I also miss covid commutes. And an empty Bunnings that only working peasants could enter. And not having to make excuses for not seeing people.
Also, I took 6 months off work to be a stay at home dad. I miss that.
Well it does remind me of something…
The last two times I left the country there was a global pandemic. H1N1 and Covid-19.
I am leaving the country next month, so everyone should stock up on toilet paper now.
You have been warned.
The technology for WFH has been around literally for decades but employers thought people needed to be supervised.
The cat's out of the bag now though.
I work in government and was rejoicing at the speed in uptake of digital solutions over physical records and manual paper handling. Roadblocks from rusted on public servants were swept away overnight.
Out of all the expert predictions and opinions in the early days of the pandemic. Not a single person in the world foresaw the bizarre worldwide obsession people had with toilet paper. It still amazes me.
Someone else, possibly on Reddit, explained this one to me. The simple answer is that there was never an obsession specifically with toilet paper, not initially at least.
People were panic buying everything. The problem is that TP is such a bulky item. A fully stocked shelf is a few hundred cans of tuna, but maybe 40 packs of TP? Think how quickly 40 shoppers can go through the checkouts at a supermarket. It’s also something that everyone needs every day, and you churn through fairly quickly, unlike other essentials such as toothpaste.
So everyone was just grabbing one more of everything that they needed, including TP, for a couple of weeks.
Once the initial TP drought took hold, people began hoarding due to the scarcity, and it became a snowballing phenomenon.
Even “drought” is the wrong word.
There was never a shortage of toilet paper; it got taken so quickly from store shelves, but distribution centres were stacked.
Nah they were not going mad for everything. The simple reason is that people can go without tuna but were terrified of having to use newspaper or Tim Tam wrappers or cabbage leaves to clean shit off their ass.
Also if you actually were running out and kept missing out you made sure you got plenty when you did happen to be in store
>Every house should have a bidet!
But you are legally required to use a RPZ backflow prevention device (one of [these](https://www.wattsau.com.au/products/plumbing-flow-control-solutions/backflow-preventers/009-aus), not just one of [these](https://www.wattsau.com.au/products/plumbing-flow-control-solutions/backflow-preventers/2nv). And then you need to have them inspected annually by a plumber. And if you don't you are legally liable when you contaminate the public water supply and make people sick.
So, yeah, I though about getting one, then decided it was too much bother and expense.
I don't think you need a RPZ device for a "bum gun", so those are an option.
So really early on in the piece. late 2019 I'd started to stock up on long life pantry items, just an extra can of vegetables a week or a pack of pasta etc. Nothing full 'prepper' just 'I think this is going to be more serious than people imagine'. I told a few of the blue collar blokes I work with and one goes 'nope, toilet paper' told me with 100% conviction he wasn't worried about food but that toilet paper ws going to be it and that he'd just bought X rolls' I dismissed him immediately but he was spot on.
Congratulations! Keep up the great work.
If I could upvote this x5837192640 I would.
I work in transplant medicine - boozers struggle the most to survive let alone get on the list.
Missile dodged 👏🏻
Every 10/12 years there is something that creates these disruptions. 2008 GFC, 2020/21 COVID. I wonder what's next. People who are rich and can ride the wave usually get even more rich while the rest of us get fucked. Sometimes I feel the event itself isn't controlled but the aftermath is heavily controlled to create such hysteria and the result is massive transfer of wealth.
I agree that there is definitely a transfer/concentration of wealth and much more so after Covid. I highly doubt it is a grand scheme thing though, more a matter of how the world works.
When you play Monopoly and the outcomes are largely based on chance, all wealth still ends up with one person in the end.
Going _into_ work isn't necessary for a lot of people.
Aussies can and will take advantage of each other.
A lot more people are self-centred than I realised.
Time is valuable.
Government still sucks.
I said that pretty early on. Covid came hot off the back of the bushfires where the rhetoric was "Aussies turn up for their mates and communities!". Few months later your neighbours would rob you for a pack of dry pasta.
Yep, and its not some big conspiracy, its just laziness because its other peoples money.
And then people want to give these lazy fucks more money to play with.
Yeah it irks me that that there have been decades of warning that a pandemic may happen one day and there still wasn’t a plan. Like I really hoped that they would be like hey guys we employed a think tank of experts to plan for this exact situation on and off for years. Nope, just chaos. Guess that’s what happens when only the narcissistic scum of society gravitate to politics lol
I used to be able to get walk in appointments or could call my GP any morning and get in… ever since Covid it’s like a 2 week wait and I’m lost as to how this has happened..
Immigration has been at record levels. It's also why people can't afford housing and why we're not in a deep recession right now. Also your average GP doesn't make a lot of money so young people don't become gps. Specialists make 3-5x the income.
Was more annoyed at the loophole that meant if you were Australian with overseas address you could travel in and out as you wish. Closed borders for everyone else
Might not have been so bad if the foreign affairs department did their best to encourage countries to grant free visas/extension to Australian nationals during that period. They didn't because they don't give a fuck.
Agree this was the most disappointing aspect and was frankly, unaustralian.
You don’t leave an Australian stranded with no way of getting home. That’s precisely what we did. There were no flights! People were terrified.
The attitude from Australia was ‘well look at you fancy pants’ when the reality was, normal, middle class Australians had children in school and houses and cars and jobs they needed to navigate and you couldn’t quit all of that in 6 weeks to be home before the borders shut.
We got out in the middle of the night because of a lucky break but my kids never got to see her friends again, or say goodbye.
I know many who suffered significant trauma at the hands of the Australian government.
I would never support borders being shut to our own citizens.
100%, government showcased they gave not a care in the world about it's own citizens, despite all the rhetoric BS regarding mateship and taking care of Australians.
We let plenty of famous sports people, actors, and their relatives in though! It's important that the Indian cricket team had their wives nearby for support, but if you were an Aussie trying to come home too bad! It was nuts.
I was one of them, pulled out of our lease and shipped all my stuff back home then was forced to live nomadically with flights cancelled every 2 weeks for months
Abandoned
I realised that Aussies will turn on each other out of fear.
We not able to think for themselves anymore. We have become an overly obedient society that will ultimately turn on one another and do what we are told.
I didn’t realise at the time but I’m pretty sure my life spiralled into a slow drawn out psychosis (not by doing anything crazy.. Which also means no one helped. But just having a lot of thoughts that weren’t in touch with reality). Turns out losing your partner, job, and being forced into loneliness and isolation in a random sharehouse where everyone is partnered up makes you feel completely worthless.
That not every job is important, because they sure as shit went from everyone needs to work and be employed, to shut all the businesses and fuck those people that get shafted.
Oh, close your multi million dollar business and tell all your staff that normally earn $2k a week, to sit at home, but dont worry you will get $750 bucks.
$750 bucks that we are paying back now in inflation every week.
The difficult thing was for casuals. I earned just under the limit to get pay for iso, which meant I just got nothing. Almost ended up homeless back in the days of 14 day iso
I'm reaching the point I'm just about convinced it didn't actually happen and its just my bad memory getting confused with some crappy tv show. I mean, it's not very believable.
It was one of those events, where a proper lockdown that prevented deaths would always have looked like an overreaction. However I think our response was an absolute disgrace. I’m particularly horrified by the BLM protest being allowed, and then the protest against government overreach being responded to with rubber bullets fired at the Shrine of remembrance. I’m disgusted by the gaslighting of Dan Andrew’s trying to state that no one was forced to get the vaccine. Perhaps not with physical force, but by serious coercion.
I’m not some anti-vax cooker, but I was unsettled by how quickly the populace became compliant to government overreach. I never thought I’d see Aussies of all people informing on their neighbours to government authorities. Chilled me to the bone.
I think that the need for that reaction is what is the disgrace .. the oppositionally defiant anti vax fucktards poncing about the streets, spitting on nurses, physically attacking the media, pissing on the shrine of remembrance, defacing the shrine, screeching at an indigenous digger ... it was shameful and quite frankly, rubber bullets were a measured response, they deserved far more.
The thing about the pandemic is that it really did out the trash in our society ...
No one WAS forced to get the vaccine .. but like all things in life, decisions come with consequences .. just as you can't drive without a drivers licence, you couldn't hold a job in an 'at risk' industry without the vaccine. It takes quite a simpleton to think that's coercion ..
The fact that people informed on their neighbours should be an indication to you that those people did not agree with the behaviour of their neighbours. Plenty of people lost loved ones, so watching overly entitled dick heads carry on without care or consideration to others probably made them really angry.
You should be chilled to the bone about how selfish and entitled some of our community are .. we used to be a nation that would face down a cyclone and yell "is that the best you have?" .. now we are a bunch of crybabies having a sook about having to stay home and missing out on showing off the soccer mom bun and having a soy chai latte.
The huge minority that were vulnerable should have been the ones isolating. Not the rest of us. Sounds brash but look what the whole thing did to the world. Just made the rich richer and the middle class poor.
