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From the previous thread:Aware posted:
My answer to this is yes, absolutely, there is an actual problem here, and that problem is that in allowing this, the Australian government has clearly and obviously set a double standard. Back in May, the Australian government refused to allow a bunch of people to return to Australia from India because they had returned a positive COVID-19 test (many of which were later shown to be false-positives), and refused to entertain the idea of allowing exemptions for medical evacuation flights for COVID-positive citizens trapped in India, which at the time was hitting world headlines for having to burn bodies in car parks and literal brawls breaking out in hospitals over oxygen cylinders because their crematoriums and hospitals were overwhelmed with demand. At the time, the prime minister himself had said: quote:Morrison said the government was not considering allowing people who had tested positive to board flights. It'd be one thing if the Australian government had said 'you know what, we realised we were being poo poo, we've set up medevac flights for people stuck around the world, and in addition to that we've also allowed this family back in to Australia from Indonesia for the same reason', but that's not the case. This is from the Australian Border Force website, I looked it up just then: quote:All people travelling to Australia on flights departing on or after 22 January 2021 (local time at departure point) must provide proof of a negative COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) result at the time of check-in. The rules are still pretty clear - you have to be shown as negative for COVID-19 before boarding a flight. I'd suggest most Australians understand the reasoning for this policy, and even if they don't like it - they can accept it for now. So when our government provided this one family exemptions that allowed them to enter the country while sickened with COVID, despite the fact months earlier this same government refused to lift a finger to help our citizens who had tested positive to COVID in India (some of whom are still in India, and India is still struggling), they've demonstrated there's a set of rules for one group of Australians, and another for the rest of us. This decision was neither reasonable, nor fair. This decision was made despite the rules, despite the publics general acceptance of only allowing citizens to return when they have tested negative for COVID, and despite our governments flagrant callousness to a larger group of people just weeks earlier. It's reasonable to ask them: What has changed? What is it about this one family that has made this government decide to let them in despite our quarantine system being leakier than a sieve? What makes this journo and their family so special? Is it because they're rich? Or because they're white? Or because one of them happens to work for one of the most influential media outlets in Australia? Or is it just that the government is corrupt as gently caress and some money or favours have been exchanged?  So far they've said they 'weren't aware of it'. But... I do not understand how this could have happened unintentionally, given how clear the guidelines are and how presumably border farce has to be involved in this process at some point or other. So either they're weak or they're poo poo. tl;dr - by allowing this family to return while covid-positive but not others, the government has set a double-standard. froglet fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jul 2, 2021 |
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Jul 2, 2021 16:38
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Aware posted:I don't have enough info about this particular decision to really argue against this and you make great points - save to say that COVID positive and likely positive people have been and continue to be repratriated on medivac flights/gov approval, as I've seen in first hand from the recent PNG outbreak. Yeah, agreed. My problem isn't really with the idea of repatriating sick Australians (imho we absolutely should), it's more with the hypocrisy. Six weeks ago our government was saying given Australia has no real COVID problem, they were not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of medical repatriation, then go on to allow in a family who absolutely would not be allowed in normally. freebooter posted:I don't think so? It's about the same, but more contagious, so indirectly more deadly because it will infect more people. The thing is, I thought there is no reason for us to drop AZ entirely. That's not to say jab everyone with it, but how many people over the age of 60 have received both their shots? (I looked it up, it's less than 40% for the older age brackets)
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Jul 3, 2021 05:38
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freebooter posted:It's less effective against Delta, which is basically the same as saying it's less effective against COVID, because that's going to become the dominant strain globally by the of the year. (Unless an even worse one crops up!) I get what you're saying, but isn't "less effective" still better than none? I guess for me the determinant factor is how much supply we've got on the horizon, when it's due to arrive, and whether or not we'll have enough to go around. Like I don't understand why right at this moment, given the situation, we can't go "hey old folks, if you caught COVID, odds are you will die. Please take this vaccine that may not be perfect against this variety of COVID, but is substantially better than you catching COVID without any vaccination".
