Austria (and perhaps other European countries?) return to full lockdown

[Planesandtrain]

Upper Austria and Salzburg states going into full lockdown:
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/oesterreich-salzburg-lockdown-101.html

 

[joncombe]

Upper Austria and Salzburg states going into full lockdown:
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/oesterreich-salzburg-lockdown-101.html

Oh no. Awful for those that live there and I fear it well set the usual lockdown enthusiasts here demanding to know when we are going to be doing the same.

 

[Richard Scott]

Oh no. Awful for those that live there and I fear it well set the usual lockdown enthusiasts here demanding to know when we are going to be doing the same.

Utterly ridiculous, just shows how obsessed politicians are with this and how they like wielding their power.

 

[kristiang85]

It is insane. We are in a second winter of this; we have vaccines, natural immunity and treatments, as well as knowing infinitely more about what we are dealing with. There is absolutely no excuse for lockdowns - they should be a last resort, extraordinary measure for use when there is a new unknown viral threat that doesn't have all these other amelioration strategies in place.

This is just simply a failure of government.

 

[AlterEgo]

Upper Austria and Salzburg states going into full lockdown:
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/oesterreich-salzburg-lockdown-101.html

Well, at least it's for everyone I suppose.

Austria is a very strange country.

 

[adc82140]

It is insane. We are in a second winter of this; we have vaccines, natural immunity and treatments, as well as knowing infinitely more about what we are dealing with. There is absolutely no excuse for lockdowns - they should be a last resort, extraordinary measure for use when there is a new unknown viral threat that doesn't have all these other amelioration strategies in place.

This is just simply a failure of government.

Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe. But locking down the whole cou try isn't exactly going to persuade people to get jabbed. Insanity.

 

[westv]

Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe. But locking down the whole cou try isn't exactly going to persuade people to get jabbed. Insanity.

I've also read that they are considering making having a vaccination the law for everybody.

 

[duncanp]

Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe. But locking down the whole cou try isn't exactly going to persuade people to get jabbed. Insanity.

Vaccinations were sold to us as a means of getting back to "..normality.." (whatever that means) without the need for restrictions.

If you lock down the whole country, regardless of vaccination status, it makes you question what is the point of having the vaccination in the first place.

 

[Fragezeichnen]

It is insane. We are in a second winter of this; we have vaccines, natural immunity and treatments, as well as knowing infinitely more about what we are dealing with. There is absolutely no excuse for lockdowns - they should be a last resort, extraordinary measure for use when there is a new unknown viral threat that doesn't have all these other amelioration strategies in place.

This is just simply a failure of government.

The hospitals are already full, and anything they do will take about 3 weeks before an effect is seen, in which time they will keep getting fuller.

What would you do instead? How exactly has the government 'failed'? If 55% of the population can't/won't get vaccinated, what are they supposed to do about it?

 

[big_rig]

Austria is going back into a full lockdown for everyone for ‘a maximum of 20 days.’

Austria to go into full lockdown as Covid surges

As well as Monday's lockdown, the chancellor says vaccinations will be compulsory from February.

www.bbc.com

Days after Austria imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated, it has announced a full national Covid-19 lockdown starting on Monday.
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said it would last at least 10 days and there would be a legal requirement to get vaccinated from 1 February 2022.

 

[Smidster]

They are also making it a legal requirement to be vaccinated from February with heavy penalties for those who don't comply.

Utterly bonkers - It is shameful to see the acts of many countries right now. I do hope this is challenged in Court (and I say that as someone very pro-vaccine)

 

[island]

I do wonder if they have stopped to think for even a few minutes on where this is going.

Vaccines were always promised to be the way out. Countries cannot go flipping in and out of random lockdowns for all eternity.

 

[scarby]

What would you do instead? How exactly has the government 'failed'? If 55% of the population can't/won't get vaccinated, what are they supposed to do about it?

I would do what they just did a few days ago - introduce restrictions for the unvaccinated.