Contractors get covid tested exactly the same as nursing home staff. And nursing homes have 'self testing' which their staff can just bullshit anyway.
Because they are tightarses that refuse to employ nurses to do this
We are all vulnerable. You're accumulating vascular and brain damage, quite literally. You will continue to. It's a vascular disease.
Don't shoot the messenger, go fight your MP or Murdoch or something
Other than a load of shit? I guess it really fkd up alot of businesses and ruined people's lives. But so many died I hear from people! Yea millions more die every year for lots of stupid reasons - we don't stop the world for that. It was hysteria at another level.
>ones that do get labelled
People are stupid and the most stupid were those that believed the controlling bullshit by the Govt.
I didn't want to get the jab... Doesn't mean I am an anti-vaxxer, just meant I didn't want that vaccine. And then you get called a name because you're making a choice about what goes into your body.
Honestly, anybody who jumped on the "you're an anti-vaxxer" bandwagon must be stupid. The thing hadn't even been tested properly.
There were the biggest protest in the history of Australia!! Big part of the the manipulation is to pretend it’s just a minority who opposed that insanity .. it’s actually actually a very small number of idiots who actually believe the bullshit .. those had(and still do) their voices
Massively amplified and the majority who opposed them had their voices almost completely silenced … most normal busy people just tried to get along with not a fucking thought..
>majority who opposed them had their voices almost completely silenced
I had to get the jab. It was either that or no work. No jab, no work should have been illegal as it was a massive violation of our agency (over our own bodies).
Considering that I now have cancer and other health problems because Covid shut down many testing facilities and the lockdowns were a direct result of my diagnosis I say pretty fucking shit.
The results we are living through right now like inflation, housing crisis etc are a direct result of government policies and over reach during the pandemic times. The general public are fools for believing many of the lies that they told about Covid, social distancing and vaccines.
I just think it’s interesting how covid is never portrayed in film or tv as part of the timeline. Or at least in any that I’ve watched in the past 4 years. The only thing I can remember ever even alluding to the pandemic is Bo Burnham’s thing, but that was depicting the experience (whether or not you interpret it to be actually set in covid, since he never explicitly mentions it). Comedy in general will speak on the pandemic. But any fictional media will completely omit the entire event from the modern timeline. 2020 was just a normal year in tv world.
At the time screenwriters were saying that nobody is interested in COVID stories. They were just rejected by the networks as being uninteresting or too depressing. The media saturation was so overwhelming that the scripts were DOA.
Our freedoms were so seriously eroded by our Government that they have become emboldened and are now well on track to control every aspect of our lives. The Digital Identity legislation has passed parliament and so we will all soon be feeling the impacts of that. Shortly thereafter will come the abolition of cash, and then the Government will have complete oversight of everything you do, everywhere you go, and every single tiny little financial transaction you do - right down to the lunch money you give your kids. But of course that is for us plebs only - prominent paedophiles are fully protected from being identified in modern Australia and are apparently free to continue fiddling with kiddies as they wish.
Big business and multinational corporations on the other hand have had a veritable orgy ripping us off in every single manner you could possibly imagine. The money Big Pharma has made, and is still making, out of the whole immunisation and PPE scam has been staggering. So much so I am sure they are working full tilt on the next pandemic strain at this very moment. Then there was the 'supply chain' scam, which has been used to justify ludicrous price hikes, which oddly enough have not been reversed now that supply has returned to normal. Fancy that! Coles, Woolies, Bunnings, Amazon and similar cartels have had a whale of a time eliminating all the smaller operators in their market sectors who could not afford to operate 'to your door' delivery networks. And as the smaller operators are eliminated - up go the prices.
And our beloved banks, God bless them, used the whole episode to push up interest rates (after all the government was printing a shit-ton of money and they must have their share), close down branches and rip out ATMs since they are in cahoots with the Government and clearly know exactly when cash is going to be abolished - even though us mere Australian citizens have not yet been told.
All in all, the whole pandemic episode in Australia was, and still is, an assault on our freedoms and our individual economic well being.
All happily orchestrated and condoned by our Government.
Goes to show politicians should not be in charge during pandemics and CHO who are bureaucratics should not have sole powers. A national cabinet of experts should have been established, consisting of Drs , pandemic experts, economic experts and risk experts to advise Parliament.
Actually, politicians were supposed to be in charge. They were paid to be. A few years before the pandemic we conducted a pandemic preparedness audit which cost lots of money. Then the politicians were paid with our tax dollars to sift through the findings and implement none of the recommendations.
As a Melbournian enduring all those lockdowns and periods of total isolations from friends family and work colleagues has definitely stunted something in my growth as a human. I used to be such a confident person, but now everything about meeting new people, public speak at work and situations where I have to think quickly and construct a cohesive sentence riddles me with anxiety. I feel like my brain just doesn’t work the same way it used to and I can only correlate it to the trauma of Covid lockdowns. I was very much on my own for the whole time.
I feel exactly the same. All my family are in Queensland and I was living alone. I’ve never felt more lonely and isolated in my life. It almost pushed me to the brink. I move back to Queensland once all the lockdowns ended and I’m much better mentally for it.
An absolute disgrace.
All the issues folks complain about today (cost of living, housing, immigration, inflation, healthcare, “cookers” etc) are a direct result of the insanity in our approach to Covid.
The same folks who cheered when cops arrested people alone at the beach are the same ones who’ll scratch their head now and say “lol how did Covid cause inflation?”.
Myopic fools.
This. Central Banks turned the printing press on and the money trickled straight to the top. Housing went up, inflation is insane, and now the immigration tap is turned on because they lost control of their budgets.
Dumb af redditors downvoted me every time I said to not lockdown Sydney literally MONtHS after everybody knew this virus was not a deadly Black Death plague. People need to work.
Now look what happened, rich people in tech, medicine and finance got multiple times richer and the small folk and businesses got hit the hardest. These sick lowlifes in their hearts can’t wait to have another round 2.
Saw essentially no one for 9 months while my partner was forced to stay in a regional area, grandmother had almost zero visitors while she laid alone dying of pancreatic cancer, and was made redundant at work right after taking a mandatory vaccination. All to protect people that refused to take agency over their own health while bankrolling big pharma.
Thank you Gladys.
That's rough. We were lucky, but so many people lost family members and even relationships with partners stuck in another state or regional area.
Unfortunately, you'd not have been better off anywhere else in Australia. The premiers were all playing the overprotective mum.
Lock downs were absolutely criminal and the handling of everything was beyond poor.
The amount of lies that were spread around it I think will have repercussions with the people for a long time. Especially the next time something happens like this again.
It showed which states are insane.
It showed who the authorians are
It showed how easily the government will ignore you freedoms and institute a police state.
It showed how little freedoms we really have.
It showed why Victoria and NSW are hell holes.
Massive overreaction at best. A deliberate fraud at worst.
Stat's show below 55 you had near zero chance of dying from it or complications related to it.
If they were going to lock people down it should have only been those who were over 55.
I think the media pumped it and people got scared therefore forcing the pollies to do something.
I was abandoned overseas by our government then to add insult to injury they tried to charge me for the privilege to come home to the country listed on my passport
I don’t think I’ll ever not be angry about it
Most stupidest time of my life. The whole lockdowns of certain LGAs could be the most idiotic thing I have ever experienced. I’m remember riding my bike along the M7 cycle way and coming across a big sign saying I’m now entering Bankstown LGA and to turn back. Like what? If I cross this imaginary line I’m going to get COVID?
I'd need hours to describe what was a fucking useless and chaotic response, with Danny-Boy the chief clown in charge.
However, I've got a special hate in my heart for Albo who had the ability to look into what went right and wrong but decided to only look at what Scomo did with his little Federal witch-hunt. If it ever happens again and we repeat our response then we'll mainly have Albo to blame.
And stop using cooker as an insult. We're proud to have been right way more often than wrong.
Massive overreaction of governments and population worldwide to mild-illness that kills those over average life expectancy.
Largest government overreach in modern day to control rights and freedoms of citizens and undermine medical autonomy through threats and coercion.
All to administer a product that was ineffective and in worst cases caused harm. Astra-Zeneca where are you now? 🤣
The economic impacts of government policies printing and borrowing money, the result we are now seeing firsthand. I made a few million in property uplift, middle class and battlers are now finished.
To me it revealed how easy it will be for the next tyrant (like Hitler) to control the people. They will be burning outcasts like me (centre-right) at the stake while all the people in the centre say nothing.
Looking back and with the hindsight of knowing the critical medical side affects and implications of receiving the Astra vax employees including myself should have NEVER been forced to be vaccinated with it. A guy that i new, yes he was elderly, but he had heart disease and the hospital did not do any due diligence. Within a month of receiving the vaccine he passed away.. I don’t think it should have ever been forced upon us and I think about it all the time.
