New South Wales is one of the most vaccinated jurisdictions on earth. You will note that our case numbers have surged but NOT our hospitalisations ie the Vaccines work. Those peddling Omicron hysteria on case numbers (& ignoring hospitals) are malignants pushing an anti-Vax case.
The Australian Capital Territory (our capital/public service jurisdiction) is heavily vaccinated & has new cases but not new hospitalisation pressures.
TL:DR our Vaccines are highly efficacious and, so far, the Vaccines mean that even when we experience a dramatic rise in new Covid cases, the hospital system is not burdened with new cases, especially not intensive care units.
Whatever else we disagree on: if you are remotely sensible politically, you have a duty, where the vaccine efficacy evidence verges on the overwhelming, to push back equally against both the anti vax lunatics/grifters & the media’s rampant Covid hysterics still stuck in 2020.
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Not sure why Australia is trending here but my reminder we are one of the most vaccinated nations on earth & many now getting their boosters. Clearly, vast majority of Australians are neither anti-vaxx cranks nor covid doomers. Be suspicious of anyone saying a video is from here
If there has been one upside to Covid, it has been, to borrow the Biblical metaphor, to bring us all into the light & so we can see people and things as they truly are. The sheer number of very online people who have used Covid to grift off people's fears has shocked even me.
Whether it is people casting doubts on either the efficaciousness of Covid Vaccines or just misreporting the severity and frequency of Vaccine side effects .... We live in an age of justified public scepticism & whole cohorts of people wanting to just grift off this distrust.
It is Christmas and it is the Australian summer: if you [esp if you are in media / the ABC] want to stay home, wear a mask, perhaps two masks, you are perfectly at liberty to do so. The rest of us will make our own decisions. We are one of the most vaccinated countries on earth.
Btw get your booster shot esp if you are someone who needs boosting. Vaccinations are the way out/through this madness, as the panicked and fearmongering Media & lunatic Anti-Vaxxers join hands in the age of Omicron to say (explicitly or impliedly) they do not trust the Vaccines.
The only valid case for restrictions in 2021-2022 is if the hospital systems are being overwhelmed (noting a lot of doctors are about to go on Summer holidays, too). Absent that, we have annual Flus & Flu jabs, and we can reasonably expect Covid jabs may be an annual jab, too.
No, the ABC would never hype the most inane Covid hysteria in one of the world’s most vaccinated nations as the summer holidays and long awaited family reunions beckon … no, not at all.
Australia has, for almost 2 years, been divided from the one country we all share into the most provincial fiefdoms. No entity has now done more to spread Covid fear & hype - causing spineless Govts to close borders etc and separate families - than the ABC's resident hysterics.
Australians got vaccinated, use their QR codes, played the game etc. This has to be it. Living with Covid means living with Covid. It will be around as the Flu is around. You can get a Flu shot each year. Or not. We have had 2 years of this .... time to "Advance Australia" etc
Problem with the Ukraine is it is a Cossack descended state that is caught between what was its historically western Habsburg realm and its eastern Romanov world...which was then brutalised by the Soviets. It is different from Poland or Hungary recovering historic nations
Anyone thinking Russian war policy is Putin-driven should watch the former head of the Romanov family speaking in 1990 to William F. Buckley & note his strong scepticism of peripheral states esp Belarus & Ukraine ever being apart from Russia 🇷🇺🐻
Problem is that any sensible resolution of Russian periphery issues, esp in eastern Ukraine, is that we are ~3 months from the collapse in Afghanistan & the Russians have claims elsewhere that US weakness only encourages, esp in the Baltic & ivo Poland.
Watching this Sullivan fellow (late of Kabul infamy) brief the press on Biden-Putin discussion. Why is Biden, who spoke with Putin, not the one speaking to the press about what occurred? Even a Neville Chamberlain spoke to the crowds after Munich about 'peace in our time'.
Contrast with a year ago, when @generalkellogg advised the President, to this Sullivan fellow, who is a boy on a man's errand, is a stark one ..... the idea that the Russians (esp in Winter) fear the people who 'planned' the Afghan collapse & Kabul catastrophe is just farcical.
'President Putin was told in no uncertain terms that we will respond to him .... Also we gave him a gas pipeline to throttle the Germans with, esp in winter. The historic norms people are in charge"
As it is Christmas and I am often (for some reason) DMed about gift ideas for that hard-to-buy-for curmudgeon, here are some books that I have read or re-read this year that would make for a good & sound Christma gift. In no particular order ⬇️
Well this is in order as it is the excellent memoir of our former Governor General and most senior soldier, as well as my own former commanding General, Sir Peter Cosgrove
This by @hoyer_kat on the German Empire is superb and should be read by every sound person here