Two fairly meaty items of attitudinal polling on COVID-19 today, starting with the fortnightly Essential Research poll, which also included its monthly leadership ratings. Scott Morrison’s ratings were hardly changed, with approval steady at 50% and disapproval up one to 41%, while Anthony Albanese’s were slightly improved, with approval up three to 37% and disapproval down two to 36%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister nonetheless widened slightly, from 45-26 to 47-26. Offered a choice between the proposition that the government deserved to be re-elected and that it was “time to give someone else a go”, respondents favoured the latter over the former by 41% over 36%, which sits well with the tenor of recent voting intention polling.
On COVID-19 management, the federal government’s good rating was down two to 39% and its bad rating was up one to 36%. Of the state governments with almost meaningful sample sizes, the good rating of the New South Wales government was down two to 40%, that of the Victorian government tumbled 12 points to 44%, and the Queensland government was up a point to 67%. Of those with entirely inadequate sample sizes, the Western Australian government’s good rating was down nine to 78% and South Australia’s was up eight to 76%.
A series of questions on COVID-19 strategy produced the rather striking finding that 61% favoured the low-ball option of “less than 100 deaths per year” when asked how many would be “acceptable to ‘live with’ in Australia as lockdown restrictions are removed”. Furthermore, current lockdown restrictions remain strongly supported, with 56% in New South Wales and 57% in Victoria considering their states’ settings to be “about right”. However, the balance is tipping towards them being thought too strong, at 28% and 35% respectively, compared with too weak, at 16% and 8% respectively.
Another question found only 12% favoured Australia living with COVID-19 “even if there are hospitalisations and deaths”, compared with 44% apeice who favoured a near-zero policy and living with a few cases “even if there are hospitalisations and deaths”. There were notable differences between the lockdown states and the others: 38% in New South Wales and 37% in Victoria favoured a near-zero strategy, compared with 50% in Queensland, 51% in South Australia and 59% in Western Australia. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1100.
Also out today through the News Corp papers is a large-sample survey on COVID-19 conducted by YouGov, results from which can be viewed in The Australian here. This featured a number of questions on how things should be “when everyone has the opportunity to be fully vaccinated”, which 41% thought should mean an end to lockdowns, although a not inconsiderable 37% felt otherwise. Respondents from Western Australia were most pro-lockdown, those from New South Wales and Victoria least so. Younger respondents and parents of children in school were more likely to be pro-lockdown; those who did not wish to be vaccinated, accounting for 13% of the total sample, were most opposed.
The poll similarly found that 66% would eventually favour French-style vaccine passports for a range of public activities; 63% state borders being kept open only for the vaccinated; and 68% likewise with respect to overseas travel. Only 23% were opposed to the notion that employers should be able to demand their staff be vaccinated, compared with 69% who supported it for “frontline or public-facing jobs”, inclusive of 45% who thought it should be allowed across the board. Clear majorities were in favour of compulsory vaccinations for aged-care workers, nurses, school staff, public transport workers, take-away restaurant and food delivery workers, public servants and hospitality workers, and opinion was about evenly divided for construction workers and tradies.
Respondents were also given a choice between uncompromising anti-lockdown (“lockdowns should be ended immediately”) and pro-lockdown (“lockdowns must be part of Australia’s future until COVID-19 is completely eliminated”) positions and the much looser middle-ground option that “vaccination is the pathway to ending lockdowns”, which when you put it like that gets respective results of 14%, 22% and 64%. The survey was conducted by YouGov from August 20 to 25 from a sample of 3114.
did he also cause One Direction to split, BW?
Say no more DisplayName 🙂
So Nath is no longer Nath due to a smiting. And Lars is no longer posting either.
How fortunate that we have Hugoaugogo and Expat Follower reemerge to keep us company 🙂
The Aus:
After a disastrous 29 per cent primary vote in the 2019 federal poll in WA, senior Labor sources believe getting to 35 per cent will win the party three seats.
The ALP’s main targets are Mr Porter’s northern Perth suburbs seat of Pearce and long-time MP Steve Iron’s northeastern seat of Swan. There are also hopes to win the northeastern electorate of Hasluck off the Indigenous Australians Minister, Mr Wyatt.