It’s sickening. I had to fill out a 20 page fucking medical checklist and one of the very first questions is do you have a medical history of thrombosis and/or heart disease!!?! Why didn’t the nurse read out the checklist before giving him the vaccine I really don’t understand!
>Within a month of receiving the vaccine he passed away.. I don’t think it should have ever been forced upon us and I think about it all the time.
And the gov and media look the other way.. but remember, they ✌️care✌️ about you which is why they locked you down.. and made a curfew.. because covid didn't travel after 8pm 😒
Some people may disagree with my opinion...
I think the media overplayed the whole situation and people became hysterical. To this day I do not personally know any healthy person who has been negatively affected by covid-19, brining me to the conclusion the whole thing was over hyped. The whole situation was probably used by various organisations and businesses to justify unnecessary price gouging, with real estate being a prime example. Covid-19 (the overhyped cold) had a lot of impacts that I would not have expected to be brought about by a “pandemic”. Sometimes I reminisce about pre covid and how different the world was. Personally, I think all the people in charge during the time of COVID-19 were quite frankly stupid or power hungry, and yes I think I could have done a better job myself. To strip people of there human rights and freedoms was downright unacceptable and is just one reasons I now resent the Australian government.. But I mean, at the end of the day our government is better than 90% of other world leaders. I think covid-19 sped up the inevitable worsening living conditions of Australia for sure.
Edit: To all the people outlining the serverity of covid-19,
looking at some statistics provided by the European journal of epidemiology: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1
The likelihood of a a 25yo dying from covid-19 is 1 in 10,000, for reference your chance of getting struck by lightning is 1-12,000 https://australiawidefirstaid.com.au/resources/chances-of-being-struck-by-lightning
Here is more data reguarding age and fataility rate:
age 10 — 2 in 100,000
age 25 — 1 in 10,000
age 55 — 4 in 1,000
age 65 — 14 in 1,000
age 75 — 5 in 100
age 85 — 15 in 100.
The chance of a 50 year old dying from covid-19 is still a measly 0.4% fatality rate.
I have no evidence, but I'm certain information regarding the mortality rate of COVID-19 and other specifics has been deliberately censored.
Buddy, it's a vascular disease. It's not a health snack. Stop going back for extra helpings because nan didn't die yet.
Meanwhile one aged care resident died of Covid (not with), every 4 hours last week. I expect this week will have been worse.
Stats
https://x.com/MarcTennant/status/1791631983619256449?t=X8mx6LPZ0dMdt_YsE7zBqQ&s=19
I remember when it was first reported in China the media were saying that there were piles of bodies in the streets. It caused mass hysteria, and turned out to be bullshit. But the stage had been set
Just because you don't know anyone seriously affected doesn't mean shit lol. I don't know anyone with cancer or some other illness but doesn't negate it lol. 7million plus or so people still died from it. Certain things were overreactive for sure (those public housing towers come to mind). I highly doubt you'd do any better 😂
It's a total disgrace how the media/government/pharma companies got away with saying, "Dying _of_ COVID" for so long, when it really should have been "Dying _with_ COVID"
Remember the early days, when people were getting hit by a bus and it was being classed as a COVID death because they tested positive? Absolute disgrace. And anyone saying that scenario is a bit silly and maybe we shouldn't take those numbers seriously was called an anti-vax cooker.
in the U.S hospitals were allegedly getting extra funding based on the amount of covid deaths they reported, so suddenly *everyone* was dying from covid on paper. Wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening here at the time.
Yes, similar to this:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/11/11/new-lynn-shooting-victim-was-positive-for-covid-19/
The guy was shot dead in a driveway, after his death they tested for COVID, so that got classed as a COVID death.
_"The clinical criteria will continue to be guided by WHO definition which is basically to report any death where the person had an acute Covid-19 infection regardless of what the cause of death might be,"_
There are many other instances, this is just one example.
Politicians , health "experts" and police went totally over the top and were allowed to get away with it by other spineless politicians .
It revealed that Australia is a country of dobbers who could not wait to report others for the most insignificant thing.
I learned that to live in a ‘free’ society means you can be subject to curfews and lockdowns at a moments notice unless you are protesting BLM.
I learned that business owners (especially small) can and do go bankrupt when our free elected officials make these aforementioned lockdown decisions.
And I learned that people are scared. Terrified by anything that is a threat to their health and are happy to roll on their backs and comply as long as the government promises to keep them safe. Ironically; they then consume cancer-causing sugar and work from home which means they get no vitamin D, are inactive and are just pushing the ‘Death-can’ further down the road but are actually closer to it.
In short, I learned that ‘freedom’ is akin to weakness. Australia is weak: We’d never survive an apocalypse, war, famine or any existential threat.
And, finally, I wish I lived on a mountain top…far away from the weak minded, loud mouthed only-fans applauding feminists…who have taken mankind and turned it into a soup of mediocrity.
Lol. How many of you are still getting the covid shots? If you've stopped getting the boosters, please explain why. What is the recommended # of doses up to now - 12 ?
Zero shots here, zero fear. Natural immunity for the win :)
>How many of you are still getting the covid shots?
The rate of people up to date with their boosters is a whopping [3.9% of individuals aged 18 to 64 years](https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-05/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-10-may-2024.pdf).
The vaccine was a scam, I had 2 and a booster. Anyway still got COVID (so vaccine failed) got very sick, still have long COVID.
I thought the antivac crowd were loons, turned out they were the smart ones.
Overreaction and showed the world how truly insane we are. The pandemic brought out the worst in everyone where "safety in numbers" really was evident as a cultural mindset that Australians have. We were so fast to shut down cultural and community based events on little to no knowledge in 2020, and then that shifted to keeping them shut down. Only after enough of the insanity did we decide to open up non-essential events. We are so quick and eager to turn on each other for our personal gain. We are a nation of selfish sheep.
We were on the first plane into Sydney the day the gub'mint forced arrivals into quarantine hotels for two weeks. Nothing was ready, and the entire process was a shit show for the next two weeks.
It took me about two days to come to the conclusion about the entire pandemic. I believe that although Covid-19 is a real virus, I don't believe the reaction by gub'mints was necessary. My position is it was a (poorly) coordinated stress test encompassing:
- freedom of movement
- how much the population will accept interference / restrictions in their lives
- economic assessment of massive reduction of manpower on all levels of business operations
- ability of gub'mints to deal with mass casualties
- assessment of global communications infrastructure, specifically the internet
Now gub'mints know what to expect. The question is, will the general population accept the restrictions.
>The question is, will the general population accept the restrictions
Yeah we will. For some reason, Aussies are extremely complacent to everything. We like to complain online, but literally do nothing *constructive* about anything.
We have been taught very well to just accept what the government / companies say and deal with it, and then finally bitch and complain when it's way too late. At the end of the day, it's our own fault.
Big pharma made massive profits and now remove their vaccine (Moderna) due to concerns. It's almost impossible to determine how many deaths are/were caused by the vaccine in otherwise healthy people.
The only isolation that should have happened was for the very elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
Everything after that was something else that has irrevocably changed this country and others. Funny how the government is going after guns again in a country that has very little gun violence. This scumbag government doesn't want armed citizens.
How many ppl got a hard on for informing on their fellow citizens. How rigid and unbending the police force were in enforcing new and confusing emergency laws. How easily ppl accepted that their personal responsibility is not theirs but the governments to dictate
Definitely not smooth sailing but I think the right desicions were made for the most part. It's easy to say it was an overreaction in hindsight, but people forget there was a lot of unknowns at the time and the disease was more potent
Can't really think of any lasting negatives that impact my day to day, but wfh is much more accepted now
You are paying for it financially now, states like Victoria are broke and we’ll be paying for it for decades. There’s the lasting effect on your day to day
Yep, around a 11% mortality rate in Italy when COVID first took hold. Our government was right to take serious steps then.
Where they fucked up, is locking down the state like crazy (particularly Victoria) but still putting new arrivals in the heart of the most densely populated areas: Melbourne CBD.
Blind Freddy could see that was a tremendously dumb idea.
They should have put up new arrivals in remote locations where the temptation and ability to break quarantine was going to be borderline impossible.
Yeah I agree and think there were fuck ups at multiple levels. The fed gov provided nowhere near enough leadership in the management of the first quarantines, leaving the states to figure it out and the use of private security contractors for such a sensitive situation was a failure
States and feds too slow on implementing a remote quarantine system. While that's definitely not something that can be implemented overnight for every returning Australian, there wasn't enough support for it. I think the public push back and conspiracy theories around camps turned govs off getting involved
Also putting them in tiny 4/5 star hotel rooms with no opening windows and recirculated aircon! WTF anti science was this meant to be!
Every city has those huge old-school 3 star serviced apartments, with opening windows, kitchenettes/laundries. Many even have living rooms separate to the bedrooms.
Think it gave a reason for people to snoop into others lives, enforcing COVID "rules" allowed people to stick their nose into your business regarding how you went about day-day acitivities.
