COVID Medical Information On Brisbane Lockdown

[bhobba]

I originally posted in the general section that where I am in Brisbane we are now in lockdown. Further medical information has emerged on what is happening with 8 new cases overnight so I will post it here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03...s-coronavirus-explained-pa-hospital/100037608

It seems the root cause is not following the government's carefully laid out plans to vaccinate front line medical workers first, called group 1a. They only vaccinated half and then started on my group, 1b, which are those over 70 or those at high risk such as being immunocompromised like me. Well it looks like that backfired. One reason I heard is too many front line workers were staying away from work after vaccination with reactions they wanted to stager it more. We had it very well under control here in Brisbane with no community transmission for a long time. All they had to do was stick with the original plan. I will restrain posting what I really think - simply saying this is so exasperating.

Added Later: It has now been announced that only vaccinated front line workers will be allowed to actually perform their front line duties. Oh dear - why not before beats me. As I said I do not want say what I really think.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Further information from Australian physician:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03...mpaign=abc_news_web#live-blog-post-1199486177

Looks like I may have been correct - 'botched' implementation of the vaccine may at least be partially at fault.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Astronuc]

Further information from Australian physician:

At 1:07 in the video, Norman Swan, mentions that the national (Australia) guidelines do not acknowledge airborne spread!

 

[bhobba]

At 1:07 in the video, Norman Swan, mentions that the national (Australia) guidelines do not acknowledge airborne spread!

I know. It's part of some of the 'questionable' official guidelines we have in Aus. I won't go into others, but they certainly exist. All I can say is even my Doctor is not impressed by some. That said, overall we have done well, but other countries like Taiwan have done it better.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Good news - we may be out of lockdown by Easter:
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...g-signs-brisbane-lockdown-may-lift-for-easter

I just wish we didn't learn 'obvious' lessons the hard way - front line workers should be vaccinated before doing frontline tasks.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

front line workers should be vaccinated before doing frontline tasks.

That's just not practical unless you're willing to close down your hospitals until the staff can get vaccinated.

 

[bhobba]

That's just not practical unless you're willing to close down your hospitals until the staff can get vaccinated.

Of course. I do not know the details of phase 1a, but Dr Swan thought they got it wrong. Maybe they should have done the hospitals in phases, locking them down one by one until the workers were all vaccinated with the Pfizer Vaccine which has the second dose I believe after 3 weeks. Some hospitals are now in lockdown anyway. As always it is easy to be wise in hindsight. I still do not think they should have started 1b until 1a was completed, but we were already falling behind because Europe refused to deliver our pre-paid and ordered vaccines. At the moment phase 1a is 86% completed, so they can introduce the rule of only vaccinated workers can do frontline duties. The public was getting 'jumpy' and there was a lot of concern the rollout was falling behind. Then we had the emergency in PNG that took priority. Personally I was not concerned in the least as I knew from the 22nd of March we would be delivering 1 million doses per week from CSL in Melbourne, and Covid was well under control here. I always had my doubts about the timeline anyway because 1 million doses per week corresponds to a total of 50 weeks for our 25 million population (more actually because we had promised to supply our pacific neighbours as well), ie about a year before all are vaccinated - not October which was the plan. Of course there are other things I did not account for such as we are still getting supplies during that time of the Pfizer vaccine etc.

Thanks
Bill