I read on Twitter that HotDoc now lets you search specifically for clinics that are willing to administer AstraZeneca vaccine to under-60s, so I’ve now made use of that function and booked an appointment. The soonest I could get was for Monday 16th though. I’m just praying I navigated the maze of bureaucracy correctly and nothing’s gonna go awry by the time I turn up 🙏
Posts tagged ‘Covid-19’
Link: “Australians who live overseas now unable to leave country if they return for visit”
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Australian citizens abroad are denied the right to return home because of caps on quarantine places and airlines price-gouging and not respecting people’s confirmed bookings, but now, Australia wants to make the right to leave conditional, as well.
This “Fortress Australia” approach might be popular, but is such a hardship on Australians with international connections… and we are, after all, a country where half the population was either born overseas or has at least one parent who was. I think quarantine is a necessity, and we can look abroad to see what we’ve been spared thanks to it, but the system we have is so obviously a kludge and combine that with airlines prioritising wealthy celebrity passengers, many of whom aren’t even Australian, ahead of ordinary dual nationals or expats who just want to see their families…
Whaaaat. I feel like going from “zero cases” to “week-long lockdown” in under 24 hours has to be some kind of record.
Anyway, lockdown number 6. At what point do we get a free coffee 😂
Link: “Australia makes world-class mess of its vaccine rollout”
The Irish Times does a good job calling out those responsible for Australia’s current Covid mess. The only thing I would add is that not all Australians are even free to choose whether or not to “wait for Pfizer”; sure under-40s can ask their GP about getting AstraZeneca now, but the GP is still free to say no, and for the many small practices that aren’t doing vaccinations themselves, what can your GP do for you anyway – write you a letter? If under-40s could just walk up to a hub and get vaccinated on spec, taking their chances with a blood clot that’s probably less likely to happen than getting hit by a car on your way to the hub in the first place, I think we’d see a high take-up. I certainly would be more likely to do that than deal with the current obstacle course, considering I’m already making so many medical appointments with unfamiliar clinics for other issues right now. (And also, anecdotally, I’ve seen people wondering where the fuck these “surplus doses” even are because in their searches, appointment slots seem all booked up for weeks.)
Link: “Trust and Terror” by Omar Sakr
This is a great piece, drawing together anti-capitalism, anger at racist policing, and criticism of our terrible fucking government that puts the wishes of our corporate donors ahead of scientific realities all the fucking time. There’s a lot of it I would quote, but really, you’d be better off just reading the full article because all of it is on-point.
According to the ABC, some guy in Perth tied sheets together and threw them out the window to escape from his hotel quarantine room… like literally climbed down the sheets like in some cartoon. 🤯
For some reason they had Jeroen Weimar give a whole press conference where he didn’t announce any lockdowns, and then almost as soon as that ended the ABC said we’re going back into lockdown. Considering I already thought it was inevitable I’m just relieved they’ve finally declared it (or at least, uhh, leaked it to the media). More details to come later this afternoon.
This makes me think that Victoria is shortly to go back into lockdown… again. Eight new cases and already lots of exposure sites. Nothing has been announced but I’m mentally psyching myself up for what seems to be the inevitable.
Vivian’s got a job interview in Canberra late next week, so he wants us to travel up there together (driving, in case we need to make a hasty retreat back to Victoria). Cue me researching all the entry requirements for the ACT and NSW (which we obviously need to pass through), because we live in a topsy-turvy world where Australia has restrictions on internal movement 😂 That said, I think we’ll just have to fill in declaration forms that we haven’t been to any exposure sites, so long as that remains true. Then we should be fine.
So schools are set to reopen on Friday, even though teachers under the age of 40 are still not eligible for Covid-19 vaccines. Love this total indifference for the lives and wellbeing of teachers 🙄
And while I’m at it, a complaint I’ve made before but still rankles: the sheer difficulty of trying to work out whether specific disabilities or medical conditions make you fit the government’s criteria of “people with disabilities or underlying medical conditions”. I think I qualify as a person with “chronic lung disease” except they haven’t put up an exhaustive list of which lung diseases count, just that asthma doesn’t. Look, as a substitute teacher with an underlying medical condition I just want to get vaccinated, alright?!
Jessica Smith is a left-wing feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also very interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.