COVIDSafe: Australia’s digital contact tracing failure | Hacker News Reader

COVIDSafe: Australia’s digital contact tracing failure

ghuntley.com

74 pointsghuntley98 comments

The COVIDSafe app was a failure and waste of tax payer money. Everyone knows it. The federal government has spent the last year and a half trying to change the narrative, mostly unsuccessfully.

State governments developed their own QR code based systems which seem to work.. up to a limit. Those systems worked to stop multiple outbreaks - e.g. NSW contract traced their way out of several outbreaks without significant restrictions.

The question I felt was unanswered by the article is have overseas apps actually delivered significantly better results than that?

The actual big difference between Australia and most other developed nations seems to be that we are behind on our vaccine rollout and more willing/able to restrict individual movement, especially across state borders.

Our vaccine rollout should catch up over the next month or so. NSW is approaching 90% first doses for over 16’s. VIC is approaching 80%. The dose spacing for AZ is particularly long, and at least VIC is using 6 week spacing for Pfizer so Australia tends to lag more on 2nd dose figures but that gap will close over the coming month.

On a side note, all the information the author wishes was in the COVIDSafe app is also readily available on state government websites - e.g. coronavirus.vic.gov.au. Personally I prefer having this information on a website than in an app.

> The question I felt was unanswered by the article is have overseas apps actually delivered significantly better results than that?

1. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AusOpenTech/COVIDSafe-Repo...

2. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.04.21257951v...

My question was have contract tracing apps overseas performed significantly better than the QR based systems used in Australia (instead of COVIDSafe). Neither of these links seem to show that.

The first is a criticism of COVIDSafe. I agree it was crap, but have Bluetooth based contract tracing actually worked well to prevent outbreaks anywhere? Is it actually better than QR code based systems?

The second paper you link at least attempts to model this but it’s just that, conclusions drawn from a simulation. In practice there have been many more cases and deaths in Washington State alone than all of Australia, and that’s without adjusting for the much larger population in Australia.

> QR based systems used in Australia (instead of COVIDSafe)

I deeply feel that QR should have been built into COVIDSafe as well as use GAEN. That way at least the collected data would have been protected by strong federal legislation vs the early days where businesses were asking people to "checkin" to their marketing platforms and the data was used to harvest email addresses.

GAEN would not have provided contact tracers with information about contacts.

Incorrect.

Care to explain how?

> The question I felt was unanswered by the article is have overseas apps actually delivered significantly better results than that?

My country rolled out an app quite early last year. It worked well, didn't drain battery life, didn't need you to "sign up" or provide any personal details. The problem was pretty much nobody installed it, so it was basically useless.

They also tried strict contact tracing, requiring people to register whenever they go into a bar or restaurant, but that also didn't work (most outbreaks were from meeting family or in the workplace).

Now my country has given up on contact tracing and moved to accepting the virus will be here forever, and is trying to encourage more people to be vaccinated.

The thing that pissed me off the most was that they took gpl licensed software and slapped more terms and conditions on it. Some suit didn't read the original license and thought it was just free code.

The thing about Australia is we love to walk eyes wide open into failure. We watch policies being implemented in other countries with real world data to learn from, and will then just unabashedly ignore it and do it all ourselves to achieve the exact same outcomes.

This is across technology, politics, climate, business, the works. It's ingrained culturally and will never change.

> Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country

Australia doesn't have to be competent, it can just dig up its vast mineral wealth, share the riches among its very small population, and think that skill and competence had something to do with it.

By comparison, I'm amazed at places like South Korea, Japan and Israel that get by on sheer innovation and technology.

a very unfair characterization of Australia, we also invest heavily in institutional education, as an export, wine producing, tourism and other pretentious things like that.

You see innovation is about profit margin, technology is for China and that kind of countries.

The "small population" who benefit most are the corrupted politicians and mining magnates. and their hangers-on.

Average Australians (including heavy manufacturers) often pay approximately double for our own gas, than Japan and China do, even when liquefaction and transport are included.

Victoria is looking to build a gas import terminal to re-purchase Australian gas via a 3rd party country, and this will actually save money, because the system is that bad and Liberal govt refuses to activate the "gas reservation" law they passed in parliament (but never called into action) as a warning to the gas cartel to slightly reduce the price gouging.

As another example, Qatar exports less volume of gas than Australia but their country earns 2000% more royalties that Australia because of our self-interest-first political class playing the "game of mates" for cushy jobs (board of directors etc) for these traitors post-politics.

Norway is a much better example of how to do things with less corruption than Australia.

They created a sovereign wealth fund that has saved well over $100 Billion.