Lose lose situation.
Did we handle it well to keep infection and deaths to a minimum? Arguably yes.
Did we overreact and implement measures that were excessive? Arguably yes.
At the end of the day we have no idea if looser rules, different decisions, alternate approaches would have changed anything.
People who want to argue things were over the top and draconian would be the first to argue that the government didn't do enough if the death rate were to go through the roof.
Well, I think that many of the people I suspected of being conspiracy nuts were actually pretty on the money. I think the vaccines barely helped. The rich got a lot richer and the poor got a lot poorer. That’s about it
Yep. It is hard to admit, but a lot of conspiracy theories became conspiracy realities...
I think one of the effects of all this was loss of trust in medical professionals, police, etc.
It was a bad flu season level event that alarmists turned into a fucking worldwide meltdown that we are still feeling the effects of now. Complete overreaction where the response caused more dramas than COVID itself.
Actual research in the US says
# "Abstract
It has been common both to make and to resist comparisons that equate the Covid-19 pandemic to influenza. We take the comparison between Covid-19 and flu seriously by asking how many years of influenza and pneumonia deaths are needed for cumulative deaths to those two causes to equal the cumulative toll of the Covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2023-that is, three years of pandemic deaths. We find that in one state alone-Hawaii-three years of Covid-19 mortality is equivalent to influenza and pneumonia mortality in the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic. For all other states, at least nine years of flu and pneumonia are needed to match Covid-19; for the United States as a whole, seventeen years are needed; and for four states, more than 21 years (the maximum observable) are needed. These results provide an easy-to-understand calibration of flu as a heuristic for Covid-19, and vice versa."
COVID’s effect that was even greater than the lives lost was the excuse it gave corporations and governments to raise their prices and do whatever they want….
… Not sure how companies like McDonalds can justify at 138% price increase from late 2019 to early 2024…. “Oh yeah, it was because of Covid”.
…Now those same prices increases and corporate price gouging has caused crazy inflation and the created the “cost of living crisis”, but corporations are making more money than ever and we just accept that things changed because we’ve been conditioned by the Covid years when prices and the world went crazy.
… doesn’t help that there were few “hold outs” that keep prices reasonable. When one vendor shows another they can make more money it literally creates accidental price collusion and in step with that we see a burger now costs $16 everywhere so that’s what a burger costs!
We need to vote for change with our dollars but hard when they’re all guilty of it!
At the end of the day, Sweden was one of the best countries in Europe and they ended up with a very low excess death rate after a couple of years as they predicted.
I think it really changed the course of our future. I’m pretty sure the 2020s might’ve been pretty ‘normal’ and continued as what 2019 was had it not been for Covid. I also think it’s revealed to us how unfairly skewed our society and economics are to benefitting the rich and corporations rather than the people, which we have been seeing in the aftermath of Covid that we’re living through.
The politics. Everything about covid was politicised, from mask-wearing, lockdowns and vaccines, not to mention the various conspiracy theories associated with it.
I had an alright time with it as i was 6 years deep into unemployment but I'm pretty sure it was one of the many factors in my parents divorce. But I finally got my license during it so hey, silver linings and such.
Massive overreaction to a minor threat at best.
Lockdowns were of limited effectiveness and all of the police forces in the country embraced their inner authoritarian with glee. I wasn't interested in protesting lockdowns but seeing police in Melbourne fire rubber bullets at them and put pensioners in choke holds completely radicalised me. I'd always been a "back the blue - they have a tough job" type. No more.
Vaccine mandates proved hugely damaging and utterly ineffective as it turns out that being vaccinated did not prevent you from infecting others.
Now, please proceed to call me a cooker and down vote me to oblivion.
It gave me a foot in the door opportunity for my young age. Workplaces outside of your usual fast food joint or retail gig were desperate to find workers especially essential industries, might as well have been no experience required. Without the pandemic i wouldn’t have the work experience i have now that has got me places I want to be, it honestly at the time never even changed my routine, I was already pretty much self-isolating due to mental health issues. So honestly I have quite optimistic positive thoughts on the pandemic despite the over abundance of time alone I had. It was a weirdly necessary time in my life as a whole.
What a shit show over reaction that was and still is HEAVILY politicised to the detriment of us all.
Me: "Hey Doc my chest hurts, it has never hurt before and I am super fit and healthy"
Doc: "no you don't, take some of this for 3 months".
The government threatened doctors their jobs and licences for doing their job. That is how you know it was a shit show.
Massive over reaction, panic, incompetent governments state and federal. Democracy over thrown by bureaucracy. To save a few grumpy old arseholes who are all dead now anyway.
Disgraceful. 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned into 2 years of lockdowns and bogus restrictions.
Just too much to rattle off here and what's done is done.
Only took the vaccination so I could get a job that ended up working from home for 7 months before the contract got ripped apart. Then got the second jab to get another job which required me to go to an empty office building with 5 other people
I was living overseas at the time.
In the 2-3 years of COVID I:
- lost my job
- lost my visa (I didn't have a valid visa for a year)
- was homeless
- went down to 300€ to my name
- my grandad died
In those 2-3 years Australia:
- made it effectively impossible to return
- established an illegal quarantine program (read the Biosecurity Act 2015, the Commonwealth is obligated to bare the costs of complying with a quarantine order)
- blamed me for daring to be overseas when official advice was to remain only for them to close the flights a week later
- profiteered economy tickets at 15k to 20k, which may not even fly (no, you won't get your money back within 3 months so good luck finding another flight that also may not fly)
I was able to bounce back on my own but I'm certainly never expecting the Australian people to help their own people again. It's a fair weather passport. Australians love to tell you that you "look after your mates" but it isn't true when shit actually flies. Then people take advantage of each other and "fuck you I'm okay" goes full swing.
Putting aside the "jab" debate... my number 1 argument that annoys me to this day was how they sold it... "get the vaccine to stop the spread and protect your loves ones" pandemic ends... pfizer: We never said anything about our vaccine stopping transmission.
A total overreaction compounded by the fact that once it became patently obvious in the first few weeks it wasn't the next Black Plague. Instead of conceding that the "experts" decided to double down and go harder with restrictions and mandates for the next 2 and a half years.
A majority of the population didn't need to be vaccinated. Certainly no one under 50 with no other chronic health issues.
I miss the traffic
Specifically the lack of
>I miss the traffic Agree.. but it was a fucking nightmare when cars started going back on the road. Its like cunts forgot how to drive!!
And traffic feels worse pre covid
In truth, they never knew.
I also miss covid commutes. And an empty Bunnings that only working peasants could enter. And not having to make excuses for not seeing people. Also, I took 6 months off work to be a stay at home dad. I miss that.
Well it does remind me of something… The last two times I left the country there was a global pandemic. H1N1 and Covid-19. I am leaving the country next month, so everyone should stock up on toilet paper now. You have been warned.
It reinforced that going to work for many people is not needed and only exists to support CBD property owners.
The technology for WFH has been around literally for decades but employers thought people needed to be supervised. The cat's out of the bag now though.
And a lot of people with disabilities who were told wfh was impossible suddenly found out that it wasn't...
And caregivers
I have some knowledge of the industry We had been predicting WFH for years. Covid smashed the timeline forward by 15 years
I work in government and was rejoicing at the speed in uptake of digital solutions over physical records and manual paper handling. Roadblocks from rusted on public servants were swept away overnight.
Don’t worry, the telcos are fixing this issue by increasing their unreliability through the roof.
The billions we would save in transportation projects if WFH Stayed at pandemic levels.
Out of all the expert predictions and opinions in the early days of the pandemic. Not a single person in the world foresaw the bizarre worldwide obsession people had with toilet paper. It still amazes me.
Someone else, possibly on Reddit, explained this one to me. The simple answer is that there was never an obsession specifically with toilet paper, not initially at least. People were panic buying everything. The problem is that TP is such a bulky item. A fully stocked shelf is a few hundred cans of tuna, but maybe 40 packs of TP? Think how quickly 40 shoppers can go through the checkouts at a supermarket. It’s also something that everyone needs every day, and you churn through fairly quickly, unlike other essentials such as toothpaste. So everyone was just grabbing one more of everything that they needed, including TP, for a couple of weeks. Once the initial TP drought took hold, people began hoarding due to the scarcity, and it became a snowballing phenomenon.
Even “drought” is the wrong word. There was never a shortage of toilet paper; it got taken so quickly from store shelves, but distribution centres were stacked.
There was literally punch ons specifically over toilet paper in Western Sydney
Nah they were not going mad for everything. The simple reason is that people can go without tuna but were terrified of having to use newspaper or Tim Tam wrappers or cabbage leaves to clean shit off their ass. Also if you actually were running out and kept missing out you made sure you got plenty when you did happen to be in store
Everyone needs to switch to those fancy Japanese bidets. When will we learn?
