Sydney Extends Lockdown Due to Fears Over Delta Covid Variant
Australia’s largest city, Sydney, will remain locked down until at least mid-July, with restrictions having been extended by a week due to fears over the Indian Delta Covid variant. Empty Sydney beaches suggest that locals broadly support the extension of lockdown measures. One city resident told BBC News: “We have to knock [Covid] on the head so you have to go along with [lockdown].” BBC News has the story.
The New South Wales Government said it had made the “difficult decision” as it battles the highly transmissible Delta strain.
A stay-at-home order was issued on June 26th.
Australia has recorded 910 deaths and fewer than 31,000 cases since the pandemic began.
Clusters have emerged after some people who were later found to be infected left their homes for essentials.
The outbreak of around 330 cases is the worst in the city this year.
A stay-at-home order covering more than five million residents in the Greater Sydney, Wollongong and Central Coast areas was due to be lifted on Friday. It has now been extended to July 16th. Schools will also be closed next week.
The New South Wales Government said it recognised the “pain and stress” that lockdown was causing families and businesses.
Yet officials said the daily case rate – with 27 new cases recorded on Wednesday – and low levels of vaccination meant the restrictions needed to be extended.
Less than 10% of Australians are fully vaccinated. A lack of supplies, specifically of the Pfizer vaccine, means many Australians will not be able to get a jab until the final months of the year.
“What we want to do is give us our best chance of making sure this is the only lockdown we have until the vast majority of our citizens are vaccinated,” said Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Wednesday.
“We don’t want to be in a situation where we are constantly having to move between lockdown and no lockdown.”
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“We don’t want to be in a situation where we are constantly having to move between lockdown and no lockdown.”
LOL! That’s exactly what you’ve got!! Hahaha!
Thats what a zerocovid policy is and always will be.
The cultists dont seem to realise that.
No, it’s just about the experimental coerced administration of a manmade pathogen within human cells. These guys all have to be locked down until those jabs arrive. Simple.
When they do obviously the population will beg for them.
Whether the motive is just profit, or profit plus a crazy stop climate change via miracles of technology driven by Gates, that’s what’s happening.
Complete idiots in the Australian government
The idea that they “have” to lockdown is nonsense. It’s quite clear this disease is manageable without.
Australia and NZ have probably the dumbest covid policy in the world. They really have no idea what to do
Their ‘policy’ was to go all-in on a bet that a 100% sterile immunity providing ‘vaccine’ would soon be available.
The rest is history.
Added to which, the longer they spend isolated from the rest of the world, or more specifically, the viruses circulating in the rest of the world, the bigger the timebomb being created for when they do eventually, inevitably, have to open up.
There will then be an explosion of other viruses amongst the population whose immune systems have become impoverished after 18 months hiding behind the sofa.
Its going to be amusing if/when they ever decide to open up and a virus with an R0 of 7-10 rips through a population with pretty much zero natural immunity.
Even if they vaccinate the efficacy is low enough it’ll be absolute carnage.
All Aus/NZ have actually achieved is they’ve made it impossible to ever open up again without a problem worse than Europe had.
That, and whether they eventially had that vaccine or not, and whether they lived like the Sentinelese or eventually opened up, they corrupted their immune system and that of their descendants with regard to being better able to fighting off later similar pathogens- see Gupta’s post Spanish flu theory.
I suppose this is what happens when you have a bunch of lefties in charge of NZ and Oz governments. Oh well, their funeral
FuneralS
It’s possible that there’s fairly high immunity already. If Sars 2 escaped from Wuhan’s lab, or even from some trial they did in humans, in about spring 2019 then Australia might have had enough contacts with China and intermediate host countries to have had quite a spread.
Hmmm – so has Australia looked to see what the nation’s T cells are saying? Bet not.
A policy so dumb, it’s praised by a guy called Adam Hill who trolls the Telegraph pages, spouting contradictory rubbish.