Australia in contrast voted in Tony Abbott whose platform consisted of "ax the mining tax" and like sheep people voted for it to save money for the magnates and collect even less resource taxes for the benefit of all.

Australia does have a "future fund" of saved cash but that is ONLY for politician's financial benefit, not the population in general.

My favourite is the myki fiasco. We could have had Oyster down here, but apparently Melbourne is too special and needed a full custom solution.

Cue billions of blowouts and late deliveries and the thing still doesn't work well even after all these years. Sydney can use their nfc cards to travel, we still need a myki or Google pay, of which GP takes forever to read your card.

One of the biggest failures of COVIDSafe in Australia was that it was so heavily bashed by everyone on it's initial release. Anyone who was anyone binned it as soon as it was released.

With an app like COVIDSafe, where you require to have mass adoption of the app to work (there is no use having 10% of phones operating in the wild with the app installed, you require more like 80-90%, ideally every phone running the app.)

Instead, every techie I spoke to either hated it wasn't open source; or used the fact that the app was based on Singapore's app, but was not subsequently open sourced itself.

I feel that if the powers that be had changed the way that the source was developed, worked with the public a little closer that maybe these issues would not have existed.

But sadly, the damage for COVIDSafe was already done in the first few weeks. There was no resuscitation possible.

I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. A small chance of clots was heralded as a major issue, which lead to a extremely slow uptake of a vaccine that is for the most part perfectly fine.

Add to that the fact that privacy was never really enacted for the use of the data gathered by COVIDSafe (and other similar contact tracing tools, for example in Sydney, NSW https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/breach-of-trust-poli... ) and you have a perfect storm of an app that no-one really keeps installed.

COVIDSafe was dead on arrival.

> I liken it to how the AstraZeneca vaccine was dissed in the media. A small chance of clots was heralded as a major issue, which lead to a extremely slow uptake of a vaccine that is for the most part perfectly fine.

It's less safe, there were some deaths, and also it protects less than alternatives like Pfizer and Moderna. So there is no point in that vaccine, in my country they first banned it for people under 60, and now they are no longer using it, choosing only to use Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (that uses the better mRNA technology).

The problem is that we had put quite a few of our eggs in the AZ basket to begin with, so the loss of confidence seriously delayed our vaccine rollout. And in the end we missed out, by a couple of months, on having good vaccine coverage before the delta strain got away from us.

On the other hand, I think some of the anti-anti-AZ stuff is over the top. The increased TTS risk is by now clearly real, the non-fatal outcomes are often pretty bad, and until recently the fatality rate was expected to be very high.

In the pre-delta period, when our covid prevalence was extremely low and it was reasonable to hope that state would last long enough to see us through to the Pfizer rollout, waiting for Pfizer was probably a sensible decision ex ante for many people, even taking into account a reasonable level of pro-sociality (and even without knowing that there would be a significant difference in effectiveness).

An official or media-led decision to play down the risk would have caused some preventable deaths (and serious harm to a larger number) among people who, from a self-interested perspective, probably shouldn't have taken that vaccine in the first place. With hindsight, those deaths are outweighed by the covid deaths we're now seeing; but that wasn't obvious pre-delta, and in any case the authorities would have burned a lot of trust and given a free kick to the 'sceptics' and conspiracy theorists if they had hidden or misleadingly played down the risk.

The distrust I had was also in part because it was rushed out the door and based upon Singapores's app, which used deprecated APIs. This, while Google and Apple were promising new fit-for-purpose and interworking APIs within a few weeks.

At the risk of getting political I would also say that this government has a track record of making big announcements, throwing some money to it's friends (donors, boosters) to do the work, not adequately spec'ing or managing the project, not caring if the expected outcomes are achieved and money was wasted, then blaming someone else should this become an issue in the media. This project seems to be just another example of that process.

Yeah, but the amazing thing about software is that updates can arrive.

It shouldn't matter if the APIs in use are deprecated, or a new API that is designed for the use case arrives in three weeks after the application was initially released (the APIs were not ready when COVIDSafe was made available to the public).

Get the app - even if it's imperfect - in the hands of users. Admit fault for the issues that do exist, and commit to a timeline to remedy the issues and update APIs.

I think that in the big picture, COVIDSafe failing over these issues was a good thing: Hopefully, it will encourage future governments to take a more transparent approach and respect people's privacy, because (maybe for the first time in recent history), there's a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite.

> …there’s a concrete, demonstrated downside to trying to do the opposite.

I feel this way about so much of the things that have happened with COVID.

We have such an opportunity to learn so much here but looking at how we’re handling the outbreaks in real time doesn’t give me a lot of hope. At this point we know which actions or lack of actions will lead to an outbreak and those communities still do little to mitigate.

