Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
Even if you are uncomfortable with how quickly the vaccines were rolled out, the problem with shuffling is that there were no risk free options on the table. If the world had listened to Shuffle, how many additional COVID deaths would result? I can't even guess, but in the millions worldwide to be sure. And the incremental economic, psychological and non-COVID health effects would be enormous.
And if only one country -- say, the U.S. -- had listened to Shuffle, then you would have had the added problem of the U.S. becoming a pariah as the rest of the world got vaccinated. Again, the economic effects of that policy would have been disastrous.
This is exactly the problem Australia has with its COVID-Zero policy.
Every individual state has had the power to lockout other states when they have outbreaks. Some do it at the drop of a hat, and some are more lenient. The most lenient state has had an outbreak, and its only now that the lenient states are closing off to them. What would have happened before with single figure cases is that the state locks down for a few days closing bars and some retail, the couple cases and their contacts are isolated and within a week things are back to fairly normal (we had a lockdown in my city a month ago, within two weeks we had 30,000 people at a football game with zero masks).
However, by waiting so long NSW has a comedown that if they want to get to 0, is going to take months, not days or weeks. So either they have to suck it up and do it, or abandon the plan and live with it. And if they do live with it, my guess is that my state (and the rest) just close the door on the them for the next 6 months until the vaccine rates are at an acceptable level (Australia is well behind the rest of the world).