ALP figures also believe they have an outside chance to gain Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie’s seat of Canning and Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Ben Morton’s electorate of Tangney.
hazza4257 at 9:24 pm
Scotty and Gladys have been doing great work campaigning for Labor in Western Australia.
I thought Nath was on a suspension rather than a ban
He’ll be back sooner rather than later .. with Mr. Bowe laying on his back with his legs in the air as per
don’t forget Palmer!
“ but yes if i were Chris Minns, i would probably be hanging out a fair bit in SW Sydney over the next 18 months years doing my best to keep that fire stoked.”
Mate, it you were Chris Minns, you’d spend the next 18 months getting your hair blow waved, in between holding intense one on one ‘strategy meetings’ with certain newly minted members of your front bench.
Sceptic @ Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 9:24 pm
So that would be the Gladys Berejiklian variant of ‘optimal’ test, trace, isolate, quarantine then? How lucky are we!
On the www, you are what you type.
Iceland is another country that certain “experts” and the media paid brief attention to as an example of how a high vaccinated country can’t get to herd immunity. Then they stopped mentioning it.
https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/iceland/
Well, they’re at 76.8% and although they did see a Delta wave, over the past month they’ve steadily whittled it down. One of those to watch. They’re also headed to over 80% (real percentage).
Griff
Gladys telegraphed months ago that the contact tracing would be dropped.
Without this, R will never be below 1.0. Welcome to India/Brazil.
This is going to cause ructions within the various health districts and contact tracing teams.
chris who?
was he the guy who popped up arguing for more visible leadership, and got himself in to cut through, and was never seen again. if he can’t score points at present , then when?
Cud “when cases/hospitalisations don’t peak in mid October”
well, to be fair, that wouldnt be going tits up because we opened up prematurely after hitting a supposedly threshold vax rate – would it?
from that it sounds like you’re predicting November case counts of 5000/day or more?
Andrew from Earlwood: Mins has it in the bag 18 months from now, that is confident. Hope memories are long enough to remember this period but not long enough to remember happy days of NSW Labor past. We shall see…
cud chewer,
Well it isn’t going to be Doherty modelling compliant either. Partial TTIQ and baseline minimal density/capacity restrictions contribute the MAJORITY of the dampening effect of restrictions and vaccination combined (from an R0 of 8 to a Reff below 4). See Figure 1.1 on page 10 of the report.
https://www.doherty.edu.au/uploads/content_doc/DohertyModelling_NationalPlan_and_Addendum_20210810.pdf
In their words: “Maintaining a rapid and highly effective TTIQ response capacity is critical for ongoing epidemic control”
Oh Dear!
Any chance a so-called journalist will ask how this possibly could be compliant with the Doherty modelling sometime?
“ Andrew from Earlwood: Mins has it in the bag 18 months from now, that is confident. Hope memories are long enough to remember this period but not long enough to remember happy days of NSW Labor past. We shall see…”
If you thought i was implying that Minns ‘has it in the bag’ then i must have been waaay too cryptic. My bad.
“Re-opening” has not been defined.
We hit their nominated number and then …. ? Drop *all* health measures and go about as we did before the pandemic hit, except for vaccinations? If case numbers keep going up, do nothing because doing any more is not part of the plan? That’s not a plan, that’s a gamble. Or wishful thinking. Where’s the *how*? Or do we consider such questions to be “fearmongering”?
It’s an easy gamble for a federal government who can just leave the implementation to the states. Take credit if it works. Lay blame if it doesn’t. That’s not leadership. That’s playing everyone for suckers.
hazza4257 @ #1148 Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 – 9:24 pm
They always say that sort of thing when Labor are up in the polls, then make a determined effort to tear them down between now and the election. Then, after the election they go, ‘Hail, Scott the Miracle Man!’ 🙂
That sort of reporting, as quoted above, is also the cue for the Coalition to start their, ‘measuring the drapes in The Lodge’, BS.
So…where did Gaslight Gladys announce an end t contract tracing?? Surely that would invalidate the current “National Plan” and any claim that its based on the Doherty modeling?
It’s an easy gamble for a federal government who can just leave the implementation to the states. Take credit if it works. Lay blame if it doesn’t. That’s not leadership. That’s playing everyone for suckers.
