A bit of conjecture on the podcast regarding the covid situation in Australia being to blame for the Phoenix' situation.
It is infact New Zealand's problem, not Australia's, why we will have no home games in Wellington for another season and why the boys will have to play in aus for a second season.
We have very low vaccination rates playing catch up and no road map out.
Covid numbers are pretty irrelevant when you have high vaccination rates. Sydney will be more free than Auckland in a few weeks time. Australia is opening up international travel to other countries in November/December.
Sadly for us, NZ asleep at the wheel.
It is infact New Zealand's problem, not Australia's, why we will have no home games in Wellington for another season and why the boys will have to play in aus for a second season.
We have very low vaccination rates playing catch up and no road map out.
Covid numbers are pretty irrelevant when you have high vaccination rates. Sydney will be more free than Auckland in a few weeks time. Australia is opening up international travel to other countries in November/December.
Sadly for us, NZ asleep at the wheel.
The only way really for NZ to do better would be to have a horrible covid response so that we were in those early priority shipments, or to make deals with the Russians for vaccines.
No denying we achieved great gains early on and saved a lot of deaths. But we had a perfect opportunity to vaccinate our community during this time. We rested on our laurels.
Pfizer is not the only vaccine out there you know? Gov failed to sign enough deals. We could've and should've been all vaccinated months ago. Instead it took a 6 week Auckland lockdown, loss of billions, before any urgency kicked in and kiwis rolled up their sleeves.
The rest of the world has moved on and we'll still be here in Lockdown pursuing an elimination strategy even when we are vaccinated!
AstroZenica has worse supply constraints, was part of an EU law suit, and has less efficacy. Australia manufactures AZ domestically and is still behind us when we purchase internationally.
We could have had more vaccines, especially if we went with Sputnik, but there's also the logistics of this. The government, quite sensibly decided to just use a single vaccine provider because logistically that's easier.
I seriously doubt anyone has rested on their laurels, in fact I know for a fact that people have been working incredibly long hours since the start to make this thing work.
Do you think it's a coincidence that all countries which did well early in the pandemic lagged behind the worst hit countries in vaccination rates?