International travel for Australians will not resume until 2024, economic report reveals - "Earlier this year, department of health secretary Brendan Murphy said he was hopeful Australians could travel overseas again in 2022, as Australia’s vaccination program reached completion and countries around the world achieved herd immunity. However, economic analysts for Deloitte have offered a far grimmer prediction for when Australians can once again be able to travel freely overseas: 2024. This pessimistic forecast was released as part of the latest Deloitte Access Economics quarterly business outlook, which suggested that Australia’s international borders may be one of the last in the world to fully reopen. In another blow to the tourism industry, the report also stated that quarantine for arrivals – which currently calls for a 14-day isolation period in a mandated hotel, at a cost of $3,000-$4,000 depending on the state – would likely remain in some form for the next three years, as Australia’s effort to maintain 100 per cent suppression of the virus remains a high priority. However, Deloitte’s report was prepared prior to news breaking that Australia’s vaccine rollout was slower than expected, which could potentially delay border reopenings even further. The vaccine program has been delayed due to federal health authorities’ recommendations that Australians under 50 avoid the AstraZeneca vaccine due to the risk of blood clots, and take the Pfizer vaccine instead – the only other vaccine currently approved for distribution in Australia."
What covid "success" looks like
China: Take my vaccines, please - "I have a weird thought about China and its COVID-19 vaccines. It’s weird because it doesn’t seem to show “rising in the East and falling in the West,” as Xi Jinping insists.By the end of February, the US reports over 75 million doses had been administered to our population of about 330 million. China naturally doesn’t provide public data — that might imply some accountability for the Communist Party — but last week indicated 52 million doses administered at the end of February, for a population of about 1.4 billion.The PRC’s internal inoculation task has always been enormous, so it’s too early to criticize the per capita failing. It’s not too early to wonder why the US is 23 million doses ahead. China started inoculating months earlier, dispensing with some of those annoying clinical trials... it’s odd the PRC can anticipate jumping to 25 million doses per week after barely eclipsing 50 million, total. It’s reminiscent of Beijing not reporting COVID testing figures for months, then suddenly being able to test millions of people quickly, once there was little sign of virus spread.Deepening the mystery: China has rushed to make deals to provide vaccines to foreigners. This is yet another area where the government declines to provide authoritative numbers, but more than 50 countries and 500 million doses seem to be involved over some timeframe... It’s well established that China’s current vaccines are inferior to American vaccines and possibly others (see the table here for a summary). Their claimed efficacy is lower, possibly due to use of older technologies. And the data that have been made available on development and evaluation is less complete than for American vaccines... The PRC continues to slow-play vaccination at home and prioritize exports. The argument could be that China has controlled COVID and can afford to do this strange thing. Despite frightening virus mutations, major holiday travel being largely forbidden last month, and occasional outbreaks continuing to result in spot lockdowns of entire cities.Most important, any reasonable government should feel compelled to ensure its own citizens’ health before that of other countries’. So here’s the weird thought: What if the Communist Party knows China’s current vaccines are barely worth the vials they’re kept in?The Party should have access to the efficacy data it won’t let anyone else have. It’s capable of fast action yet has been in no hurry at home and seems willing to ship hundreds of millions of doses overseas, at risk of angering its own people and inducing much-dreaded social instability. This makes sense if it’s shipping out low-quality vaccines while waiting for high-quality vaccines to become available, perhaps even one that is foreign-developed. Of course, the evidence for this can’t possibly be conclusive. But it’s not like this would be China’s first COVID scam. Or second. Or third."
The pandemic has made Canada one of the world's most miserable countries - "The national public policy think tank looked at things like the misery caused by the government's response to the virus, the misery caused by the economic impact of that response, and the misery caused by the virus itself.It scored things like number of COVID cases, deaths, hospitalizations and ICU admissions per million residents in respective countries, also examining things like testing and vaccination rates, stringency of lockdown measures, unemployement rates and changes in GDP and public borrowing. Canada did terribly as far as response misery, at number 14 out of 15 countries or a 'D' grade, as well as economic misery, at number 13 out of 15, also a 'D' grade. We thankfully evened things out when it came to our disease stats, coming in at 6 out of 15 or a 'B' grade for disease misery (again, a smaller number or higher on the list is better than a larger number or further down the list)."
Strange. Covid hystericists claim that a tighter lockdown controls the virus better so the end result will be better. Of course to them this just proves that there should have been more lockdown, science on their not working be damned
Full article: Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response - "The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved."
