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BONUS: Josh’s Covid Lockdown Thoughts · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans. We have a terrific episode for you this week. It's just not this episode.
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This episode is
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terrific, but it's not the one that you're actually supposed to be listening to.
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Let me explain. This week's guest is Kat Rosenfield. She is fantastic.
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I'll tell you all about her in another context. We recorded the conversation several weeks ago. Before
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more than half the population of Australia found itself in a seemingly interminable lockdown.
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And so I normally record the introductions to the episodes after. I make them a little bit
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topical and so I thought, oh, you know, I'll address the top of the lockdown in my introduction
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to the Kat Rosenfield episode. And well, 45 odd minutes later, I was still rambling about
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Australia's lockdown and how we're going to get out of it and vaccines and international
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borders and quarantine hotels and freedom protests and whatnot. And I thought that's going to be
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a little bit weird to have 45 minutes of me rambling on about the the coronavirus situation
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in Australia and then all of a sudden I'm talking to Kat Rosenfield about a whole bunch of
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completely unrelated issues. That conversation is well worth checking out. So what we're going to do
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is we'll release that as a separate episode. At the same time, Dory, not going to have to wait
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another week while you listen to me rant about coronavirus. This is just the introduction to
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the Kat Rosenfield episode, which has nothing to do with Kat Rosenfield and everything to do
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with my frustrations, your frustrations, our future communally as Australian citizens in
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coronavirus. And even if you're not Australian, this should be interesting to you because it is
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about the fundamental issues, the questions of freedom versus lockdowns, vaccinations versus
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not. I just sort of felt that I had to say something and what I expected to be a three minute
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conversation turned into a 40 plus minute conversation. So I hope this is in some way useful.
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Please enjoy Kat Rosenfield on the other episode that will drop the same day. And in the meantime,
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here's me and Koth. How are you? Australia?
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Stuck inside most likely as a majority of Australians currently are. We were doing well, weren't we?
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We were the envy of the world for a while there, at least Nisat Wales thought it was.
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And I don't remember a time when there's been the level of white hot acrimony and antagonism
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between Australian states and Australian political leaders as there is right now.
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I don't just mean I don't remember a time during this pandemic. I don't remember a time in my
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lifetime when there's been this kind of pent up rage that I feel could just burst out
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if a dedicated New South Welsh person and a dedicated Victorian came to blows. If a dedicated
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lockdowner and a dedicated freedom fighter found each other mingling in a pub, which is currently
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not open, so they wouldn't mingle. Thank God they're at home. I just want to say a few words about
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all of this before we get started today because I think we need a day-taunt. We need a time-out.
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Take a deep breath. Look out the window if there is one. The sky is still there. The clouds are
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still there. The birds are still tweeting. The trees are still alive. We're going to be okay.
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What's basically happening if you're not an Australian is that the Delta variant is upending all
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of the epidemiological assumptions that had underpinned the success of Nisat Wales in particular.
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Australia is governed our response to the pandemic in terms of lockdowns is governed by state
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governments, not the federal government. If you've seen images over the past 12 months of Australians
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enduring interminable endless lockdowns with heavy-handed police arresting people for posting
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on Facebook that they wanted to go outside and host a rally against the lockdowns and protest.
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Then you will have been seeing those images from Victoria which is the state where Melbourne is
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and whose government, centre-left government, has been extremely quick to pull the trigger on
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lockdowns, on statewide lockdowns. Very intense harsh statewide lockdowns. This is lockdown number
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five that Melbourne is currently in. It's only lockdown number two that Sydney's in because New
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South Wales is government. The state where Sydney is the most populous state in Australia has taken
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much more pro-business, much more anti-lockdown approach and Sydney has not been in a citywide
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lockdown for more than 13 months, not since the early days of the pandemic. Life has been fairly
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normal and Sydney scientists have been full of enormous sympathy for their Melbourne compatriots
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who have had to endure lockdown after lockdown after lockdown after lockdown after lockdown.
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And mixed in with that sympathy has been a certain sense of superiority from Sydney
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scientists, myself included. I confess that the Victorian government was being
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ridiculously hyper cautious and was paying no heed to the economic and cultural and social
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life of the state and of Melbourneians and was myopically fixated on maintaining zero
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community cases of coronavirus with essentially an undervaluing of mental health and community.
