Covid in Sydney: Military deployed to help enforce lockdown | Hacker News Reader

Covid in Sydney: Military deployed to help enforce lockdown

bbc.com

52 pointsjimmy2020117 comments

170 cases in one day and the army is deployed to enforce lockdowns.

In my country we had over 10,000 cases yesterday and I will be going out for after work drinks at the end of this week to socialise.

Does Australia just overspend on its military budget or am I misunderstanding why Australia is going to these extremes?

Yes, they withdrew from Afghanistan there's money to be spent domestically or internationally.

Thank you, this makes more sense now.

It seems that it is normal for Australian soldiers to be deployed in Australia as they are not in Afghanistan. This article has just taken advantage of it for the headline and news content.

There's a difference between being deployed sitting around at your base doing Really Important Stuff and

> Australian Defence Force soldiers will undergo training on the weekend before beginning unarmed patrols on Monday.

The deployment isn't a standard practice. Just something that has been enforced as of late.

Normal for Australian soldiers to police the streets to keep people locked in their homes?

When has this happened before 2020?

Not specifically to enforce a lockdown (and to clarify they are assisting police, it's not the ADF doing this by itself), but it's routine for the ADF to assist with disasters.

Surely you remember the ADF helping out with the bushfires not too long ago? There were the big news items like civilians trapped by bushfires being evacuated by the RAN off of Mallacoota beach, but the ADF also provided an incredible amount of assistance with logistics, engineering, and so on... it is deeply unfair to assume the worst of them just because it's enforcing a lockdown.

Parent is missing <sarcasm> tag, I think.

Yes.

Just because most countries are being exceedingly lax in their covid response, does not make Australia trying to actually contain it "extreme".

If you have to deploy your military on your citizens you have in fact ventured way beyond into the extreme.

in many countries the military has a role to play during states of emergency or disasters or otherwise unusual situations like this, not every country is the US with its hyperbolic aversion to government or the state. The same bad takes keep happening every time an Anglosphere journalist sees the Gendarmerie on a French street.

Of course the military is used for other means. This time just isn't one of them and thus my point still stands.

When you have to use military to enforce your policies you've lost the plot it's really that simple.

> The same bad takes keep happening every time an Anglosphere journalist sees the Gendarmerie on a French street.

I'm not familiar with the "bad takes" happening in the Anglosphere, but it should be noted that the French Gendarmerie is not exactly the same thing as "the military".

Until recently they were, technically, military, as in they were attached to the Defense Ministry. This has changed a few years ago, and are now attached to the Interior (Home) Ministry, like the "regular" Police. But this isn't what I'm arguing.

Even before the change, the Gendarmerie was intended to police the citizens, even though they would sometime take part in external operations. They are basically "the police outside of cities". This is in contrast to the "regular military" whose goal is to operate outside of France.

What is unusual is the "Operation Sentinelle", where actual soldiers are patrolling the streets of French cities in an effort to fight terrorism.

But note that pretty much every action by the actual military inside of France is seen as exceptional, and there really aren't that many.

For example, during the height of the Covid crisis last year, when hospitals were overflowing with the sick, the military transported some people from one hospital to another. This was considered fairly out of the ordinary, much more so than the national rail company preparing special TGVs (high-speed trains) for the same.

They're being used to supplement the police force during a state of emergency. It's absolutely an appropriate use of the ADF.

they are being used to enforce something you might think is appropriate, but something huge parts of the world including many Australians don’t think there is a moral basis for which is in part why they have to use the military. So you and i just have different moral compasses it seems. Enforcing your will by boots on the neck is a sign you are doing something wrong.

Why would the rest of the world get a say in what the ADF is used for? isn't that precisely the point of a military?

The rest of the world is entitled to opinions about what the ADF is being used for.

If you think this is the point of the military then we just have two very different opinions about what it says about a governments ability to manage the mess they made themselves.

The use of coercion is a sign you've failed regardless of the outcome.

>If you think this is the point of the military then we just have two very different opinions about what it says about a governments ability to manage the mess they made themselves.