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Jul 3, 2021 09:57
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Konomex posted:Give it a year or two and covid will be like the flu, sweeping the world killing 300,000-600,000 people annually. Health experts will implore people to get the yearly vaccine and to stay home from work, wash their hands, yada yada yada. But most people will forget to get the vaccine, or outright refuse, or be too poor (time or moneywise) to get it. They'll sneeze right in your face on the bus, or go to work dripping with sweat and with a fever because they don't have any sick days left. That really sucks about your grandad, Konomex. Organza Quiz posted:Yeah it never quite hit home just how preventable flu deaths are until last year's basically non-existent flu season. Imagine if every winter we didn't go to work when sick, wore masks out when sick or even just in crowded environments like public transport, washed our hands properly and didn't stand right up close to strangers unnecessarily. ... And getting your seasonal flu shot was a cultural norm that was supported and encouraged by your friends, family, employer, etc. I personally reckon the majority of vaccinations should be free for everyone (right now flu shots are $15-$20, you can get them for free if you meet certain criteria but I'm not sure what those are besides being over a certain age). That and people should get an extra paid day or two of annual leave for getting a vaccination as a way of encouraging uptake. Public health is important! Seriously, folks, something almost everyone can do right now (finances/lockdown situation permitting, of course) is get their flu shot. Getting your COVID shot is no barrier - you can get a flu shot 7 days before, or 7 days after getting either COVID dose. While I'm on a roll: The shot you get for tetanus also protects against whooping cough and diphtheria, and it wears off, so you need to get it re-done every ~10-ish years. Whooping cough is bloody frightening, and getting the shot is worth doing even if you personally hate kids and have no plans on being near them. Adults can and do get whooping cough, and from what I gather they either get super mild symptoms or the experience leaves them with a deep understanding of how it kills off children and old people. I was going to share a link here of what it's like to get a bad case of whooping cough as an adult and... It's distressing and I don't think now is a good time to share that sort of thing, so look it up yourself if you're curious. Don't look it up if you find that sort of thing upsetting. (Note: I paid $50 for the tetanus booster, obviously that's not affordable for everyone, but hey it's worth mentioning and it's good to mention to anyone here who's either a rich gently caress or lives/works with babies/olds). Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, I'm some random on the internet, I just read up on this stuff recently coz I got a flu shot and the tetanus booster at the same time coz hey if in the middle of a pandemic isn't a good time, when is? froglet fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Jul 5, 2021 12:52
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Centusin posted:Story is a few days old but it's weird that all these non-citizens came into the country, brought covid with them and nobody cared BrigadierSensible posted:Lets add some fuel to the fire of the guy complaining about how certain places have slashed the numbers of people arriving in Aus. Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest we allow Australia and the US to play capture the flag, with Katie Hopkins and Caitlyn Jenner as the flags. That way we will be taking both Hopkins and Jenner out of the limelight and protecting the Australian public from their noxious views, while the Australian and American governments can have the terf war they crave.
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Jul 17, 2021 18:23
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spaceblancmange posted:I will never get over that the success of the UKs vaccination program was because Matt Hancock watched Contagion. Wait, what?! I'm going to have to look this up now.
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Jul 21, 2021 15:24
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bell jar posted:I don't know anything about Perth, is that area a sex worker hotspot? Or a homelessness hotspot? Or just a series of very unfortunate incidents happening to people who are indigenous? It's right in the middle of the CBD, where a majority of the homelessness services are concentrated. What's happening is two things: Firstly, there's an explosion in homelessness. Rents have skyrocketed, the COVID protections for tenants have disappeared, there's very little new public housing being made available (all of which is going to the most needy, and since there's so much need, that bar is being raised ever higher and higher), and aboriginal people face astounding housing discrimination. Homeless shelters are generally some mix of full, scary, dangerous, infectious, patronising, needlessly cruel, or run by religious nutters. Rent assistance/the dole doesn't even factor in here - it's not enough to get a private rental, or when it is, it's away from public transport, services, friends, family, etc. Secondly, there's been an anti-homeless people sentiment (ugh). Case in point, the Mayor of Perth, Basil Zempilas, who ran on a platform of literally running the homeless out of the CBD. Because how dare they want access to all the services located in the city centre, right folks?! Clearly he's not the only one, though, because in recent years councils, the public transit authority and various landowners have been doing various things to discourage people from sleeping on properties or on land for which they're responsible or to otherwise encourage them to move them on. This has lead to the traditionally more sheltered areas homeless people could previously rely on as a reasonably sheltered (or at least safer) place to sleep at night (e.g. beneath the Lord St bridge in East Perth) becoming fenced off or otherwise made inaccessible or inhospital to these people. So the homless of the CBD now have two choices - find one of the vanishingly few quasi-sheltered places to sleep that's out of the way, probably somewhere you'll be less likely to be asked to move on (but land up aggravatingly far away from services you need), or sleep in a reasonably high-trafficked area near the services you are using every day where you will be safe(r than you may be otherwise), but also exposed to the elements. As a woman, I can definitely understand the appeal of sleeping in a highly-trafficked/patrolled public space over crossing your fingers and hoping nobody else finds or follows you to the quiet, dark, out-of-the-way place you sleep at night. Additionally, Yagan Square's busport opens early enough a person who's spent the night on the street could feasibly go inside to warm up a little and few would notice. The situation is such in the Perth CBD there's minimal shelter, anywhere that would otherwise be suitable is either already taken or has loving spikes and railings and other bullshit installed to keep people from sleeping safely there, and the Perth CBD is already a wind tunnel. When society removes the conditions the local homeless people rely on to get through the night safely, the homeless people die. That's it.
