Vaccine roll out in Australia

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Sun Jun 20, 2021 8:36 pm

Risk of dying from adverse reaction to AstraZeneca vaccine compared to a whole bunch of things but not the risk of dying from covid...

Two people have died from the vaccine, the total deaths in that age group is, what, 20?
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Thu Jun 24, 2021 6:17 am

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:23 pm

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:54 am

Australia has secured 4m doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines in a swap deal with Britain
There's not much point linking to a source since that's all the source says (although in the case of the Guardian live blog, it does say it a lot of times). In particular, it's not mentioned what Britain is getting out of the swap.

(I note that Australia has first-dosed more of its population than Slovakia for example.)
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by jdc » Fri Sep 03, 2021 3:04 pm

shpalman wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:54 am
Australia has secured 4m doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines in a swap deal with Britain
There's not much point linking to a source since that's all the source says (although in the case of the Guardian live blog, it does say it a lot of times). In particular, it's not mentioned what Britain is getting out of the swap.

(I note that Australia has first-dosed more of its population than Slovakia for example.)
FT has "Australia will return an equivalent 4m doses before the end of the year, according to the UK health department." https://www.ft.com/content/ce41fca1-3e0 ... ec0da4c04a
[The deal] reflects the UK’s calculation that it does not currently need all its stockpiled doses, which expire in a matter of months if not used, while allowing London to boost supplies later this year in anticipation of a broad booster campaign and the vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:15 pm

jdc wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 3:04 pm
shpalman wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:54 am
Australia has secured 4m doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines in a swap deal with Britain
There's not much point linking to a source since that's all the source says (although in the case of the Guardian live blog, it does say it a lot of times). In particular, it's not mentioned what Britain is getting out of the swap.

(I note that Australia has first-dosed more of its population than Slovakia for example.)
FT has "Australia will return an equivalent 4m doses before the end of the year, according to the UK health department." https://www.ft.com/content/ce41fca1-3e0 ... ec0da4c04a
[The deal] reflects the UK’s calculation that it does not currently need all its stockpiled doses, which expire in a matter of months if not used, while allowing London to boost supplies later this year in anticipation of a broad booster campaign and the vaccination of 12 to 15-year-olds
Disappointing. I hoped we would get a cricket star or something like that.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:21 pm

Or, you know, some food.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Martin_B » Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:12 pm

shpalman wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:21 pm
Or, you know, some food.
You want some Vegemite?
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:07 am

Martin_B wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:12 pm
shpalman wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:21 pm
Or, you know, some food.
You want some Vegemite?
He said food.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Martin_B » Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:12 am

Herainestold wrote:
Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:07 am
Martin_B wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:12 pm
shpalman wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:21 pm
Or, you know, some food.
You want some Vegemite?
He said food.
Vegemite is food. Cheesy vegemite is best used as pest deterrent, or possibly coloured grout.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:17 am

Ozsage a new advisory group to discuss policy to aid Australia going forward to end the pandemic
(1) The precautionary principle (that reasonable steps to protect people and reduce risk should not await scientific certainty) influences our advice. Much is still unknown (such as the chronic health impact and long-term health effects including on children) and the virus is clearly still evolving/worsening. Delta is very unlikely to be the last SARS-Cov-2 variant we face, nor the worst. Low case numbers should be the Australian strategy for the foreseeable future. Analogies to seasonal influenza are less helpful than measles and polio.
(7) Aspire to elimination: A range of technical terms (eradication, elimination, control) with specific meanings have been widely misused during the pandemic, causing confusion among the community and decision makers. Eradication (getting rid of the virus from the world) is likely not possible for SARS-COV-2. Elimination for countries or regions is possible. This does not mean outbreaks of COVID-19 will never occur. It means sustained, ongoing outbreaks can be prevented. We have achieved elimination of measles and polio through vaccination in Australia, and it may be possible to do the same for SARS-CoV-2. We believe the best possible outcome for Australia is a measles-like situation, where occasional outbreaks occur because of infection imported through travel, but sustained community transmission is prevented because enough people have sufficient vaccine-induced immunity, and our lives can continue normally. This is what the technical term “elimination” means. This is achievable with booster vaccinations that are matched to Delta or other variants and other measures outlined in our advice.
https://www.ozsage.org/
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:30 am