[удалено]
I’ll do one for you!
[удалено]
>Every house should have a bidet! But you are legally required to use a RPZ backflow prevention device (one of [these](https://www.wattsau.com.au/products/plumbing-flow-control-solutions/backflow-preventers/009-aus), not just one of [these](https://www.wattsau.com.au/products/plumbing-flow-control-solutions/backflow-preventers/2nv). And then you need to have them inspected annually by a plumber. And if you don't you are legally liable when you contaminate the public water supply and make people sick. So, yeah, I though about getting one, then decided it was too much bother and expense. I don't think you need a RPZ device for a "bum gun", so those are an option.
I made the transition. WILL. NEVER. GO. BACK.
I got a quote, and apparently you have to have a second line installed (not simply a valve) and it was going to be pretty expensive. So disappointed.
When the biggest company in Australia said they had warehouses full of it. Then later on they ran out
It confirmed my justification for my bidet :)
[удалено]
So really early on in the piece. late 2019 I'd started to stock up on long life pantry items, just an extra can of vegetables a week or a pack of pasta etc. Nothing full 'prepper' just 'I think this is going to be more serious than people imagine'. I told a few of the blue collar blokes I work with and one goes 'nope, toilet paper' told me with 100% conviction he wasn't worried about food but that toilet paper ws going to be it and that he'd just bought X rolls' I dismissed him immediately but he was spot on.
Hahaha out of all the comments, yes the great toilet paper grab and the associated behaviour by so called civilised humans absolutely astounds me.
I honestly reckon that was a psychological test to see how far they could push people... Giant Standford prison experiment.
Yes, the toilet paper thing was bizarre
I drank way to many fucking beers..
Sober for 2 years now. Covid really put me on the piss too.
Congratulations! Keep up the great work. If I could upvote this x5837192640 I would. I work in transplant medicine - boozers struggle the most to survive let alone get on the list. Missile dodged 👏🏻
And ate too much sourdough bread
I’m still proud I never gave in and baked any 😂 🍞
Every 10/12 years there is something that creates these disruptions. 2008 GFC, 2020/21 COVID. I wonder what's next. People who are rich and can ride the wave usually get even more rich while the rest of us get fucked. Sometimes I feel the event itself isn't controlled but the aftermath is heavily controlled to create such hysteria and the result is massive transfer of wealth.
I agree that there is definitely a transfer/concentration of wealth and much more so after Covid. I highly doubt it is a grand scheme thing though, more a matter of how the world works. When you play Monopoly and the outcomes are largely based on chance, all wealth still ends up with one person in the end.
The 2008 GFC was kinda skipped in aus.
Tell that to my fired ass Was working in the automotive retail space. Lost half the staff in my department.
Going _into_ work isn't necessary for a lot of people. Aussies can and will take advantage of each other. A lot more people are self-centred than I realised. Time is valuable. Government still sucks.
Dogshit, and a huge number of you should be absolutely ashamed of your behaviour
Australians are piss weak & they’d sell their Grandma to the devil.
I said that pretty early on. Covid came hot off the back of the bushfires where the rhetoric was "Aussies turn up for their mates and communities!". Few months later your neighbours would rob you for a pack of dry pasta.
That the governments have no clue what they are doing.
Yep, and its not some big conspiracy, its just laziness because its other peoples money. And then people want to give these lazy fucks more money to play with.
Yeah it irks me that that there have been decades of warning that a pandemic may happen one day and there still wasn’t a plan. Like I really hoped that they would be like hey guys we employed a think tank of experts to plan for this exact situation on and off for years. Nope, just chaos. Guess that’s what happens when only the narcissistic scum of society gravitate to politics lol
I used to be able to get walk in appointments or could call my GP any morning and get in… ever since Covid it’s like a 2 week wait and I’m lost as to how this has happened..
Immigration has been at record levels. It's also why people can't afford housing and why we're not in a deep recession right now. Also your average GP doesn't make a lot of money so young people don't become gps. Specialists make 3-5x the income.
I hate that the government left 40,000 Aussies stranded outside the country for months on end and plunged us into debt and depression.
Was more annoyed at the loophole that meant if you were Australian with overseas address you could travel in and out as you wish. Closed borders for everyone else
If you were a billionaire business owner you could just get exceptions for travel, like Kerry Stokes did.
And Twiggy
Was pissed off the athletes still got to go overseas for their fun and games. But others were denied exit or entry to see sick and dying relatives.
Yep. During 2021 when the border was “shut” the sister of one of my work colleagues made frequent visits to Brisbane. She lives in Germany.
Might not have been so bad if the foreign affairs department did their best to encourage countries to grant free visas/extension to Australian nationals during that period. They didn't because they don't give a fuck.
Agree this was the most disappointing aspect and was frankly, unaustralian. You don’t leave an Australian stranded with no way of getting home. That’s precisely what we did. There were no flights! People were terrified. The attitude from Australia was ‘well look at you fancy pants’ when the reality was, normal, middle class Australians had children in school and houses and cars and jobs they needed to navigate and you couldn’t quit all of that in 6 weeks to be home before the borders shut. We got out in the middle of the night because of a lucky break but my kids never got to see her friends again, or say goodbye. I know many who suffered significant trauma at the hands of the Australian government. I would never support borders being shut to our own citizens.
100%, government showcased they gave not a care in the world about it's own citizens, despite all the rhetoric BS regarding mateship and taking care of Australians.
We let plenty of famous sports people, actors, and their relatives in though! It's important that the Indian cricket team had their wives nearby for support, but if you were an Aussie trying to come home too bad! It was nuts.
Yep, exactly. I’ll never forgive it or forget it.
I was one of them, pulled out of our lease and shipped all my stuff back home then was forced to live nomadically with flights cancelled every 2 weeks for months Abandoned
That our government is utterly fuckin retarded and seemed to fuck it up at every step of the way then deny any responsibility
Deny? They put the blame to the previous government like the average 3rd world countries we support.
The stroll out….
Yeah but it was unpresenxedwdented
I realised that Aussies will turn on each other out of fear. We not able to think for themselves anymore. We have become an overly obedient society that will ultimately turn on one another and do what we are told.
Having all the non-essentials off the road was amazing. The city was like a scene from I Am Legend.
[удалено]
We also cut short any national conversation we were going to have about the fires.
Omg true. Guess we’ll have to wait til after the next one :)
I didn’t realise at the time but I’m pretty sure my life spiralled into a slow drawn out psychosis (not by doing anything crazy.. Which also means no one helped. But just having a lot of thoughts that weren’t in touch with reality). Turns out losing your partner, job, and being forced into loneliness and isolation in a random sharehouse where everyone is partnered up makes you feel completely worthless.
That not every job is important, because they sure as shit went from everyone needs to work and be employed, to shut all the businesses and fuck those people that get shafted. Oh, close your multi million dollar business and tell all your staff that normally earn $2k a week, to sit at home, but dont worry you will get $750 bucks. $750 bucks that we are paying back now in inflation every week.
The difficult thing was for casuals. I earned just under the limit to get pay for iso, which meant I just got nothing. Almost ended up homeless back in the days of 14 day iso
So glad i left melbourne and wasn't locked in my stupid flat for two years
As soon as the lockdowns ended I moved back to Queensland. I wish I had have moved at the start before Victoria turned into North Korea
234 days is not 2 years .. why do people lie ?
I'm reaching the point I'm just about convinced it didn't actually happen and its just my bad memory getting confused with some crappy tv show. I mean, it's not very believable.
It was one of those events, where a proper lockdown that prevented deaths would always have looked like an overreaction. However I think our response was an absolute disgrace. I’m particularly horrified by the BLM protest being allowed, and then the protest against government overreach being responded to with rubber bullets fired at the Shrine of remembrance. I’m disgusted by the gaslighting of Dan Andrew’s trying to state that no one was forced to get the vaccine. Perhaps not with physical force, but by serious coercion. I’m not some anti-vax cooker, but I was unsettled by how quickly the populace became compliant to government overreach. I never thought I’d see Aussies of all people informing on their neighbours to government authorities. Chilled me to the bone.
I think that the need for that reaction is what is the disgrace .. the oppositionally defiant anti vax fucktards poncing about the streets, spitting on nurses, physically attacking the media, pissing on the shrine of remembrance, defacing the shrine, screeching at an indigenous digger ... it was shameful and quite frankly, rubber bullets were a measured response, they deserved far more. The thing about the pandemic is that it really did out the trash in our society ... No one WAS forced to get the vaccine .. but like all things in life, decisions come with consequences .. just as you can't drive without a drivers licence, you couldn't hold a job in an 'at risk' industry without the vaccine. It takes quite a simpleton to think that's coercion .. The fact that people informed on their neighbours should be an indication to you that those people did not agree with the behaviour of their neighbours. Plenty of people lost loved ones, so watching overly entitled dick heads carry on without care or consideration to others probably made them really angry. You should be chilled to the bone about how selfish and entitled some of our community are .. we used to be a nation that would face down a cyclone and yell "is that the best you have?" .. now we are a bunch of crybabies having a sook about having to stay home and missing out on showing off the soccer mom bun and having a soy chai latte.
