Australian in NSW [heaviest hit region currently] here to provide singular data point.
for my personal life, 0.92 QALY for covid lockdown seems reasonable. But I am generally an introvert and tend not to go out. My friends and families are also mostly tech-literate and able to keep in touch online. I change relatively little of my habits.
It is certainly much harder to do business
The lockdown is not that strictly enforces [by my personal experience] and sounds worse on paper than it actually is. Mostly just security theater.
I was unaware of the Government censor on Facebook.
I agree that the government interventions are more to appear to do something than actually doing the things that could have an impact. But I assume that this is the problem with all democratic governments. Heck, at work my co-workers are still arguing for harsher lock-down while being openly anti-vax. You just can’t win.
I’m also Australian, though not in New South Wales. Prior to the current NSW outbreak, localised and usually short lockdowns (generally one city, or at worst one state at a time) had been overwhelmingly effective at keeping the rest of the nation both COVID-free and free of restrictions.
While I do disagree with a great deal that Australia’s various governments have been doing, that has not been one of them.
The current outbreak has come as shock for two reasons: first is that the NSW state government was slower than every other state to act, breaking the implicit deal of fast temporary sacrifices to eliminate transmission and protect everyone else. The second is that this is the Delta variant, known to be more transmissible.
Both of these meant that the NSW outbreak rapidly grew to a size that outpaced testing tracing and isolation, meaning that lockdown measures would take much longer and also require more stringent restrictions to eliminate than any previous outbreak. The NSW premier made the decision to abandon that approach altogether. The new strategy is to rush mass vaccinations and then stop most restrictions.
Projections show various Sydney hospitals being overwhelmed within weeks if restrictions are dropped now. So it’s now a three-way balance over the next 6-8 weeks between vaccine supply, already stretched hospital capacity, and the ability of people and businesses to endure whatever restrictions are needed to keep the hospitals functioning and reduce avoidable deaths.
Australian in NSW [heaviest hit region currently] here to provide singular data point.
for my personal life, 0.92 QALY for covid lockdown seems reasonable. But I am generally an introvert and tend not to go out. My friends and families are also mostly tech-literate and able to keep in touch online. I change relatively little of my habits.
It is certainly much harder to do business
The lockdown is not that strictly enforces [by my personal experience] and sounds worse on paper than it actually is. Mostly just security theater.
I was unaware of the Government censor on Facebook.
I agree that the government interventions are more to appear to do something than actually doing the things that could have an impact. But I assume that this is the problem with all democratic governments. Heck, at work my co-workers are still arguing for harsher lock-down while being openly anti-vax. You just can’t win.
I’m also Australian, though not in New South Wales. Prior to the current NSW outbreak, localised and usually short lockdowns (generally one city, or at worst one state at a time) had been overwhelmingly effective at keeping the rest of the nation both COVID-free and free of restrictions.
While I do disagree with a great deal that Australia’s various governments have been doing, that has not been one of them.
The current outbreak has come as shock for two reasons: first is that the NSW state government was slower than every other state to act, breaking the implicit deal of fast temporary sacrifices to eliminate transmission and protect everyone else. The second is that this is the Delta variant, known to be more transmissible.
Both of these meant that the NSW outbreak rapidly grew to a size that outpaced testing tracing and isolation, meaning that lockdown measures would take much longer and also require more stringent restrictions to eliminate than any previous outbreak. The NSW premier made the decision to abandon that approach altogether. The new strategy is to rush mass vaccinations and then stop most restrictions.
Projections show various Sydney hospitals being overwhelmed within weeks if restrictions are dropped now. So it’s now a three-way balance over the next 6-8 weeks between vaccine supply, already stretched hospital capacity, and the ability of people and businesses to endure whatever restrictions are needed to keep the hospitals functioning and reduce avoidable deaths.
I agree,
tbh it surprised me how infectious the delta variant is. I just could not update hard enough even against what happened in India.
I do hope that the vaccine push is hard and fast enough, but I suppose we will see how it is going to turn out in the next 2 weeks.
this quote from NSW health is giving me hope
https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20210912_00.aspx
Same here—it’s truly bizarre