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Tue Sep 14, 2021 2:08 pm

There was some understandable complacency in Oz about vaccine roll out, but when all is said and done, it will have one of the best records against covid.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:22 am

Somewhat counter intuitive, Ozsage modelling suggests that a two stage opening at 70% and 80% vaccinated will kill more people than opening up at 70% vaccinated.
Lifting lockdown restrictions in two stages in New South Wales could overwhelm intensive care units for up to five weeks over the Christmas period, according to modelling from a new expert advisory group.

Easing restrictions when 70% of NSW adults are fully vaccinated and further relaxing rules at 80% would lead to a “worst-case scenario”, suggests OzSage, a recently formed advisory group of experts in epidemiology, health and economics.

The modelling also suggests that waiting for an 80% vaccination rate – estimated to occur in November – to ease any restrictions would result in greater infections, deaths and peak daily ICU beds needed than if restrictions were eased at 70%. It predicts 689 deaths in NSW by February 1 if restrictions are eased at 70%, compared to 1,004 deaths at 80%.
It looks to me like the safest course would be to maintain existing restrictions until vaccination is very high , 85% or something like that, and then very gradually easing restrictions. Perhaps some measures like masking and border restrictions should continue indefinitely.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... ation-rate
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Martin_B » Wed Sep 15, 2021 5:55 am

Herainestold wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:22 am
Somewhat counter intuitive, Ozsage modelling suggests that a two stage opening at 70% and 80% vaccinated will kill more people than opening up at 70% vaccinated.
Lifting lockdown restrictions in two stages in New South Wales could overwhelm intensive care units for up to five weeks over the Christmas period, according to modelling from a new expert advisory group.

Easing restrictions when 70% of NSW adults are fully vaccinated and further relaxing rules at 80% would lead to a “worst-case scenario”, suggests OzSage, a recently formed advisory group of experts in epidemiology, health and economics.

The modelling also suggests that waiting for an 80% vaccination rate – estimated to occur in November – to ease any restrictions would result in greater infections, deaths and peak daily ICU beds needed than if restrictions were eased at 70%. It predicts 689 deaths in NSW by February 1 if restrictions are eased at 70%, compared to 1,004 deaths at 80%.
It looks to me like the safest course would be to maintain existing restrictions until vaccination is very high , 85% or something like that, and then very gradually easing restrictions. Perhaps some measures like masking and border restrictions should continue indefinitely.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... ation-rate
Ah, but that's ignoring the political will of the NSW Premier who never wanted lockdown in the first place and would lift all restrictions now if she could; the only reason she hasn't (she did lift some restrictions last weekend) is that she's not so f.cking stupid not to realise that it'd be political suicide to just open up now. Sydney (and it is Sydney far more than NSW) tends to have a more selfish mindset than the rest of Australia and so personal freedom trumps civil responsibility.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Chris Preston » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:13 am

Herainestold wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:22 am
Somewhat counter intuitive, Ozsage modelling suggests that a two stage opening at 70% and 80% vaccinated will kill more people than opening up at 70% vaccinated.
Lifting lockdown restrictions in two stages in New South Wales could overwhelm intensive care units for up to five weeks over the Christmas period, according to modelling from a new expert advisory group.

Easing restrictions when 70% of NSW adults are fully vaccinated and further relaxing rules at 80% would lead to a “worst-case scenario”, suggests OzSage, a recently formed advisory group of experts in epidemiology, health and economics.

The modelling also suggests that waiting for an 80% vaccination rate – estimated to occur in November – to ease any restrictions would result in greater infections, deaths and peak daily ICU beds needed than if restrictions were eased at 70%. It predicts 689 deaths in NSW by February 1 if restrictions are eased at 70%, compared to 1,004 deaths at 80%.
It looks to me like the safest course would be to maintain existing restrictions until vaccination is very high , 85% or something like that, and then very gradually easing restrictions. Perhaps some measures like masking and border restrictions should continue indefinitely.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... ation-rate
That would contradict the advice in the quote you have posted, which appears to be claiming fewer deaths will occur on opening at 70% than at 80%.