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Aug 24, 2021 15:51
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norp posted:I loving hate that we don't support the homeless more. Honestly nobody should have to sleep rough, we can do way better as a society. Oh I'm quite familiar with the area, I used to ride my bike through there every weekday on my way to work and copped a handful of threats, though admittedly I haven't done so in a while. That happening underlines my point: Since so many different parts of the city are using hostile architecture to keep the homeless out, and the number of homeless has gone way up, what ends up happening is the disadvantage concentrates in the one spot and spirals out of control, which is what happened at the Lord St bridge. It's a vicious cycle - the council/landholders do something to discourage the homeless, the homeless then move on to the next available area that isn't entirely awful to them, but now there's more of them due to a double whammy of low housing availability and the other places they'd previously stay being rendered inaccessible or inhospitable by the aforementioned councils and landholders. So the council/landholders do something to discourage the homeless...
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Aug 24, 2021 16:59
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Launchpad McQuack posted:Armadale Hospital ED was down 8 staff the other night, my sister in law was stuck in the isolation work for 9 hours by herself, no support, no toilet break and nothing to drink. There is literally no one to back these people up. She is looking for jobs outside of nurse now, because she knows it is not going to get better. She is one of the most highest trained and capable ED nurses in the country. freebooter posted:This sounds completely poo poo but is a separate issue to the federal government expecting WA and every other COVID-free state to open their borders ahead of schedule simply because New South Wales hosed up. I'd say they are related in that WA cannot handle even a "small" delta outbreak.
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Sep 1, 2021 12:12
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freebooter posted:That's not going to be possible until/unless it mutates down into something less deadly, or unless we carry on with a really strict level of restrictions including the occasional UK-style winter circuit breaker lockdown. Delta is both more contagious and more deadly than the flu. Vaccines are not going to change that (hundreds of people still die annually from the flu even though we have flu vaccines). I'd also point out there's a hypocrisy in forcing the interstate borders to open up when it's not like Scummo is opening up our international borders at the same time. You'd think catching covid from a local would be the same as catching it from someone overseas, but apparently not. It's almost as if this were politically motivated...  Here in WA, the overall attitude toward allowing eastern states people to come here, almost certainly cause an outbreak that rapidly spirals out of control, and burden our already overburdened health system is "no way, get hosed, gently caress off". Sandgropers are really enjoying the lack of mask mandates and the only requirement of going out being you check in using an app. To us, not being able to travel is not the downside eastern staters think it is - Perth people generally go on holiday to Bali or Margaret River, not Sydney, and there's plenty of places to go now Bali is off limits. If you were to ask the average punter from WA how they feel about opening the borders, they say they feel sorry for eastern states people who want to come here to see their families, but interstate travel like that is a want, not a need, and that the needs of the people who already live here trump that. While I don't wholesale agree entirely with that attitude, it's very hard to argue against when, from my perspective, there's so much downside and so little to be gained by us reopening to the eastern states. gay picnic defence posted:Hopefully there’s just enough stress on the health system that anti vaxxers with covid get triaged into the hallway while the ICUs are saved for people who did the right thing. Don't. For that to happen, a whole lot of innocent people have to sicken and die. freebooter posted:Which is why I said it was true at the start but is no longer true now. I'd say this isn't really the fault of the health bureaucracies, though. It's the fault of a government that wants the virus to stop spreading while not doing any of the things that actually stop infected people from mingling with uninfected people. People are dying of COVID in their homes because their families didn't want the authorities to know they had it. Someone in your household having COVID means nobody in that house can work, which often translates to them not having enough money for rent, food, etc. Of course people are going out and about in the community with the virus, the government hasn't presented them with a viable alternative! If the government wanted to stop people spreading covid, they would pay people to stay home, and not just some measly 'disaster payment'. Raise Newstart to a point people aren't having to make the calculation of working and risk catching and spreading the disease, and making rent. Give a hugely generous payout to everyone in a household who has to isolate. Change whatever laws needed to make dismissing someone due to their need to isolate an unfair dismissal. Or pay businesses for the inconveniences for losing their workforce. Or even have a temp workforce they can tap into if the business is actually essential. The long and short of it is "find out the reasons why people are non-compliant, and find ways to make compliance a non-issue".