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And now the tables have turned and Victorians and Melbourneians and other Australians
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are furious at New South Wales for having sort of sleepwalked us all into this situation for not
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having gone into a harsher lockdown sooner and allowing the current epidemic to get someone
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out of control. When I say out of control, when I talk about British or American or European
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numbers, we're not talking about a rampant viral contagion that's endemic to the community
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at we're talking about numbers in the low triple figures of which of whom a few dozen might be
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out in the community circulating, but that's still enough to completely detonate Australia's
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policy up until this point, which has been to have diamond standard, gold standard contact
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traces who are able to hunt down every person who came in contact with any infectious person and
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get them to stay inside while the rest of the community goes about its business. That is
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impossible when you've got many dozens of cases of Delta variant circulating in the community.
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So here we are in a standoff in a stalemate with the virus. It's not exploding out of control,
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but we're essentially locked down. So who blinks first and what happens next is the big question.
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I don't blame Victorians for being angry, given that they had to endure so many lockdowns
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in order to be hyper cautious while Sydney scientists were swanning about, and that that swanning
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about has now that sort of heedlessness has led to the current predicament. But I would also say
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that hindsight is 2020 and had New South Wales had a more cautious approach
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than many more millions of people would have entered many more lockdowns over the past 12 months,
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including when there was a cluster in Avalon on Sydney's northern beaches in December,
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including when there was a cluster in Berala in Sydney in January. We would have been in and
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out and in and out of lockdowns the way that Melbourne has. And if you're very enthusiastically
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pro lockdown and you're a big supporter of the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, then you might say,
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well, yes, that's exactly what you should have been doing. This is a dangerous virus.
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You should have been erring on the side of caution all along.
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But to be fair to the New South Wales government, if you can avoid a lockdown, you should avoid
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a lockdown. If you can avoid economic devastation, you should avoid economic devastation.
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If you can avoid mental people going stir crazy inside their houses all alone, you should.
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So you should want to thread that needle as subtly with as great care, but also as
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great attention to the bigger picture as you possibly can. Now that we're in this situation,
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there's some question about what happens to Australia's vaccine stockpile because
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the vast elephant in the room here, the backdrop to all of this is that the vaccine roll out was
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completely and utterly bungled by the federal government, which as I've already mentioned in a
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previous introduction to on this on an earlier episode of this podcast, didn't even take place
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at the usual timeline of the other big anglophone democracies, the US, UK, Canada.
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They all got their Pfizer orders in last July. Canada was August 5th, a little bit later.
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The Australian government had a meeting with Pfizer, which a junior official
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did not make the greatest impression. There's some difference of opinion about in reporting,
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about whether or not this junior official was proactively aggressive and arrogant in such a way
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that alienated Pfizer and turned them off from what could have been a pilot program to dump a lot
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of Pfizer on Australia the way that they did on Israel. Whether or not that's the case,
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what we do know is that the Australian government didn't bother to place an order with Pfizer until
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October, November, at which point Pfizer laughed and said you gotta be joking. You can have 10
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million doses until we've got left for you. It's hard to understate the frustration,
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the fury that I and many Australians fail towards that lack of foresight,
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toward the inability of the federal government a year ago to look into the future and see that
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vaccines were going to be the only way out of this. And as recently as earlier this year,
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the narrative from federal officials was that the vaccine rollout is not a race.
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That's verbatim from the Prime Minister. It's not a race. Let's do it methodically.
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There's no need to fast track the approval of these vaccines. We're not in the same dire
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position that other countries are. There's no need for us to really ramp things up.
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Let's take things slowly. No need for us to hand over the vaccine responsibility,
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the administration of vaccines to the states and to give them the money and the resources that they
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need to be able to set up multiple massive vaccination hubs. We don't need to treat this as a
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quasi military style operation. All we're going to do is use the existing system of general
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practitioners and you'll be able to go to your GP and get a jab. Well,
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GPs have other things to do. It's not like GPs are sitting around all day with nothing
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else to do, apart from administer vaccine doses. And where are they getting these doses from?