Either the modelling is wrong or the Guardian has reported it incorrectly.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Wed Sep 15, 2021 2:13 pm

Chris Preston wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:13 am
Herainestold wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:22 am
Somewhat counter intuitive, Ozsage modelling suggests that a two stage opening at 70% and 80% vaccinated will kill more people than opening up at 70% vaccinated.
Lifting lockdown restrictions in two stages in New South Wales could overwhelm intensive care units for up to five weeks over the Christmas period, according to modelling from a new expert advisory group.

Easing restrictions when 70% of NSW adults are fully vaccinated and further relaxing rules at 80% would lead to a “worst-case scenario”, suggests OzSage, a recently formed advisory group of experts in epidemiology, health and economics.

The modelling also suggests that waiting for an 80% vaccination rate – estimated to occur in November – to ease any restrictions would result in greater infections, deaths and peak daily ICU beds needed than if restrictions were eased at 70%. It predicts 689 deaths in NSW by February 1 if restrictions are eased at 70%, compared to 1,004 deaths at 80%.
It looks to me like the safest course would be to maintain existing restrictions until vaccination is very high , 85% or something like that, and then very gradually easing restrictions. Perhaps some measures like masking and border restrictions should continue indefinitely.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... ation-rate
That would contradict the advice in the quote you have posted, which appears to be claiming fewer deaths will occur on opening at 70% than at 80%.

Either the modelling is wrong or the Guardian has reported it incorrectly.
There is different modelling from different sources and they do not totally agree. It would be surprising if they did. I suspect the Graun did not really understand the OzSage results. The real world outcomes from jurisdictions that opened early in the face of Delta are not encouraging so I would suggest extreme caution, keeping some restrictions, and vaccinate absolutely everybody that can be reached.

NZ and China are going to continue their elimination policies, which are working. It is a pity that Australia appears to be abandoning its stance.
New Zealand, in contrast, is sticking with its elimination strategy, which has been more successful than Australia’s. The country has taken a “rapid, decisive approach” in “applying maximum lockdown measures as soon as it detects unexplained cases of COVID-19,” says Michael Baker, a public health scientist at the University of Otago, Wellington. It appears to be on the cusp of containing its latest COVID-19 outbreak, which began on 17 August and triggered a nationwide lockdown. Daily infections reached 84 on 28 August and again on 2 September, but have trended downward since. “The country’s elimination status will be regained in coming weeks,” predicts Nick Wilson, a public health scientist at Otago. Despite the painful lockdowns, the zero COVID strategy remains popular, he says.
Other elimination countries fall between these two poles. China has not announced plans to change its strategy and “may well decide to continue with COVID elimination,” Cowling says. The country followed its strict elimination playbook to gain control of a Delta variant outbreak that started in late July in Nanjing and popped up in a number of other cities; daily cases had dropped from nearly 150 to zero by early September. But Delta infections reappeared: Southeast Fujian province reported 59 locally acquired cases on 13 September.

Taiwan’s zero COVID strategy was tested in May, when the island saw cases spike to more than 700 daily, but has proved to be robust; this week, there were fewer than 10 daily cases on average. Still, some are calling for Taiwan to relax its stringent entry restrictions and prepare the island for “limited endemicity,” says Lin Hsien-Ho, an epidemiologist at National Taiwan University. Daily case numbers would likely have to remain in the double digits for the public to accept those changes, he says: Having had so little COVID-19 for so long, Taiwan “has high expectations that there will be very few cases.”
https://www.science.org/content/article ... hey-reopen
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:41 pm