Combine this with how we continually do the wrong things on so many other issues and then cry crocodile tears when we get the same results, I’m just not sure we’ll behave differently next time.

> Instead, every techie I spoke to either hated it wasn't open source; or used the fact that the app was based on Singapore's app, but was not subsequently open sourced itself.

Singaporean here. Our app has never really been open sourced either, contrary to claims from our previous Smart Nation Minister [1].

The only things that were open sourced were the BlueTrace protocol, which Australia uses, and some really outdated reference app implementations.

I think Singapore has given up on the Bluetooth tracing approach as well, and has pivoted to requiring everyone to check in at various buildings and eating establishments [2].

Then again, Singapore, despite being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, imposed further restrictions on eating out that take effect today. [3] Hurray. :) /s

[1] https://www.smartnation.gov.sg/whats-new/speeches/clarificat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SafeEntry

[3] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/dine-in-social...

> But sadly, the damage for COVIDSafe was already done in the first few weeks. There was no resuscitation possible.

I (the aurhor) feel similar as well. Interfacing with the media was (and continues) to be the only way problems in Australian IT projects are resolved. The Australian Government needs a Vulnerability Disclosure Policy. I would love nothing more than to be able to deal directly with engineers and have sound knowledge that critical problems will be fixed vs having to interface with the media to get problems resolved.

Australia should get something akin to the USDS (https://www.usds.gov/) that acts as a third party contractor/advisor to the federal and state departments.

Have a rolling panel built from Australians that work in the industry to publicly comment on tech projects run by the Government.

Don’t forget the detail that the app just flat out didn’t work on iOS and the governments advice was to open the app, turn off auto screen locking and leave the app running, screen on in your pocket.

Shortly after, Android and iOS released a proper API for doing this which worked in the background but the government did not use it.

As soon as it was released, there was actually pretty good support for it. It was shortly after - when people started realising it didn't actually work as advertised, that it lost all credibility as the government insisted that it did. But you're right, from there it didn't recover.

Most of the bugs affecting how it worked (especially on iPhone) , security and privacy were found by the community, including critical bugs that stopped the app working entirely that weren't fixed until August. All while the government kept saying there was nothing wrong with it.

So it's hard to argue that the bashing wasn't warranted. The app really did not work.

I really want our government to do technology better. Vaccine passports are already off to a poor start - but I really hope that the community has enough influence that we can start to make a difference.

Digital contact tracing was a failure in practically every country, and there is a techincal problem: all these apps uses Bluetooth to measure the distance, since GPS impacts privacy too much, and also battery life on the device, and doesn't work well in closed spaces. But you cannot have enought resolution with bluetooth to distinguish between 1 meter and 2 meters (the distance that is considered safe), you can have precision in tens of meters. Also you get a ton of false positives, for example caused by people that passes nearby buy you don't came in contact with (e.g. people in the car near you when you are stopped in the traffic). Finally the idea that people wants to collaborate is pure utopia, yes there are people that wants, but the majority of people don't want to install an app that if they possibly came in contact with one people that have the virus (something that if we all install the app was certain, at least in the last winter) will force you to isolate for 14 days, that includes not going to work without getting money for sickness since you are techincailly not ill. Basically it's a failure the whole concept of digital contact tracing, not the implementations.

In Australia there were more problems, see some other comments providing the details.

There is no reliable scientific evidence that 2m is "safe". It's an arbitrary number. The WHO recommends 1m. It's really more a matter of airflow than distance.

https://www.who.int/westernpacific/emergencies/covid-19/info...

I have no comment on the rest of the-fine-article, bu this statement is incorrect:

  Our two largest cities (Sydney and Melbourne) right now are in a continued state of lockdown, with the various states pursuing a COVID19 eradication strategy which has caused immense social and financial damage to our society.

Australia's two most populous states (New South Wales and Victoria, the main jurisdictions presently under lock-down) are not pursuing any COVID19 eradication strategy; that boat sailed months ago when the NSW government failed to lock-down sufficiently when the Delta strain hit, thus infecting many of the other states and New Zealand through that lack of action.

The evident strategy being pursued by these two states is one of protecting the health system by ensuring it isn't overrun by COVID cases, while also giving as many people as possible the chance to vaccinate.

Once 80% of the populace is vaccinated (and I concur with the author of the piece here that that should have been achieved months ago), then most of the lock-down measures will cease.

It also means that anyone who opts not to vaccinate (and kids under 12, and the immuno-compromised who cannot vaccinate) will have to fend for themselves.

> Australia right now is in a continued state of lockdown

_Some_ of Australia is in a state of lockdown. This includes Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities, but the majority of states are currently not in lockdown.