The ADF's stated mission is "to defend Australia and its national interests in order to advance Australia's security and prosperity.", and further goes on to state one of it's purposes is to "defend Australia and its national interests through the conduct of operations and provision of support for the Australian community and civilian authorities in accordance with Government direction."

Supporting state government and local police during a time of declared emergency is clearly within that scope.

Further, the ADF personnel deployed to assist with the lockdown will not be armed and will not have law enforcement powers - each ADF member will be paired with a regular police officer, and the police will be performing checks as they have for the last however many months [2]. This is simply to alleviate staffing and logistical issues, and is entirely ordinary. No one's getting a rifle squad kicking down their door because they didn't wear a mask.

>The use of coercion is a sign you've failed regardless of the outcome.

There is no coercion, and the whole point of the lockdowns are to prevent failure (that is, uncontrolled community transmission of COVID).

[1] https://www1.defence.gov.au/about/at-a-glance

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arriv... - quote extract from NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller

If you are so successful why did you have to use military to coerce people into doing it? That's not success thats failure. If we can't agree on that I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

The failure belongs to the selfish individuals who are ignoring the lockdown because it offends their personal convenience. If everyone did the right thing by isolating, engaging with contact tracing and getting tested for possible exposures, etc. voluntarily then there would be no need for enforcement.

Given that we know people are ignoring lockdown, it would be a failing of the government NOT to do something about it given the grave consequences to both individuals and the security of the nation as a whole.

>why did you have to use military to coerce people

The ADF are not there in a military capacity. They are assisting regular law enforcement with a labor shortage due to the scale of the outbreak.

And again, it is not coercive for police officers to enforce the law, including public health directives. Unless you consider all law enforcement to be coercive, in which case I no longer have any time for your opinions and would encourage you to expatriate yourself to a country with a more "relaxed" legal system as soon as you can. I hear Mogadishu is nice this time of year.

You are assuming that you are on the right side of this.

If you can't at least understand why people are opposed to the lockdown of course you think "boots on the neck" is a justified response.

Most people luckily do know the nuances and do understand the consequences of lockdown taken to the extreme of what we see in Australia.

That's why as I said we should probably just agree to disagree, I am not convinced about your justification for coercion no matter what semantic and rhetorical games you throw at it.

I would respectfully suggest that you've lost perspective if you don't see military deployments to keep people in their homes as extreme. Maybe it's justified - I'm certainly not gonna go around telling other countries how they ought to handle a pandemic - but this is not just your normal every day decision.

To quote the dictionary:

extreme | ɪkˈstriːm, ɛkˈstriːm | adjective

1 reaching a high or the highest degree; very great: extreme cold.

• not usual; exceptional: in extreme cases the soldier may be discharged.

• very severe or serious: expulsion is an extreme sanction.

• (of a person or their opinions) far from moderate, especially politically: groups of his more extreme supporters rioted in front of parliament.

• denoting or relating to a sport performed in a hazardous environment and involving great risk: extreme sports like snowboarding.

2 [attributive] furthest from the centre or a given point: the extreme north-west of Scotland.

It fits every option, other than the extreme sports.

Edit: formatting.

> am I misunderstanding why Australia is going to these extremes?

Australia had 923 COVID deaths total, for a population of 25 million. That’s 36 cases per million.

For comparison, the US has 1,887 deaths per million. Most European states aren’t much better, or even worse, per capita.

Now, you can argue if these extremes are worth it, or not, but it seems clear that what they are doing is saving lives.

Saving lives maybe, but how many people have basically lost 2 years of their lives by now?

It’s been a bit inconvenient but quite a stretch to say anyone “lost two years”. Life was basically back to normal in Australia until June. In my city we’ve had practically no restrictions for over a year.

The lockdowns have been relatively short-lived and only in the city metros which were then or are currently experiencing outbreaks. So most people have only been in lock down for a few months, if at all.

As a Melbourne resident I really want a citation for this. Maybe the whole thing has been a nightmare and I will wake up shortly, who knows?

Australian lockdowns have been much more intermittent because of their effectiveness; there have been some periods of no restrictions.

