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Australian & NZ Politics: Double Dipping in Luxonry

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    DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    asur wrote: »

    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.

    Lockdowns don't work to eliminate Delta when it's already present. But border lockdowns work to keep it out.

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    lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    Until they don't.

    One case got through the border controls and now here we are in NZ.

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    DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Until they don't.

    One case got through the border controls and now here we are in NZ.

    It worked for WA. To be fair, it is hard to separate what part of that was just sheer luck and whether it can be continued. I don't know fully know what NZ's border strategy was, but my understanding was travel was permitted for a wide variety of reasons and hotel quarantine was required. WA just simply doesn't permit most travel at all.

    Dhalphir on
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    exisexis Registered User regular
    So it looks like Luxon has won the National leadership contest. An evangelical Christian who opposes euthanasia and abortion decriminalisation (presumably marriage equality as well, he just hasn't stated his position on record). But don't worry, he was CEO of Air NZ so he must know how to run the country. Very cool, National, great work.

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    MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    The hotel quarantine system is another yoyo temporary system anyway.

    Temp staff with contractors in accommodations not suited to the task.

    Its an example of the problem of not changing.

    They threw in the towel for the future with delta not because they couldn't have created a robust system.

    They threw it in the too hard basket and decided vaccines would fix everything.

    Until it doesnt.

    Two years and they're still using hotels.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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    FishmanFishman Put your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain. Registered User regular
    A hotel in Kilbirnie just got added to the locations of interest list.

    Now for another round of will-it-won't-it in Wellington, I guess.

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    GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    Tbh I am not sure if we would have bet the regular COVID in 2020 if it had got into the same communities the Delta wave got into. And my guess is that we would have done a lot better against Delta if it hadn't spread into antisocial people. We were lucky with the 2020 wave and unlucky with this one. That's all. It doesn't really demonstrate the success or failure of lockdown against Delta. Same with our border security. MIQ (and the self isolating system before that) were full of holes and disorganisation, but we were lucky and it gave the impression that they were working better than they really were. It took multiple close calls to sharpen up the system and even now it's still a bit shambolic.

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    MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Thats nonsense, basically.

    There were hundreds of cases found in quarantine that stayed there. It worked over and over again for weeks and months and years. The vast majority of overseas cases were captured by quarantine. Thats an incredible success rate.

    If your definition of works is "one failure negates the entire thing" then don't bother wearing a seatbelt, you can still die.

    You are right that the hotel quarantine system was and is shoddy tho. But this doesnt mean there's no point building a better one. Even a shoddy one worked over and over and over again, day after day.

    Morninglord on
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    AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    In fairness to NZ, I think Delta got in via a Green Zone flight from the trans-tasman bubble. The moment NSW dropped the ball on Delta there that should have been shut down but it wasn't. So it leaked in from there and once you have it getting rid of it is impossible (as NZ has unfortunately proven). It looks like Omnicron is in NSW now, via people who were double vaccinated coming in without quarantine it looks like.

    It's like Bush after a certain war. "90% vaccinated? Mission Accomplished!". Shame the virus didn't get the memo.

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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    @Fishman and I was just in Kilbernie today. Lovely!

    Also was planning on messaging you and going 'hey, wanna meet up for boardgames sometime?' so maybe putting the kibosh on that for now.

    Thankfully I haven't been alerted to wanting by the covid app... Yet.

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    GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    I'm thinking of close calls such as isolating people at home not following the rules, people escaping, fresh arrivals mingling with people nearing the end of their stay, MIQ residents popping out to the supermarket, uh... "fraternisation" of guards with residents. Etc etc. Each of these was a time when there were gaps in the security but they didn't result in covid spreading because we were lucky. Heck, not MIQ but the luckiest break we got was when the Delta positive guy visited Wellington for the day with no outbreak. We really dodged a bullet there.

