What would have happened if there was no vaccine and mandated program?
How many people would have died worldwide? Estimates suggest the death toll would have been 6 times greater, and that vaccination saved around 20 million lives in the first year alone.
Would our health systems have collapsed under the burden of overwhelming numbers of patients? I was working in a healthcare facility at the time - we managed to keep our head above water, just. If the patient numbers had even gone up by 20%, I think we would have been turning seriously-ill patients away.
This is something that often gets overlooked in all of this. How many people would have died because they couldn't get access to doctors/hospitals etc because they were overrun with covid patients.
People forget about the early days of COVID. Remember people singing from their balconies in Italy? They were in lockdown early on. There was people dead inside those same areas who could not get access to help. They couldn't even get people to come and collect bodies. That is 'middle ages' stuff. Thats a small example of what overrun healthcare systems can look like.
Had there been no lockdowns and no vaccine, the death toll from covid would've sky rocketted. The death toll from other diseases would've skyrocketted as well. I've got no doubt that this would've encouraged riots/looting etc because 'the government failed to keep people safe' and society would've been worse off as a result.
It doesn't take much for society to go balls up. Look at how everyone reacted to toilet paper FFS. Imagine instead of a shortage of TP there was a shortage of medicine and medical treatments. A shortage of healthcare for mothers giving birth and infants. Elderly unable to be looked after regularly like they required.
Take away some basic things you take for granted - water, food, healthcare and people will go nuts.
Do we make anything of Z Williams playing across half back for the all-stars?
The all-stars always have a larger than normal number of small forward options available to them.
Not as many wise heads who have done their time at half back by comparison.
Zac is no spring chicken. He is holding a spot in the forward line until the new breed come through. We don't need him to do the same at half back because we have a few old heads there already, as well as some new kids coming through.
IMO Zac will still start forward with us. Injuries, form and circumstances may change that though.
Whilst we may be focussing on the important impacts on physical health during the pandemic (in some areas, still continuing), there was an another every bit as terrible (in some respects, worse) impact which still lingers - mental health. 1. Every day folk. Very well documented were the adverse effects of lockdowns (let's resist the urge for hindsight condemnations of governments). Anxiety, depression and other impacts on mental health rose, significantly. Then consider the ongoing effects of these stressors after the lockdowns. Alcohol consumption also rose, significantly... as did domestic violence. Believe it or not, mental health professionals are still dealing with and treating effected folks. 2. Caregivers/community support workers. This includes psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, counsellors/therapists, doctors, nurses, police, ambos... etc. These folks, already dealing with 'vicarious trauma' in their professional lives (this also includes firies), were pushed even harder during the pandemic. Too many had no other option than to leave, or take extended leave. Anecdotally (for Shawny's benefit ) these impacts are still being felt today.
No doubt.
Playing devils advocate though, there is another side of that story.
Personally, i had very little issues with lockdowns. Even if my 40th birthday was restricted to a teams meeting. I enjoyed the time around the house to do things that hadn't had time to do for years. I enjoyed reduced traffic when i was allowed to work (which was most of the time).
Working from home became a thing and plenty of people are continuing to reap the benefits of that. Which is improving peoples mental health. This is true for both adults and kids who now may get to see their parents a bit more thanks to being home more.
Yes, the businesses in and around the city struggled with the reduced number of available customers, but at the same time, businesses in the 'burbs managed to pick up the slack and benefit from it....continuing now.
I don't discount the issues it has created in some areas. I think it needs to be said that there were definite benefits in others areas though.
You have to have your own game style and not try and emulate or compete with other teams perfected game style.
If you try and copy another team, you are always playing catchup and won't be as good at it. In the meantime, something completely different might become 'the new way' and you are left trying again.
Much better to play to your strengths and not play catchup elsewhere.
The vaccines did have serious side effects on some people. Elwood thanks for sharing your story, my father in law was told by his oncologist not to get a second shot after the first one put him in hospital.
Did he have a known heart condition before the vaccine?
The vaccines did have serious side effects on some people. Elwood thanks for sharing your story, my father in law was told by his oncologist not to get a second shot after the first one put him in hospital.
MBB, Hope your Father in law is doing better with his health, there needed to be pre testing for folk with serious pre existing conditions.
A lot of the people who had heart issues didn't know they had 'pre existing issues'until they got sick.
When you do rehab and nearly everyone is under 30 and all had heart attacks 3-4 weeks after boosters and the staff say they have never seen numbers in that age group like that before then I don't see it as a coincidence.
There is certainly a chance it could be a coincidence.
Regardless, how many people in the same age group ended up dead with Covid without the vaccine? How many people did they infect and ended up dead as well? Etc.