(Would be good if someone had a calendar recording this)

Up until June this year almost everything was back to normal. Even the economy was back on track. The government basically squandered a 12 month head start.

why do people with no idea about what's happening bother to comment at all?

australia's use of a few lockdowns and draconian border resitrictions eliminated covid within the country and meant there's been little restrictions for anyone for most of the pandemic.

You are comparing an island with low-density population with huge continents, one of them with poorly enforced border control. The amount of confounding here makes it impossible to attribute Australia's success to its policies.

The very topic of this thread is about how Australia is quarantining a _city_ from the rest of the country.

Australia quarantines internally, which is comparable, if not more difficult, than countries that close their international borders. Imagine if LA was quarantined from the rest of California. That's the closest analogy I can make to the subject of this thread.

And yes Australia is a large island but if you take the briefest glance at a population density map, you'll see that the vast majority of the population is concentrated in a few coastal regions and particularly around Sydney and Melbourne.

I'd say it is the other way around. Trying to quarantine a city / aim for zero cases only make sense because the larger area it's easy to shut itself out at the country level.

Lockdowns are not 100% effective, but just an attempt to slow down the transmission rate. Think of it as a type of defense-in-depth. Australia (and New Zealand's) true advantage is their natural isolation from the rest of the world and their ability to control/track who is coming into the country.

40% of Australia's population lives in just 2 cities.

Still an island, and that alone is the source of confounding.

So is the UK

While population density in Australia is low, the population is very concentrated. Half of the population lives in only 3 cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane).

Arguably the US would have it easier to control, since half its population is in low density rural and suburban environments that significantly reduce social contact.

these sort of clueless comments come up in every single thread. approximately everyone in australia lives in six fairly dense cities.

Different strategies. Australia wants to completely eliminate covid from the country, it means going all out when even a single case is detected, and no restriction otherwise. It is a strategy well adapted to a large, low density island country.

Your country has decided to live with covid and adjust its response gradually.

I don’t think any reasonable person ever thought that was a viable long term strategy. We’ve detected all the variants of concern here. So eventually one was going to get past quarantine.

Before the 170 daily case 'outbreak' we were able to go a fairly long time without any community transmissions. The point of military involvement is to try enforce an effective lockdown so people take lockdown seriously and we stop the spread as fast as possible while we finally start rolling out vaccines.

Australia and NZ are going for "zero covid"; the suppression of general community transmission when it appears, rather than letting it become endemic or having runaway caseloads.

I've not seen this explicitly articulated but I think it may be linked to their long-standing onerous biosecurity rules for plants and animals, e.g. https://www.agriculture.gov.au/import/arrival/pests/plant_di... . If Australia can be free of certain plant diseases, why not of human diseases? The result is a low death toll and really heavy lockdowns.

I think the big difference is that Australia has managed to have zero cases for most of the last 18 months, which has allowed it to go on pretty much as normal for much of that time.

Although 170 cases is a lot less than 10,000 when you view it as a pure number, from an economic and lifestyle perspective the difference between 0 cases and 1 case is effectively more significant than 1 case and any number of cases greater than that - zero cases means that you can not only end restrictions, but also that people who normally wouldn't leave the house as long as there was any danger at all can go out and spend money without any fear of the virus.

So that's why there's so much emphasis on locking down even with only 170 cases - it's about trying to get back to zero ASAP.

There is an argument to be made for the fact that we'll have to live with covid eventually, but: 1. Vaccine numbers remain low 2. Given that people have seen lockdowns succeed in essentially ending covid before, and blame the government for both not locking down quickly enough in this outbreak and for the vaccination rollout, committing to living with covid now would be political suicide

There's a big difference between zero cases and one. When there are zero cases, you can (assuming a tight border and quarantine) act more-or-less as you did pre-pandemic. This is what most of Australia has been like, and what Sydney was like before this lockdown.

When you have a small number of cases, you still have to take precautions to keep the reproduction rate below 1.0.

It's up to each society to decide which strategy it wants to take. Australia has chosen eradication (zero cases) over suppression (a low and flat number of cases). The former lets you have periods of pre-pandemic behavior punctuated by short but extreme lockdowns, the latter means you get a constant set of restrictions until enough people are vaccinated.

