you still can't visit your family anyway and get your flight cancelled and have huge trouble getting a refund if you get one at all. And possibly get covid ripping through your country so your time at home is just as miserable.

    Change first. Then you fix the problems that result.

    This will be my answer to every but what about.

    Anything else leads to the yoyo.

    Didn't this strategy stop working with the advent of Delta? I thought that was the entire reason NZ switched from Covid Zero to vaccination and the traffic light system. Auckland has been locked down for three and a half months and failed eliminate the Delta outbreak.

    I believe those cases are theoretically all (at least as far as we've been able to contact trace) due to community transmission within NZ. The border quarantine is working in the sense that if it wasn't there we would probably have a lot more cases and they would be spread throughout the country.

    That said, once our daily case numbers crossed a certain threshold, accurately contact tracing every case became impractical and we just stopped hearing about clusters and sources.

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