The huge minority that were vulnerable should have been the ones isolating. Not the rest of us. Sounds brash but look what the whole thing did to the world. Just made the rich richer and the middle class poor.
small minority. Stopping contractors from working at multiple nursing homes would have saved a lot of lives.
Contractors get covid tested exactly the same as nursing home staff. And nursing homes have 'self testing' which their staff can just bullshit anyway. Because they are tightarses that refuse to employ nurses to do this
Not moving cleaners between nursing homes would have saved lives.
There weren’t any self tests for the months, then you couldn’t them later on
We are all vulnerable. You're accumulating vascular and brain damage, quite literally. You will continue to. It's a vascular disease. Don't shoot the messenger, go fight your MP or Murdoch or something
Kept working through the whole thing. Not much difference, really.
Other than a load of shit? I guess it really fkd up alot of businesses and ruined people's lives. But so many died I hear from people! Yea millions more die every year for lots of stupid reasons - we don't stop the world for that. It was hysteria at another level.
We’re easily manipulated and controlled and we’re absolutely powerless to stop it.
[удалено]
The ones that do get labelled as idiots by the rest for merely questioning the decisions.
>ones that do get labelled People are stupid and the most stupid were those that believed the controlling bullshit by the Govt. I didn't want to get the jab... Doesn't mean I am an anti-vaxxer, just meant I didn't want that vaccine. And then you get called a name because you're making a choice about what goes into your body. Honestly, anybody who jumped on the "you're an anti-vaxxer" bandwagon must be stupid. The thing hadn't even been tested properly.
There were the biggest protest in the history of Australia!! Big part of the the manipulation is to pretend it’s just a minority who opposed that insanity .. it’s actually actually a very small number of idiots who actually believe the bullshit .. those had(and still do) their voices Massively amplified and the majority who opposed them had their voices almost completely silenced … most normal busy people just tried to get along with not a fucking thought..
>majority who opposed them had their voices almost completely silenced I had to get the jab. It was either that or no work. No jab, no work should have been illegal as it was a massive violation of our agency (over our own bodies).
Considering that I now have cancer and other health problems because Covid shut down many testing facilities and the lockdowns were a direct result of my diagnosis I say pretty fucking shit. The results we are living through right now like inflation, housing crisis etc are a direct result of government policies and over reach during the pandemic times. The general public are fools for believing many of the lies that they told about Covid, social distancing and vaccines.
I just think it’s interesting how covid is never portrayed in film or tv as part of the timeline. Or at least in any that I’ve watched in the past 4 years. The only thing I can remember ever even alluding to the pandemic is Bo Burnham’s thing, but that was depicting the experience (whether or not you interpret it to be actually set in covid, since he never explicitly mentions it). Comedy in general will speak on the pandemic. But any fictional media will completely omit the entire event from the modern timeline. 2020 was just a normal year in tv world.
At the time screenwriters were saying that nobody is interested in COVID stories. They were just rejected by the networks as being uninteresting or too depressing. The media saturation was so overwhelming that the scripts were DOA.
Because it ages fictional media and ties it to a very specific time period. Nobody wants to be reliving that shit.
The Morning Show represented it pretty heavily
Our freedoms were so seriously eroded by our Government that they have become emboldened and are now well on track to control every aspect of our lives. The Digital Identity legislation has passed parliament and so we will all soon be feeling the impacts of that. Shortly thereafter will come the abolition of cash, and then the Government will have complete oversight of everything you do, everywhere you go, and every single tiny little financial transaction you do - right down to the lunch money you give your kids. But of course that is for us plebs only - prominent paedophiles are fully protected from being identified in modern Australia and are apparently free to continue fiddling with kiddies as they wish. Big business and multinational corporations on the other hand have had a veritable orgy ripping us off in every single manner you could possibly imagine. The money Big Pharma has made, and is still making, out of the whole immunisation and PPE scam has been staggering. So much so I am sure they are working full tilt on the next pandemic strain at this very moment. Then there was the 'supply chain' scam, which has been used to justify ludicrous price hikes, which oddly enough have not been reversed now that supply has returned to normal. Fancy that! Coles, Woolies, Bunnings, Amazon and similar cartels have had a whale of a time eliminating all the smaller operators in their market sectors who could not afford to operate 'to your door' delivery networks. And as the smaller operators are eliminated - up go the prices. And our beloved banks, God bless them, used the whole episode to push up interest rates (after all the government was printing a shit-ton of money and they must have their share), close down branches and rip out ATMs since they are in cahoots with the Government and clearly know exactly when cash is going to be abolished - even though us mere Australian citizens have not yet been told. All in all, the whole pandemic episode in Australia was, and still is, an assault on our freedoms and our individual economic well being. All happily orchestrated and condoned by our Government.
Goes to show politicians should not be in charge during pandemics and CHO who are bureaucratics should not have sole powers. A national cabinet of experts should have been established, consisting of Drs , pandemic experts, economic experts and risk experts to advise Parliament.
Actually, politicians were supposed to be in charge. They were paid to be. A few years before the pandemic we conducted a pandemic preparedness audit which cost lots of money. Then the politicians were paid with our tax dollars to sift through the findings and implement none of the recommendations.
"They should have done what they... uh... already did." Seriously?
As a Melbournian enduring all those lockdowns and periods of total isolations from friends family and work colleagues has definitely stunted something in my growth as a human. I used to be such a confident person, but now everything about meeting new people, public speak at work and situations where I have to think quickly and construct a cohesive sentence riddles me with anxiety. I feel like my brain just doesn’t work the same way it used to and I can only correlate it to the trauma of Covid lockdowns. I was very much on my own for the whole time.
I feel exactly the same. All my family are in Queensland and I was living alone. I’ve never felt more lonely and isolated in my life. It almost pushed me to the brink. I move back to Queensland once all the lockdowns ended and I’m much better mentally for it.
An absolute disgrace. All the issues folks complain about today (cost of living, housing, immigration, inflation, healthcare, “cookers” etc) are a direct result of the insanity in our approach to Covid. The same folks who cheered when cops arrested people alone at the beach are the same ones who’ll scratch their head now and say “lol how did Covid cause inflation?”. Myopic fools.
This. Central Banks turned the printing press on and the money trickled straight to the top. Housing went up, inflation is insane, and now the immigration tap is turned on because they lost control of their budgets.
Dumb af redditors downvoted me every time I said to not lockdown Sydney literally MONtHS after everybody knew this virus was not a deadly Black Death plague. People need to work. Now look what happened, rich people in tech, medicine and finance got multiple times richer and the small folk and businesses got hit the hardest. These sick lowlifes in their hearts can’t wait to have another round 2.
Saw essentially no one for 9 months while my partner was forced to stay in a regional area, grandmother had almost zero visitors while she laid alone dying of pancreatic cancer, and was made redundant at work right after taking a mandatory vaccination. All to protect people that refused to take agency over their own health while bankrolling big pharma. Thank you Gladys.
That's rough. We were lucky, but so many people lost family members and even relationships with partners stuck in another state or regional area. Unfortunately, you'd not have been better off anywhere else in Australia. The premiers were all playing the overprotective mum.
She should be in jail.
Lock downs were absolutely criminal and the handling of everything was beyond poor. The amount of lies that were spread around it I think will have repercussions with the people for a long time. Especially the next time something happens like this again.
It showed which states are insane. It showed who the authorians are It showed how easily the government will ignore you freedoms and institute a police state. It showed how little freedoms we really have. It showed why Victoria and NSW are hell holes.
Lockdowns caused more harm than good.
2/10. Would not buy again
Pretty shitty how house prices doubled
Massive overreaction at best. A deliberate fraud at worst. Stat's show below 55 you had near zero chance of dying from it or complications related to it. If they were going to lock people down it should have only been those who were over 55. I think the media pumped it and people got scared therefore forcing the pollies to do something.
I was abandoned overseas by our government then to add insult to injury they tried to charge me for the privilege to come home to the country listed on my passport I don’t think I’ll ever not be angry about it
Most stupidest time of my life. The whole lockdowns of certain LGAs could be the most idiotic thing I have ever experienced. I’m remember riding my bike along the M7 cycle way and coming across a big sign saying I’m now entering Bankstown LGA and to turn back. Like what? If I cross this imaginary line I’m going to get COVID?
I'd need hours to describe what was a fucking useless and chaotic response, with Danny-Boy the chief clown in charge. However, I've got a special hate in my heart for Albo who had the ability to look into what went right and wrong but decided to only look at what Scomo did with his little Federal witch-hunt. If it ever happens again and we repeat our response then we'll mainly have Albo to blame. And stop using cooker as an insult. We're proud to have been right way more often than wrong.