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Sep 5, 2021 07:08
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hooman posted:I saw today that WA government is reconsidering the Feb 5 open date based on the infectiousness of omicron, as they'd done their modelling for delta. God, I hope they do coz the situation over east sounds loving awful. Also, we haven't even hit the peak of summer temps yet and I am not keen to have a repeat of last year's double whammy of people losing their homes to bushfire while there's lockdowns. This week I had to attend my grandmother's funeral online because if I attended in person, I wouldn't be allowed back into WA until they reopen the borders. Probably for the best I stayed home - today I hear my uncle has been diagnosed with COVID and odds are he's spread it to the rest of the family at grandma's funeral... Which is likely why I'm writing this at 2:40am on a work night. quote:I wonder if WA does just pursue an elimination strategy, keeping permanent quarantine on entry and strict requirements for arrival. Is there a market for a covid free state that could be used to drive investment and business here because we say "look it's hard to come and go but you don't lose 30% of your workforce every 3 months". I have no hard evidence to back this up, but I've heard some international investors have expressed interest in creating or expanding their existing operations in WA. The hard border means you have to pay far higher salaries than you would otherwise (because there's so few people arriving and industries are having to get candidates from the same pool), but depending on your business, that could be far offset by the savings from operating somewhere that has substantially less COVID disruption. However, it's been on the news tonight that someone with the Omicron variant has been out in the community and likely passed it on. Sooo... I think our days of relative freedom in contrast to the rest of the world are numbered. As a side note for any WA goons - if he hasn't posted it here yet (idek if he's still a goon), forums user kronicd wrote an unofficial exposure sites mailing list, which will send you an email when the Healthy WA website is updated with new covid exposure locations. No warranty on it, and obvs you should periodically check the actual website yourself, but it is quite useful to receive sporadic emails to
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Jan 11, 2022 19:55
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Well, that didn't last long. Masks reintroduced as WA records five new local COVID-19 cases amid Omicron spread in Perth. 
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Jan 16, 2022 10:17
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ColtMcAsskick posted:Welcome to the Plague Zone The worst thing is that the main exposure sites have all been "massage" parlours, so obviously nobody was checking in even if there was a QR code.
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Jan 16, 2022 13:11
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eXXon posted:My Facebook feed is filled with former colleagues in Perth complaining about that idiot McGowan ruining their travel plans, how inhuman and monstrous it is that they can't leave their prison, how they have nothing to look forward to, how international students are so hard done by (they're all permanent residents though so not really relevant to them personally, admittedly sucks for the more precarious students), how everyone supporting the government is an insular born-and-bred moron that probably never left the state, how omicron is mild and they should just go for herd immunity now (never mind that it's close to peaking out East), how the rest of the world gave up on zero covid and so who wants to be like dystopian China with their modest body count, etc. etc. The thing is, they can leave. Yes, coming back may be difficult, but not liking the consequences of their choices doesn't mean they don't have a choice at all. I think most sandgropers will agree in principle that the current restrictions (even after the recent changes) may be too strict and that perhaps there should be some means of appeal for people who fall into grey areas or who are otherwise disqualified. However, I don't think it's an entirely uncommon view that the state government should be primarly concerned with the welfare of the people who live here, even if it comes at the cost of a minority. Also, saying people supporting this are "insular born-and-bred morons" is not the burn they think it is. I don't think it's surprising or news that by virtue of how remote we are from everywhere else, people in WA generally don't visit the other states (or at least, if they do it's with a frequency well-beneath that of the average person over east). It's likely that this makes the firm border an easy sell and, in some ways, a net benefit for the entire state, not just people in the Perth metro area. To elaborate on that last point - I don't think too many people over east really 'get' how big WA is, how uneven our vaccination rates actually are, and how even the most basic stuff has unique challenges when you have to account for the extreme distances involved. If COVID broke out in some regional community, even a relatively small number of cases could break the regional hospital