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And who exactly is eligible to get the doses? Why is this not being coordinated in a systematic
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way? And why is there not someone banging on the table saying, we need more vaccines now? Why
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was that not happening in February? In March. Because there was no problem here yet. Do you have that
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little foresight that you don't see that in a global pandemic, things can change. Things might
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happen. Things might get away from you. A bloke who's unvaccinated might drive a shuttle bus with
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flight crew on it who are infected and he might catch the Delta variant and he might go home and
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see it into the community, which is exactly what happened and which is why we are where we are
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right now. Why didn't he need to be vaccinated? Why was it so hard to imagine that as soon as
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vaccines became available, you might want to ring fence the border. If there's no vaccine in the
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if there's no coronavirus in the country, endemic in the community and the all the coronavirus is
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outside of Australia, why would your first priority not be to acquire as many vaccines as you
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need to and to implement the rules that you need to to ensure that every single person who comes
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in contact with foreigners getting off planes is vaccinated. At the time, I was on the air
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on the ABC and I was asking these questions and the answer was, oh well there might be, you know,
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there might be employment law issues with requiring people to get vaccinated. It's not very consistent
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with Australians' appreciation of freedom to insist that they get vaccinated. Well okay,
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don't insist that the people who are currently driving the flight attendant shuttle buses
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around the airport get vaccinated. Just say that they will no longer be employed unless they are
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vaccinated. Only hire, limousine and shuttle bus companies, whose staff are all vaccinated.
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That's not against employment law. There are all kinds of jobs that you need to get vaccinated for,
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not for coronavirus for all sorts of other things. Nurses and doctors, they have to be vaccinated
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against all kinds of diseases. Your child has to be vaccinated to go to preschool or school.
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Just make a tiny tweak to the law. It's not even the law, just for your requirements as to who gets
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hired for what position. This is a global pandemic. What are you even talking about?
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Earlier this year, I was interviewing experts who predicted that this would happen and I thought
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it was a little bit far fetch that it would get this out of control because I thought, well,
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you can always turn the dials and going to lock down and then the numbers will come down.
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New South Wales had proven that they had built up enough experience to know what they were doing
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with the Wuhan variant or the Alpha variant. Turns out not so much with Delta.
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And the experts were saying we're not serious about getting enough vaccines. We're not serious
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anymore about checking into everywhere with QR codes, which means that life is going to be much
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more difficult for contact traces. We're not serious anymore about social distancing and masks
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the way that we used to be and we're coming into winter and coronavirus is incredibly seasonal.
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This is the other thing that people are forgetting about why we're in the pickle
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wearing and it might give you a little bit of hope as the weather starts getting nicer
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or not until fairway away yet. But there is at least a sort of meteorological end to this lockdown,
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which is that like the seasonal flu, which is 90 percent of seasonal flu occurs in winter,
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only 10 percent in summer. Just think about the other coronaviruses and their seasonality,
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other coronaviruses being things like the common cold. When you think about the amount of
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sniffly noses in winter versus summer, when you just look at, in fact, at graphs of the
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coronavirus spikes in winter in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere,
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they're perfectly inverted. I mean, you can just see how seasonal it is. The only places that get
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coronavirus outbreaks in summer are places like the American South where they almost are actively
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trying to stoke an epidemic. So these experts were saying winter's coming and we're not doing
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anything to protect ourselves against a possible leak from the hotel quarantine system.
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Not to mention the fact that we've now had a year and a half in which we could have been building
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proper quarantine facilities outside of the central urban areas of these cities. We're currently
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using hotels, ordinary hotels, which aren't set up as medical facilities, right in the middle of
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Sydney for infectious passengers to come in from overseas, returning Australians and permanent
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residents to come in from overseas and quarantine that. Now doctors and epidemiologists say,
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that's absolutely crazy. If you were going to keep an infectious person and you really wanted
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to be sure that they weren't going to get their infection released out into the community,
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you'd think you'd have things like reverse pressure rooms and doors. So you know, this just means
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this is a simple thing. They have it in all hospitals where when you're inside, there's no
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air that's leaking out from the inside of the room to the outside because it has a slightly lower
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pressure than the hallway does, which means that there's a constant slight draft coming from the
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hallway and through the door into the room rather than running the other way out. You'd create
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facilities in which there were self-contained outdoor spaces like Howard Springs in the Northern
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Territory does, which is a government run facility where some of the planes are being
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diverted to at the moment. I mean, you'd certainly be more epidemiologically sound in terms of having
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a different strategy for returning vaccinated travelers versus unvaccinated travelers. All the
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epidemiologists say that you don't actually need to have vaccinated arrivals coming into quarantine
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hotels for 14 days. They could be self-isolating at home for seven days with about the same risk as,
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in fact, less risk. The epidemiologists say that 14 days for an unvaccinated person in hotel
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quarantine. I mean, hotel quarantine is so bad in Australia that people are giving themselves
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coronavirus in hotel quarantine. People are catching it. People are coming in. They're testing negative.