Australia did well with this strategy initially, then returned to normal months before the rest of the world and with really low deaths to show of.

So they went ahead and used the strategy again, but this time (because delta is much worse) it didn't work, but they can't stop because the politicians who back this would take a hit if they admitted it. So they do the only thing they can, which is go at it, but harder.

This is basically the US Vietnam war situation.

They don't have their rifles with them. So arguably the words "force" and "army" don't even apply. (An 'army' generally has 'arms' or at least 'armor'.) It's just more bodies, more personnel. Cheaper than hiring a bunch of temps.

Nine deaths in June led to military deployment. How many deaths from depression, overdose or another mental health problem happened in June and will happen due to lockdown hysteria. And why not put more resources into vaccination rather than enforce lockdown by military.

That's not the point.

We've gone months without any community covid cases and suddenly there's a break out.

The point in military involvement is to to make sure the lockdown we run is actually effective and doesn't drag on for months while we finally push vaccination rates up

> The point in military involvement is

There's no point of military involvement whatsoever. This is just to expand the government power over the civil society and they doing it through the military. If you are worried as government about covid cases, well start with the vaccine. Buy more or do more to distribute the shots. But enforce lockdown and then send the military? This is so disturbing.

The point of the military involvement is that the normal police don't have enough resources to properly handle what they need to do. The military won't be arresting anyone in Australia, they don't have the power too.

The government has done a poor job of handing both the outbreaks and vaccination, but I don't think this has anything to do with expanding government powers, I believe they are up shit creek without a paddle and need all the help they can get.

The country literally cannot get vaccines fast enough to roll out to the population. Astra Zenica, which Australia has millions of extra doses of, has only been recommended for use in over 60s due to blood clotting risks. We do not have enough alternative vaccines (Pfizer) to put into the arms of those under 60.

While I can understand that in comparison to the rest of the world, Australia has faired comparably well, we are poised on a knife edge between harsh and costly restrictions that save lives and just "letting it rip", and seeing the same brutal results that occurred in the US, India and the UK (among other places).

Without more of the population vaccinated, we don't have any other options.

I know you're asking a rhetorical question, but the answer to your question is: none (and in some places like Victoria, suicides were down compared to 2019).

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/health/distress-levels-up-d...

U.S. drug overdose deaths rise 30% to record during pandemic

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-drug-overdose-deaths-ris...

How does that apply to Australia?

Why do think Australia is exception when it comes to mental health?

US drug overdose deaths were such a huge outlier before COVID, that people were talking of an opiate pandemic. As usual it's America that's the exception.

A statement about US drug deaths says nothing about what happened in Australia.

Sure, but that's a different country to the one that the article is talking about. That country has a different safety net, a different strategy for managing the virus, and a different set of vaccines available to it.

Australia shouldn't give up on its strategy of COVID eradication just because American drug overdoses are up.

Is there a good explanation for why? It seems so unbelievable that the number hasn't gone up that I would assume an error somewhere.

The depression and suicides don't happen during the crisis but afterwards.

In NL, the suicide stats are basically flat.

The government completely messed up the messaging for the Astra Zeneca vaccine, a lot of people think it is very risky due to the reports of blood clotting (which are actually lower than for most common medicines!!). It doesn't matter though because even the AZ vaccine is hard to get, you need to be over 40 or have medical reasons and even then you need an appointment. EDIT: And you can't even leave the country without government permission so its not like you can fly a country with vaccine availability to get it.

In NSW you don't need a Medical reason to get AZ but you still need a GP note. I think... I can't find consistent information sources. But the advice is "Just get AZ if you dont have existing blood clotting issues". But how to actually get it is left as a exercise for the reader.

As of Wednesday you don’t need a gp consult prior to AZ.

Also, should be pointed out that it is not thrombophilias in general but immune thrombophilias that are of concern for AZ (ie factor V lieden and others are fine per ATAGI advice which is in line with the pathophysiology as I understand it)

ATAGI is an independent government body and they're pretty clear in their advice that the benefits of AZ only outweigh the risks for people over 60. Morrison has been literally pleading with them to change their advice but so far they're holding firm.

https://www.health.gov.au/news/atagi-statement-on-revised-re...