system. It could cause the kind of crisis where you'd see people dying in their beds at home, air ambulances being overwhelmed trying to get critically ill people to Perth for treatment because their local hospital cannot treat them, and people spreading it further and wider than you'd expect, including to communities with extremely low vaccination rates, whether that's country communities (which are demographically a bit older than the rest of the state) that think covid is a 'city people problem' or aboriginal communities that have a perfectly understandable mistrust of any white folks who show up. In that situation, even if people wanted to get vaccinated (and there's already some pretty large barriers), there's a chance they may not be able to due to the distance and logistical support that would require. At least, not on the time frame that'd keep it from spreading far and wide. freebooter posted:It's a genuinely baffling display of cognitive dissonance and the explanation I've settled on - given how often they refer to "families being torn apart" while ignoring e.g. me, who is torn apart from his family but can accept it given the circumstances - is that they don't really conceptualise WA as a place where 2.5 million of their fellow citizens live, work and play. They've never been there, they don't know anyone who lives there, they don't think about it. They see those headlines about east-coast-sandgropers not being able to attend funerals of loved ones and think "that's awful" (and it is! there are only less-bad options available to us all now!) and see headlines about how McGowan has neglected hospital funding/preparation (and I dunno, maybe he has!) but on a subconscious level they don't really grasp what it means for such a large number of people to be able to still go about their day to day lives without having to do the constant risk assessment that comes with living with the virus. I really agree with you on the bolded bit. I do wonder if this is all a thinly-veiled crab bucket mentality - yes, not being able to see your friends or family interstate is terrible, but a lot of the time the vibe I've gotten from over east is 'everything's terrible here, and it's only fair that everything should be terrible for you also'. Coz how very dare us for wanting to hang onto all the good things we've got going here for as long as possible .  I'll be the first to admit that a lot of our situation is by virtue of geography and luck, but there's a very good reason Labor thrashed everyone else at the last state election here. You don't have to look far to see how awful things are elsewhere - I have a friend in the UK who was utterly gobsmacked that while she was getting stopped by the police while driving to and from work in the wee small hours to make sure she was actually out for a good reason and not defying the lockdown restrictions, in my part of the world lockdowns were an exception, not the norm. For a lot of the pandemic we've been able to go to work, uni, the pub, the cinema, the gym, etc with relatively few restrictions. And again, having to remain in WA isn't exactly a bummer when you're used to your entire life being here, or see how things are going over east. And yeah, I don't think it's possible to have an elimination strategy forever, I do think there should be some way to make an appeal if you've, say, sold all your possessions and ended your lease on the understanding you'd be allowed into WA to be with your family or to take a new job after the 5th February and are now finding you're ineligible to enter the state, but I also don't think the WA hospital system can handle an outbreak similar to the ones in NSW or Victoria without it rapidly devolving into combat triage and medicos having to make terrible decisions in an already dreadful situation.
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Jan 22, 2022 15:55
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eXXon posted:That's a good point, and reminds me that a friend of mine was in a tiny rural clinic in SA a few years back; I wonder what he's up to now (probably moved on). While I can't say for sure that I know what it's actually like over east, all we hear about here either from the news or from friends and family over there ranges from genuinely frightening to Kafka-esque nightmare. To us, allowing people from over east to just fly over whenever they like with no quarantine was an arrangement that is all downside with no noticeable gain for the overwhelming majority of us. Yes, it's awful that families are separated (due to the restrictions, my family could only watch a recording of my grandmothers funeral), and yeah I reckon there should be at least some leeway for special cases and so on, but I have to wonder if people over east (especially politicians) read their own headlines or hear the stories coming out of their states and think about how they scan to people who aren't having to live through this madness every day. From what I gather, people over east are having to do things like buy RATs at an outrageous markup from weirdoes on gumtree or out of a plastic bag from a petrol station, live with the extreme uncertainty of not being able to go to work coz your kids daycare may shutter overnight with no notice after becoming an exposure site, or having to navigate the weird logistics of having to isolate