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They're getting tested only a couple of times throughout the course of their stay, whereas the
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experts say that they should be being given rapid antigen tests instead of the long turnaround
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tests that are currently being used. They should be beginning rapid antigen tests almost every single
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day. Certainly, when we start introducing home quarantine, that should happen. Because what's
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happening is people getting into the home quarantine, into hotel quarantine, then at the end,
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they're testing negative. They're coming home. They're walking through the community. They're
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spreading what they don't realize is infectious coronavirus, which they caught in the hotel
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quarantine and seeding it into the community. That's what happened in South Australia. Thank God
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it wasn't Delta. They managed to lock down and get a put a lid on it. If it had been Delta,
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we could have been in this pickle many months earlier.
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So now we're trying to figure out what do we do with all this Pfizer vaccine. The
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Prime Minister is crowing about the fact that we've got a million doses arriving each week until
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the end of August. Million doses, of course, is only half a million people. You need two doses per
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person. And the New South Wales Premier is saying we desperately need it here. The whole
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national problem is centered around Southwest Sydney. It's a migrant heavy community. Many families
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are speaking English as a second language. It's one of the highest suburbs and local government
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areas in Australia for households of five people or more. So when one person gets infected,
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lots of people get infected. These are migrant families who come from communities where the idea
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of not seeing extended family is completely anathema. It's a very hard idea to get across. It's a
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major sacrifice for them. They're not tuning in to listen to the Premier Gladys Berragically
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in every day at 11 a.m. as the rest of us fancy journalistic elites are. They're just trying to
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catch up with each other. The moat look, yesterday, I'm recording this on Sunday, yesterday,
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the Health Minister Brad Hazard was essentially shaming a family out in Fairfield. It may have been
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the police minister. I'm getting people confused. I don't want to throw Brad under the bus. He's been
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doing a Titanic job for the past 18 months. Anyway, the point is that they were isolating. They were
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shining a spotlight. The public spotlight on this family who had gathered 18 people together
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in a household and they were saying, look, all of those 18 people are now infected. So don't
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be as crazy as they are. But the reality is, those people were getting together to grieve a loved
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one who died. Now, I don't know what the what the nationality of those people were. Whether
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they were all Australian or whether they were migrant families, New Australians, but they
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clearly come from a place where the idea of not gathering together to mourn a loved one is almost
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heresy. Of course, you have to come together. So what we need to do as a community is not
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finger wag at them, badger them and attack each other for following rules in ways that we don't
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quite agree with. What we need to do for them is get them vaccinated immediately. I mean,
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there should be a massive vaccination drive in South West Sydney. We don't quite have enough
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Pfizer to do it. So the New South Wales Premier is saying to the other states, can we please have
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your Pfizer now? And you can have more of ours once we get over this. And the other states are
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going but known as how dare you ask for that. The other Premier is saying not to mention the
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citizens. I mean, people on Twitter are going nuts at me for suggesting that they're saying every
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state should get its fair share of Pfizer. Yes, every state should get its fair share. And the
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share that is fair is to give it first to the people who are most at risk, which is South West
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Sydney. It is not fair to give a share to people who live in some town in Western Australia where there
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is zero chance of getting coronavirus because the state has locked its borders. Absolute madness.