Here are the results from the OzSAGE model as a pdf of a presentation.
Background: NSW plans to relax restrictions when national vaccination targets of 70% and 80% of the eligible population 16 years and over are met. The initial premise of the planning was an epidemic of 30 cases when restrictions are lifted. However, the epidemic in NSW will result in cases in the hundreds or thousands at the time of planned relaxing of restrictions. The virus spreads between people, and when movement of people increases, so will spread of the virus, especially if large numbers of cases are present. The current strategy of mass vaccination is needed, but cannot control an epidemic that began in June when fully vaccinated rates were less than 5%. This is because the virus spreads much faster (days) than the time taken to benefit from vaccine immunity after 2 doses (2 months with a 6 week interval between doses and two weeks after the second dose to get maximal immunity).
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Table1.png
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Table1.png (210.09 KiB) Viewed 2081 times
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Table2.png
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Table2.png (144.92 KiB) Viewed 2081 times
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Graphs.png
OzSAGE-2021-09-15-Graphs.png (101.18 KiB) Viewed 2081 times
What nobody seems to understand - and the other models can't reproduce - is why Scenario 3 (partial lifting of restrictions at 70% of adults vaccinated then full lifting of restrictions at 80%) is worse than (as the Guardian reports) "if restrictions were eased at 70%". I think, although it's not clear from that "Background" section, that Scenario 1 "NSW Roadmap with single stage lifting of restrictions" is the "lifting everything at 70%" one while Scenario 5 is clearly the "lifting everything at 80%" one.

The graphs show that Scenario 1 gives much smaller peaks than Scenario 3. If a colleague came to me with that I'd ask to see the code to figure out what was wrong with it because there must be something wrong with how they've set up Scenarios 1 and 2.

(The difference between the odd and even numbered Scenarios is the degree of contact tracing.)

I mean, Scenarios 5 and 6 "rebound" because the restrictions are lifted later (waiting until 80% coverage) when cases are predicted to already be coming down, but they still end up higher than just releasing sooner at 70% in Scenarios 1 and 2. That makes no sense.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:15 am

It strikes me as bizarre that they would publish something like this. Or maybe I just don't understand it.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Herainestold » Thu Sep 16, 2021 4:21 pm

Maybe it is due to waning immunity. By the time 80% is reached the immunity of the original cohort will have declined enough that the additional 10% doesn't compensate.
I am really worried that it will be a disaster if Australia opens at 70%, with no community immunity from past infections, it will be worse than here and it is bad enough here. Need to aim much higher but I don't know what level is sufficent or how high a proportion of the population is achievable.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by shpalman » Thu Sep 16, 2021 4:27 pm

Waning immunity wasn't in their model and anyway wouldn't be so strong over that relatively short time scale.
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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Chris Preston » Mon Nov 01, 2021 8:51 am

Here grows much rhubarb.

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Sciolus » Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:13 am

Indeed. Why are they (and osteopaths) listed under "allied health professionals"?

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by dyqik » Mon Nov 01, 2021 4:52 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:13 am
Indeed. Why are they (and osteopaths) listed under "allied health professionals"?
In the US, chiropractors and osteopaths are legally medical professionals, with oversight by the national agencies and with costs covered by health insurance. Which means they are covered by all the regulations that cover real doctors.

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Re: Vaccine roll out in Australia

Post by Chris Preston » Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:52 am

South Australia is also requiring chiropractors to be vaccinated to practice.

Nationwide vaccine roll out now has 77% of the total population with one dose and 72% with 2 doses. That is about 80% of those aged 12 and over (who are eligible to be vaccinated). Most states are instituting some occupational mandates for vaccines, but businesses more so. Almost all the large venues in Adelaide have brought in mandatory vaccination rules for workers and patrons. This is causing havoc with some school graduations though. I will need to prove I have had both vaccine doses to get to the Test Match next month.

A few idiot politicians (including some Government members) have started to create a ruckus about the states mandating vaccines and want the federal Government to outlaw mandates on the basis of discrimination. One of the cross-bench Senators called them out on it and basically told them to act like adults and accept responsibility for their actions. This led one of the right-wing nut-job Senators to leak her personal phone number on social media where other right-wing nut-jobs could then harass her. Really appalling behaviour. Doubt any action will be taken, because the Government needs the right-wing not-job party to pass legislation in the Senate.
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