The government has messed up vaccine availability.

Many of my friends and I are in our 30s and got the AZ. Might have to doctor shop a bit, some still seem to be operating on older recommendations.

Also, I went to move my second dose to 4 weeks as recommended by the ATAGI(Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation), but the doctors said the recommendation they got was 6 weeks minimum.

Sure, for any individual the risk of the AZ side effect (thrombosis+thrombocytopenia) is low (3 per 100,000 for the <50 age group [1]). But in Australia, the risk of catching COVID and dying is/was even lower, especially for the <50 age group (6 deaths out of 16 million so far).

I know I'm ignoring many of the nuances here (long COVID, mortality risk of thrombocytopenia, externalities of higher vaccination rates), but it's clearly not a slam dunk to just jab everyone in in Australia with AZ if they're not supply constrained. Many European nations came to a similar conclusion (banning AZ for the younger age groups) even when at much higher COVID incidence rates.

[1] https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-...

The Australian government bet on a single brand of vaccine: AstraZeneca. We also had some Pfizer stock but not enough for the entire country.

This would have been fine until reports of clotting disorders started coming in. The official advice was revised so over 50s and then over 60s should get AZ. Technically you could still get the AZ if you wanted to, but due to the advice, no one did.

Meanwhile, only 40s and over and at risk demographics below 60 could get Pfizer. And by now they did such a good job trashing AZ, no one wanted it. Then Delta hit and no one wants AZ. So here we are.

Reports are Pfizer offered our government a deal last year, and they could have locked in enough doses for the entire population. But they declined.

For those wondering why Australia deploys the army in such events: it's because soldiers are public servants and have been deployed in the past for different reasons including natural disasters.

They won't carry weapons, because they're jobs aren't just killing people unlike other armed forces of other nations.

There is a distinction between using the army for disaster relief and to enforce. Even in the case of extreme riots, this is an option most democratic countries are reluctant to entertain.

From the ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/adf-soldiers-to-arriv... , ADF is assisting police who are checking on those who are infected are actually staying home. Instead of 2 police knocking on your door, there is 1 police and 1 ADF.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/what-happens-i... has some detail on what each state does. In Queensland if you get Covid you are taken to a hospital. (not in article:In other states the case numbers are much lower so people are sent to medical hotels to ride out the disease and make also sure they don't infect anyone else) In NSW there are 2500 cases so they don't have that luxury and rely on infected people actually staying home. Hence the need for random checks to make sure the sick people aren't out roaming.

Medical hotels? They’re prisons, not hotels. Truly sick people go to hospitals, for treatment. Out of choice. If they need more hospitals then build them. Raid wealth of the the mining lords.

I cannot stomach the acceptance of hauling allegedly infectious people away to imprison them (and subject healthy people to the virus). It’s sickening to read.

The replies to all these Covid articles about non-US (and non-european) countries are just surreally out of touch. Some corrections for the common incorrect or silly comments:

> lockdown for only a few hundred cases???

Australia essentially eliminated covid, and never had a widespread pandemic, so there's both a desire and ability to eliminate it again and no immunity at all in the community.

> the army???

Australia is a poorly governed country and the Army gets called out to assist with government logistical failures (fire, flood) fairly often and it's sometimes just done so it looks like the government is Taking It Seriously. also, there's insufficient financial support from governments who are asking people to lock down, and insufficient seriousness from the government about it in general via inconsistent rules and application of them. there also appears to be a concerted foreign disinformation campaign (as well as the usual domestic disinformers) that culminated in a massive protest about...lockdown during lockdown.

> why don't they focus on vaccinations????

the Australian federal government deeply fucked vaccines up. they bet too hard on a domestically developed one that got cancelled, then didn't secure sufficient supplies from overseas (ie did not order enough Pfizer and Moderna for the population in May last year), then let old people *choose* what vaccine they got, then sowed fear about AZ, then fucked up logistics - until *this week* you needed approval from your GP (via an appointment) to get AZ if you were under 40, and it's only very very recently become possible to easily access it.

the government keeps cancelling it's own vaccine forecasts due to the absolute shambles they'ver created, but it's unlikely there will be 80%+ fully vaccinated before the end of the year.

tl;dr there aren't enough vaccines or capacity to inject them in the next few months

> but what about deaths from suicide etc from lockdown???

there's no evidence this happened in Australia, presumably due to social and cultural and welfare reasons. not everywhere is the USA, folks!