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The West Australian Premier is sniping at New South Wales saying, oh, they've got to lock down
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seriously. They've got to get, they've got to do a much harsher lockdown than the lockdown that
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they currently have and we're not giving them any of our Pfizer. Oh, you mean the Pfizer that came
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through Sydney and that we sent to you, you're not going to send that back to us, the one we sent to
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you, right? How are all your people doing in Western Australia who came through Sydney's quarantine
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system? More than half of returning Australians since the start of the pandemic have come through
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Sydney. They've been staying in our hotels and they've been putting us at risk of infection. So
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you're welcome, Western Australia. Now shut up and distribute the Pfizer to where it's needed,
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which is here in Western Sydney. And now I'm doing exactly what I just said I don't want
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us all to do, which is be partisan and divisive and engage in acrimony. But it's very hard
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when there's so much politicking of something that I think should be decided
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based on health outcomes and epidemiology, not on politics. I was very critical of the Victorian
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government last year when it was locking down as frequently as it was. I've always felt that it's
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extremely important for elites who are less affected by this pandemic to understand the plight
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of working people, small business people, migrant communities and the the impacts that a lockdown
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can have on them. If you can't just sit at home on your computer, earning money as I can,
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it has real world effects to be locked down. And I support a lockdown, I support a very harsh
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lockdown if we can see the other side of it, but I don't support argy, bargy and politically
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about quasi lockdowns indefinitely and trying to play political games.
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So I think it's time for the New South Wales Premier to give Dan Andrews a bit of credit.
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I'm grateful to her for having kept Sydney open during the many small outbreaks over the past 12
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months, but it's time to say that what was the right policy for one situation may not be right in
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another and Delta is another situation. It's come time that it feels like we need to either fully
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lockdown or abandon this strategy and go home because what's the end game? People outside of
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New South Wales are looking at Sydney going, you guys aren't even fully locked down and I hear a
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lot of people from Sydney saying, what are you talking about? We basically are locked down. It's
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basically the same rules as there are in New South Wales, but that basically is doing an awful lot
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of work. I've got to tell you, from personal experience, Sydney is not locked down, the way you
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would think of a lockdown. Here's how the rules differ. In Victoria under stage four at the moment,
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masks are required anywhere in public, including outdoors. In New South Wales, they're not,
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they're required indoors and they're required outdoor shopping strips and when you're standing in
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a queue outdoors, but not when you're walking around outdoors. In Victoria, the travel radius is
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you can't go more than five kilometres from your home. In New South Wales, it's 10 kilometres
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or anywhere within your local government area unless you live in one of the three local government
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areas where the virus is most pronounced, then you can't lead to go to work. In Victoria, you can
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exercise for up to one hour with one other person. In New South Wales, you can exercise unlimited
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with one other person. In Victoria, there's a curfew from 8pm to 5am. You've got to be in your house
26:44
during that time. In New South Wales, there's no curfew. In Victoria and New South Wales, both
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food courts are closed, restaurants are closed, take away only. Non-essential retail is closed
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and workplaces are limited to critical and essential workplaces. In New South Wales, the one
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respect in which New South Wales is locked down is harder than Victoria's is that construction
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has been suspended. There are a lot of people taking advantage of the exercise loophole
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and going outside socialising. A lot of people taking advantage of the essential retail loophole.
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Essential is defined very broadly. In fact, it's not defined in New South Wales. Businesses
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are allowed to define it themselves, essentially. There is now a list of critical industries. Only
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critical retail is permitted, but it includes things like office supplies. Office works is open.
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It includes home repairs, so bunnings is open. So if you can still wander around a store
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shopping for gaffer tape and lumber, it's not a real lockdown. The streets are not deserted.
27:58
People are not trapped inside. Now, the epidemiologist in me says, well, why should you need
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to do those things? Those things aren't where people are catching the virus. I was just reading a
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piece in the New York Post, which was commenting on the mask mandate, which has just returned to
28:17
California. The New York Post, the tabloid magazine, was exhorting New York not to follow
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California's lead. And it made this point. I'm reading verbatim from the New York Post here.
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By December 2020, New York's contact tracing operation showed that 70% of New COVID-19
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cases originate from households and small gatherings. And in October, the New Jersey
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Governor said it was small household gatherings, largely driving the uptick of cases in the garden state.
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It wasn't bypassing someone on the street, right, the New York Post. It wasn't shopping or
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exercising or going to school. It was generally close contact inside homes that continued to spread
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COVID. Bringing back masks in the low-risk situations will do exactly nothing to stop COVID from
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spreading in situations such as gatherings with family and friends. That's the New York Post.