Don't get me wrong: the response to the pandemic from Australia's federal government has been dreadful, and I'm not a huge fan of the police-oriented approach some states have used when they've been locked down either. But I think the first few paragraphs are alarmist and exaggerated, and that discredits the excellent discussion of the technical failures later in the article.

Thanks for being my editor. Tweaked!

It still takes a bit of scrolling to get past the unreadable alarmism, fyi.

If anything is not factual then https://ghuntley.com/contact and I'll make adjustments. These lockdowns have been savage have caused immense social and financial damage to our society. You would feel similar if you were in my shoes.

I am in your shoes, and while I agree that the lock-downs have been damaging, I (and I think a good percentage of Australians) believe that not locking down would have been a lot worse. It was probably the best of the range of bad choices available.

Just because people agreed with initial "2 week snap lockdowns", doesn't mean they still agree with never-ending lockdowns, curfews and closed borders (even for vaxxed / negative test people).

Many people have family interstate. There is no end in sight to lockdowns because the measures they use are case-based, not vaccination, despite what we're being told.

The states with zero cases don't want to accept the endemic reality of Covid. They are enjoying their Oasis too much.

>but the majority of states are currently not in lockdown

This is needlessly misleading. The majority of the population is in perpetual lockdown, especially Melbourne which has been in lockdown for the longest period of time globally under much stricter rules than Europe and the US.

"The majority of states" are not the majority of people.

Make no mistake, Australia is locked down. With recent changes, foreign citizens are prevented from returning to their home countries without approval. Not only are citizens trapped, but foreigners who had the misfortune of being here are now trapped as well.

You may claim there are exemptions, but I've seen piles of evidence that foreigners are being denied exemptions to leave even in extraordinary circumstances (leaving permanently to see dying family, for example).

For anyone not from Australia, there is more to the story than "police officers assaulting unarmed civilians" just because they were not following covid regulations. That being said, the footage where that was taken was in response to, I agree, a series of non-optimally handled situations.

It's closer to "police officers assaulting protesting civilians who refused to stop protesting"

It's a shame the article has such a rambling style and seems to take forever to get to the main point, which in the end isn't sufficiently fleshed out. I want to see substantiated the claim that any of these apps anywhere in the world were able to make a big impact on contact tracing. I am not aware of that being the case.

The government report into it is a scandal and should be torn apart. The fact it is almost entirely redacted except for one mildly complimentary sentence is outrageous. But I'm more interested in the simple question of whether it could work or not. There is still time even now in which it could make an impact if it is possible.

The UK version is doing all these things correctly (by the authors definition), and its digital contact tracing is a total failure.

The UK gave up. I’m not sure why we’re even bothering keeping the contact tracing going. It’s impossible to track and trace when you have 30,000+ cases a day.

The policy now is vaccines and (hopefully) mild symptoms.

Contact tracing was doomed from the start. Once widespread community transmission got moving it was simply impossible to trace so many people.

Either movement has to be low (i.e. full lockdowns) or cases have to be low.

If 'the start' is early enough, I expect the impact could be material (as per for example Australia) once the spread picks up steam, however, it is just a £40bn vanity project.

Can we get Mike Cannon Brookes in the comments again telling us to trust the government on COVIDSafe while forgetting to say Atlassian were helping develop COVIDSafe

Great article.

The hot take at the beginning on the end of liberal democracy is a bit silly. Anyone in Melbourne can tell you that the protestors are almost all just looking for a fight with the police while in various states of intoxication. The protests started the day after the path out of lockdown was announced. It started with a tantrum from the construction industry about being shutdown (they’ve been allowed to work all this time), but was then taken over by young men wanting to smash stuff and have a dust up with riot police. It is about as far from BLM as you can imagine.

> The hot take at the beginning on the end of liberal democracy is a bit silly.

I found the article difficult to follow because of that.

Is it a political statement? A frustrated rant by a concerned parent? A technical article?

I read the whole article, but am unclear without going through its references, which I haven't done. This is where an editor, even just a detached friend, would help.

Author seems to be saying they have effective telemetric contact tracing apps in Europe? Is he saying the Australian app is based on the European model but has unfixed bugs, or is he saying the Australian app uses a flawed model?

I agree this needs an editor. It is hard to follow. I can forgive anyone in Australia for being frustrated right now. We have done really well against COVID but the two largest states are in lockdown until vaccination rates get high enough. People need someone of something to blame. Somewhere they can release their rage. Hopefully we will be past all this by christmas.

