Originally Posted by
Foxxster
won’t be until December at the earliest. We need to get vaccinated rate right up to at least around 60%+ probably more like 70%. I would think around feb or March next year..
gladys has mentioned 80% which is ridiculous. That would take us until this time next year as I suspect rates will start to flatten right off once we get around the 65% to 70% mark.
Yes, but the problem is that there is no road-map from our squabbling leaders showing what happens when we reach a stage where all who wish to be vaccinated have been offered the jabs. That will probably get stuck at around the 60-70% seen in other countries, given the hold-outs and the thoroughly confused messages. When this happens, hopefully by year end, I suspect the majority of the population will have had enough of the endless "whack-a-mole" of lockdowns, however justifiable these were in the pre-vax times.
Currently the push to get vaccinated is all "stick" (getting or spreading the virus is a bad thing) and no "carrot" (when you and x% of us are vaccinated, you'll be able to do things that the unvaccinated can't). Hence we have the ridiculous Catch-22 of airlines being grounded because people are saying that there's no point in getting vaccinated because they still won't be able to travel.
What I'd like to see is for the government to set a target date by which it expects all to have been offered vaccination, after which we will for a while move on to a two-tier level of activity, much as we do with smokers and non-smokers. Sure, there are those few who cannot be vaccinated for genuine health reasons, but as with other diseases, their best defence is to be surrounded by as many as possible who have been protected. For those able but unwilling, fair enough, you are free to make your own decisions, but life for the rest of us will at some stage just have to move on. The average annual death toll in Oz from flu is reckoned to be around 2k pre-covid, so I guess that sets a benchmark for what will be acceptable.
As one with perhaps two or three decades left on this earth, I'm pretty near done with holding the pause button.