from your entire household after being exposed. Not long ago, there was a guy live tweeting about having to lay at the bottom of his staircase for hours with a badly broken leg because there were no ambulances available. ... And all of this is on top of the known bad stuff about covid, such as catching it and dying, or catching it and getting long covid. So you'll forgive sandgropers for seeing that and going 'we'll pass, thanks' (at least, until now). Sadly, it looks like omicron is taking off here - 24 new cases today, ugh. I'm pretty worried WA hospital system is not going to be able to cope well with this for very long. I'm also quite worried if it gets into the more regional areas, it'll really highlight the disparity not only in hospital capacity, but also in vaccination rates. There's loads of people in the regions who genuinely think covid is a "city person problem" while cheerfully ignoring that their entire community is dependent on people coming to them from the city. froglet fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jan 23, 2022 |
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Jan 23, 2022 15:51
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freebooter posted:Wouldn't that make you feel right at home in WA? Admittedly it's not much I've seen first hand, but I had a couple of friends who went up north over Christmas and they saw a surprising number of people who couldn't be arsed getting the vaccine coz "it's not like [they] go to the city at all". This is while carefully ignoring that they either live or work in towns with a massive tourism industry. Plus, even if they themselves don't see city people that often, someone else they know likely will. That and stuff like even if you're never going to run into the whole vaccine mandate to get into venues problem coz you're a teetotaler on a farm in the middle of nowhere, if you need elective surgery, you now need to have the vaccine. Supporting this has been the casual observation that people in the region's can be a bit slack about the contact tracing, mask requirements, etc coz they don't see covid as a problem that could affect them. I went up to Lancelin earlier this month and a local shops QR code wasn't working due to lack of phone reception. We were told not to worry about it when we asked where their sign in book was. I'm also on reasonably friendly terms with the people at a bakery right on the edge of the Perth metro area and while most people from outside the metro area decent about it, they've been saying a vocal minority tend to have a gigantic loving tantrum whenever they have to wear a mask to enter the premises. You can take it off to eat, folk, relax, geez.
froglet fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Jan 24, 2022 |
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Jan 24, 2022 10:45
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freebooter posted:I actually get this when WA genuinely was COVID-free; the entire point of an elimination strategy is to bask in the carefree joy of complacency. I just hope they don't think it'll stay put once Perth starts getting thousands of cases a day. It's not like you'd feel comfortable in rural Alabama or Alaska right now. I'd be a bit more understanding if it had been months ago, but it was during the mask mandate and there being a real risk of community transmission.  Buuut it sounds like we might be fukt, there's someone who's gotten it in the south west without having been to any of the exposure sites.
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Jan 24, 2022 12:03
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freebooter posted:Yeah but if there was a risk of community transmission, statistically speaking, it would've been happening in Perth. Exceptionally unlikely for it to suddenly spring up out of nowhere in Lancelin. Here's the problem: During holidays, people like to move around, Lancelin is definitely within daytrip distance of Perth (as in, my visit was during a daytrip recently), and the main outbreak of the time was at a venue with a heap of backpackers with minimal ties to Perth, many weren't vaccinated, they almost definitely didn't check in, and certainly wouldn't tell anyone if they got a sniffle between then and whatever job they'd picked up north or down south in the lead up to the holidays coz that'd affect their ability to earn while travelling. Someone getting And before any WA people shout me down - unlikely? Yeah I guess, but that sort of scenario wouldn't leave me shocked, either. 
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Jan 24, 2022 14:59
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Today I had a very minor sore throat, went to get tested at the nearest centre, and was turned away. Because I rode my bike in and it's apparently drive-thru only for infection containment reasons. Not mad at the path lab for trying to protect their workers, but the only walk-in testing centres are all at hospitals which are ... Reasonably difficult to get to if you don't have access to a car, or can't drive, while also wanting to keep the hell away from others lest you have the plague and accidentally infect the people around you. I mean, I could have biked but the round trip is an hour, it was easier to wait for my partner to get home with the car and go to a drive in testing centre.