The casualness. Construction industry was allowed to work. Turns out the right to work is predicated on the state of the ultimate gauge of human worth, covid-cases-per-million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work

The "allowance" to work started long before COVID-19. Zoning, licensing, etc.

This is blatant misinformation. Melbourne has been the most locked down city in the world. Understandably, the working class for whom WFH is not an option, have had enough. The protests are predominantly second/third generation Mediterranean immigrants, women, and children.

As Scandinavia rolls back all restrictions, Australian media work in concert with the government to stifle any dissent as the country spirals deeper into totalitarianism. Citizens are unable to leave the country, a violation of the UN declaration of Human Rights.

This is what fascism looks like: https://twitter.com/RitaPanahi/status/1441323043687518221

https://twitter.com/beingrealmac/status/1441687633911074816

https://twitter.com/K_for_rats/status/1441380783676030983

For those not from Australia; we are not about to become a fascist state. The parent comment’s other complaints about inequality are indeed true and our government has failed them.

Lockdown sucks and is problematic. There are riots and the media is of course following the government line. But these lockdowns will end and some level of normalcy restored.

I live in Melbourne. Trust me, I’m not misinformed.

You can leave the country by the way (I’ve done it), what is your source?

> If you are an Australian citizen or a permanent resident you cannot leave Australia due to COVID-19 restrictions unless you have an exemption.

https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia

There is a list of reasonable exemptions including work related travel.

My wife took three tries for urgent necessary business. We think she just got a sympathetic reviewer, because the entire process is opaque.

> There is a list of reasonable exemptions including work related travel.

Don't you think that you should've caveated your original comment with the fact that you need a specialized exemption to be able to leave?

Every other account I've read besides yours says that these exemptions are difficult and onerous to get, including for extreme cases like family emergencies. And even if you're granted one, trying to come back is still a very messy and expensive affair. As per the article's point — only available to the more privileged classes.

Here's an article from July [1] that has the numbers for June: out of 34,616 exemptions applied for, 14,522 were granted. That's about 40%.

---

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/03/trave...

Please consider my reply in the context of the original comment claiming the Australian Covid19 travel policy is a violation of the UN charter of human rights.

From Article 13 of the UN declaration of human rights:

    Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
    Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

This is a more complex question than you’re making out.

The declaration also says:

> In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

I'm not sure what makes me angrier, the lack of freedom, or the laziness of the Australian government. It's clear that they don't want people to leave the country because they don't want to deal with people comming back.

Yes they think that far ahead to avoid doing their job.

The OA has a well sourced section that indicates that you can leave, you just may not be able to come back.

> Currently, more than 38,000 Australians are stranded overseas and nobody can leave the country unless you have a rarely granted exemption. The prime minister of Australia threatened jail-time for anyone returning back from India due to concerns about the transmissibility of the Delta strain yet the New South Wales government when there was an outbreak of Delta strain was like "nah, she will be alright mate" and did nothing for weeks.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/stranded-australians-...

> More than 38,000 Australians stranded overseas due to COVID-19, with dozens of flights planned for August

https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia

> Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.

> If you are an Australian citizen or a permanent resident you cannot leave Australia due to COVID-19 restrictions unless you have an exemption.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/04/australia-in...

> Australian prime minister backs down on jail threats as India travel ban backlash intensifies.

I'm skeptical of that second video. Looks like the woman screaming (also not wearing a mask) was not being arrested. There were also a suspiciosly high number of professional cameramen and cops there for just not wearing a mask...

as well you should be.

I'm a long term melbourne resident: this was a photo my wife took at a similar time, in our local park in an almost adjacent suburb:

https://imgur.com/assTtuS

Whether the lockdowns are justified or not (I think it's complicated, sure, no one likes them but that doesn't mean they're not the right thing or on the alternative side that there haven't been mistakes in their implementation), there has been a coordinated attempt with protests recently attracting low thousands, but dwindling to hundreds in recent days.

that video I believe is from St kilda, which a particular small group of protesters targeted on that day for their specific actions. this was day 5 or so of them effectively playing tag with police around the inner city. the rest of us have largely been getting on with our lives.

the first video is from the cbd during similar actions, and while it's likely unjustified behaviour from police, it has to be taken in the context of an organised movement that has targeted and injured police in recent times, and an extreme right wing subset deliberately provoking and trying to get as much of a response from police as possible (they then film, edit and post things out of context)

Another Melburnian here, agree with what you’re saying.

I’m surprised that so many people on HN have such a warped perspective on what’s going on here, and even when multiple people from Melbourne post in this thread about their own experience living here, they’re told that they’re misinformed.

Yes there are problems in Australia, but it’s not about to become a facist state.

