Australia changes the definition of "close contacts" to four hours and restrictions and testing on "casual contacts" have been ab

yep makes the qr code check in everywhere totally obselete..yipeee no more check in nazi BS

Im changing the definition of politician .
Now known as "yet to be hanged" .

maybe you have to check in at your house, hospitals, somebody else's house, and aged care homes? or only go out for less than four hours, then you can't be a close contact so no tracing?

PEOPLE POWER!

Your pushback and demonstrations actually worked!





The politicians of Australia and NZ lost their fucking minds and went way overboard. The whole world saw it.










Now do something about Dan and Jacinda.
They must face justice for their crimes.

The decision comes after this

Thread: Contact tracers give up as there are too many covid cases and too many exposure sites, they don't even publish the sites any more

I think the term is.... Sh*tting bricks

that is a real good point. the contact tracers can't keep up with da spread of da virus. there is just too much work for them. seems like they could of automated the system with them new fangled electric computer machines all the kiddies are using but they didn't do that. so now they can't do their job. so get rid of almost all the work will make their job much much easier huh!

also there is the other news that the pcr testing labs can't keep up with the amount of testing that would be required if they kept the system the same. basically pathologist says "we can't do all them tests please stop turning up for testing".

that leaves just the "medical system" of hospitals and doctors clinics. can they keep up or are they also now got too much work and it's game over there too??


here is teh "anonymous pathologist"s story:


"I am a pathologist at a big Australian laboratory where these tests for COVID are conducted, so I’m at the coalface. You might ask, what’s it like to work in a busy laboratory? Or you might ask, what is a PCR, anyway?

...

Laboratories are busy places at the best of times, unpacking boxes and boxes of samples, checking the paperwork, doing the testing and verifying results, answering phones and managing logistics. As with any pathology test, the staff well know the implications of positive results, and that people are anxious and want speed.

Errors can creep in, as we have seen this week with a private laboratory issuing incorrect results, the Ruby Princess debacle early in the pandemic, and the occasional lost specimen. Staff need a break as they’ve been going full pelt for nearly two years. They are committed but constantly asking them to do extra shifts, work longer hours, and go faster: it’s starting to feel like we are shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. And it’s becoming increasingly hard to access the reagents needed for the tests from overseas.

Expert scientists and technicians are not easy to find, and burnout is a real problem, as in the hospital wards. It doesn’t help when people wanting a holiday test abuse the laboratory (often the wrong one!) staff or the drive-in clinic swabbers.

So who should be tested? You can’t do everyone. People who have COVID-19 symptoms, or who live in the same house as a case, need a PCR. The ICUs and hospitals are the pointy end of the health system, so PCR testing should be done quickly and accurately on people who need hospitalisation through serious illness or to deliver babies. Testing is needed to protect healthcare workers so they can do their work.

Healthy, asymptomatic people don’t need PCR testing in the current surge as Omicron is probably not as severe as what we’ve seen before, and vaccination numbers are good. So please don’t become part of the problem – joining those hours-long testing queues when you are not a priority. Now that Queensland is dropping its requirement for PCR tests for any interstate visitors, many thousands of well travellers have no reason to queue. And, by the way, get your booster.

What about rapid antigen tests to reduce the strain on the laboratories? The problems: they are about 20 per cent less sensitive than a PCR, and a positive RAT needs to be confirmed with a PCR. They are quick, but you can’t do many at the same time. And they cost as much as $15 a test."

[link to www.smh.com.au (secure)]

This is what politicians do, when the numbers don't fit their agenda,, they don't actually change their strategy, they just change the definitions of things so the numbers look better.

a lot of people were saying they were never gonna lift any restrictions and it was the end of the world. well that didn't happen!

Never check in mate, screw that shit. I just stand at the door and pretend im scanning their stupid barcode.

they shouldn't even have the barcodes any more since the contract tracers aren't going to bother with any contact less than four hours! they don't even publish a list of exposure sites any more! what is the point of checking in now?

Scott Morrison, Dominic Perrottet and Dan Andrews, and many others, are now finding that after the best part of two years of direct instruction to the general public about COVID-19, the message has to quickly change.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s political and health leaders have urged people even with the slightest of symptoms to get tested.

But with the Omicron variant now sweeping the country and a vast number of Australians spending large parts of their holidays stuck in a car outside a testing centre rather than on a highway to a beach or river retreat, the message needs to vary.

As the Commonwealth’s Chief Health Officer, Paul Kelly noted on Wednesday, waiting in a car for eight hours to get a test and then up to 96 hours for the result fails to serve “any useful public health function”.

PCR testing should now only be carried out by those with “symptoms of an infection”, he said.

The priority groups with symptoms who should line up for a test, according to Scott Morrison, include international arrivals, healthcare workers, people in high-risk settings and particular populations which include the elderly, the immunocompromised, those with co-morbidities or vulnerable to severe diseases, Indigenous Australians and anyone who has had a positive rapid antigen test (who is symptomatic).

Again, since the start of the pandemic, the definition has been broad enough to include anyone who happened to have been in the cheese aisle of your local supermarket while you were in the fruit and veg section trying to find a decent bunch of bananas.

With the testing regime under so much pressure, and thousands of workers now home-quarantining because they have been deemed a close contact, the definition of the term has to be altered.

That’s two substantial changes to two years’ worth of public messaging.

[link to www.brisbanetimes.com.au (secure)]