Wholly contradictory. Assuming that any jollop works, if it takes to the end of the year to administer it to “the vast majority”, then logic suggests that they will either remain locked-down well beyond mid-July, or else they’ll be in and out of them.
Good luck with “knocking it on the head”. Experience would suggest that what actually does get knocked on the head are education, non-Covid health, the economy, mental health and all the other serious downsides. Hopefully they will learn to distrust their politicians as much as we do.
Sadly it looks like the majority do trust our politicians about this shit anyway. F… knows why?
Yes, people evidently think that what the majority believe must be right.
Very odd. They only have to think back to the causes of the 2007 collapse, and ponder on how many were warning of that.
But I guess this is herd instinct. Our animal selves follow the loudest, strongest, most assertive members of the herd.
In this case, as in 2006 and its prelude, over a cliff.
the Aussies don’t seem too keen on the experimental gene therapy – zey vill need to be coerced into taking it – bring on the fear…..
“What we want to do is give us our best chance of making sure this is the only lockdown we have until the vast majority of our citizens are vaccinated,” said Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Wednesday.
hilarious!
“Lockdown now to avoid a lockdown” is (i) insane and (ii) basically the UK labour, iSAGE and the zerocovid lots policy over here as well.
They’ve literally said we need to lockdown so we don’t have to lockdown again.
It’s actually an admission that people fear lockdown more than covvie.
They are saying don’t live your life so that old people won’t die. The old are vaxed so if they can going to die of anything, it will be of lockdown, lack of a life and human contact and loneliness. If I was an OAP I’d be livid that the government has stolen my last years and months and made retirement a misery
“The only lockdown we have” should be taken as “this lockdown is indefinite”.
Vax Macht Frei
I feel sorry for Australian plebs as they haven’t got the data we have in the UK to prove it only kills the seriously ill and frail in large numbers, ie like Influenza.
I expect their media is pumping out ICU footage day and night to perpetuate the Covid nightmare.
This whole chirade is only just getting going for them.
I got slapped right down when I gave my NZ relative some actual official government figures ONS and PHE. Wouldnt have it and told me it was all wrong!
None so blind as those who refuse to see.
They same as the UK, the data is all there to see but the people are stupid.
When I pointed my friends towards various facts and figures mostly from Government sources I was told to stop send them propaganda! Mind you it was from Government sources so they might have a point!!😂
As I quoted from Peter Hitchens somewhere on here yesterday “the greatest fortress of all is a closed mind”.
We most certainly do have that data. For example the median age of death is 86 and 75+% of the deaths have occurred in nursing homes. The plebs are too stupid and ignorant to see it, however. You’re right about the ICU propaganda, but if the public only glanced at the information on the Australian government Covid dashboard they would understand very well who is and who is not vulnerable.
But that requires effort, thought, personal responsibility, etc.- these things are out of fashion at the moment.
Having holidayed in Oz on three separate occasions for a total of four months, I can safely say that they are the most risk averse country I have ever visited. These are people who, on encountering a pedestrian crossing, will absolutely refuse to cross until the green go ahead sign appears even if they can see the way is clear for a mile up the road in either direction. I constantly had looks of either horror or barely concealed anger if I crossed on a red. So their slavish devotion and obedience to lockdown and restrictions does not surprise me in the slightest. This is a country where nature is trying its best to kill you at every opportunity on both land and in the sea and yet your average Aussie appears to be terrified of their own shadow. It certainly is contradictory to the stereotype image we hold of Australians being rough, tough and not giving a sh*t. Pussies the lot of em.
Risk averse they are but are you sure you’re not thinking of Germany with that crossing anecdote? Having spent the first 30 years of my life there I never had a problem crossing a clear road.
Isn’t it illegal in Germany to cross on the red?
Yes.
They’ve fallen a long way in a short time.
Perhaps it’s just the government. If the UK had fines for pedestrians crossing at a red light (classed as jaywalking) like they do down under likely we’d soon have similar behaviour here in the UK.