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And it's clearly the same epidemiological advice that the New South Wales Government is getting,
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which is motivating it even in this dire situation where we seem to be in a COVID-19 delta stalemate
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with the virus, unable to nudge those numbers down even in this situation. The government doesn't
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think that it's necessary to go full stage 4 style lockdown. Like stay in your house. Do not leave.
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And the reason is presumably because they realize that walking down the street or jogging along the
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beach or going for a surf or playing in a playground outdoors with your kids is not where people are
29:59
getting coronavirus. People are getting coronavirus because the large family is gathering together with
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18 people inside sharing mail and breaking bread to mourn the passing of a loved one.
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However, I can't help but share a bit of the frustration that people in other states must be
30:23
feeling towards this kind of cold calculation. Because the question for me is,
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would people be just as likely as they currently are to gather together in their homes with 18 people
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to mourn the passing of a loved one? If they could see around them that all shopping malls
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were shutted, that bunnings was closed, that office works was closed, that no one was on the street,
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that everyone on the street was wearing a mask, that their offices were all closed,
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that they weren't allowed out of their front door after 8 p.m. Even if those things make no sense
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epidemiologically, they create a culture of taking shit seriously. And so I do wonder whether or not
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Sydney is focused a little bit too much on the hyper rationality of its epidemiological experts
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and the instincts of the Premier to not lose face by having to go full Dan Andrews and essentially
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concede that she's always been wrong. Her reluctance to impose a full scale lockdown while perhaps
31:45
technically correct about the way that the virus is transmitted feeds into a sense in Sydney that the
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crisis is not as bad as it actually is. So I'd like her to be able to say,
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I got this one wrong. Pretty soon will be well vaccinated enough to tolerate someone going
32:08
level of coronavirus that's endemic in the community. I would like to hear her and the Victorian
32:16
Premier and particularly the Prime Minister say that in a world of ever changing variants and
32:25
in perfect vaccination, Australia is someday soon going to have to reopen our international
32:32
border to the rest of the world and that even if everyone we let in is vaccinated, some virus
32:39
will slip through and it may kill some Australians and that will be said but that will be worth it
32:43
as the price for living as a proudly free people but that moment is not yet because our vaccination
32:48
rates aren't high enough. So we're going to go to full scale lockdown for two weeks and we're going
32:54
to knock this thing on its head. Everything will be closed. I would respect that. I'm an aunt, I'm
33:05
instinctively anti-lockdown. I am instinctively a kind of a culturally libertarian person. I want
33:11
people to be free to express themselves, to explore, to do whatever they want. I am not a hyper cautious
33:16
person but in a case like this either suck it up or don't either go big or go home because I know
33:22
what we're doing. I don't know how long we're going to last in this quasi-lockdown until we're
33:29
saved. Look, maybe we can stay like this and get saved by a combination of the weather and higher
33:35
vaccine rates but that's going to be September, October. How much income will we have lost by then?
33:42
How many businesses will have closed? How many people will have lost their life savings? How many
33:45
people will have seen their life dreams? Their small businesses shattered by then unable to ever recover.
33:53
I mean, it may be a price worth paying to just go full, full, full, full lockdown.
34:03
And maybe in exchange for committing to that, the Premier can extract from other Premier's,
34:08
all of the fires that they've currently got. And maybe she can extract from the Prime Minister,
34:13
a promise to fast track non-urban quarantine centres so that this doesn't happen again.
34:18
If Sydney signers are going to put up with those kinds of restrictions to keep the whole of Australia
34:25
COVID-free, seeing as how we in Sydney and New South Wales contribute the plurality of taxpayer
34:32
funds to the national budget, maybe we require that custom built quarantine facilities be quickly
34:36
constructed outside the Sydney urban area. And that it only be staffed by people who are vaccinated
34:42
and who's close contacts have vaccinated and who's close contacts have closed contacts have
34:46
vaccinated. And those people will all be at the front of the queue to get vaccinated today.
34:53
If I was Premier, that's what would be happening. And if I was Premier, if you decline to get
34:58
vaccinated, you don't work anywhere near the airport. If your nephew declines to get vaccinated,
35:08
you don't work anywhere near the airport. If your nephew's roommate declines to get vaccinated,
35:14
you don't work anywhere near the airport. And I'm including quarantine hotels in that,
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even if they're 100 kilometres away. You don't work anywhere near a quarantine hotel.