If you hadn’t already figured it out, that’s exactly what he does. 😉
It’s easy for Mr All Care And No Responsibilty to make promises, and criticise those who have to carry out the actual work for being reluctant to make promises.
Barr was very clear that he wanted people to stop using the term “opening up”.
The ACT’s approach will be very gradual, even possibly too gradual. He is under the impression the other leaders are of mostly the same mind that it is not intended to be a Freedom Day – where suddenly there are no restrictions and everything returns to the way it was before and certainly some conditions will remain in place for some time after *insert magic number here* is reached.
We just have the SMH article that Skeptic linked on the previous page imacca. No direct quote that I can see, but we have this:
“Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello said updates to the Service NSW app will be critical as the state learns to live with COVID-19. The function will mean NSW Health can scale back the number of workers on the ground investigating who has been at a venue at a certain time when a COVID-19 positive case visited.
The alert function will trigger an automatic notification for people who have checked in to a venue that is later identified as a venue of concern. The alert will also be listed in the app’s check-in history. It will be included in an update of the app in late September.”
Oh Dear! I hope it is a thought bubble that Dr Kerry Chant can pop.
Andrew – ah, its hard to distinguish sarcasm from blind overconfidence here sometimes!
Contact tracing capacity is broken now. Not being abandoned permanently, but with numbers at this level just cannot keep up. Suggesting this means it wont exist in conjunction with a high vax world (thus rendering the Doherty modelled outcome impossible) is a tad misleading. Thats endgame state – a point we are far away from right now, conceded.
jt
So there’s our answer. The states are doing the actual planning.
No point going to ScoMo for answers because he doesn’t have any. He’s like that manager who needs to be seen to be doing something so spends all his time getting in the way of the people who are doing the actual work.
Expat
“from that it sounds like you’re predicting November case counts of 5000/day or more?”
More. Far more. On the present trend we hit 4,000 by the end of September. The only way we don’t go over 5,000 is if the most optimistic assumptions about the effect of vaccination prove true (I’m willing to believe this is possible) and Gladys doesn’t alter the current lockdown in a substantive way (in a way that doesn’t add 0.2 to 0.5 to R). That’s very unlikely. On top of that, behaviour will shift and become more permissive, even in the absence of changes to formal lockdown rules. Gladys, again, has ensure this by putting the wrong ideas in people’s heads.
R is now around 1.25/1.3. Vaccination could bring this down to 0.8 by mid October. But contrary to this, you could add another 0.6 to 0.8 to R accounting for behavioural shifts and formal easings.
Bottom line, R will remain over 1.0 well into November. Cases could easily escalate well beyond 10,000 and Gladys is going to wear this shit.
Bear in mind also that about 2-3% of covid cases end up in ICU. At 2% and 10,000 cases per day, that’s 2,800 ICU beds occupied. NSW has a capacity of about 800. You can now contemplate the political implications. Horror stories. People dying from things unrelated to covid because of lack of resources. People being transferred interstate. And more than this, Gladys being wedged between an R value of over 1.0, with an uncooperative populace, needing to re-tighten restrictions and on the other hand, the “let it rip” crowd in full chorus and riots in Parramatta.
This would be a popcorn moment if it wasn’t so fucking sad, and unnecesary.
JT:
“He is under the impression the other leaders are of mostly the same mind that it is not intended to be a Freedom Day – where suddenly there are no restrictions and everything returns to the way it was before and certainly some conditions will remain in place for some time after *insert magic number here* is reached”
is it remotely possible that ‘other leaders mostly of the same mind’ ultimately includes ScoMo & Gladys?
the idea, dare i say conviction, that ScoMo is absolutely committed to declaring “freedom day” at the first possible trigger opportunity i suspect will prove misplaced.
EF
I’d agree with that. He’s just committed to setting up a story.
Labor’s response that it’s up to the states is really no different to how things will work under Morrison’s “plan”.
Cud:
“Bear in mind also that about 2-3% of covid cases end up in ICU” – surely that is not independent of what vaccine level we have reached? (assuming one accepts that being vaccinated reduces one’s risk of serious adverse health impact)
Expat
“Contact tracing capacity is broken now. Not being abandoned permanently,”
Its permanently broken. You don’t get your contact tracing back to doing anything meaningful until you get back to under about 200 cases per day. And if you think that’s going to happen, you need to think again. We’re going into the thousands. We’ll be lucky to avoid the 10,000 mark. For the reasons I described, R = 1.0 will only ever be possible in circumstances where we have very high vaccination rates (genuine 80+) and we can block all non vaccinated people from practically any social venue and we can vaccinate children and we focus a lot more on ventilation in places like schools and we allow/encourage frequent do it yourself testing and we have indoor masks. All of that and we might get R back under 1.0 and we might get cases back to where contact tracing makes any real difference.
