Our initial ambitions of COVID-0, both in Australia and New Zealand are over – in Melbourne,…
we have now opened despite over 1,000 daily cases and ~10 deaths per day, Sydney is doing a bit better and New Zealand reporting 160 COVID-19 cases yesterday, is going through the worst phase since the start of the pandemic.
In Melbourne, freedoms were triggered a week ago when the double vaccination rate reached 70%, and now more freedoms including retail (from 6 pm on Friday), and other things have been opened since we have reached the 80% vaccination; for reference assuming an R0 of ~ for the delta SARS-CoV-2 variant we need >85% percent fully vaccinated to reach the magical “herd immunity”. It looks like we will reach 90% in the coming weeks!
Here, I just want to state a few personal observations regarding our “new” freedoms here in Melbourne.
- People are still subdued – this weekend Friday and Saturday were not at pre-pandemic levels; no that much excitement and venues around the city not as packed as would have been imagined. Some hullabaloo but nothing extravagant.
- Some “shops” (venues) were not ready for the “opening” – even though many are allowed to have seated customers they are still only offering “take way”; probably trying to rush to get adequate staff numbers double vaxxed to be “legal”.
- Vaccine mandates and requirements for venues are going to be very difficult to police accurately; already some “informal” social experiments have shown that it is too easy to “trick” staff – who are typically already overworked and overpaid!
- Universities are excited – “reactivating” campuses starting next week and preparing for the return of international students.
- The vast majority of people are still wearing masks – indoors and outdoors.
- We had a demonstration about something – I think people complaining about vaccination for children or something; parent are sceptical but it really is in the best public health interests that as many people including children are vaccinated as possible.
So we’ve finally re-opened; high vaccination rates – most because people wanted to get vaccinated and some due to the mandates – have triggered the re-opening. There are issues and people are still largely subdued; vaccinated people get still get infected and that’s a bit of a downer. Plus we’ve given vaccine certificates to people that were vaxxed many months ago – doesn’t really make sense. Thankfully, booster shots for the eleigble population have been approved and emerging data indicates that for the major vaccines efficiency is restored to >95% following a booster shot; booster are popular with people as well. Also, it clear and maybe beneficial to mix and match vaccines, and some new evidence indicated that natural immunity following infection might not last.
Therefore, full vaccination and booster as necessary is the correct cause of action – so we can return to “normality”, but judging from this weekend it looks like and altered “normality” – a new post-pandemic model.
I think people know – we lost the war – we got hammered by COVID-19, so not that much to celebrate.
Until next time …