I'm in Australia, and our pandemic's management from some of our governments is a bit like dropped spaghetti. Ie it's a big mess.
Anyway, the frustrating issue is that advice seems to be risk based mixed with environmental conditions. Which seems sensible, but I actually think it's not the correct approach.
So right now we have a bloom of Delta in Sydney, and our medical advice was previously not recommending AZ because of the chance of blood clots. However now the situation is really quickly getting out of hand and they are recommending AZ.
It strongly seems like they considered Australia being some island all on it's own some massive mitigating factor which changed the impact of the virus. And as a consequence a lot of people are without any vaccine and a lot of hesitancy about AZ.
The failure here was they thought they had time to wait for pfizer.
But Delta acts like Delta and is just spreading around like wildfire. I actually believe some of the advice is suffering from normalization of deviance. Where the deviance is being able to suppress the virus with things like quarantine. As opposed to getting everyone vaccinated.
Oh btw, I'm under 40 and got AZ because I'm willing to risk it. I've never been struck by lighting and i've done way riskier things.
Let's be honest. IMO the assumption of Australia being an island was right (as evidenced by the states that made sure their states were islands most notably WA). At this stage WA is clearly the "gold standard" of COVID management, not NSW. NSW, given the numbers it was taking through its "hotels" which never should of been permanent quarantine facilities in any case was not "an island" at all. They arguably were just lucky most of this time, and through hubris of the local people there this was considered good "gold standard" management.
The low tech easy solution for a country like Australia is really better quarantine facilities (i.e. not hotels in the middle of population centers) IMO coupled with a vaccine rollout geared to workers at the quarantine facility (and potentially freight facilities). Its easier to rollout the vaccine and subsequent updates to it for future variants to a smaller number quicker. States in Australia that limited their international intake seem to be doing better than particularly Sydney who were taking the most arrivals. It really isn't an island when your taking the brunt of international arrivals. The fact that it was even working (hotels) for as long as it did shows the effectiveness of a good quarantine strategy. Low tech, simple solutions usually trump high tech solutions that require everyone to participate (problem of the commons).
Anyway, the frustrating issue is that advice seems to be risk based mixed with environmental conditions. Which seems sensible, but I actually think it's not the correct approach.
So right now we have a bloom of Delta in Sydney, and our medical advice was previously not recommending AZ because of the chance of blood clots. However now the situation is really quickly getting out of hand and they are recommending AZ.
It strongly seems like they considered Australia being some island all on it's own some massive mitigating factor which changed the impact of the virus. And as a consequence a lot of people are without any vaccine and a lot of hesitancy about AZ. The failure here was they thought they had time to wait for pfizer.
But Delta acts like Delta and is just spreading around like wildfire. I actually believe some of the advice is suffering from normalization of deviance. Where the deviance is being able to suppress the virus with things like quarantine. As opposed to getting everyone vaccinated.
Oh btw, I'm under 40 and got AZ because I'm willing to risk it. I've never been struck by lighting and i've done way riskier things.