> why aren't people rising up against this huge injustice!?!?!

it's not an injustice, it's concerted community effort to achieve a goal for society. not everyone is happy about it but almost no one considered it to be some huge crime against human rights, and it's...week five of a not particulary strict lockdown. again, not everywhere is North Dakota or whatever.

Meanwhile the earliest appointment to get the Pfizer vaccine in the area I work in (Western Sydney ) is November, because of our Prime Minister's incompetence.

( Pfizer Vaccine: Risk of myocarditis 55 - 450 / 1000,000 )

The AstraZeneca vaccine is available tomorrow, but the Prime Minister's flip flopping messaging means that laypeople are terrified that they will get blood clots and so refuse to have the vaccine. The PM's vacuous and incompetent messaging has even managed to get some physician collegues of mine terrified of this insignificant risk.

( AstraZeneca Vaccine: Risk of thrombotic thrombocytopenic syndrome with cerebral venous thrombosis 33 / 1000,000 )

We have an election coming up soon and our politicians are desperate to impress the median voter. That is why we have ridiculous stunts like this.

Even worse, some of our politicians are still distributing COVID denial and vaccine denial pamphlets, in order to attract votes from the lower end of the bell curve.

See: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/30/clive...

Clive Palmer disregards TGA call to stop spreading misleading vaccine material

"Clive Palmer is defying a call from the Therapeutic Goods Administration to stop spreading “misleading information” as his new pamphlet containing disputed claims about the impact of vaccinations is being distributed across the country, including to residents in greater Sydney.

It quotes figures published by the TGA on post-vaccination deaths and adverse reactions out of context, criticises the body for not ceasing the vaccine rollout, claims there is no pandemic in Australia, and accuses the TGA and the government of spreading misleading information. "

> …some of our politicians are still distributing COVID denial and vaccine denial pamphlets, in order to attract votes from the lower end of the bell curve.

I assume you’re referencing to IQ and The Bell Curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve). Can you show any correlation between intelligence and being sceptical to the COVID-19 vaccines?

Don’t do that. Don’t equate anti-vax and enlightened skepticism. They’re not the same thing.

> We have an election coming up soon and our politicians are desperate to impress the median voter.

I am not familiar with Australian politics but isn’t an authoritarian move like deploying the military unlikely to land well on the median voter, especially considering they are probably COVID-weary by now? Could you explain the voter sentiment that might see this as a positive?

Glad to see this. There's been very little enforcement since the pandemic began. We need it now.

How do Australians feel about the lockdowns?

We hate them but recognise their importance. I live in Melbourne and have been in 6 or so lockdowns.

NSW is really fucking this up.

Agree with your statement - NSW is the biggest threat to the rest of the other States.

We also need to drive vaccination rates up. Too much hesitation around either vax option (Pfizer/AZ).

Most people I know (including myself) find them a hassle but completely necessary and appropriate.

NSW has terrible leadership that has blundered the entire thing. The “lockdown” in Sydney is an absolute joke compared to what other states have been doing, and the proof is in the numbers.

I’d much rather have strict enforced shorter lockdowns that actually stops the spread (like VIC/etc), than this bollocks half-arsed political-stunt stuff that ends up not containing anything and dragging on forever.

Not to mention the costs involved that could’ve gone towards immunisations. People WANT to get immunised. The immunisation hubs have queues of people wanting it but the Government just isn’t willing to pay for it.

Everyone I know in sydney is quite frustrated but also fairly compliant, it’s a reasonably relaxed lockdown compared to others or Melbourne’s (unless you’re in one of the 8 local government areas at the epicentre).

Personally, and as a doctor with many colleagues who are treating patients in this outbreak, we’ve had like 2800 positive cases (with a test positivity rate of ~0.01%, so we can be fairly confident we are reporting most of the cases) but have 150 patients in hospital and 58 in ICU at present including quite a scary number under 50.