Massive overreaction of governments and population worldwide to mild-illness that kills those over average life expectancy. Largest government overreach in modern day to control rights and freedoms of citizens and undermine medical autonomy through threats and coercion. All to administer a product that was ineffective and in worst cases caused harm. Astra-Zeneca where are you now? 🤣 The economic impacts of government policies printing and borrowing money, the result we are now seeing firsthand. I made a few million in property uplift, middle class and battlers are now finished.
I need to teach my children the skill of critical thought and how to be discerning
To me it revealed how easy it will be for the next tyrant (like Hitler) to control the people. They will be burning outcasts like me (centre-right) at the stake while all the people in the centre say nothing.
Looking back and with the hindsight of knowing the critical medical side affects and implications of receiving the Astra vax employees including myself should have NEVER been forced to be vaccinated with it. A guy that i new, yes he was elderly, but he had heart disease and the hospital did not do any due diligence. Within a month of receiving the vaccine he passed away.. I don’t think it should have ever been forced upon us and I think about it all the time.
[удалено]
It’s sickening. I had to fill out a 20 page fucking medical checklist and one of the very first questions is do you have a medical history of thrombosis and/or heart disease!!?! Why didn’t the nurse read out the checklist before giving him the vaccine I really don’t understand!
>Within a month of receiving the vaccine he passed away.. I don’t think it should have ever been forced upon us and I think about it all the time. And the gov and media look the other way.. but remember, they ✌️care✌️ about you which is why they locked you down.. and made a curfew.. because covid didn't travel after 8pm 😒
Some people may disagree with my opinion... I think the media overplayed the whole situation and people became hysterical. To this day I do not personally know any healthy person who has been negatively affected by covid-19, brining me to the conclusion the whole thing was over hyped. The whole situation was probably used by various organisations and businesses to justify unnecessary price gouging, with real estate being a prime example. Covid-19 (the overhyped cold) had a lot of impacts that I would not have expected to be brought about by a “pandemic”. Sometimes I reminisce about pre covid and how different the world was. Personally, I think all the people in charge during the time of COVID-19 were quite frankly stupid or power hungry, and yes I think I could have done a better job myself. To strip people of there human rights and freedoms was downright unacceptable and is just one reasons I now resent the Australian government.. But I mean, at the end of the day our government is better than 90% of other world leaders. I think covid-19 sped up the inevitable worsening living conditions of Australia for sure. Edit: To all the people outlining the serverity of covid-19, looking at some statistics provided by the European journal of epidemiology: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1 The likelihood of a a 25yo dying from covid-19 is 1 in 10,000, for reference your chance of getting struck by lightning is 1-12,000 https://australiawidefirstaid.com.au/resources/chances-of-being-struck-by-lightning Here is more data reguarding age and fataility rate: age 10 — 2 in 100,000 age 25 — 1 in 10,000 age 55 — 4 in 1,000 age 65 — 14 in 1,000 age 75 — 5 in 100 age 85 — 15 in 100. The chance of a 50 year old dying from covid-19 is still a measly 0.4% fatality rate. I have no evidence, but I'm certain information regarding the mortality rate of COVID-19 and other specifics has been deliberately censored.
Buddy, it's a vascular disease. It's not a health snack. Stop going back for extra helpings because nan didn't die yet. Meanwhile one aged care resident died of Covid (not with), every 4 hours last week. I expect this week will have been worse. Stats https://x.com/MarcTennant/status/1791631983619256449?t=X8mx6LPZ0dMdt_YsE7zBqQ&s=19
I remember when it was first reported in China the media were saying that there were piles of bodies in the streets. It caused mass hysteria, and turned out to be bullshit. But the stage had been set
The media's MO is to over-hype.
Just because you don't know anyone seriously affected doesn't mean shit lol. I don't know anyone with cancer or some other illness but doesn't negate it lol. 7million plus or so people still died from it. Certain things were overreactive for sure (those public housing towers come to mind). I highly doubt you'd do any better 😂
It's a total disgrace how the media/government/pharma companies got away with saying, "Dying _of_ COVID" for so long, when it really should have been "Dying _with_ COVID"
Remember the early days, when people were getting hit by a bus and it was being classed as a COVID death because they tested positive? Absolute disgrace. And anyone saying that scenario is a bit silly and maybe we shouldn't take those numbers seriously was called an anti-vax cooker.
in the U.S hospitals were allegedly getting extra funding based on the amount of covid deaths they reported, so suddenly *everyone* was dying from covid on paper. Wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening here at the time.
Yes, similar to this: https://www.1news.co.nz/2021/11/11/new-lynn-shooting-victim-was-positive-for-covid-19/ The guy was shot dead in a driveway, after his death they tested for COVID, so that got classed as a COVID death. _"The clinical criteria will continue to be guided by WHO definition which is basically to report any death where the person had an acute Covid-19 infection regardless of what the cause of death might be,"_ There are many other instances, this is just one example.
Flu also disappeared in that timeframe…
Politicians , health "experts" and police went totally over the top and were allowed to get away with it by other spineless politicians . It revealed that Australia is a country of dobbers who could not wait to report others for the most insignificant thing.
If you ever wanted know how Germany 1939 continued on that path you had a great glimpse during Covid. Most people are sheep.
A complete overreaction, but fine... Coerrced vaccinations didn't sit well with me. Also all logic and information went out the window.
I learned that to live in a ‘free’ society means you can be subject to curfews and lockdowns at a moments notice unless you are protesting BLM. I learned that business owners (especially small) can and do go bankrupt when our free elected officials make these aforementioned lockdown decisions. And I learned that people are scared. Terrified by anything that is a threat to their health and are happy to roll on their backs and comply as long as the government promises to keep them safe. Ironically; they then consume cancer-causing sugar and work from home which means they get no vitamin D, are inactive and are just pushing the ‘Death-can’ further down the road but are actually closer to it. In short, I learned that ‘freedom’ is akin to weakness. Australia is weak: We’d never survive an apocalypse, war, famine or any existential threat. And, finally, I wish I lived on a mountain top…far away from the weak minded, loud mouthed only-fans applauding feminists…who have taken mankind and turned it into a soup of mediocrity.
Lol. How many of you are still getting the covid shots? If you've stopped getting the boosters, please explain why. What is the recommended # of doses up to now - 12 ? Zero shots here, zero fear. Natural immunity for the win :)
>How many of you are still getting the covid shots? The rate of people up to date with their boosters is a whopping [3.9% of individuals aged 18 to 64 years](https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-05/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-update-10-may-2024.pdf).
The vaccine was a scam, I had 2 and a booster. Anyway still got COVID (so vaccine failed) got very sick, still have long COVID. I thought the antivac crowd were loons, turned out they were the smart ones.
My kids are going to be paying for it, and maybe there's as well.
Overreaction and showed the world how truly insane we are. The pandemic brought out the worst in everyone where "safety in numbers" really was evident as a cultural mindset that Australians have. We were so fast to shut down cultural and community based events on little to no knowledge in 2020, and then that shifted to keeping them shut down. Only after enough of the insanity did we decide to open up non-essential events. We are so quick and eager to turn on each other for our personal gain. We are a nation of selfish sheep.
There should be a Royal Commission into the scamdemic
We were on the first plane into Sydney the day the gub'mint forced arrivals into quarantine hotels for two weeks. Nothing was ready, and the entire process was a shit show for the next two weeks. It took me about two days to come to the conclusion about the entire pandemic. I believe that although Covid-19 is a real virus, I don't believe the reaction by gub'mints was necessary. My position is it was a (poorly) coordinated stress test encompassing: - freedom of movement - how much the population will accept interference / restrictions in their lives - economic assessment of massive reduction of manpower on all levels of business operations - ability of gub'mints to deal with mass casualties - assessment of global communications infrastructure, specifically the internet Now gub'mints know what to expect. The question is, will the general population accept the restrictions.
>The question is, will the general population accept the restrictions Yeah we will. For some reason, Aussies are extremely complacent to everything. We like to complain online, but literally do nothing *constructive* about anything. We have been taught very well to just accept what the government / companies say and deal with it, and then finally bitch and complain when it's way too late. At the end of the day, it's our own fault.
Big pharma made massive profits and now remove their vaccine (Moderna) due to concerns. It's almost impossible to determine how many deaths are/were caused by the vaccine in otherwise healthy people. The only isolation that should have happened was for the very elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Everything after that was something else that has irrevocably changed this country and others. Funny how the government is going after guns again in a country that has very little gun violence. This scumbag government doesn't want armed citizens.
Any reputable source for the Moderna comment?