COVID Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Fatal Car Crashes: More Deaths on Hobbesian Highways? - "The volume of traffic contracted sharply once a COVID-19 national emergency was declared and most states issued stay-at-home orders, but motor vehicle fatality rates, injury accidents, and speeding violations went up, and remained elevated even as traffic began returning toward normal... The findings are consistent with a theory of social distancing on highways undermining compliance with social norms, a social cost of COVID which, if not corrected, poses potential long-term increases in non-compliance and dangerous driving."
Since lockdowns don't reduce covid deaths, this means that lockdowns kill more people than they save
COVID-19 lockdowns in low- and middle-income countries: Success against COVID-19 at the price of greater costs - "While [Sub-Saharan Africa] and [South Africa] are unlikely to be spared from deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic, uncalculated measures such as extended lockdown, while possibly being able to mitigate some effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, could, albeit inadvertently, indirectly result in non-COVID-19 morbidity and mortality that could far exceed the 196 000 deaths the WHO estimates would occur from COVID-19 in SSA. As evident from early experience with TB and HIV in SA, we are clearly heading down such a pathway unless the response to COVID-19 is adequately calibrated and essential services are safeguarded. We believe that a strategy focused primarily on COVID-19 can no longer be ethically or morally justified, and will have long-lasting health, societal and economic impacts that may reverberate for decades to come. Rather, more pragmatic approaches are warranted, including emphasis on community mobilisation and education on COVID-19, and the widespread adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as use of cloth masks, hand hygiene, and avoiding overcrowded settings."
Effectiveness of Corona Lockdowns: Evidence for a Number of Countries - "The paper assesses the effectiveness of the large-scale lockdowns that took place during the SARS-CoV-2 (corona) pandemic. Countries considered include the United States, South Korea, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. Our research strategy utilizes the fact that fatal outcomes follow infections with a delay of 23 days. Therefore, the dates of the actual infections can be inferred from the data. The results suggest that lockdowns were superfluous and ineffective." One covid hystericist claimed that the papers showing lockdowns didn't work missed a year of data, but refused to explain why lockdowns would work later on even if they didn't work earlier on, ignoring the fact that one of the papers had data till end August 2020. He then claimed that due to "massive fluctuations over time and location" the research showing lockdowns didn't work was invalid. I pointed out that using similar logic, even if lockdowns worked in April 2020, they would not work today. Or that even if lockdowns worked in, say, Italy, they wouldn't work in Argentina.
Texas Grandparents Can't Spend Thanksgiving with Family Due to Covid, Send Cardboard Cutouts Instead - "Out of concern over Coronavirus, Missy and Barry Buchanan decided that they would not spend Thanksgiving with their children and grandchildren this year. But they didn't want their absence to put a damper on the holiday proceedings. Missy wanted to bring joy to her family, even if the couple couldn't be present."
Special Report: How U.S. CDC missed chances to spot COVID's silent spread - "Agency officials worried that detained people couldn’t give proper consent because they might feel coerced into testing. “CDC does not approve this study,” an official at the quarantine site wrote to Lawler in a Feb. 8 email obtained by Reuters. “Please discontinue all contact with the travelers for research purposes.”More than two months passed before the CDC expanded its testing guidelines to include all asymptomatic people, saying soon afterward that this silent spread “may meaningfully contribute to the propagation of the COVID-19 pandemic.” By November, the agency estimated that more than half of cases were spread by people not currently experiencing symptoms.Critics have widely asserted that the CDC fumbled key decisions during the coronavirus scourge because then-President Donald Trump and his administration meddled in the agency’s operations and muzzled internal experts. The matter is now the subject of a congressional inquiry. Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff."