So, it’s warranted in my view, and for me personally, I’m 5 minutes walk to the beach and a swim every day in the middle of winter (there are no limits on hours of exercise) is quite a good life, but I’d like to be more free than I am now.

However my livelihood hasn’t been affected, and it’s not overly affecting my mental health, and I sympathise with those who are at risk of losing their business or who are doing it hard psychologically (or trapped in abusive relationships).

I should also point out that there is a fair bit of government support, but it’s been a bit slow coming and is being unevenly applied (ie Melbourne’s last lockdown basically got told to go suck it, liberal governments playing favourites).

Generally, there is a lot of anger at the government’s bungling of the vaccine rollout which probably would have meant this whole thing didn’t have to happen

With a test positivity of .01% the only thing I'd be confident in is that false positives are the majority of positive tests.

As someone from South Australia I'm pretty happy with how our state has handled things so far. As soon as there's been any sign of community transmission of COVID we've had hard and fast "circuit breaker" lockdowns (which has only been a couple of occasions and no longer than a week) to allow time for contact tracing to find and isolate any potentially infected people.

I know a few people who're unhappy because the lockdowns have disrupted their business, but for the most part everyone I know understands that it's necessary to prevent outbreaks like Victoria have been suffering, or a complete disaster like the USA. SA has only had 4 deaths so far, less that 900 cases total, so we're doing quite well overall.

That said there is probably some bias as myself and most of my social circle are in essential industry and have been busier than ever. You'd probably get a significantly different response from someone in the hospitality sector or similar.

Lockdowns are annoying but tolerable. Whats frustrating is being imprisoned with no way of travelling in or out of Australia.

I have not seen my family in 2 years now, and with the current attitude of this government it looks like it will be another year before there is movement....

I'm in a state that has hard and fast lockdowns, I am also 2x pfizer vaccinated. I'm in support of hard and fast lockdowns. they have proven to be very effective and at a minimal cost to society in general.

we do however need to financially support the hardest hit industries (hospitality) better. lots of casual work in that spce and those people need their work to survive.

There’s a fair bit of context absent from this article. The military aren’t being deployed to enforce a lockdown so much as they’re providing some extra manpower to augment the local police force. NSW Police have part of their workforce isolating due to exposure to infected people, coupled with extra patrol requirements, and they need some more bodies.

The military personnel will be unarmed and will be accompanied by police. The army doesn’t actually have any powers in this scenario, so it’s up to the police to actually issue fines, make arrests, move people on, etc.

So for all intents and purposes they are indeed enforcing the lockdown

Why is Australia doing so bad in term of vaccination? It sounds backward to have all these restrictions and at the same time not bothering to vaccinate people. Do they hope covid will disappear from earth?

The federal gov didn’t order enough Pfizer/Moderna. They have plenty of AstraZenica but nobody wants it because the risk of blood clot has been blown out of proportion.

I’d suggest one part has been political and messaging: poor organisation from politicians in securing a sufficient number of vaccines and poor communication from them about the risks of something like the AstraZeneca version which means most people want to avoid it now.

I think the larger but less spoken about issue is general apathy and a lack of urgency from the population. Our case numbers and deaths are incredibly low by most global standards. Melbourne has been in and out of lockdowns, but most of the rest of the country have been _mostly_ going on with business as usual. The biggest impact for people has been the uncertainty around interstate travel.

From my perspective as a progressive, the Federal government are corrupt, lazy, and have an extreme inability to get things done.

Scott Morrison, the prime minster, had the opportunity to purchase more vaccines, and was advised to "purchase as many as you can" by public health advisors. Instead, he did what he and the rest of the Liberal Party of Australia (conservative) have always done...

Not purchase enough, then shift the blame to the individual states and let them fight over what few vaccines were actually purchased.

There has been months of advertisements rolling, advising under 50s to head to their GP and get an Astrazeneca shot. I am in my late 20s, and have gone to my GP multiple times only to be told I'm not part of the roll out. The ads from the government tell me I can get a vaccine, but my GP says there are no vaccines.

Our government only know how to spin and market.