LOL them’s fighting words! Most of my friends back home think it’s all a load of bollocks, and won’t be getting the jab, aren’t complying with lockdown etc. Polls suggest about 1/3 of Aussies won’t be taking the jab, compared to the UK with 86% already jabbed if you believe the data. UK seem pretty compliant and obedient to me, not sure us Aussies have clapped for the national health service yet. I’ve spent time in several EU countries during the past 18 months, currently in Norway, and as much as I love the UK, sadly it had the highest percentage of “pussies” I’ve witnessed by far. Unfortunately though in Australia and it seems most other western countries, pussies seem to be of the majority.
It is definitely a Western/Anglo type thing- other places I’ve visited seem much more relaxed about things. totally agree about the UK- I was just hopeful that our Aussie cousins wouldn’t also be vegetables…
P.S. Many years ago I crossed the road just before the red man turned green, wild times.
You hooligan.
You’ be running recklessly through fields of wheat soon – honestly some people.
Isn’t modern Oz one of the most urbanized countries on the planet?
I think that explains a lot about their attitudes.
This is pretty much my experience when visiting relatives there over the past 20 years. I was shocked to find such a contradiction with the ‘Crocodile Dundee’ sort of people I was expecting. They were very friendly on the whole but completely accepting of whatever the authorities told them and wary of anyone that wasn’t- it was often like listening to a speak your weight machine as they simply repeated what they’d been told and as you say obeyed every rule without question. Driving on the motorway was a tedious nightmare! The school system appears to have been completely taken over by the left with their woke nonsense so it’s not going to get better anytime soon. I think the Northern Territory is different, or was when I was last there.
As its winter the Sydney beaches are obviously not as full as in the summer, so they are making that look as if people are complying Trying to limit travel based on the seasons.
Sydney temperature is 9-10C right now, of course there’s no-one on the beach!
“What we want to do is give us our best chance of making sure this is the only lockdown we have until the vast majority of our citizens are vaccinated,” said Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Wednesday.
so that’s a lockdown until the end of the year then
and the vaccines won’t stop it spreading when you do open up in 2022. and won’t save the hyper-frail if they get it (even if they survive the vaccine). There will be a lot of dry-tinder. I expect there’s a few people wish it would just escape and get it over with. With what they know now they could still do the GBD and avoid the worst of our errors (infected into care homes)
“We don’t want to be in a situation where we are constantly having to move between lockdown and no lockdown.”
*Bangs head on wall*
I would also point out that the Australian MSM makes the UK’s appear calm and measured in comparison. Channel 7 and Channel 9 news output is truly awful. I was there during the bush fire “crisis” in 2019/20 and the regular news bulletins actually became hilarious. They reported one day that Sydney was shrouded in smoke to the point where you couldn’t see the Harbour Bridge. I happened to be staying in a hotel that overlooked the bridge and it was crystal clear.
Too many “tinnies”?
Channels 7 and 9 staff, that is.
MSM exaggerate – never!
Idi*ts.
Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind.
Tell them the story of Canute .
Very apposite.
Pretty sure his name was spelled Cnut. There are quite a few Cnuts around at the moment.
What we could do with is more Eric Bloodaxes.
And a bit of blood-eagling.
‘Cnut’ if you’re dyslexic?
A wise man who demonstrated the limits of his power.
Gosh, I remember this situation being exactly what was predicted for any country stupid enough to try to go down the road of self-isolation and zero covid in the face of an already globally endemic respiratory virus.
But the Australians and NZers were collectively too stupid, too authoritarian and too cowardly to listen. And sure enough, look where they are now (and a large part of any lives they “saved” by hiding from covid will have already died anyway by now, from the old age and illnesses that would have made them vulnerable to covid).
[Should be conceded here, though, that “there but for the grace of God go we”. We probably aren’t really much better than the Aussies and NZers, it’s just that we were never in the position to try the stupidity of zero covid that they have tried. If it had been a possibility for us, we probably would have been collectively stupid, authoritarian and cowardly enough to let our politicians try it.]
