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He's also now said that anyone testing positive will now have to quarantine for 14 days in a Government Quarantine facility. And so the madness begins.

Given the Melbourne / Victoria outbreak seems to have been at least partly caused by people not self-quarantining this seems eminently sensible. To be honest, this together with your postings on another thread is making you sound a bit like a plandemic type.
 
Given the Melbourne / Victoria outbreak seems to have been at least partly caused by people not self-quarantining this seems eminently sensible. To be honest, this together with your postings on another thread is making you sound a bit like a plandemic type.

The Melbourne outbreak started from local government hotel quarantine facilities not being secured properly.

Premier Daniel Andrews has pinpointed the origin of many infections to workers overseeing hotel quarantines breaking the rules. More than 20,000 travellers have gone through 14-day quarantine in the state.

A report which traced Covid-19's mutation in Victoria found that hotel staff cases were the "ancestors" of ones found later in suburban homes.

If it's tiny numbers, as in NZ, it seems sensible to force self-quarantining, backed with full pay during the period, regular spot checks & massive fines for breaching quarantine, rather than packing people into hotels, where leaking can occur via staff.
 
Its what I would do if I were in their position.

Even England made a big show of doing that in the early days when repatriating people from the most obviously affected areas, back when it was possible to maintain an illusion that this virus was not in general circulation in the UK. There were too many other holes in the system to make it much more than being about being seen to be doing something, and not many people were included in the quarantine so it was absurd in many ways, but if done with the right scope at the right time in the right situation it can be a vital tool.
They are putting people who test positive into quarantine centres. This is not the same as quarantining people on arrival. So, they are forcing people to self isolate in a government centre.
 
Given the Melbourne / Victoria outbreak seems to have been at least partly caused by people not self-quarantining this seems eminently sensible. To be honest, this together with your postings on another thread is making you sound a bit like a plandemic type.
So you'd be happy to have yourself or a family member removed to a quarantine centre if you tested positive? Your son, daughter etc... for 14 days?
 
Yes, if I was in a country such as New Zealand that had prevented widespread outbreaks so far, it would be reckless and selfish to do anything less.

The circumstances that I would not agree with it would be if the numbers involved had grown so large that it wasnt practical, and where it was clear the horse had already bolted.
 
Its pretty clear that eradication is never going to work. There will just be a series of new lock downs and economic fall out, with people removed to quarantine centres when they test positive - irrespective of whether they are ill or not. Absurd, but it seems everyone likes the absurd.
 
Well in the first months of the pandemic I repeatedly cautioned that countries that had made early gains and kept the situation well under control would not necessarily be able to maintain those gains. And when the new virus was first announced, I didnt consider it at all likely that the world would really do everything to stop it.

But given how much success New Zealand had and for how long, I do think it would be absurd not to keep trying that strategy. There is a point at which they should give up on that approach, but I dont think its now. Especially not in winter, and not unless the numbers indicate such widespread community transmission that its a futile quest.
 
So, its likely that they will give up that strategy in the long term. But in the meantime, people will be forcibly quarantined and new lockdowns imposed. Seems an absolute mess. Its important to note that they locked down and forced quarantine over 14 new cases. Australia seems even worse. I guess we have it all to come in the UK - again.
 
General lockdowns arent avoided just because you give up that approach though. Countries that are going for a strategy that involves suppression and limiting numbers but not total elimination still have lockdowns in their stated arsenal. And stricter measures targeting infected individuals should be to prevent the need for more far-reaching draconian measures that affect the general population as a whole.

In the longterm the various available options on this front are only going to go away when we replace them with vaccination campaigns. Or if other virus factors lead to a similar situation with regards number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths as we would have seen under mass vaccination scenarios.
 
Or if the cases dont cause hospitilisations then we can all just adop the common sense Swedish approach. I suspect everyone will eventually, but only after they have trashed their economies first. You couldn't possibly admit that eradication was a pipe dream after being so draconian in approach to lockdown. Unfortunately I suspect that is the mess that most countries are now finding themselves in. A case of having to continue down a failing approach due to an inability to lose face and admit the strategy was flawed. Lockdown until a vaccine is found now seems the only approach allowed.
 
Detaining in a quarantine centre for people who haven't broken self quarantine is a step too far IMHO. As a result of breaching self quarantine it's understandable but not like this. A line crossed.
 
Or if the cases dont cause hospitilisations then we can all just adop the common sense Swedish approach. I suspect everyone will eventually, but only after they have trashed their economies first. You couldn't possibly admit that eradication was a pipe dream after being so draconian in approach to lockdown. Unfortunately I suspect that is the mess that most countries are now finding themselves in. A case of having to continue down a failing approach due to an inability to lose face and admit the strategy was flawed. Lockdown until a vaccine is found now seems the only approach allowed.

The UK government never committed to eradication and the lockdowns were weak in various ways, so only draconian in a pretty superficial way in many cases. Official UK government scientific advisors have not set themselves up for the 'pipe dream' stuff you mention because they often said that total eradication wasnt really an option, and their words on this did not suddenly change once UK abandoned its especially crappy plan A, a plan which by the sounds of it would have been more to your taste. And their positions havent moved much since then either, they still talk about us having to find ways to cope until vaccination is available, and dont mention eradication as a possibility. Lockdowns arent only for eradication, they can be used for suppression and pushing down on the curve stuff, which is mostly why we ended up with them, not with the expectation that the virus would be eliminated. The Imperial College papers that influenced thinking were not looking at one lockdown that lasted from the start till vaccination, but they knew the situation would not require just one single initial lockdown. Their original suggestion was to switch the lockdown on and off in response to intensive care data, but this evolved into the localised measures we see mentioned and done at the moment. They will try to avoid another national lockdown but they arent going to rule it out completely with winter looming in the distance.

