We so assumed that in this state our systems were better than yours that we either just pitied you and your endless lockdowns, or looked down our long noses at how badly you had stuffed it up.
And now look at us. We stuffed it up by not doing what you told us to do: go early, go hard.
There is a legitimate argument to be made that Premier Andrews should be removed from office on health grounds. Continuing a policy of blaming the public for “cases” to ensure that he isn’t blamed and ordering paramilitaries to give violent form to the figment are signs of moral insanity.
Some of us Victorians who aren’t swallowing the kool aid like FitzSimons, remember Andrews boasting (and gloating) about how much better he was handling this than N.S.W. less than two months ago.
FitzSimons is bonkers, and no historian, BTW.
I know she’s not popular with the locals but Gladys has done sterling work showing Andrews as the premier buffoon, first by forcing him to eat his stale don’ut and then forcing him to put up a roadmap and finally, to set a date.
But I think it took an Andrews to make her look even remotely passable.
Her betrayals of conservatives and Christians are disgraceful.
No. She has been utterly abysmal. Just because Andrews is worse doesn’t mean that Gladys hasn’t been a totalitarian arsehole. She has deprived millions of people their liberty.
I wasn’t praising Gladys. I was pointing out the greater failings of Andrews.
We, the people of Melbourne have now endured 242 days of lockdown.
Forcing him to change tack means we now have an end in sight.
And that was precipitated by Gladys refusing to immediately follow the Andrews direction when Delta was released into the NSW community.
Because I see an attempt early on to balance competing interests, if you like, that Andrews never considered.
And yes on other issues including vaccine mandates and passports, judge her harshly, she is after all supposed to be a liberal premier.
What, like a coup?
Andrews is a complete and utter political hack, but he is properly elected hack just the same.
This is a fairly pointless anecdote, but about halfway through last year, my workplace (Vic public service) hosted an online meeting with the Victorian Governor, Linda Dessau, I suppose as a bit of a morale booster. She gave us a general rundown on the role of the Governor, and what struck me as odd was the amount of time she gave to the question of when the Governor might need to dismiss the Government of the day. Even the fact that she raised it seemed odd. End of pointless anecdote.
His own party should remove him but he is, by reputation, even more ruthless in the party room than he is with the people he is governing.
Like a Kerr.
or looked down our long noses
Fitzsimian does a little Semite baiting.
He might, but that has nothing to to do with looking down noses, long or otherwise.
I think CL means like a Game however Andrews has the confidence of the house and no problem with money bills so it is entirely irrelevant.
The problems of covid is threefold.
It directly kills people, It was over 1& but it maybe a lot less depending whether you think the UK or texas is your benchmark.
It affects somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 8 people through long covid.
It kills indirectly. If you have problems with your heart, lungs or kidney then you chance of dying is 1 in 12 at present.
covid and more importantly the delta variant leads to more hospitalisations. It crowds out other sick people. This means as we see in some US states and one Canadian province hospitals have to do triage They are selecting who lives or die not unlike the military. so if you are old for example you won’t go to an ICU.
We now know if a lockdown is not done immediately then it will merely curtail the delta variant. It will not get rid of it. After all the WHO believes it has a R0 of 8.
thus Victoria, the ACT, NSW (who started it all through utter incompetence) and NZ are stuck on the long term solution of getting most people vaccinated.
Denmark have reduced the RO of covid to .7 through their vaccination program.
It’s over.
Their vaccination rates are similar to those being achieved in NSW ahead of 1 December.
Zero covid was both unachievable
and exacted too high a price.
Confidence of the house?
He’s run the state using state of emergency powers for eighteen months!
What’s your point?
And achieved the worst results in all of Australia. What would it need to look like if lockdowns were failing?
rosie your first sentence makes no sense. I have no idea of where you got that number from but since NSW is nowhere near that it does not matter.
how many deaths are acceptable to you if you think the lockdowns should not occur.
A government to be sacked needs a legitimate reason. None have been given thus far.
Not Trampis, you are wrong.
Utterly, wildly, hopelessly, pathetically wrong.
You have obviously been getting your information from the ABC. Or maybe the Guardian (or CNN, etc).
Total death statistics from around the world show that Covid is no worse than a bad flu. Yes, total deaths are up slightly, but those were very likely caused by the lockdowns (not Covid).
“Long Covid”? A very very poorly understood phenomena, but appears to be extremely rare. Almost any disease can give you the symptoms that are being attributed to “long covid”.
Dear CL,
Love your writing and world views and go out of my way to read them, but one little request:
Please put a comma after “wrong” in this title, viz:
“Elder statesman of wrong, Peter Fitzsimons scores again”
Go and look at Australia’s vaccination rates for older people. In nsw and the act we are rapidly approaching these kinds of numbers.
There is also the issue, unprecedented I know, of taking personal responsibility.
I am not responsible for what other people choose to do, or do not, and quite frankly, neither is the government.
read it here trampis reproduction rate of 0.7 and a vaccination rate of 73% of the entire population and 96% of people over the age of 65.
It’s also absurd (and impossible to accomplish) to claim that covid deaths must all be prevented, no matter how high the cost.
Even with vaccination people with compromised immune systems die of covid, as they used to die of flu despite being vaccinated.
I’m not going to argue the numbers, I accept that covid is more virulent than most influenzas, but that doesn’t mean that I support government overreach (or ever did)
vaccine numbers here
Non Compos Mentis
A government to be sacked needs a legitimate reason. None have been given thus far.
How about charges being laid against a major government department for health and safety breaches?
Can’t you do better Homer?
Yeah but that was just a chronic viral inflection. This in LONG COVID!
A newspaper article does not cut it. It probably got the decimal point wrong. Why di this not occur in Singapore or Israel for a start.
Health experts are rock stars now I have yet to hear Blakely, Bennett , McClaws et al agree on this indeed they say the opposite. nothing on the Health report.
Indeed we had an article on this very topic yesterday in the conversation by a leading academic who should and would know and no mention of the Denmark miracle at all.
tom you should read the article as well.
Long covid is not rare at all. it affects between 1 in 3 and 1 in 8 people who get it. Results both here and in europe appear to be similar.
By the way ever wonder why we have not had a flu season for two years. Yes combatting flu is that easy.
and as expected no serious reason has been given for the governor to act.
our world in data covid reproduction rate Denmark
israel is .77