Guess IRB blocked this study
I fear that we'll be stuck with travel restrictions for years - "As the virus has lurched ever more out of control, more and more restrictions are being brought in – and no doubt, in some cases, for sound reasons. I understand why, but once imposed they will be the very devil to get rid of. Then there’s the virtual impossibility of getting travel insurance, the fact that we’re banned from entry to countless countries, to say nothing of having to be tested in and out. Far from planning for emergence into the post-Covid sunlit lands, governments are only turning, increasingly, to enhanced restrictions like stricter border precautions, with wide support from their general populations... The virus has put us in a tight corner alright, but we are steadily dismantling our entire way of life in the belief we only face one risk and that everything must be subordinated to exterminating it. I saw a chap on telly a few weeks back, afflicted with major kidney disease, overjoyed at having had his Covid vaccination. "Now I can see my grandchildren next Christmas", he exclaimed. Well, great, and I really hope he does, but at what point did he think the enormous risks of his very serious life-threatening underlying condition disappeared? He had the jubilant expression of a man who had discovered eternal life. If that’s really what some people believe we’re going through all this for, they’re going to be very disappointed. Just yesterday one of my other sons sent over a video from Hanoi. He works in Vietnam with his British wife teaching English. The video is of their little boy, born in December 2019. Ordinarily, we’d have flown out to see him, or his parents would have come here. Thanks to Covid, we’ve never met him. He was tottering around dancing to music at his playgroup, consumed with innocent joy. Everything came together for me in those precious 45 seconds and for the first time, I felt really broken. For months I’ve escaped by throwing myself into writing a book while my wife decorates. Every week or so we go and shout through a window at her 100-year-old mother in a care home. That’s a luxury so we should be grateful. The old lady doesn’t mince her words at being obliged to live a life in which everything that made it worth living is denied her, including holding her only surviving daughter, and seeing her grandsons, and her great-grandchildren.Watching that little boy filled with me despair because our hopes that we might have seen him this summer are receding further into the distance with every week. Vietnam has now banned all flights from the UK. It’s an unsentimental country that will stick to that sort of edict indefinitely if it suits.That’s the real nub, isn’t it? There will be no international consensus about opening borders for a long time. That will be haphazard, inconsistent, and laden with new regulations, just as it was last year."
Covid hysteria means that covid is the only thing we need to worry about, and the only relevant considerationImmunity passports will stoke the fires of inter-generational rage - "Recent reports suggest that Israel is already planning to insist that visitors certify whether or not they have been immunised. Greece and Spain are leading calls for the entire EU to follow suit, while the US is busy developing its own scheme. As private businesses, airlines and cruise companies will also be free to ask people to demonstrate they are not a Covid risk if they see this as commercially advantageous – which it doubtless will be. And given the importance of the “grey pound” to international tourism, the Government looks highly unlikely to declare: “No, on grounds of equity we refuse to set up any scheme to allow those who have been vaccinated to prove it.” So vaccine passports, certificates or similar are bound to be with us soon, helping us over-50s warm our old bones in second homes, at plush hotels and aboard sun-drenched cruise liners.What a heart-warming thought. Unless, that is, you belong to a younger generation. Even at the UK’s current impressive vaccination rates, the under-50s are unlikely to have received their initial jabs and boosters in time to clear new Covid-secure booking hurdles. The under-35s can forget it. Sadly they will remain low priority for vaccination at home, yet will still be judged an unacceptable Covid transmission risk abroad... Lockdowns and distancing restrictions have afflicted young people desperate for a normal social life, far more than older and more settled cohorts. For the past year, the regulations have rendered the typical 20-something lifestyle of “dates and mates’ impossible – illegal, even. And who in their right mind would envy the 30-somethings with stir-crazy children to care for and home educate?Hospitality and retail, the economic sectors that employ young people most, have been hardest hit, driving rocketing unemployment among younger age groups. It all adds to the widespread intergenerational unfairness which has become a talking point, but little else, in our politics in recent years... Having sold young people the idea that ‘we’re all in it together’ in the great national effort, it is surely up to us oldies to do better than a parting farewell of “so long, suckers!” as we head to the airport. Or did they squash the sombrero so we could wear it on the beach?"
Strange, vaccine passports were, we were told, a conspiracy theory
Will vaccine passports open up our holidays? - "Not everybody is behind the idea of a vaccination passport being made mandatory for international holidays. Gloria Guevara, president and chief executive of the World Travel and Tourism Council, said: "We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel. I totally disagree with the approach from Qantas. If you require the vaccination before travel, that takes us to discrimination."A 2020 report by the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body, echoes Guevara’s sentiments, stating that the introduction of vaccine passports could "pose extremely high risks in terms of social cohesion, discrimination, exclusion and vulnerability."Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy the PC Agency, warned of a situation where a privileged few are able to access countries: "Governments have a duty to protect health but also to get the world moving economically. Vaccine passports will initially only be held by the minority. We cannot have a situation where only the privileged few are able to access countries." "Governments need to coordinate their actions and create an open, consistent approach for anyone who wants to travel. Otherwise we could see numbers restricted for years, until every country has rolled out major vaccination programmes. Testing everyone on departure is the only solution to freeing up travel and tourism."There are also questions regarding data privacy and human rights. Anna Beduschi, an academic from Exeter University, said the introduction of vaccine passports "poses essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights."She said passports could "create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can then be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights they may enjoy."Human rights advocacy group Liberty said the plans "raise more questions than they answer" and "could pave the way for a national ID system"."