35:25
You don't work with shuttle buses transporting people around.
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If you're not vaccinated, you shouldn't be employed in any job that comes in contact with anyone
35:35
who comes in contact with anyone who comes in contact with anyone who's unvaccinated.
35:39
And the same goes for staff at schools, hospitals, doctors, officers, nursing homes.
35:44
If you don't believe in science, don't get to vaccine. But if you don't believe in science,
35:47
then don't be part of the scientific solution to this pandemic.
35:53
Just go and post on Instagram a meme that someone shared from someone on YouTube about how the
35:57
MRNA vaccine alters the DNA of your cells.
36:00
I mean, this is not a new battle, folks. Between the men and women of science trying to drag
36:16
the rest of humanity towards the light, as the rest of humanity throws sand in the gears and
36:24
wails and tricks about their superstitions. This is as old as time.
36:33
People have been spurning new medical advances and clinging to mystical misinformation.
36:41
Forever. Do you know about bodily humours? Do you know about the ether?
36:48
People who are declining to get vaccines are heirs to the people who during the enlightenment
36:54
viewed the Isaac Newton's and Charles Darwin's of the world with suspicion. They are heirs to the
36:58
people who have been dragged kicking and screaming into modernity by patient men and women of science
37:06
who've had to coax them at every stage to trust reason over instinct. Whether that was swallowing
37:13
penicillin or getting on an aeroplane. I don't want to make anyone get a vaccine.
37:20
But I'm not going to let anyone who doesn't want to get a vaccine prevent me from recovering
37:24
from this catastrophe and resuming my life. More than a billion people are now vaccinated against
37:32
COVID-19. More than 160 million in the United States alone. There is no widespread side effect.
37:40
The jury is in. If you look at states like Virginia, which is a pretty good
37:47
state because it's a blend of North and South. It's a blend of kind of Trump country and
37:51
sort of Washington DC intellectuals. It's about 50-50 vaccinated at the moment. Slightly more
37:58
vaccinated than not. More than 98% of people in hospital there with COVID are unvaccinated.
38:06
More than 99% of the people who are currently dying of COVID are unvaccinated.
38:12
Even if you have suspicions about big farmer, if you have suspicions about the pace with which
38:22
the vaccine was released, there is no world in which your suspicions about the harms of that
38:31
vaccine outweigh the actual real known harms of COVID. No world over a billion people have been
38:42
vaccinated. If there was even a millionth the downside of getting vaccinated as there is
38:51
of catching coronavirus. You would see hundreds of thousands of those billion people suffering
39:01
some kind of effect and you don't. We've run this test. The vaccinated population is not
39:09
experiencing any issues. The UK is seeing a massive spike in cases for a number of complex
39:17
epidemiological reasons, mostly behavioral, with no corresponding spike in deaths as has
39:23
happened in every previous wave thanks to the vaccine. From now on, you can be part of the
39:29
solution or you can stay inside. We've had enough of lockdowns. Unvaccinated people can
39:34
lock down next time. For our last lockdown, I would like to see Sydney go big and see New South
39:44
Wales move to a complete and total lockdown where you can't be outside for basically any reason.
39:52
See if that gets us somewhere in two weeks and then we can reevaluate things because I don't want
39:58
to be in this state of quasi lockdown for the next four months or even three months or two months.
40:05
If we're not going to do that then I think we should change the metrics and accept that we're not
40:11
shooting for zero cases and just be upfront about doing what we need to do to keep hospitalisations
40:18
low and to help the contact traces do the best job that they can but accept that COVID zero is not
40:25
something that we're going to get to or try to get to anymore. And maybe we only take serious
40:31
action if the number of cases out in the community tips into triple digits for example instead of
40:35
the 30s or 40s where it currently is. Maybe instead we look at metrics like the number of hospitalised
40:41
COVID patients or something but that's very risky because once it gets out of hand once the genie's
40:47
out of the bottle there's no putting it back. This is what I think people don't appreciate when
40:52
they're at the freedom marches. We saw these huge freedom marches in Sydney and Melbourne over the weekend.