    Basically, we don't know how lucky we are. A lot of the handling of covid that we are so proud of has been luck. We've done well, but we've also been very lucky. It's a shame the luck ran out with this Delta outbreak because I believe we could have beat it if the cards had fallen another way. As is we're still keeping that Reff value low (I'm curious to see what happens after Friday).

    Gvzbgul on
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    MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    edited November 2021
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    I'm thinking of close calls such as isolating people at home not following the rules, people escaping, fresh arrivals mingling with people nearing the end of their stay, MIQ residents popping out to the supermarket, uh... "fraternisation" of guards with residents. Etc etc.

    I am also thinking of those things when I call them yoyo half assed temporary measures.

    Let me put it another way.

    If we treated people coming in like we do refugees, it wouldn't have escaped. Ever.

    No I am not suggesting we start. The way we treat refugees is an abomination.

    I'm just pointing out that we are capable of creating dedicated facilities with rigid systems.

    We have never done this, so you cannot point to it and say look, a dedicated facility wouldn't work, or would be more or less lucky. Everything you are talking about is about a jury rigged half assed measure intended as a temporary stop gap, that just continued for over a year because nobody had the guts to say "hmm, maybe we should take this seriously?". Of course it has dozens of failure points. The hotels aren't even designed for this kind of disease, nobody took the idea seriously that it could spread via the air.

    I'm talking about something else entirely.

    It's like doing a science experiment and measuring the wrong variable. You are going beyond your evidence.

    But yes of course we are lucky and even then, despite the shoddyness, the fact remains, that thousands of cases did not go out into the community.

    You got to remember all those cases that didn't? They helped. They helped a lot. Each stopped case in quarantine prevented an entire new tree of epidemic spread, which would have quickly swamped our systems like this *snaps fingers*. Even after delta escaped the quarantines were still massively valuable, and successful, because of that, even with the luck. Throughout the entire sydney lockdown there was a constant trickle of one or two or a few cases coming in from outside, in quarantine, that nobody paid attention to because they were safely quarantined, all of which would have if they'd just come in exponentially added on top of the existing local infections. Every few days, a new outbreak start, somewhere else, in a random spot in the country.

    Morninglord on
    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    @Morninglord I think @Gvzbgul is talking about NZs system and experiences, while you seem to be taking about auses?

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    MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    Oh. That would explain a lot.

    I have absolutely no idea what happened in NZ and cannot comment on it. If so disregard what I said.

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    A quick summary as I understand it:

    We successfully stamped out COVID-19 using an elimination strategy.

    Then Delta happened. It appears to have gotten into the country via a case from NSW. Once it was in the elimination strategy failed for various reasons. We've since moved to a containment strategy, now with vaccine passes

    Now we're all giving omicron the stink eye

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    GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    Haha whoops. TBH, sometimes in this thread the only thing I have to go on is whether it's spelled "Labour" or "Labor".

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    exisexis Registered User regular
    From now on all posts about Aus must be prefixed with "Crikey!: ..."

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    MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    exis wrote: »
    From now on all posts about Aus must be prefixed with "Crikey!: ..."

    Only if all posts about NZ are prefixed with "fush and chups".

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    AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    Fush and Chips: I do feel many of @Morninglord's points are as applicable to NZ as they are to Australia. In NZ we just constantly got lucky multiple times: People being able to fly out of Auckland not just once but several times to the South Island. The Holidaymakers who went on a tiki tour around other places in the North Island, again, despite being from a hot delta area in Auckland and so on. The fact things were so leaky while Delta was circulating in Auckland was just a miracle it didn't spread further than it managed to. At some point the parts of the country that have not had Delta will get it, but it's been well contained - but I would argue that's as much by pure stupid luck as it is the governments actions.

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    DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    WA got lucky that our initial Delta cases happened to be responsible truckers who stayed in their cabs, wore masks, and signed in everywhere.

    They could easily have been the apparent IGA enthusiasts that you see on exposure site lists, who somehow go to five different IGAs every day.