Covid hysteria means that they are a certainty. But then, with the panic over variants, even if you and most of the country you want to visit have been jabbed, you may not be let in
Globe editorial: COVID-19 vaccine passports are coming. Is Canada ready? - The Globe and Mail - "If governments don’t act in concert with one another and the WHO, private companies, such as airlines, could create their own systems, the authors conclude, “potentially leading to problems related to equity, privacy and coercion.” All of which means Canada has to get on board with what appears to be an inevitability. Once again, this country will be playing catch-up on a key COVID-19 development.For starters, Ottawa and the provinces are not doing a good job of keeping track of who is fully vaccinated. There is a worrisome inconsistency in how records are kept from province to province, and there is no centralized database.Once the data are collected, the federal government will have to ensure it meets the best standards in terms of security, authentication, privacy and data sharing, and that it addresses any ethical concerns around coercion and discrimination. There is no evidence Canada is currently in a position to begin doing anything of that.It could leave Canadians stuck at home this summer, while the rest of the world comes back to life."
Vaccine passports are the thin end of the wedge - "Even that great proponent of big-state activism, the World Health Organisation, has stated that ‘we would not like to see the vaccination passport as a requirement for entry or exit’, citing concerns about the efficacy of vaccination to prevent transmission and issues to do with discrimination. Millions of people in the UK have neither had the virus itself nor have had the vaccination, mostly due to their age. Pregnant women are advised against the vaccination, as the fertility impact is unknown. Then there are those groups who, for religious or political reasons, find themselves as conscientious objectors. To ram through vaccine passports, then, would indeed be discriminatory. As an editorial in Science put it recently: ‘The greatest risk is that people for whom vaccination is unacceptable, untested, inaccessible, or impossible are denied access to essential goods and services. This could happen where there is vaccine hesitancy or refusal among certain ethnic minorities; where there are no data on vaccine efficacy for people at risk, such as children and pregnant women; where migrants are undocumented and unreachable; where passports are exclusively digital, barring people without smartphones; and where people are not yet eligible for vaccination.’ If we all believe that vaccines are effective, soon anyone who wants and is medically eligible for a vaccine will have protection from the effects of the virus. These passports are the thin end of a wedge when it comes to civil liberties. Before we know it they could incorporate other medical information, such as whether we have been vaccinated for flu."
Vaccine passports: Can they save travel? Should they? - Nikkei Asia - "there is also the decisive question of whether vaccine passports would even work. Last year, "travel bubbles" were eagerly discussed by governments including Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand in an effort to facilitate quarantine-free travel between countries with low COVID-19 infection rates. But they have so far failed to materialize on a large scale because of worries about risk. Similarly, experts today caution they cannot say with any certainty that vaccine passports would keep countries safe from infection because not enough is known about whether vaccines prevent transmission of the virus. The World Health Organization said in January that due to a lack of data on vaccine safety they recommended against countries issuing vaccine passports... In their eagerness for vaccine passports, however, airlines appear to be outrunning some governments' own tolerance for risk. Vaccine passports adopted by airlines may be of little use getting into a country.
Vaccine passports will divide society - " A supporter of vaccine passports might argue that they are not entirely unprecedented. After all, in some countries it is already standard practice to require proof of vaccination against diseases such as yellow fever. And you could say that the type of discrimination involved is more than justified by the protection from a deadly virus that it confers on society. Neither of these claims, however, is likely to dispel people’s misgivings. To begin with, though some countries do require visitors to have proof of vaccination against certain diseases, this traditional form of vaccination requirement affects a very small fraction of the population. It is not associated with routine social activity. Also, the people who need protection from Covid are the elderly and those who suffer from significant health complications like diabetes, heart conditions and obesity. The risk Covid poses to life and health is highly concentrated among these groups. The public at large is less at risk. In the US, 94 per cent of all Covid deaths have been among people with comorbidities, and 80 per cent have been among the over-65s. Therefore, there is no compelling medical case for a universal vaccination requirement. We can just provide the jab to those who are vulnerable and therefore have stronger personal motives to accept it – voluntarily... The first and most obvious ethical hazard relates to the issue of informed consent to medical treatment and experiments – a right firmly entrenched in international law and medical ethics. While vaccine passports would not directly mandate vaccination, they would make social life and travel significantly more burdensome for those who opt, for health reasons or on conscientious grounds, not to get vaccinated. This would place significant social and legal pressure on citizens to submit to having a medical procedure they might not consent to. Secondly, a vaccine passport would involve a fundamental transformation of the way we socialise, authorising venue owners, event managers and airlines to exclude unvaccinated clients or have them engage in repeated, intrusive PCR or antigen testing. Those who opt out of vaccination programmes might well find themselves becoming a new social ‘underclass’: not of race, national origin or economic status, but documented immunity status. By excluding the unvaccinated from full and equal social participation on arbitrary and disproportionate grounds, immunity certificates risk leading to resentment and division, public unrest and political instability."
