James105

Ok lets address this argument by taking a look at one bar that this happened to - the triangle bar. Bunch of staff tested positive for covid and they have to close for 2 weeks but (and this is crucial) they will be allowed to open again after this 2 weeks rather than shut down for 8 months. So what do you think is worse for a business? A. Forced to close for 8-10 months to prevent being closed for 2 weeks due to a mild illness B. Forced to close for 2 weeks due to mild illness I'm presuming from your comments you have never owned a business so this might be a tricky one for you.

I've never understood this argument. Even the most economically illiterate would realise that being closed for 2 weeks due to illness is better than being forcibly closed for 8-10 months due to overreaction. It's right up there with the "we need to lockdown to prevent lockdown" arguments that are equally non sensical.

Maybe you should check again then if you think that someone in Australia is giving exemptions to elite sports people and no-one else. Here is an example, if someone had an adverse reaction to the first jab so severe that it put them in hospital - do you think that they should not be granted an exemption from requiring the second jab? This is one of the exemption reasons that allows “unvaccinated” people to enter Australia regardless of whether they are an elite sports person or not.

Oz is entitled to make its own terms and its own exemptions and they used their own terms/rules to provide an exemption for him. They are breaking their own rules by not allowing him in after granting an exemption. You would have a point if the rule was no unvaccinated person can come in without exception, but that is not the rule, so you do not have a point.

All from the same hotel that happened to test positive after presumably testing negative before leaving their countries? Wonder what the odds of that happening are? Sounds a bit fishy to me.

He was given an exemption and he wouldn’t have been allowed on the plane if he did not have it. By not allowing him in with the same exemption that others have used without issue is making an exception of him.

of course it is going to be difficult to compete with other years that did not have covid. But it is in crisis every single year. This one no different to any other. The time to be concerned is when the NHS is not claiming to be in a crisis in winter as then we know something is terribly wrong.

Are they letting people drink alcohol in factories and hospitals then, as that is (by a significant margin) where covid has been spreading the most? Closing pubs does not "prevent infection" at all, it simply moves it into peoples houses or condo rooms or wherever else they can find to socialise instead. Your theory is only correct in a strictly controlled environment where the closure of the pub is combined with harsh measures to also prevent people socialising in non pub environments. Since that has never been the case here (and is nigh on impossible to enforce outside of totalitarian countries such as China/North Korea/Australia) the only thing that is achieved is the destruction of peoples business and increased poverty. For evidence see April to October 2021 in Thailand where all pubs were closed and covid reached 20,000 a day at its peak several months after pubs were forced to close.

He was told to "get ready for opening on the 16th Jan" by the government - what was he supposed to do? Any bar or venue will have to spend significant money getting ready to open after being closed for so long (stock/marketing/staff/sprucing things up), and will also have incurred significant debt prior to that due to being closed for so long. It's incredibly cruel to do this to people. I'd expect some suicides as a result of giving people hope, getting them to spend money they do not have on this hope, then taking the hope away again. I feel desperately sorry for people who have invested in what was previously a viable business.

Blinkered thinking. No country has ever improved its health outcomes by making the country poorer. Have a little think and ask yourself why it is that the poorest countries in the world also have the shortest life expectancy.

Old and/or obese vaccinated people over 60 are more likely to die from covid than unvaccinated young and healthy people I believe. I remember seeing a chart somewhere that suggested vaccines give an 80 year old the same chances as a 50 year old and the returns started to diminish the younger the person was. I would suggest that unvaccinated do not worry about death (or more accurately dying from covid) otherwise they would get vaccinated. There is another category of people like myself who got vaccinated not out of fear of dying from covid but was tricked into thinking that if I did my part then things would return to normal once enough of us did so. All of the scared rabbits on here who want to keep the bars closed, subject people to abject poverty by denying them an income and prevent people from enjoying life are vaccinated. My point was and is that illness and death are no longer relevant factors in deciding policy. It's now all about the "cases" or "positive tests" which as we have seen from other countries will rapidly increase for several weeks no matter what ridiculous restrictions are imposed and then decline just as sharply. The only reason hospitals will get overwhelmed is if the stupid policy of putting healthy people in them who do not need treatment continues.

straw man. Try actually reading what I said before answering a point that I didn't make.