I think it's obvious we're on the road to becoming a facist state. As you and your parent point out, the only difference between sitting peacefully in a park and having the police move you on (or at worst assault you) is the act of protesting.

See this protest by healthcare workers earlier today https://twitter.com/7NewsMelbourne/status/144237090600158003...

interesting that the health care protest is in the same park my picture further up the thread was in :)

but I wouldn't say that's the only difference. indeed if anyone is still reading this, I'd say go look at the report linked above. the small healthcare protest this morning peacefully dispersed, but the end of the report contains footage of the group/protests that have been running organised skirmishes with police most of this week. that this group is out there organising mobile/running protests on telegram and the like (the groups were public and they were livestreaming as they did so if you want to know how I know) is a pretty important context for police actions right now.

additional context is that protests (and subsequent police presence) has historically been a relatively common thing in Melbourne, and obviously the current context additionally involves movement restrictions and gathering in group restrictions that have been put in place until the vaccine has been rolled out. current evidence suggests we are primarily supply constrained ATM in Australia/Victoria relative to absolute demand, and the government has announced targets and timelines for removing these restrictions once the people who want vaccines have recieved them.

Australia lacks an explicit freedom/liberal philosophy, and it's certainly been the case that authoritarian aspects have increased recently, but it seems like a stretch to say that we're currently on a march to fascism. especially given the additional subtlety that what little fascist movements there have been in Australia are paradoxically aligned with the current protesters.

to paraphrase a quote from one of the protesting live streamer: "look at the police trying to stop peaceful protests. all we want to do is overthrow this government!"

in that sense there's a lot of commonality/overlap between the current protesters and the Trump movement. And another additional context of interest is the number of members on the twittersphere commenting on all this who are clearly Americans or aligned with American politics/media rather than locals. It's bizarre in that there's even been Trump flag wavers at some of the protests :/

> especially given the additional subtlety that what little fascist movements there have been in Australia are paradoxically aligned with the current protesters.

I think the paradoxical nature is a clue that there might be a little more to the story.... My take is most protesters are pretty normal people and the media/politicians overblow the extremist element out of self interest.

> footage of the group/protests that have been running organised skirmishes with police most of this week

I'm generally sympathetic as it seems like the police action is what causes the degradation from protest to skirmish. It sounds like you are aware of the livestreams but for anyone who isn't check out this facebook streamer for full unedited footage (commentary can be biased though). This video at one of the larger protests pretty clearly shows that arc.

https://www.facebook.com/therealrukshan/videos/2149636972096...

Once again this needs context that I'm assuming most international viewers/commentators lack,or can't be bothered with, or are deliberately omitting.

Firstly, the livestreams are good for seeing what's going on on the ground and for tracking where things are operating during the day (like when a small group of protesters invaded a shopping centre carpark/playground/picnic area a day or two after that protest... in an area that borderline openly hostile to them). This is important for people like me living this at the moment who are literally just trying to head out with their toddlers and don't want to be caught up with the radical/violent protesters. Just looking up in the sky is often a good hint for us as the police helicopters generally follow that days main groups. But one has to be careful viewing the footage afterwards, as it's often deliberately edited and taken out of context for propaganda purposes.

therealrukshan (the linked streamer) for instance is far from independent or objective media. he's far-right/trump aligned (yes, it's Australia, no it doesn't make sense) and has been known to give running commentary bordering on "reality denial" imo. in the background we also have telegram and messaging groups going on at the same time, so watching one view after the fact still often departs from the context of what was happening or being said at the time.

It happens that I was watching the particular stream linked in the video (and others) in real time, so I'm pretty familiar with the events and context of that protest.

For those wondering, this was day 3 of a series of events. If I've got my timelines right, the violent protests in the previous article happened the weekend before and have another additional layer of context on top (they happened after police shut-down the public transport into the city, and my neighbourhood, for the morning to try to hinder an organised protest that would be taking part during our latest delta-ourbreak: keeping in mind we don't yet have widespread vaccine coverage due to supply failures/AZ hesitancy AND practically no recieved immunity due to elimination of the earlier coronavirus transmissions here locally).

Following that, a series of unfortunate events took place. Restrictions (and compulsory vaccines) were announced on the construction industry, which compared to other industries during our lockdowns had been allowed to operate with relative freedom.