Confining vaccinated people is absolutely pointless, it is also likely to make them unhealthier mentally and physically (it certainly won't make them healthier!), and so-called 'lockdowns' prevent society from being able to function properly.

 

[kristiang85]

The hospitals are already full, and anything they do will take about 3 weeks before an effect is seen, in which time they will keep getting fuller.

What would you do instead? How exactly has the government 'failed'? If 55% of the population can't/won't get vaccinated, what are they supposed to do about it?

They've had 20 months to increase health capacity, plan ahead, have more pro-vaccination strategies (I don't believe in coercion though) - there are treatments there too. Twenty months into a crisis you should still not be implementing these blunt instrument NPIs that do far more harm than good.

Given how dodgy the 'hospitals at breaking point' stories from the UK are (i.e. media concentrating on specific hospitals where COVID patients tend to be sent in a region), I'm also inclined to take the Austria stories with a pinch of salt unless I see proof otherwise.

More to the point, the original strict lockdowns are probably why they are still in this mess, and places like the UK and Italy aren't.

 

[joncombe]

Austria is going back into a full lockdown for everyone for ‘a maximum of 20 days.’

Let's put it this way, I would not put any money on it being a "maximum of 20 days". I'm sure most here remember "3 weeks to flatten the curve". (or was it 2...). Either way only a fool would trust Governments that make promises like this to keep them. We saw how many times the British Government has U-turned and I can't certainly remember Joe Biden in the US stating at election that mask laws would be for a maximum of 100 days and we saw that the 100 days was quickly forgotten.

 

[bengley]

I would do what they just did a few days ago - introduce restrictions for the unvaccinated.

Confining vaccinated people is absolutely pointless, it is also likely to make them unhealthier mentally and physically (it certainly won't make them healthier!), and so-called 'lockdowns' prevent society from being able to function properly.

That doesn't work either. Vaccinated people spread the virus. I know someone who recently went to a concert which required vaccine passports and he has since tested positive. He is certain it was from that concert.

It doesn't make sense for any other reason than to coerce people into having the vaccine

 

[MikeWM]

Ah, so we're past the coercion and bullying stage, and we're now at the stage where the state can legally *require* healthy people to undergo (experimental) medical treatment, whether they want to or need to or not.

This is all going really well.

 

[brad465]

"The one thing we learn from history is we don't learn anything from history."

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different result."

 

[scarby]

I would like to see businesses such as bars, restaurants and other social centres make a mass rebellion against this. Of course it won't happen but it would be the the easiest way to stop this kind of thing, since there would then be little a government could do short of deploying police or troops to literally drag people out of establishments or off the streets.

 

[westv]

They are also making it a legal requirement to be vaccinated from February with heavy penalties for those who don't comply.

Well they did elect an ex Nazi as president in the 80s!

 

[Smidster]

Ah, so we're past the coercion and bullying stage, and we're now at the stage where the state can legally *require* healthy people to undergo (experimental) medical treatment, whether they want to or need to or not.

This is all going really well.

I do wish people wouldn't undermine the vaccines - they are effective and have been through a robust approval process.

That doesn't mean it is right that people should be coerced or become criminals if they don't take a medical treatment but anything that dissuades people should be discouraged.

 

[Cdd89]

I personally don’t see mandatory vaccination as that much of a stretch. I would have pre-Covid, but since then we’ve had mandatory no-sitting-on-a-bench, mandatory no-meeting-a-friend, mandatory wearing-a-mask, mandatory taking-a-test-for-returnees, mandatory detention-in-a-hotel, and mandatory you-can’t-do-a-load-of-things-unless-vaccinated.

Is mandatory you-must-have-this-vaccine really that much of a stretch in comparison to some of these*? What is truly so special about a medical treatment as compared with the other restrictions on freedom above?

* I feel I should highlight here that I am not in favour of any of the above items, and I’m certainly not in favour of mandatory vaccination. Not only that,
I suspect it would be counterproductive. I just think it is somewhere in the middle among those apparently socially acceptable interventions.