But that’s not for many months. The brakes (contact tracing) are burnt. Gone bye bye. We’re in this shit for real now.
You know the sad thing is that what we need to do to bring cases back to that 200 mark (where contact tracing has much effect) is exactly what we need to do (see above) to have effective herd immunity. But to get there, the likes of Gladys need to recant their mistakes and we need social license for all those things I described. Gonna be hard after Gladys and Scomo have told everyone they can go back to normal, isn’t it.
There are a million ways this could go and the handful of possible futures where sense prevails and we get back to a handful of cases all depend on having a competent government. Yep, we’re fucked. Have a good night.
So the missus and I started watching the wonderful Apple TV series Ted Lasso this week, and in the episode we watched tonight, Ted misattributes a quote to Walt Whitman in saying “be curious, not judgemental”. For some reason, it made me think of many on here. Not sure why.
Night all – hope you have the sleep of the righteous.
Display Name,
yes he is setting up a story, and intends i think to push on a marginal basis for more aggressive relaxation relative to Labor with the hope of exploiting what is really a small ‘gap’ between them for electoral purposes.
and, on the off chance, we all line up with relaxation on acceptable grounds – he intends to parade himself as the leader who drove us there in spite of dastardly resistance… again for electoral purposes.
better watch out, better not cry – Santa Claus is coming to town… that is his schtick, and i wouldnt underestimate it
Expat
“surely that is not independent of what vaccine level we have reached? ”
I’ve already factored this in: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/covid-19/Documents/in-focus/hospitalisations.pdf – about 4.1% without vaccines.
Hugo, take this mirror with you.
Cud, that is dark dude! But if many months is your timeframe, then i agree whether we hit the armageddon levels you project or not.
The point where supply flips on demand then the case for being savage on unvaxxed adults (at least) becomes compelling. So i see much of what you are saying actually transpiring, all the rhetoric (and hysterical reaction thereto) notwithstanding.
10,000 cases per day is a prediction of note. We’ll both obviously be happy if it proves significantly highside. There is a panic point i feel where people will rush for astrazeneca (if not invermectin or bleach), NSW is nowhere near that yet. Multiple thousands per day could be a different story
Expat
The Doherty modelling assumes that 33% of expected deaths (in the first 180 days) will occur in fully vaccinated individuals. There will be a large number of fully vaccinated people over 70 years old needing hospitalization. In addition, many of the remaining 36% of the population (9,180,000) who are either not yet fully vaccinated or who refuse to get vaccinated will also require hospitalization.
@NYTimes tweets
Climate shocks are pushing small rural communities in the U.S. to the brink of financial collapse. Rather than bouncing back, places hit repeatedly by hurricanes, floods and wildfires are unraveling.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/climate/climate-towns-bankruptcy.html
SamraTW @ #1185 Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 – 10:21 pm
In other words, a broken health system.
The hospitals will have to triage, and they better do it on the basis of putting any adult who refused a vaccine to the back of the queue. Giving those people priority over any adult who has done the right thing, or any child, would cause riots.
An opinion piece in the SMH, posted in full as it came in an email and I can’t locate it on the site:
[‘What we’re talking about: the unity of our federation
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared yesterday that it was “impossible” to eliminate the Delta strain of COVID-19. In doing so, she made it very clear that from now on, NSW will be living with this virus.
Other Australian states are not so keen to embrace her vision of the future. And these states just happen to be home to a host of marginal federal seats. It seems we are in for a cracker of a federal election within the next nine months, in which the federal-state tensions that have plagued the nation for the past 20 months will come to a head.
Even though the states agreed to a plan to reopen at national cabinet only last month, sticking to that agreement is looking increasingly unappetising for the COVID-free states, as NSW records more than 1000 cases a day and today, seven deaths in 24 hours.