The Liberal party have literally been marketing a solution (get vaccinated) that they don't have, because they never had enough vaccines in the first place.

It's hard to tell exactly what went wrong. But it seems like the Government literally just didn't buy enough. There's not much Pfizer so only health workers and the elderly have been getting it. Then when we actually got AZ. It's rollout has been extremely slow. Then the Blood-clot risk came about AZ was restricted to 40+ only. Now anyone can ask for it, but you have to go get a note from a GP. It's very confusing.

tl;dr Effectively most people (in NSW at least) haven't been able to get a Vaccine until very recently, and there's weeks of waiting to get a booking.

If you want a case study of a bad vaccine rollout. Australia is a good bet.

For comparison to their 170 cases in a day:

> Tokyo saw 3,865 new cases Thursday

I don't think ordering the JSDF to deploy to the streets of Japan would end well...

...for the person giving the orders

Hmm, that would actually be one of the few legal uses of the JSDF I suppose?

That’s if you count only the 23 wards, with around 16M inhabitants. If you add the outlying areas to get the total to like 25M inhabitants (same as Australia) the total number of cases is more like 6000/day.

For extra comparison, Greater Tokyo Area has a population of more than 37 million, 50% higher than the population of Australia which is 25 million.

The population of Greater Tokyo Area is approximately the same as the entire Canada.

I'm not sure whether military intervention is right or not, but for everyone making comparisons based on absolute numbers, please note that the population in Sydney is tiny. If you take the lower population density into account, all of a sudden ~200 cases no longer appears to be a trivial number.

I see people constantly breaking lockdown restrictions outside of my window here. It's pretty damn frustrating for those who are obeying the restrictions.

"please note that the population in Sydney is tiny"

The population of Sydney is 5367206 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Smaller than most major cities, but not all that tiny....

I guess "big" and "tiny" are subjective.

My point still hasn't changed: that people who are saying that "we have X many cases in our city, your ~200 cases is nothing compared to ours" are perhaps over-trivialising the problems we are facing.

It is very close to that of Denmark. We had 3 times that yesterday. Not a problem if you have vacines.

Maybe I'm missing your point: but wouldn't one be more concerned if there are more people vaccinated and the number of cases is higher?

Also, I was under the impression that the long-term effects of COVID isn't well understood yet, and that people who are vaccinated can still be carriers. If I'm not mistaken on both accounts, then everyone should be just as cautious until basically the majority of the population is vaccinated -- otherwise those who are vaccinated are basically just walking around infecting those who aren't since everyone has the guard down?

Edit: potentially abrasive choice of word.

We aren't close to having issues with hospital capacity, while long covid is an issue, the fear was always overrunning the hospitals and the old people. The first isn't an issue and the rest are vaccinated.

That's fair enough. We were lucky that hospital capacity wasn't much of a problem, but the lack of vaccination coverage together with a lot of... questionable strategies and mixed messages has done us in.

Given there are still a lot of unknowns with the virus, I still think we should all be more cautious. But it's just personal opinion at this point, so I don't want to dwell on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

Australia recently just tightened its gun laws... now you have state tyranny over a few cases...

Maybe the NRA were right.

The end is nigh.

Australia has lost the plot a long time ago.

This is not the way to solve a pandemic. It is however a way to make your society much more fragile.

These lock downs are a proven tool to stop transmissionof covid.

A multifaceted issue like the pandemic requires multiple approaches and this is how we have controlled the virus. And we have controlled it well.

Are they a proven tool? The article says that "despite five weeks of lockdown, infections in the nation's largest city continue to spread".

NSW basically did a fake lockdown and took their sweet time in even getting to that point. Other states like Victoria and South Australia have locked down quick, hard, and within two weeks effectively eliminated community transmission.

WA says "yes"

when you do it properly, and lock down hard and fast. this half arsed and poorly communicated bullshit is whats screwing NSW right now. not to mention the poor compliance.

They are a proven tool if you want to isolate yourself from the rest of the world yes and live on an island so you can.

They are not a proven tool for actually dealing with the endemic nature of this virus. Australia will realize sooner or later that they can't actually avoid getting most of their population exposed to covid.

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