40:59
People saying give us our freedom which as I've said I am sympathetic to and I completely
41:05
understand and I hate it when wealthy elites who haven't been harmed by the pandemic in fact some of
41:12
whom have done better out of the pandemic than they were before because they've gotten government
41:18
subsidies and job keeper small business disaster relief and so on whilst still making basically the
41:26
same amount of money as they were. These people look down their nose on the freedom fighters and say
41:32
people don't understand and the elites have no empathy for the situation of a blue collar person
41:39
or a small business owner who's trying to make ends meet so I get it but what I get even more
41:46
is that the so-called freedom fighters they're only thinking one chest move ahead.
41:51
Chest move one is okay let's end the lockdown and let us be free but we've seen what the subsequent
41:59
chest moves are in the US and the UK and Europe and everywhere else in the world. The subsequent
42:04
chest moves are you end the lockdown the virus starts spiraling out of control it becomes so
42:11
prevalent that nobody wants to go to a cafe or a movie cinema even if they can and even if they're
42:17
allowed to nobody wants to risk getting really really sick for two weeks and possibly killing their
42:24
grandparents so they stay home anyway and you end up with a de facto self-imposed lockdown a
42:33
sort of cultural shutdown and then once the virus is rampant there's no way to undo it you've
42:43
got to wait down you've got to wait for either another lockdown another actual hard lockdown to get
42:49
some of those some of that spread under control or you have to wait for enough people to get vaccinated
42:54
that you've reached some sort of herd immunity or you have to wait until you've had COVID
43:00
or everyone else in the world has had COVID and isn't going to give it to you none of which is fast
43:06
and none of which is desirable so you're stuck in a pickle and I don't know how the so-called
43:13
freedom fighters don't see that we can give you freedom now and the freedom from the lockdown will
43:20
last about two or three weeks before someone you know knows someone who gets COVID spends two weeks
43:32
in bed feeling absolutely awful the worst ever felt in their entire life and you go mate I'm not going
43:39
you think I'm going to a restaurant not a chance so go big or go home is my message new South Wales
43:51
and it's not just new South Wales who needs to get a bit more fed income here it's Victoria too
43:56
I would love to hear Dan Andrews say this current outbreak vindicates my caution all along but
44:07
let's be fair Sydney's strategy was successful every single time they had an outbreak
44:18
until now it was successful with every prior variant until Delta
44:27
so let's not make this about whose idea was right all along whether it was Dan Andrews or
44:32
Gladys Berejikliens whether it was Melbourne's or Sydney who has the right to wear the mantle
44:39
of best COVID responder who gets the kindergarten smiley face sticker it's not about that
44:50
it's about tap dancing through every day of this bloody pandemic
44:56
and doing the best that we can the best thing you can do is get vaccinated if you are all
45:01
eligible and I mean I don't want I don't hear any more about people talking about well you know I
45:06
I just I went online and I didn't couldn't find an appointment for another five weeks great
45:13
we'll make the appointment for five weeks and explain to me why you didn't make that appointment two
45:17
months ago if you were eligible and seeing people who are over the age of 60 who still haven't
45:23
had their second AstraZeneca shot you've been eligible for to get your AstraZeneca since February
45:28
oh my GP didn't offer it okay we'll go around you GP as soon as I was eligible for Pfizer I was doing
45:33
everything I was googling I was asking friends if they had a link to the vaccination hub I was in
45:37
there I was like I want to get this done I just want all of us to get this done so things can get
45:41
back to normal as quickly as possible and people will be andering around slaughtering around going
45:45
oh no this is back in April oh no Australia is good we're COVID-free mate I'm like yeah but not
45:50
forever listen to the experts some shit's going to go down and even if it doesn't you're going to
45:56
want to be able to leave the country my kids haven't seen their grandparents in two years
46:00
because we can't get out this is not normal this is not desirable the solution is vaccines
46:07
and the solution right now is a bit more honesty from our political leaders and a bit more upfront
46:12
bluntness about the situation we find ourselves in so let's get real with each other
46:18
let's have conversations that are blunt that are forward-looking that are honest about the trade-offs
46:27
of this shit soup we're standing in knee-deep let's have some conversations that are pretty
46:35
bloody uncomfortable