Its somewhat hard to judge the effectiveness of many lockdowns because they were done rather late and failed to avoid a lot of the initial exposure of the vulnerable to the virus. But its clear that governments are mostly going to be proactive now and not make the same mistakes most of them made in the first months. So they will be cautious, which is the right approach. If at some point hospitalisations and deaths remained low in a situation where there were an absolutely huge number of infections taking place, then of course the equation will change and governments will change approach again.
 
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Detaining in a quarantine centre for people who haven't broken self quarantine is a step too far IMHO. As a result of breaching self quarantine it's understandable but not like this. A line crossed.
detaining people in a quarantine centre who have broken home self-quarantine is a bit bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted though.

it's a lose-lose proposition either way.
 
The UK government never committed to eradication and the lockdowns were weak in various ways, so only draconian in a pretty superficial way in many cases. Official UK government scientific advisors have not set themselves up for the 'pipe dream' stuff you mention because they often said that total eradication wasnt really an option, and that did not suddenly change once UK abandoned its especially crappy plan A, a plan which by the sounds of it would have been more to your taste.

Its somewhat hard to judge the effectiveness of many lockdowns because they were done rather late and failed to avoid a lot of the initial exposure of the vulnerable to the virus. But its clear that governments are mostly going to be proactive now and not make the same mistakes most of them made in the first months. So they will be cautious, which is the right approach. If at some point hospitalisations and deaths remained low in a situation where there were an absolutely huge number of infections taking place, then of course the equation will change and governments will change approach again.
But yet, Sweden continues to record low death rates - after the initial high rates in care homes (like everywhere). So deaths and hospitilisations have been, and continue to be, very low with zero lockdown.
 
detaining people in a quarantine centre who have broken home self-quarantine is a bit bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted though.

it's a lose-lose proposition either way.

I think it's more of a reigning the horse in measure. Before it goes on more of a rampage.
 
Its pretty clear that eradication is never going to work. There will just be a series of new lock downs and economic fall out, with people removed to quarantine centres when they test positive - irrespective of whether they are ill or not. Absurd, but it seems everyone likes the absurd.
They're all marching out of step, except you :hmm:
 
But yet, Sweden continues to record low death rates - after the initial high rates in care homes (like everywhere). So deaths and hospitilisations have been, and continue to be, very low with zero lockdown.

lol i am no fan of the swedish strategy but you need to learn what you are talking about. they have stricter restrictions than we do now. they banned gatherings of more than 50 (which are still banned iirc) when we were hosting hundreds of thousands of people at cheltenham and stereophonics concerts.
except they never did a lockdown because their comparatively mild restrictions were supposed to be maintained indefinitely until either a vaccine or natural immunity was achieved - up to a number of years if necessary.
 
lol i am no fan of the swedish strategy but you need to learn what you are talking about. they have stricter restrictions than we do now. they banned gatherings of more than 50 (which are still banned iirc) when we were hosting hundreds of thousands of people at cheltenham and stereophonics concerts.
except they never did a lockdown because their comparatively mild restrictions were supposed to be maintained indefinitely until either a vaccine or natural immunity was achieved - up to a number of years if necessary.
A much more sustainable and balanced approach.
 
I'm interested in what you think we should do if things get worse in terms of hospital admissions and deaths as we get into winter. Because its not hard to make all sorts of cases for different sorts of responses with the situation as it is right now, but when the going gets real tough the options shrink and I am left not understanding the logic and rationale of certain proposals when applied to such situations.

I'm also interested in what you think Sweden will do if things get bad for them this winter. I dont think they have ruled out draconian stuff if they think circumstances demand it.
 
All gone rather quiet on the previously 'big upped' UK vaccine front.
methinks too many in charge of the coffers are that thick they can't tell the difference between genuine progress and a bunch of post-grads telling porkies to secure next years grants
I'll wager the ongoing trials are throwing a bit of reality into the mix and its being surpressed
 
A much more sustainable and balanced approach.

don't know whether they still do this but they've shut bars that have more than 50 people in them. during march and april they banned all but essential travel between the regions. reading your posts i get the idea you wouldn't be impressed at this.
 
But yet, Sweden continues to record low death rates - after the initial high rates in care homes (like everywhere). So deaths and hospitilisations have been, and continue to be, very low with zero lockdown.

International comparisons are always difficult, for all-sorts of reasons, you certainly can't compare Sweden to the likes of the UK, Belgium, Spain, Italy, etc.

It's fairer to compare them with their neighbours, so lets look at the deaths per million in the Nordic countries - Norway 47, Finland 60, Denmark 107, Sweden 571.

If you seriously think Sweden has been successful, with one of the highest death rates in Europe, and off the scale compared to its neighbours, and their anti-lock down policy has worked, you frankly need therapy.
 
All gone rather quiet on the previously 'big upped' UK vaccine front.
methinks too many in charge of the coffers are that thick they can't tell the difference between genuine progress and a bunch of post-grads telling porkies to secure next years grants
I'll wager the ongoing trials are throwing a bit of reality into the mix and its being surpressed

Are you trying to start a conspiracy theory with little knowledge of what's actually going on? We have a thread for that elsewhere.
 
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