In the end, there might be some risk with the vaccine. But the risk is less than that of covid. So why risk it?
MBB, I've giving up replying to him now. I understand why Kruddler got so frustrated.
Never reads what he is replying to properly as he is too excited to write his typical rambling reply.
Waste of time
Looks like I have great efficacy in the fight against bullsh1t!
I agree with your Covid stance. My wife is a microbioligist who works in vaccine manufacturing so have some inside knowledge your average joe does not.
But.....Shawny is 100% right about you skimming posts and missing the point of a large number of posts. There are a handful of people on this site that have said the same thing. Take it as constructive criticism and be better at it.
Pitto seems to think that he will be rucking in tandem with TDK and has been working on strengthening the non-ruck aspects of his game.
If he wants to ruck at all he needs to work on that part of his game. TDK is getting picked ahead of him. So he either adapts of waits in the 2's.
I think Pittos ruck craft is elite, so no point training that side of things excessively. Spend time getting him right elsewhere. TDK on the other hand needs to improve his ruck craft........or improve the consistency of his forward craft. Around the ground he is good without being great.
If we could combine the 2, we'd be unstoppable.
Still think we are better off switching Harry in the ruck as it actually improves his confidence and thus his forward craft on the back of it.
People continue to blame Dan Andrews for the lockdowns.
People should look in the mirror.
People refusing to go into lockdown is what caused the continuation of the lockdowns.
I've said it all along. Dan Andrews biggest mistake was trusting people to do the right thing. If we did. It never would've been an issue and never would've got to the stage it did.
Thry, As best as i can tell your biggest issue is with the population figures quoted and that not lining up with what you deemed normal for other parts of the world. Is that a fair comment?
My question to that is, how the hell did anyone come up with any kind of estimate 200+ years ago that was even slightly accurate?
Looking at Perth as an example. The Dutch first arrived late 1600s. French early 1800s. Wasn't until 1830ish that anyone thought enough of it to do something with it. Cook was long dead before any of that (post Dutch) so how could he provide an estimate on anything happening outside of his little area on the east coast?
Australia is a huge country with every kind of biome spread between its sea borders. Any kind of extrapolation for population figures are going to be far from accurate that long ago.
Don't forget, cook wasn't the first white man to arrive......and you are putting a lot of faith in some of these estimates, which is can't fathom how those numbers came to be.
The Dutch stumbled upon us a lot earlier than him and may have indirectly attributed to a decline in numbers.
All in all, I don't think it's one factor, but a combination of everything that's been mentioned.
20,000 years ago the coastal water around australia were 120m lower than it is now. Dramatic difference to how things are today, absolutely.
Where do people live nowadays? On the coast. Where did people live then? Probably on the coast.
I think it was thry that asked where is the evidence and bones? Perhaps we need to check where the old coast was.....which is now completely underwater.
So lower populations were spread out over various areas that are now underwater and have 'created' islands. No stretch to think that these new islands meant resources available dwindled and so did the populations to the point it reached 0 in these areas, thus stunting the population growth rates compared to the rest of the world.
Again, when they hit australia, there was a dead end and no major lands to explore. where they spread out to is now underwater and/or was unreachable for 'technology' at the time.
I'm not sure what you expect.
I dont expect anything just asking questions.
Entire populations may have shifted but we are at 1 million indigenous Australians today.
Samoa is a dot in the pacific ocean. As of 2023, population of 225681 people and 96%. Earliest signs of humans there is 3000 years ago. I get it, things are or were different in Australia.
I get that 200 years ago European settlement impacted these populations, but you can't deny in a country of this size, there likely should be significantly more indigenous people given the timeline quoted.
It's not a country it's a continent, that has/had 250 nations, and 65000 years of continuous inhabitants.
The Maori people of new Zealand first arrived there in 1250 odd AD, supplanted the previous land holders (the moriori) and in 1769 when cook got there he, estimated their number at 110000 odd people.
You know it actually doesn't change anything either? They were still here first, but maybe for not as long as asserted.
Djc is much more knowledgeable on the topic and will provide his own answers, but you seem to be missing an important factor, or at least downplaying it's importance.
The 'white man' factor. Disease. Genocide. Even not too long ago you talk about the stolen generation. Indigenous people have not been treated well.
Another factor which you touched on in your comparisons is shear size.
Growth is somewhat exponential. That growth depends on starting numbers. The more spread out you get, the more numbers are not in the original location the longer it takes those numbers to grow. Higher growth comes from higher population density.
New Zealand, Samoa etc have a lot smaller borders and can contain a much quicker growth rate.
I think those 2 factors cannot be underestimated in the comparisons.