Australian gov't faces pressure to reinstate COVID quarantine pay

BigYenToday  12:31 pm JST

Australia’s Opposition, the recently defeated Liberal Party, has joined in the calls to reinstate the compensation. That’s odd, considering that before they lost the election, less than two months ago, they’d announced they were going to end it.

Can't say I disagree with you. The Coalition can say anything they like, since nobody's going to listen to them anyway. Burned too many bridges.

Instead of a ZeroCovid strategy extinguishing the viruses once and for all, that preferred living with the viruses seems to bring lot of ‘fun’ into society with every next mass infection wave. Delivered as ordered.

So this terribly disruptive Covid, which suddenly appeared in early 2020 and keeps mutating and coming back like a determined vampire, which has upended so much of our lives, separated people, caused billions of dollars worth of debts, etc., is such a gigantic threat, and yet no one seems to care anymore where it came from. There's no investigation or inquiry, just a passive acceptance that it started in 2020, as if it fell from the sky.

....total federal support since the pandemic began is estimated to be over A$300 billion.

Japan’s probably spent something similar. Completely different beneficiaries, however, and that makes all the difference in the world.

compensation pay for casual workers forced to isolate due to COVID-19

end date of June 30 for quarantine pay of up to A$750 ($500) for casual workers was put in place by the previous Liberal-National coalition government.

We inherited these decisions, but we also inherited a trillion dollars of debt

And WHO is going to end up paying for that debt, the people in extra taxes and/or reduced services

The pandemic is far from over. BA4 and BA5 Omicron variants are right now having vaccines tailored for them as they are able to evade current vaccines and resistance from having previous versions of Covid. It will take six months or more for the new vaccines to be readily available and by then it will have mutated again. The question will be as always, are current, past or new vaccines effective or not. For the next few year getting up to 3 or 4 vaccines per year, modified for the dominant variant in play may be required, to minimize hospitalizations and deaths.

As the worlds average temperature continues to rise, it has been warned that old diseases could mutate and once again become deadly, as well as new diseases being unleashed on humans and perhaps other animals.

Climate change whether man made or not, is altering life from microbes upwards to live and survive in hotter temperatures. We are after all, products of our environment and we change to adapt to environmental changes. Microbes and bacteria do it much faster than we do.

I had my second booster shot today, for the old variants, and expect to get a third boosted in six months or so when the new BA4/5 vaccine is available. I welcome any increase in my chances to survive Covid. Like everyone I would prefer the pandemic ends quickly but it is not up to us what nature does.

The debt incurred fighting covid, providing income to those in need, to support businesses will be paid off over time by the people, many of whom were supported when they needed it most. Nobody was left to starve and I support that. Nobody asked for covid or its consequences but as long as we survive, life goes on one way or another. Our job is to make the most of it, get through it and find a new normal while we wait for the pandemic stage to be over as it one day will be.

Hang in there and be as positive as you can be.

A renewed surge in cases fueled by the BA.4/5 Omicron coronavirus variants have put Australia's health system on alert with the total number of people admitted to hospitals from COVID-19 not far away from record levels seen earlier this year.

Australia did very well keeping infections low with its zero covid policy but as soon as it eased restrictions the infections and related deaths skyrocketed, and its economy has been taking a hard hit too.

Since the pandemic began, Australia has reported about 8.7 million cases and 10,549 deaths, far lower than many countries.

Almost 30% of Australians have been infected. The overall numbers are low compared to other countries because it has such a small population.

Compared to a major city in China, Australia has done extremely poor.

CCP numbers are not even remotely trustworthy

I actually trust CCP numbers more from the way they’ve tried to control the virus. Have the West followed China and applied Zero Covid policy, the virus spread would have been curbed and eradicated. Now, many people in the West have to endure pain and suffering from the long Covid and shorter life span, too bad.