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by thombee 1769 days ago
The perception of this in the hn comments is funny cos in nsw I feel most people are mad that the lockdown didn't happen earlier and wasn't tougher. Because of this lapse, cases keep rising. We're a highly not vacced population.
3 comments

I strongly agree. Anyone interested in seeing the reactions of the (admittedly largely left-leaning) Sydney reddit population should check out this thread, which is the comments on the daily case numbers (466, which is a huge number for Australia):

https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/p3ycd9/nsw_recorded...

Largely it's complaints about the government not locking down harder & faster, and failing to take any further measures for lockdown.

Yes. It's been incredibly frustrating watching NSW turn what might have been a two-week lockdown into a national threat by making the same mistake Victoria made during its long outbreak last year: not going hard enough early on.
Funny you should say that, because that's definitely not the perception among my friends. I wouldn't overly generalise from one's own circles (or the circlejerk that is Aussie Twitter/Reddit) - I think there's genuine and good faith disagreement on the cost-benefit trade-off of lockdowns in the community.

It is definitely the perspective that's being pushed very hard by all the local media though, who are absolutely revelling in the circus of daily Premier's briefings.

It's also worth noting WHY we're so unvaccinated - the media frenzy over the minuscule risks associated with AstraZeneca, which we make locally and have mountains of, and the consequent switch to Pfizer, which we don't make locally and are short on.

AstraZeneca is only 67% effective at preventing someone from contracting the delta variant, which isn't enough to prevent it from spreading without restrictions even at a 100% vaccination rate. I'm currently on the government website trying to book an AstraZeneca appointment in, but let's acknowledge that we're all going to need booster shots of Moderna or Pfizer after this.
Moderna and Pfizer aren’t even enough to attain herd immunity. They are enough to prevent the healthcare system from completely failing. Even AZ is better than nothing.
It's true that AZ isn't enough for herd immunity, but as I understand it neither is Pfizer or Moderna. It's also worth noting that AZ is extremely effective at preventing serious illness or death from the Delta variant (as are the other vaccines). Had we all gotten AZ months ago, we would be talking about the transmission of a virus that's been rendered much less menacing, which is a totally different risk-benefit calculus.
Singapore has >80% vaccination rate with almost exclusively Moderna/Pfizer and they’re just coming out of a couple months of restrictions. Currently about half of their new cases are fully vaccinated.