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    MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    Crikey!

    https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/former-attorneygeneral-christian-porter-to-quit-federal-politics-after-false-rape-allegation/news-story/128c1cf312cca9e653e7fe1304e7d903
    "Former Attorney-General Christian Porter to quit federal politics after ’false’ rape allegation"

    Fuck off, you corrupt probable rapist.

    And fuck every LNP politician that covered for him. That definitely includes you, Scotty.

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    MorninglordMorninglord I'm tired of being Batman, so today I'll be Owl.Registered User regular
    Liberals shedding the dead weight in time for the election I see.

    (PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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    MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    Liberals shedding the dead weight in time for the election I see.

    Yeah, I figure it's primarily, if not solely, him being pushed, rather than him not wanting to be a politician anymore.

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    SurikoSuriko AustraliaRegistered User regular
    Greg Hunt's out too.

    Farewell to a useless empty suit who failed upwards, mismanaging every portfolio he was given. Good riddance.

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    -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    More good news - Jacqui Lambie swapped sides on Morrison’s voter ID bill, leaving it dead in the water.

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    discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Was listening to her going off about some bill that sounded like it was trying to 'expedite' investigations within the armed forces, saying that it will just increase the power that abusers within the army have over their abused.
    Which, good on her.

    Wouldn't be surprised if her support for the government generally was tanking because of it.

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    MorganVMorganV Registered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    Was listening to her going off about some bill that sounded like it was trying to 'expedite' investigations within the armed forces, saying that it will just increase the power that abusers within the army have over their abused.
    Which, good on her.

    Wouldn't be surprised if her support for the government generally was tanking because of it.

    She's got some shitty positions, and I hold a significant grudge about who she was willing to partner with to get elected (Eat shit, Clive), but when it comes to doing the right thing sometimes, she definitely isn't afraid to do so.

    Just checking, and some of the things she did was...
    - tell the Liberal party to fuck off over university reform that would have negatively affected poorer students.
    - pushed for assistance for armed forces veterans in regards suicide prevention.
    - pushed for a reduction in the limit of "undisclosed donations" from over $14K to no more than $2,500.

    There was something else important, that I can't recall.

    Doesn't erase the fact that she's significantly islamophobic (wanted to ban the burqua, wanted to give immunity to soldiers for war crimes against AQ/Taliban, etc), is a fan of Putin, and her views on China are probably across the line into racism. But she's also a conservative, so at least some of each of that is basically baked in to her being a politician.

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    DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    why does scotty from marketing never smile with any teeth

    surely the focus groups have told him the closed mouth smirk is creepy as fuck by now or what

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    LokarnLokarn Registered User regular
    Passed a small anti vax protest outside Adelaide parliament this morning. Protesting the vaccine mandates but of course none of them masked or taking any other precautions. At least one of whom was wearing a star of David for that extra level of despicable.

    Meanwhile one of the first cases of community transmission since the border opened is the ex-premier of the state!

    Wife works in a small pharmacy so getting anxious for her for the coming weeks! 🙁

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    DhalphirDhalphir don't you open that trapdoor you're a fool if you dareRegistered User regular
    rvugd8cfxa68.png

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    AegeriAegeri Tiny wee bacteriums Plateau of LengRegistered User regular
    It couldn't be a large group of unvaccinated people crowding into a small area and not taking any safety measures?

    Surely not?!?

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    AntoshkaAntoshka Miauen Oil Change LazarusRegistered User regular
    Dhalphir wrote: »
    rvugd8cfxa68.png

    That is so, so frustratingly close to the point, and yet misses it by such a large margin.

    n57PM0C.jpg
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    Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
    edited December 2021
    Dhalphir wrote: »
    why does scotty from marketing never smile with any teeth

    surely the focus groups have told him the closed mouth smirk is creepy as fuck by now or what

    If you're going to do a fake smile, you have to keep your mouth shut. A truly genuine smile involves both the eyes and the mouth, and the eyes are very difficult to fake. Since he's obviously incapable of a genuine smile the smirk is the best he's got. Otherwise what you'd end up with is bared teeth and the cold dead eyes of a shark and that looks more like "I am going to wear your skin as a suit" than "I am genuinely pleased to see you".