The article doesn't consider the potential of superspreader events, which would be the ones most likely to have the passport requirements
To understand the dangers of Covid passports, simply imagine an obesity equivalent - " It is absolutely the case that being overweight and obese is a choice, but it is only right that choices carry consequences. Why should those 37 per cent of us adults who aren’t fat have to put up with the selfish conduct of the wilfully heavy. No, fat people have had it easy for too long. Removing them from fast-food chains, restaurants and the snack aisles of supermarkets will be both good for them and good for us. Clamping down on the voluntarily obese will free up money, beds and resources in the NHS. Quite frankly, it will save lives."
With socialised healthcare, it is incontrovertible that some people impose negative externalities on others, so this comparison isn't as ridiculous as it might seem
From the old to the pregnant: vaccine passports discriminate against every group of society possible - "Already, we hear of older people, in particular, struggling with the ghastly fetish for insisting on smart phone apps to do something as innocent as buying a pint of beer. Nothing will stop an Englishman going to the pub, said Stanley Johnson, Boris’s father, at the start of all this a year ago. Well Stanley, I hate to say it, but some pubs won’t let you order without the latest technology in your pocket and the right app. Look at David Waters, 78, who was denied a drink at a pub in Corbridge this week because he didn’t have a smart phone. That’s despite government guidance saying drinkers should be allowed to use a paper form to register themselves. Clearly, pubs prefer to discriminate against the elderly rather than invest in a pen and paper. Age UK is up in arms. Waters isn’t the only one of his generation to be flummoxed. Four out of five of people aged over 75 don’t own a smart phone, and even for those that do, downloading some app will be too much hassle. All they want is to buy a pint, for goodness sake, not book a safari. Might as well stay at home... all of these groups – the old, the young and pregnant, the ethnic minorities, the poor, the sceptical – are to be told that shops, trains, buses, restaurants, cafes and theatres, are off limits. They might even be denied work. Pimlico Plumbers were the first to require employees to be vaccinated. They won’t be the last. And why stop at Covid? Flu can be transmitted asymptomatically too."
Vaccine Passports Don't Solve Our Pandemic Problems - The Atlantic - "That division, public-health experts warn, could entrench inequalities and dissuade vaccine-hesitant populations precisely when governments need to shore up their confidence. Perhaps most concerning, the proposal undermines the narrative that we are all in this together by creating a system that benefits those who are open to vaccination at the expense of those who have concerns... Though London has promoted testing as an equalizer that will prevent nonvaccinated people from being excluded, it isn’t widely accessible in Britain. Until it is, “the same people who are most at risk are going to be the same people who are least able to get a test,” Clare Wenham, an assistant professor of global-health policy at the London School of Economics, told me, noting the challenges facing those who cannot currently access testing due to cost, inability to get time off work, and transport issues... What if the scheme really is brought in this May, when only a small number of under-35s will have been offered the vaccine? Are the same theatres that used to subsidise tickets for under-30s – sometimes down to as little as £5 – really going to accept laws that will add £140 (the price of a certificated PCR test) to the cost of a theatre ticket? All while older audiences face no such restrictions? Let’s not forget that the last time the government made PCR tests compulsory for an activity – demanding that anyone returning to the UK pay for two tests – the intent was actively to discourage people from doing that thing in the first place. Is it really fair to extend the same treatment to people who, after a year of lockdowns, just want to enjoy some culture? There are also practical arguments against vaccine passports in theatres. The West End in particular has long relied on international visitors to buy top-price tickets in the stalls. Is the government seriously expecting that tourists (assuming, that is, it ever wants to have any in the first place) will have to apply for a vaccine passport before they can go to a musical? As an industry, theatre has been treated appallingly by this government. After being kept closed for longer than pubs and restaurants in the first lockdown, many theatres invested heavily in making their venues ‘Covid-safe’, often going to quite extraordinary lengths to uphold social distancing. Did this stop the government forcibly closing theatres when London was shifted into tier three after the November lockdown? Absolutely not."