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Jan 25, 2022 07:37
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dr_rat posted:Yeah, some parts of Australia have reasonably decent public transportation, other parts with out a car you're pretty hosed if you want to go anywhere. It's not even about the automotive hegemony, it's about pathology clinics effectively requiring cars be used as PPE for their workers. Employers in industries like this should absolutely have and enforce policies to protect their workers, but this policy of theirs creates a substantial barrier to testing. As in, there are 2 collection centres within reasonable walking or cycling distance of me, and both of them are drive-thrus. While I haven't tried the other place, I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case there, also. I live a suburb that's among the densest in the Perth metro area, and while car ownership is still reasonably high (coz Perth), I reckon there's enough one or no-car households to make it unreasonable to demand people either present at one of the few walk-in testing centres (largely based out of the major hospitals), or take a taxi/uber through the drive thru testing centre and potentially infect the driver. It's easy enough for me to get around this - my partner owns a car and works in an industry that would allow him to come home early, so I was eventually able to be tested at the drive-thru testing centre, but what do they expect to happen for people who don't have either the convenience or luxury of a car to take them to a testing centre? The people at the testing centre were saying they did get people arriving in taxis or ubers to be tested, but how many of them are doing this to tick the box for their employer or for an airline that they're clear of covid vs. potentially being infected? If the private labs are deciding who gets tested at their labs by the manner in which they come, there's going to be people who'll just not bother getting tested. Some of those people will be positive, and will spread covid. Even if you don't have a problem with WA's car dominance in general, I'd have thought this would be a problem the state govt should have recognised sooner? hooman posted:I'm feeling pretty crook and looking for a place to get a covid test tomorrow. Turns out all the clinipath places are closed on Australia day. Where are you these days? Dunno if you have a car these days, but I believe the drive-thru ones in Mt Hawthorn and Osborne Park are open on public holidays. Just don't show up to the Mt Hawthorn on a bike, cars only. 
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Jan 25, 2022 13:59
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Konomex posted:WA won't elect Clive, I don't know why he's wasting his money here. The tiniest tiny part of a percent might vote for him, if they vote at all. WA hates him. I get the impression he doesn't actually want to win and instead wants to exert enough influence on the flow of preferences to assist a liberals win.
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Jan 28, 2022 16:12
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Bill Posters posted:As an office worker who is trying to hire people right now... You should absolutely quit and get hired for at least 20% more than what you were getting. Anecdotally, this is true in my field - I moved jobs <6 months ago and got a 33% pay increase.  I'm now making very close to what my husband makes, which is not something I'd ever thought possible given he has a PhD.
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Feb 20, 2022 02:14
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Megillah Gorilla posted:In today's greyhound racing class, we'll be tying up the extra puppies in a bag with a brick and heading down the local creek. Stop crying Timmy. Jeez, that's dark. (... Can I steal it to share with my other friend with an equally grimdark sense of humour?) Eediot Jedi posted:Someone smart enough to use the church for their own ends would be smart enough not to do dumb poo poo Scott does. I reckon churches have just enough structure/hierarchy and quasi-unstructured interaction with the general public that people like Scotty from Marketing are able to fail upward with minimal risk of them having to wear the consequences of their inadequacies. That means it's a skillset that only translates into running the country when the country basically runs itself and has no real issues that require someone with actual leadership skills and experience making tough decisions. It's amazing how good you can look when you rest on your laurels and there's no major fires, floods, pandemics, or any other kind of catastrophe that would require any amount of flexibility and/or refusing to pander to your vested interests.
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Mar 2, 2022 05:26
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With all the news about boosters fading off after a couple months, is there any news on people getting a second booster? I got mine before Xmas, so I imagine I should keep an eye out for these things, but I haven't heard anything, received an email, nothing.
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Mar 11, 2022 02:48
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Eediot Jedi posted:Vax numbers stalled until the NSW then Vic delta outbreaks. That did a lot more heavy lifting than mandates, though mandates do put in work. A bit late, but where that analogy falls apart is that it's not like merely being in the presence of someone like that will mean you'll catch diving-into-the-shallows-itis. Like the problem is even if you're as cautious as humanely possible, some numbskull can go spread the plague to the rest of us. bee posted:Apart from the money they get from the membership fees, is there benefit to a political party in having larger membership numbers? I mean if I decide to let a membership lapse and just pay an annual donation to the party instead, would they be any worse off? Political parties can only remain registered so long as they have a certain number of members. While I think something truly catastrophic would have to happen for the greens to be deregistered, it does happen with other parties. Blamestorm posted:I also wonder if the the Greens branding is more of a liability than an asset for their actual policy platform now. I'm a member and I've heard this bandied about occasionally, mostly by people whose main exposure to the Green's has been through the mainstream media. It's pretty hard to fight years of misinformation from an unfriendly media and hostile political class, but it does have a benefit in that it is extremely recognisable, and people do occasionally vote Green purely coz they have a vaguely positive recollection of us. Or they go look us up online and realise maybe the meme of us sitting in a circle playing Kumbaya might be a bit overblown (no shade on Kumbaya, it's a bop). Additionally, the places where we get the best response are ones where we have enough boots on the ground actually show up in person in communities and people suddenly realise we're generally reasonable, sensible people with jobs and families and lives, this isn't a fad or phase, etc. I reckon the main problem with the greens is that the sorts of people who care enough to join are generally people who are already stretched thin in their day to day lives.