Subsequently a borderline riot took place outside a union office in the city that afternoon: comprised of legitimate construction staff, but with the context of the far right groups also messaging people to buy/wear uniforms and get down there to generally cause trouble. long story short: shut-downs of construction for two weeks announced.

the next day what I'll call the tradespeople march happened primarily in the city, which was easily the largest protest so far. predominantly men affected by the previous decisions + a smattering of the far right still "strategising". they basically took over the (comparatively abandoned) cbd and then marched down and blocked a freeway. they promised to continue protesting every day against the shut-downs/ lockdowns/vaccine mandates. This was not a union (who is pro- vaccine anti mandate) mandated protest, which is a whole other layer of context itself. police were present in large numbers after the previous days/weekends violence, but large scale destruction/clashes were more or less avoided.

the next day a smaller protest started in the city again, and after ambling around for a while ended up spontaneously marching to and occupying a war memorial just south of the city. This in itself was a somewhat "controversial" action (and personally, partly responsible for the fizzling of any popular remaining support, as amongst the community it was seen as borderline sacrilege/profanity). this is the edited footage above. it resulted in a multi-hour stand off with riot police while they occupied the space. the police offered safe passage away from the shrine for several hours for protesters, and numbers dwindled into the late afternoon until there were a couple of hundred more radical holdouts remaining at the end of the day refusing to leave. this was when the police cleared the space with the riot-squad.

from this point, popular support seems to have dwindled. the tradespeople have largely stopped taking part in the numbers of the earlier days, and the following protests have numbered in the small hundred (if that) compared to the relative success/numbers of the first tradespeople protest, and seems to largely now be composed of the remaining telegram/facebook brigade of far-right and... with all due respect...relative deluded crazies.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and apologies if I seem worked up.

> therealrukshan (the linked streamer) for instance is far from independent or objective media.

There's an irony in claiming that a guy walking around with a camera isn't independent. Yes he has a take but he isn't beholden to any large company (murdoch, abc...). The raw footage is also some of the most objective content out there, it's so voluminous that even when he tries to hide the protests doing something ugly it can't help but give a good ground level perspective. His edited down footage is fairly biased, but not any more than majour outlets.

> taken out of context for propaganda purposes.

It's all there in the footage... people are peacefully protesting for a few hours, sitting down, arms raised to show they have no weapons. They even observed a minutes silence to honour the shrine. They are then forcefully removed by the police using rubber bullets, horses and some sort of noxious gas. Taking it out of context is misdirecting to side shows like telegram groups (by the way several have also be arrested for suggesting people attend protests online). Taking it out of context is misdirecting to the failed negotiations with the police.

I live in the area and watched them from afar for about an hour before things got out of hand, I saw first hand that they were being respectful and peaceful.

> Subsequently a borderline riot took place outside a union office in the city that afternoon

This was really the only time in the whole affair the protesters were violent and even then it was only a small minority. (and egged on by the internal union politics - not indiscriminate).

The protests as a whole were largely peaceful and in no means justified the continual escalation and militarization of the police.

Almost every other time the police have just been quelling peaceful protests and subverting democracy.

I know multiple people who have come and gone.

> As Scandinavia rolls back all restrictions

I wonder why SWE is behaving different to AUS?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

The contact tracing seems really arbitrary. My father in law got a text telling him he'd been at a tier 2 site.... 16 days after the fact.

it looks to me just a blog promoting himself (the author) lol.. i've heard this story about covidsafe app, none of the countries in the world were fully successful in implementing contact tracing app, lets accept that.

i just find it funny, maybe the guy wants to be famous. lol

I wish I could read your van article, but it says that I'm not "subscribed". What exactly does that mean in the context of a blog? Is there some 'Pricing' page that I glossed over by accident?

I'll open it up. All content is free but older content is for newsletter subscribers only. See www.ghuntley.com/newsletter

I saw some amazing analysis from some of the folks in the group Geoff mentions. It was calm, objective and measured, and didn't attempt to draw conclusions that couldn't be backed by observable fact. Disappointingly, there was also a class of analysis (coming from a smaller part of the group) that was based conjecture or guesswork that fuelled a narrative of COVIDSafe that was wrong or inaccurate.

I saw this bring out both the best side of the tech community (methodical, analytical, evidence-based, objective) and the worst (conspiracy-driven, inflammatory, chaotic) that was dejecting. I felt the former was committed to making conclusions from observations, whereas the latter made observations to fit the conclusions they wanted to reach. Doing so in the public domain alongside legitimate analysis simply gave credibility to unfounded and baseless conclusions.

Geoff's analysis says:

>These problems would not have existed had Australia chosen the Exposure Notification Framework (GAEN) path.

however this would never have helped out contact tracing, which he says is his motivation:

>Medical professionals (contact tracers) deserve technical tools that work. Forcing them (via political pressure) to use ineffective tools robs them of precious time which could be better spent contact tracing.