 

[richa2002]

I personally don’t see mandatory vaccination as that much of a stretch. I would have pre-Covid, but since then we’ve had mandatory no-sitting-on-a-bench, mandatory no-meeting-a-friend, mandatory wearing-a-mask, mandatory taking-a-test-for-returnees, mandatory detention-in-a-hotel, and mandatory you-can’t-do-a-load-of-things-unless-vaccinated.

Is mandatory you-must-have-this-vaccine really that much of a stretch in comparison to some of these*? What is truly so special about a medical treatment as compared with the other restrictions on freedom above?

* I feel I should highlight here that I am not in favour of any of the above items, and I’m certainly not in favour of mandatory vaccination. Not only that,
I suspect it would be counterproductive. I just think it is somewhere in the middle among those apparently socially acceptable interventions.

I'd say it's a massive stretch as it directly breaches bodily autonomy in a way none of those other measures do except possibly the mask mandate. Even then, that and the other measures you mention are temporary/easily reversed. The taking of a vaccine goes to the very core of you as a physical person and is irreversible.

This should be enough for it to never be a possibility in a Western democracy but add in its experimental nature, questionable efficacy in preventing or spreading illness (who genuinely thought last January when the first vaccines were being administered that they wouldn't prevent you being in bed for days or spreading it?) and the fact Covid really isn't that serious compared to pandemics of the past. That's not to say they haven't done anything but I think it's quite evident they're not the magic bullet many claimed them to be.

It is total madness and entirely political.

 

[Cdd89]

Even then, the other measures are temporary/easily reversed.

The impact of those measures — especially lockdowns — are not easily reversed.

 

[Yew]

The hospitals are already full, and anything they do will take about 3 weeks before an effect is seen, in which time they will keep getting fuller.

What would you do instead? How exactly has the government 'failed'? If 55% of the population can't/won't get vaccinated, what are they supposed to do about it?

They’ve had 20 months to prepare, it’s time for them to realise that barbaric declarations of basic freedoms are not a mechanism of demand management.

 

[nedchester]

I do wish people wouldn't undermine the vaccines - they are effective and have been through a robust approval process.

That doesn't mean it is right that people should be coerced or become criminals if they don't take a medical treatment but anything that dissuades people should be discouraged.

Exactly.

The talk of 'experimental' medical treatment is straight from the idiot anti-vaxxers playbook.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Well, at least it's for everyone I suppose.

Austria is a very strange country.

Strange? Is it very different from Germany?

 

[Dent]

I personally don’t see mandatory vaccination as that much of a stretch. I would have pre-Covid, but since then we’ve had mandatory no-sitting-on-a-bench, mandatory no-meeting-a-friend, mandatory wearing-a-mask, mandatory taking-a-test-for-returnees, mandatory detention-in-a-hotel, and mandatory you-can’t-do-a-load-of-things-unless-vaccinated.

Is mandatory you-must-have-this-vaccine really that much of a stretch in comparison to some of these*? What is truly so special about a medical treatment as compared with the other restrictions on freedom above?

* I feel I should highlight here that I am not in favour of any of the above items, and I’m certainly not in favour of mandatory vaccination. Not only that,
I suspect it would be counterproductive. I just think it is somewhere in the middle among those apparently socially acceptable interventions.

Basically you are making the Fallacy of Relative Privation.

I don't consider any of those things to be socially acceptable.

 

[MikeWM]

I do wish people wouldn't undermine the vaccines - they are effective and have been through a robust approval process.

If the objection is to the word 'experimental', I'm not sure how else to describe something that is still in phase 3 clinical trials, and will be for at least another year.

 

[adc82140]

Exactly.

The talk of 'experimental' medical treatment is straight from the idiot anti-vaxxers playbook.

The mRNA vaccines could at a stretch be classed as "experimental", but the technology behind the AZ vaccine is almost as old as I am.