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Mar 14, 2022 15:32
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bee posted:Thanks for this. I am a greens member and I still believe in everything they're trying to achieve, but I just don't have the bandwidth to be doing all the grass roots stuff they need. My mental health has been in the toilet for the last year. Every time I get another phone call from them asking me for help with something I feel like poo poo that I have to say no, and I've said that I'm not well but they keep asking. I get why they ask, and I'll keep voting for them but I don't know if my situation will change any time soon so I'd rather not be wasting both our time and energy. As someone who's done volunteer calling, do not feel remotely bad about telling us to buzz off - we get heaps of them, and the main beats of your story are extremely common ones. Dunno what state you're in but I believe you should be able to get the next volunteer who calls you to put you on some sort of "friendly Greenie, but do not call" list. I hope things turn around for you soon!  Doing this stuff - whether it's calling potential volunteers or talking to voters - is work, though I will say I have often finished my volunteering shift feeling really positive and happy that I put myself out there for something I care about. However, sometimes it can be a kind of psychological hazard coz the general public we're interacting with (correctly) identify the greens as being made up of people who are sympathetic and willing to listen, but also have the kind of huge problems we can't really help with unless it's connect them with immediate services like a food pantry or women's refuge, so yeah, I don't recommend it if you're really fragile. I still think about the woman who sobbed as she told me she was on the dole, but it was so low she had already spent most of her money on rent, didn't have anything for bills, and had $30 to feed herself for the next fortnight.
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Mar 15, 2022 06:20
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hooman posted:Because there's barely any independant media doing real reporting. Remember when buzzfeed news Australia was doing some of the best independent journalism in the cursed country, because they gave people who gave a poo poo money and weren't reliant on the right wing ghouls who run everything else. ... And the Australian and a few other outlets swooped in and picked up the decent journos. Didn't Alice Workman go to the Australian and almost immediately became a right wing mouthpiece? I mean, not that I'm surprised - it's the Australian, it's to be expected that she'd write for the people paying her salary, but at the time it was extremely jarring and seemed incongruous with her previous persona at BuzzFeed. Comstar posted:Friendly Jordies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f83qfSV16i4 Pretty much. People won't pay for online news (I say, after deciding last year to pay for online news only to push off the decision between Crikey, the Saturday Paper, or some right wing nutcase outfit that'll do Perth specific news to another day).
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Mar 15, 2022 15:45
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GSC summoned me! I answer the call for bike and helmetchat!  Also, my last saved posted was replying to Eediot Jedi and I'm keeping it anyway! Eediot Jedi posted:Herald Sun did a journalism again, blaming dedicated bike lanes for causing gridlock in Melbourne. They spent twenty whole minutes in the AM/PM on an undisclosed number of fine days, and found just one in four vehicles on the road were bikes. Several bikers, an amazingly vague number for such thorough research, even had the gall to ride on footpaths next to the dedicated lanes. Ah yes, three in four vehicles on the road were cars yet drivers are the marginalised ones  Eediot Jedi posted:You absolutely should wear a seat belt but you shouldn't be fined if you're not. Hey mate, I get where you're coming from but this is not helpful, knock it off (with or without your helmet!  ). The thing is, bike helmet laws aren't used by cops concerned about community safety, they're used to harass people for being black and/or poor.Edit: also, not to single you out but bike helmets and seatbelts are a false equivalence - yeah sure I can get pretty fast on my bike, but the upper limit of a bike is nothing in comparison to the speeds a car reaches regularly. There's also the fact cars are orders of magnitude heavier and bigger - a car doing 25kmph is still likely to do far more damage than some dork on their bike doing the same. froglet fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Mar 25, 2022 |
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Mar 25, 2022 10:04
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Konomex posted:Yet further evidence for my 'Morrison has early onset Alzheimer's' campaign. There's also the fact the fuel excise is, for better or worse, effectively a (very narrow) carbon tax. While it's incredibly regressive, once prices get over a certain point people start having to either demand higher wages, or drive less - either by substituting some trips with other modes of transport, or forgoing the trip entirely. Hell, I've been dunking on people opposing a bike path in my area by suggesting they look at petrol prices.
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Mar 30, 2022 00:59
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