    There was an article on the ABC about the anti-vax protest du jour, and I think was pissed me off the most was the t-shirt one of the fuckwits was wearing that said "We the people" something something. That's from the fucking U.S Constitution, not that you probably know that, but good job proving in one easy step that you get all of your opinions from the internet you man-shaped pile of turds.

    *edit* I found the webcomic that I was thinking of specifically when talking about smiles and such. Scotty would be panel #2, because he lacks the genuine happy memories to do #4:
    basic151111.gif?content-type=image%2Fgif

    Mr Ray on
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    exisexis Registered User regular
    Luxon touring the Viaduct giving some hot takes on alert levels.

    Apparently, Auckland should be at orange! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/457097/live-updates-traffic-light-system-operational-aucklanders-emerge-from-lockdown
    But actually, Auckland should be at green! https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300469396/national-leader-christopher-luxon-says-auckland-should-be-in-green-traffic-light-setting-now

    Sounds like National have a well-considered plan for dealing with Covid and are definitely not just telling business owner's whatever they want to hear with zero concern about actually managing a pandemic.

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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    exis wrote: »
    Luxon touring the Viaduct giving some hot takes on alert levels.

    Apparently, Auckland should be at orange! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/457097/live-updates-traffic-light-system-operational-aucklanders-emerge-from-lockdown
    But actually, Auckland should be at green! https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300469396/national-leader-christopher-luxon-says-auckland-should-be-in-green-traffic-light-setting-now

    Sounds like National have a well-considered plan for dealing with Covid and are definitely not just telling business owner's whatever they want to hear with zero concern about actually managing a pandemic.

    I was just coming to post this. Kinda impressive setting yourself on fire publicly in your first few days.

    What a fucking moron.

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    lonelyahavalonelyahava Call me Ahava ~~She/Her~~ Move to New ZealandRegistered User regular
    We should be at Green!

    Fuck you! FUCK. YOU.

    all going to green would do at this point would be completely invalidate the last almost 4 months of work that I've done not going insane.


    It feels a lot like level 2 out there right now. Went to the mall with the kid, didn't need to use vaxpass at all. Mainly because we got her hair cut and it's My Vaxpass, and she's under 12 so she doesn't have one (YET!).

    There's going to be some painful decisions coming for me soon, because it looks like our previous favourite food places aren't requiting vaxpass. which is a concern. But it was lunch rush and I didn't get a chance to really talk.

    I'm going to get my hair done tomorrow, a proper salon and not just JustCuts or Sharing shed.

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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    I really need to find a proper saloon here in wellington and get my hair looked at (My hair is like, 80 cm long). No idea where a good one is tho >.>

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    FishmanFishman Put your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain. Registered User regular
    I really need to find a proper saloon here in wellington and get my hair looked at (My hair is like, 80 cm long). No idea where a good one is tho >.>

    Gentlemen's Approach on Grey St has pretty much the best reputation for men's cuts in the city, if you're leaning fancy and stylish.

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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Fishman wrote: »
    I really need to find a proper saloon here in wellington and get my hair looked at (My hair is like, 80 cm long). No idea where a good one is tho >.>

    Gentlemen's Approach on Grey St has pretty much the best reputation for men's cuts in the city, if you're leaning fancy and stylish.

    Thanks for the recommendation! But at what looks to be a boggling 100 NZD I think I might just stick to combing and showering at home because yeeesh

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    The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Out doing shopping and just drive past some idiots protesting in the rain about the mandate.

    I hope they all catch colds and freak the fuck out

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