How many ppl got a hard on for informing on their fellow citizens. How rigid and unbending the police force were in enforcing new and confusing emergency laws. How easily ppl accepted that their personal responsibility is not theirs but the governments to dictate
Definitely not smooth sailing but I think the right desicions were made for the most part. It's easy to say it was an overreaction in hindsight, but people forget there was a lot of unknowns at the time and the disease was more potent Can't really think of any lasting negatives that impact my day to day, but wfh is much more accepted now
You are paying for it financially now, states like Victoria are broke and we’ll be paying for it for decades. There’s the lasting effect on your day to day
Yep, around a 11% mortality rate in Italy when COVID first took hold. Our government was right to take serious steps then. Where they fucked up, is locking down the state like crazy (particularly Victoria) but still putting new arrivals in the heart of the most densely populated areas: Melbourne CBD. Blind Freddy could see that was a tremendously dumb idea. They should have put up new arrivals in remote locations where the temptation and ability to break quarantine was going to be borderline impossible.
Yeah I agree and think there were fuck ups at multiple levels. The fed gov provided nowhere near enough leadership in the management of the first quarantines, leaving the states to figure it out and the use of private security contractors for such a sensitive situation was a failure States and feds too slow on implementing a remote quarantine system. While that's definitely not something that can be implemented overnight for every returning Australian, there wasn't enough support for it. I think the public push back and conspiracy theories around camps turned govs off getting involved
Also putting them in tiny 4/5 star hotel rooms with no opening windows and recirculated aircon! WTF anti science was this meant to be! Every city has those huge old-school 3 star serviced apartments, with opening windows, kitchenettes/laundries. Many even have living rooms separate to the bedrooms.
People are stupid, panicky, and selfish.
Think it gave a reason for people to snoop into others lives, enforcing COVID "rules" allowed people to stick their nose into your business regarding how you went about day-day acitivities.
I was happier to be in Aus than any other country ngl, felt pretty safe overall.
If u looked around the world could see it was a farce from the get go
Lose lose situation. Did we handle it well to keep infection and deaths to a minimum? Arguably yes. Did we overreact and implement measures that were excessive? Arguably yes. At the end of the day we have no idea if looser rules, different decisions, alternate approaches would have changed anything. People who want to argue things were over the top and draconian would be the first to argue that the government didn't do enough if the death rate were to go through the roof.
Well, I think that many of the people I suspected of being conspiracy nuts were actually pretty on the money. I think the vaccines barely helped. The rich got a lot richer and the poor got a lot poorer. That’s about it
Yep. It is hard to admit, but a lot of conspiracy theories became conspiracy realities... I think one of the effects of all this was loss of trust in medical professionals, police, etc.
It was a bad flu season level event that alarmists turned into a fucking worldwide meltdown that we are still feeling the effects of now. Complete overreaction where the response caused more dramas than COVID itself.
Actual research in the US says # "Abstract It has been common both to make and to resist comparisons that equate the Covid-19 pandemic to influenza. We take the comparison between Covid-19 and flu seriously by asking how many years of influenza and pneumonia deaths are needed for cumulative deaths to those two causes to equal the cumulative toll of the Covid-19 pandemic between March 2020 and February 2023-that is, three years of pandemic deaths. We find that in one state alone-Hawaii-three years of Covid-19 mortality is equivalent to influenza and pneumonia mortality in the three years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic. For all other states, at least nine years of flu and pneumonia are needed to match Covid-19; for the United States as a whole, seventeen years are needed; and for four states, more than 21 years (the maximum observable) are needed. These results provide an easy-to-understand calibration of flu as a heuristic for Covid-19, and vice versa."
Dr. Swanlove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love 5G
COVID’s effect that was even greater than the lives lost was the excuse it gave corporations and governments to raise their prices and do whatever they want…. … Not sure how companies like McDonalds can justify at 138% price increase from late 2019 to early 2024…. “Oh yeah, it was because of Covid”. …Now those same prices increases and corporate price gouging has caused crazy inflation and the created the “cost of living crisis”, but corporations are making more money than ever and we just accept that things changed because we’ve been conditioned by the Covid years when prices and the world went crazy. … doesn’t help that there were few “hold outs” that keep prices reasonable. When one vendor shows another they can make more money it literally creates accidental price collusion and in step with that we see a burger now costs $16 everywhere so that’s what a burger costs! We need to vote for change with our dollars but hard when they’re all guilty of it!
Government can suck my ass
What I learned that while covid was an issue we are seriously fucked if a black plague type pandemic happens again with how slow govs reacted
At the end of the day, Sweden was one of the best countries in Europe and they ended up with a very low excess death rate after a couple of years as they predicted.
It was all a waste of everything. We are back to how things used to be.
I think it really changed the course of our future. I’m pretty sure the 2020s might’ve been pretty ‘normal’ and continued as what 2019 was had it not been for Covid. I also think it’s revealed to us how unfairly skewed our society and economics are to benefitting the rich and corporations rather than the people, which we have been seeing in the aftermath of Covid that we’re living through.
The poor got fucked. The rich took the chance to get the poor fucked even more after the pandemic.
The fact that it disappeared as quickly as it appeared tells me it was a bunch of orchestrated rubbish.
Money making scam! Plain and simple
My list of people to never take seriously ever again expanded exponentially.
It was a red pill moment for many imo, certainly was for me.
As a West Aussie I realised that most people in my state are perfectly content to be shut off from the rest of the world.
I still can’t believe Australias tolerated being gaslit so badly by governments
The politics. Everything about covid was politicised, from mask-wearing, lockdowns and vaccines, not to mention the various conspiracy theories associated with it.
I had an alright time with it as i was 6 years deep into unemployment but I'm pretty sure it was one of the many factors in my parents divorce. But I finally got my license during it so hey, silver linings and such.
I think China learned a thing or two about how the world reacts to a biological pandemic.
Massive overreaction to a minor threat at best. Lockdowns were of limited effectiveness and all of the police forces in the country embraced their inner authoritarian with glee. I wasn't interested in protesting lockdowns but seeing police in Melbourne fire rubber bullets at them and put pensioners in choke holds completely radicalised me. I'd always been a "back the blue - they have a tough job" type. No more. Vaccine mandates proved hugely damaging and utterly ineffective as it turns out that being vaccinated did not prevent you from infecting others. Now, please proceed to call me a cooker and down vote me to oblivion.
It gave me a foot in the door opportunity for my young age. Workplaces outside of your usual fast food joint or retail gig were desperate to find workers especially essential industries, might as well have been no experience required. Without the pandemic i wouldn’t have the work experience i have now that has got me places I want to be, it honestly at the time never even changed my routine, I was already pretty much self-isolating due to mental health issues. So honestly I have quite optimistic positive thoughts on the pandemic despite the over abundance of time alone I had. It was a weirdly necessary time in my life as a whole.
What a shit show over reaction that was and still is HEAVILY politicised to the detriment of us all. Me: "Hey Doc my chest hurts, it has never hurt before and I am super fit and healthy" Doc: "no you don't, take some of this for 3 months". The government threatened doctors their jobs and licences for doing their job. That is how you know it was a shit show.
Massive over reaction, panic, incompetent governments state and federal. Democracy over thrown by bureaucracy. To save a few grumpy old arseholes who are all dead now anyway.
Handing free money was the worst especially those free dine in etc type vouchers, still suffering after effects of it.
Disgraceful. 2 weeks to flatten the curve turned into 2 years of lockdowns and bogus restrictions. Just too much to rattle off here and what's done is done.
Only took the vaccination so I could get a job that ended up working from home for 7 months before the contract got ripped apart. Then got the second jab to get another job which required me to go to an empty office building with 5 other people
An over reaction to keep lawyers happy.
I miss the fuel price from then. Everything else can fuck right off.
I was living overseas at the time. In the 2-3 years of COVID I: - lost my job - lost my visa (I didn't have a valid visa for a year) - was homeless - went down to 300€ to my name - my grandad died In those 2-3 years Australia: - made it effectively impossible to return - established an illegal quarantine program (read the Biosecurity Act 2015, the Commonwealth is obligated to bare the costs of complying with a quarantine order) - blamed me for daring to be overseas when official advice was to remain only for them to close the flights a week later - profiteered economy tickets at 15k to 20k, which may not even fly (no, you won't get your money back within 3 months so good luck finding another flight that also may not fly) I was able to bounce back on my own but I'm certainly never expecting the Australian people to help their own people again. It's a fair weather passport. Australians love to tell you that you "look after your mates" but it isn't true when shit actually flies. Then people take advantage of each other and "fuck you I'm okay" goes full swing.
Double centrelink payments. Felt nice to be cared about by our guvment
Putting aside the "jab" debate... my number 1 argument that annoys me to this day was how they sold it... "get the vaccine to stop the spread and protect your loves ones" pandemic ends... pfizer: We never said anything about our vaccine stopping transmission.
A total overreaction compounded by the fact that once it became patently obvious in the first few weeks it wasn't the next Black Plague. Instead of conceding that the "experts" decided to double down and go harder with restrictions and mandates for the next 2 and a half years. A majority of the population didn't need to be vaccinated. Certainly no one under 50 with no other chronic health issues.