We’re “lucky” the UK government response was so disorganised that by the time it considered a zerocovid approach it was already too late.
If they had done so, we’d have even fewer freedoms than now and no end in sight.
We are indeed fortunate zero covid was never something they could plausibly advocate openly (though far too many have been stupid or evil enough to pursue it anyway, covertly or openly).
Not really disorganisation though. Either you accept the apparent explanation, which is that they were planning to follow a rational Swedish-style response in line with established pandemic planning, until they were scared away from it by the storm of irrationality and cynical scaremongering in Feb/Mar 2020, or you adopt the “conspiracy theory” approach that says “they” were always planning to follow the insane overreaction response we have had, and the sensible planning and rhetoric were just covers for those plans.
Neither involves “disorganisation” (more than the usual chaos of government, that is) as an explanatory factor.
Fortunately, with the UK being a major transport hub, they never had that option. It was probably spreading here by December 2019, and certainly by January 2020.
If you dance with the 0 Covid partner who brung you, you can’t stop mid-song. You are in for the whole dance marathon.
It will be interesting to see the cost per life saved when it is all calculated a few years from now and see if these leaders are still praised or treated like Blair 3 years after Iraq began.
Meanwhile, in Nashville, Tennessee… Since Covid restrictions were lifted in late April, hospitalisations and deaths in Tennessee have continued to fall.
https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1412705618985693188
..
We have disappeared down not just the rabbit hole but a new extension to the hole…this is surreal. The world is being turned upside down because of a garden-variety virus that has OBVIOUSLY been manipulated and exaggerated.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks it’s just never ending bollocks.
Australian authorities were seduced by our sheer good fortune in copping the onset of the virus during the southern hemisphere spring/summer which put lead in the saddlebags of the virus progression, minimising casualties, from the off. Thus, the mission-creep from ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ to ‘Zero Covid’ was too tempting to politicians and their tame public health tsars to pass up. The result? 15 state-based lockdowns and counting since the Big One of 2020. The virus was always going to win. With NSW state Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, the alleged ‘lockdown moderate’, now leading the charge pell-mell under the doona in the face of the spectre of twenty-something new WuFlu ‘cases’ a day, voices of opposition withing the state government are speaking up – the state Treasurer has opposed the week-long extension of ‘Glorious Gladys’s’ lockdown whilst Health Minister (Brad ‘Health’ Hazzard) is testing the waters by talking of the necessity of ‘learning to live with’ Covid rather than eliminating it. ‘Zero Covid’ may be fraying around the political edges but the national elite consensus remains ‘vaxxing’ our way out of Zero Covid’s yo-yo lockdowns with all the infringements of medical ethics and potentially ruinous health consequences of the pharmaceutical hooch consequent… Read more »
Love the first paragraph metaphor. Authentically Oz, yes?
The Aussies are even more gullible/ stupid than us Poms! 31,000 “infections ” in a year is not an emergency ffs!
Glad I don’t live there. If I did I would have ezcaped by now to anywhere.
Aus and Zealand, you’re an absolute embarrassment, I thought BoJo and his merry band of commi geeks were bad, but you guys along with Scotland, Wales and Canada have literally lost the plot … It’s Wuhan flu and it probably disappeared back end of last year when Influenza took over it … Which is what happens to new viruses, it’s basic science we were taught in school, but they want you to forget all that …
Why do they/we keep doing this? where the hell is the proof that Lockdowns do anything other than harm? Why arent they asking for some evidence that it works? Is there something we’re all missing? (Rhetorical) Just venting. There really is no hope.
“Empty Sydney beaches suggest that locals broadly support the extension of lockdown measures. One city resident told BBC News: “We have to knock [Covid] on the head so you have to go along with [lockdown].”
Don’t they know about the countries and States that haven’t locked down or stopped locking down ages ago?
330 cases in a population of almost six million. The proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.
I thought that larrakin Australians would have rebelled against all of this lockdown nonsense.