In an excellent piece of analysis, political commentator George Megalogenis explains the complicated electoral scenario facing Prime Minister Scott Morrison, as he juggles the 60 per cent of voters in lockdown with the 40 per cent who are not. He says Morrison is struggling to resolve this “dilemma of the federation”.
“The national cabinet plan is inherently biased against the states that have successfully suppressed the virus. This is an unavoidable fact of reopening: at some point the states which have enjoyed a year or more without any deaths to COVID will have to accept the risk of fatalities being imported from a rival state.”
Megalogenis says Morrison lacks the subtlety for this conversation but he’s going to have to face it sooner or later. And when you do the maths, it makes political sense for him to back NSW in its push to reopen.
“I am not suggesting that the Prime Minister is putting the pendulum ahead of the epidemiology,” he writes. “But his political interests do align with a NSW-first approach to this phase of the pandemic.”
Yet as political editor Peter Hartcher makes clear, in a piece that details how strained relations are between the Prime Minister and the different premiers, the fact Morrison’s interests lie with supporting NSW does not mean he’s found an ally in Berejiklian.
He says the NSW Premier is still seething over Morrison’s office backgrounding reporters against her and, in private, she calls Morrison a “bully”. Her government is firmly of the view that Morrison is not the Prime Minister for NSW, so much as the Prime Minister for Morrison himself.
Nine political editor Chris Uhlmann has some particularly harsh words for West Australian leader Mark McGowan. He says McGowan is hiding from his people the inevitability of the virus making its way into the “hermit kingdom” and he asks why the rest of the nation should have to be held back by the state with the slowest vaccine rollout.
In 1891, the father of federation, Sir Henry Parkes, called for states to put aside their differences and embrace the benefits of being a united nation. “The time has come for union,” he said. “…Those who are against us must be in favour of distraction and turmoil and dissension.”
Parkes’ wish was fulfilled posthumously when Australia became a federation in 1901. It seems, however, that turmoil and dissension came along for the ride.’]
Expat
“The point where supply flips on demand ”
Well, I saw on TV tonight, Kate Washington talking about hundreds of emails from people who can’t get their vax appointment until November or December. These people vote.
of putting any adult who refused a vaccine
Should be
of putting any adult with COVID who refused a vaccine
Expat
In addition to what SamraTW says, risk of death from covid escalates steeply with the elderly. So much so that a fully vaccinated person at 70 has the same risk as a non vaccinated person at 50. This is why there is a spillover of death into the vaccinated and its largely in the 60+ group. Far too many people have been given the impression by the media and nasty politicians (Gladys/Scomo) that vaccination is a magic shield. The reality is that case numbers still matter. You only have to look at the 120-140 deaths per day in the UK to understand this.
Samra,
Does the Doherty model assume that 33% of deaths come from vaccinated people or project such?
Given that the current proportion in the USA is <1% of covid deaths in fully vaccinated people, that seems highly variant (pardon the pun)
Mavis
Chris Uhlmann is a turkey.
“hundreds of people who cant get their vax appointment until November or December”
that is a reflection of current supply
all projections i am seeing envisage Nov/Dec as this supply-demand flip point, i never suggested it was now. We could be there now but for the hatchet job done on AstraZeneca, and all efforts to put that toothpaste back in the tube are hopeless (barring mass panic associated with massive infection rates, which even curr NSW isnt even close).
these people currently waiting do indeed vote, which is why anyone suggesting ScoMo will go to an election before vax supply is sorted are dreaming. How these people vote after being vaccinated and then being presented with a choice to get lives back or continue on in hermit kingdom living is the $64m question, not how they would vote now (which is #n/a)
Expat Follower @ #1191 Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 – 11:12 pm
In the UK covid is taking vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.
guytaur @ #1185 Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 – 11:07 pm
They’re getting what they repeatedly asked for. Are we meant to suddenly feel sympathy for people who’ve been warned for decades about what’s coming, now that the consequences are finally starting to arrive?
They’ve gleefully voted agaisnt action, science, common sense, and their own self-interest for years because “sticking it to those libtard elitists”. Unraveling is a karmically suitable outcome.
Cud Chewer:
Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 11:15 pm
[‘Mavis
Chris Uhlmann is a turkey.’]