I wish, but too many people have bought into the narrative that covid is a death sentence no matter which variant it is, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even if there were no deaths from this variant, unless the testing, hospitalisation and quarantine of healthy, vaccinated people comes to and end I do not see how we get out of this. Vaccines were supposed to give people/governments confidence to face the world with covid in it again, but they have failed miserably in that task and most people seem even more scared of a milder variant with vaccines today than the least mild variant without vaccines in 2020. My (depressing) prediction is that the government here will use this new variant as an excuse to shut down bars and not allow alcohol in any restaurant (even spacious outdoor ones) until at least June and extort cash from any foreigner foolish enough to get a test from the authorities with their new quarantine hotels even if they have their own house/condo to isolate in.

Same every winter in the NHS. Guess when these headlines are from

The vaccines help with severe illness but, especially with this new variant, doesn’t do diddly squat to help with infections as we can see from the evidence from highly vaccinated countries such as the UK. Italy have implicitly admitted this by banning unvaccinated over 50 year olds from going to work(!). One would presume that this is because those unvaccinated and over 50 are the most likely to consume hospital beds and not the unvaccinated under 50s should they contract covid. In fact, since they have now managed to successfully discriminate based on someones possibility to consume hospital resources (and is not related to controlling infections otherwise the youngsters would also be included), the door has now been opened to do the same to obese people. This is where we are heading. So well done everyone that has supported every dystopian measure so far - it would never have been able to happen without your support.

He has already had covid and recovered without issue. Making him take a vaccine that neither prevents catching or transmitting it is stupid and unnecessary, especially so with someone who has natural immunity following infection. Australia has been denying their citizens their basic human rights for months on end, killed innocent puppies (link) to prevent covid spreading and yet somehow Djokovic is the bad guy here? ????????

Agreed. But they still need to eat and pay rent so they would get unofficial loans from loan sharks, which is much, much worse.

What's the point in giving 1/3rd of the dose if 2 full doses of the thing is proving to be next to useless in terms of transmission? Since kids do not get seriously ill it's a pointless and unnecessary risk to use kids as stab vests in a misguided attempt to protect adults. Pfizer are trialing this now on 2-5 year olds. This is madness and it really needs to stop.

And these are the people that did not lose their jobs/incomes due to government overreaction. If it is that bad for them with an income, imagine how bad it is for those prevented from making any kind of income over the last 8 months.

What's the science behind what they are wearing here? Since covid enters through the nose, mouth and eyes, what purpose does the plastic overboots serve - for example? How long until we are forced to cover our flip flops with a plastic overboot to "prevent the spread of the virus"? If implemented I have no doubt the usual suspects would be along to justify plastic overboots with the usual defences such as: 1. It's only a minor inconvenience. 2. There is no evidence they do not work. 3. It would be much worse if we were not wearing the plastic overboots. 4. It's just until the virus is under control. 5. Name calling - plastic boot denier for example. 6. If it saves just one life it is worth it.

So all those measures that failed to control the virus since April are going to be implemented again even after all those vaccines have been administered. I remember all the lockdown fanatics telling people to stop moaning as it was only a stopgap until enough have been vaccinated. What say you now? How and when does this end exactly?

I would expect climate change lockdowns to replace covid once it has naturally run its course (just 3 weeks to flatten the CO2 levels etc). We are entering a new phase in human history now that governments worldwide have discovered how easy it is to control their sheep people via the medium of fear. They even have a lot of useful unpaid idiots that repeat their mantras verbatim and spread the fear for them. I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a wannabe totalitarian who wants to control the minutia of peoples lives. I'm looking forward to the time when all the expert epidemiologists and virologists on here become expert paleoclimatologists and tell us how many we can expect to die from climate disasters on a daily basis.

"What we do know is that the PCR test after infection can be positive for up to 12 weeks, so that is not going to be helpful. You're not going to be transmitting during all of that period of time," Walensky told NBC. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/29/health/us-coronanavirus-wednesday/index.html

More misinformation and lies to spread fear. Why do you do it? What do you gain from this? “Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year” https://www.health.com/condition/flu/how-many-people-die-of-the-flu-every-year