Yep, I’d agree with that. His criticism of McGowan is ludicrous when taking into account his success with C.19 and the fact he delivers surpluses at a time when most, if not all, other jurisdictions are deeply in the red.
Expat
The death numbers assumed by the Doherty Institute modelling are in black and white. Morrison and Gladys (and most of the media) seem to take the Doherty modelling as gospel (except when they don’t). The Doherty Institute must have some evidentiary basis for assuming one-third of the deaths will occur in the fully vaccinated. I mean you can either ‘trust’ the Morrison Government sanctioned modelling or not. It is up to you really.
Age Health reporter Aisha Dow on how important Victoria’s lockdowns have been fro keeping alive both Victorians and Australians:
After more than 210 days of lockdown for Melbourne, and longer in some hotspot suburbs, Premier Daniel Andrews declared on Wednesday that the dream of “COVID Zero” was over. It’s unlikely that coronavirus case numbers can be brought down, at least for the short term.
The focus will now shift to slowing the spread of the infectious Delta strain as we race to get vaccinations to a level that will avoid our hospitals being overwhelmed.
Whatever your views on the restrictions we have faced, this news could have left you feeling like the sacrifices we’ve made since March last year have been for nothing.
…………
But it has not been a waste. Our collective efforts have saved many thousands of lives; and those Australians living in relative freedom in other states can partly thank Victorians for that.
…… the scenario that we avoided in 2020, before any vaccines had arrived, remains our greatest achievement to date. While about 800 people died in Victoria’s second wave, you only need to look at places like Britain and the US to realise it could have been far worse.
If we’d seen deaths at a similar rate to those experienced in Britain in Victoria, there could have been roughly 15,000 socially distanced funerals.
Stephen Warrillow, the director of intensive care at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital said while he’d love to say hard-working doctors and nurses had saved the day, the real credit lay with the community at large.
If Victoria hadn’t endured its longest lockdown, more people would have died preventable deaths, of COVID but also of other things.
“I guess it’s easy to forget what happened in northern Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States,” said Associate Professor Warrillow.
“We would have our own particular version of the situation here in Victoria. Intensive care would have absolutely been full of COVID and we would have struggled to manage anything else.”
Crucially (and this is perhaps the main point) Melbourne’s 110-plus days in lockdown in 2020 also bought Victoria and the rest of the country valuable time for vaccination.
This is probably best illustrated by NSW’s second wave, which is now much larger than Victoria’s 2020 outbreak but has led to far fewer deaths because by the time it took hold a large proportion of the older population had received at least one vaccination dose.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/thank-you-victoria-your-sacrifices-have-not-been-in-vain-20210902-p58o3u.html
”
C@tmommasays:
Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 10:06 pm
hazza4257 @ #1148 Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 – 9:24 pm
From The Australian:
“Senior WA Labor sources say Anthony Albanese is on track to gain as many as four seats from the Liberals, including those of ministers Christian Porter and Ken Wyatt, amid Mr McGowan’s sky-high popularity and concerns over borders and vaccines.”
That’s the view from the horse’s mouth.
They always say that sort of thing when Labor are up in the polls, then make a determined effort to tear them down between now and the election. Then, after the election they go, ‘Hail, Scott the Miracle Man!’
That sort of reporting, as quoted above, is also the cue for the Coalition to start their, ‘measuring the drapes in The Lodge’, BS.
”
From what D&M explained in some previous posts ‘Senior WA Labor sources” are people like D&M, AE and C@tmomma from whom Murdoch hacks gather some feelpinions (not facts) in their unguarded moments and report them as facts (please note the paragraph is not in anyway an insult to any of the above 3). D&M posted that D&M is nowadays very careful with people like that.
So I will not get carried away by stories like above story in Murdoch rag.
a r / cud, i see the basis for the assumption now
of course fully vaccinated covid deaths will be > 0, and the higher the % of your population that is vaxxed then the absolute number of vaxxed covid deaths could materially compare to the absolute number of unvaxxed covid deaths… but the point is that it is at a tiny fraction of the rate infected as unvaccinated with the same risk profile (age, underlying condition)
i mean at 95% fully vaccinated, the numbers could even be equal between the two groups
is that an argument for only being able to lift restrictions when covid is eradicated?
its an insane proposition as a serious policy to hold, so what we are always debating about is where the trade-off makes utilitarian sense