This is disingenous and trivialises the situation. One of the value propositions behind the BlueTrace stack was to provide greater visibility to contact tracers, by giving them access to the data in cases of close contacts. The app development was in full swing well before Apple & Google had established their notification protocol. Using BlueTrace was a smart move at the time, as it leveraged a model that had already been rolled out to Singapore. Of course, there were/are obvious challenges with this model (e.g. the unreliability of iOS) - but at the time, there was a true need to get something out, and to their credit this was turned around exceptionally fast in the absence of anything else. Chucking it out and starting again simply because GAEN was released would have been a misfire, particularly where it could have been accommodated by a future release.

The shift away from BlueTrace to something like GAEN would have represented a significant shift away from the fundamental promise of the system - that contact tracers get access to the contact data. Whether you agree with that decision or not, that was COVIDSafe's policy objective. There are/were many legitimate issues with COVIDSafe that made the product (in my opinion) non-viable: the combination of the definition of a close contact was "1.5m + 15 min exposure time" with the means of recording encounters made using it all the time nonsensical, but also seems inconsistent with how we know COVID spreads (well, especially the delta strain). Many fleeting or substantial encounters would be completely missed, because they didn't satisfy that requirement, even though we would be legitimately concerned about them now. Add to that fact that deriving distance from BT strength is something that's challenging to do right and is only so accurate if done perfectly. But harder than that - recording "15 mins" of exposure means what exactly? Continuous exposure at what interval? xposure at the 1st and 15th min? How many inbetween?

GAEN may have solved much of that problem, but at the cost of data for contact tracers. In my mind, simple beats clever, which is exactly where the QR check-in apps have flourished.

Australia is the example we should all strive to emulate in matters of national health, citizen rights and privacy regulation, as well as a forward-thinking climate policy.

... Not.

Australia has a generally highly-regarded and affordable health care system (public and private).

The part where they lock you in your house to keep you from getting sick was the crowning achievement.

My favorite part is when they deploy a massive police force to beat you up if you dare protest being locked in your house

Not only that, but Victoria Police actually visit you at home if you're "planning to protest". That's right, thoughtcrimes will get you a visit from the same department which pepper sprayed a 70 year old woman after throwing her to the ground.

Australian healthcare has left me unnecessarily hospitalized, waiting for care, and generally unsatisfied. Do not recommend

I think that most western countries have healthcare systems on the brink of collapse and Australia is no exception unfortunately

Honestly American healthcare is very good. Expensive, but good. I am in a position where I would rather pay with cash upfront than risk to my long term health.

Australian GPs would be very far from able to practice in the US.

Unless it is an emergency you practically does not get good care unless you went private, even for private the wait time is too long. I am not impressed.

I went to a private hospital ER with an infection that was spreading five times over two weeks before being admitted. At that point I needed surgery.

Public isn't any better. My wife is allergic to codeine and had to stay awake all night after an injury that left her hospitalized. Why? Because doctors kept trying to give her medication that she's allergic to. The doctors and nurses made fun of her for being in pain and refusing medicine. It took a specialist coming in the next day and chewing them out to give her anything. They wouldn't even give her an extra ibuprofen.

Quality of care here is unbelievable.

Indeed, we are falling behind in various important areas like dental care and elective surgery waiting lists, but if you have cancer or appendicitis or some other emergency you get good care with minimal out-of-pocket expenses. When COVID happened there was never even a question about whether you would have to pay for tests or vaccinations, everyone could just do it.

Edit: I heard a funny anecdote from a friend working for a large US tech company. The corp wanted to benevolently pay for everyone's private health insurance but employees would have to switch over to a policy provided through work. That doesn't happen here and the Australians were like "uh I like having control over my own policy, I'll just pay for it thanks". Bit of a culture clash.

Does Australia still think that lockdowns do actually anything good? Lolz

My condolences to all victims of lockdown.

They’re regrettable, they’re economically disruptive, and they must end, but absolutely - they save lives and we’re in the midst of a pandemic.

No-one here wants to see the level of death and misery that has been visited on other countries that have been unable to get their case numbers under control.

No, everyone, everywhere thinks lockdowns suck. They have them because they thought it was better than the alternative. Not sure if it has though because they have gone on so long. The other states have done everything they can to keep kids in schools, businesses open and people getting incomes.

We had 10 days total lockdown in my state since this started which I think were probably 10 more than we needed but they went on the information we had at the time. I have complete freedom of movement within my state and with most other states. See lots of active construction and people working and I can go to the shops, restaurants, bars and sporting events though they have some restrictions on density. Condolences to the families of people who have died from covid everywhere.

Can't blame people for doing whatever they could to protect their local community but happy most of Australia avoided both covid and the hardships that went with fighting it. We were very fortunate.

The people who are meant to die from COVID will die when you open up again. By the way death is part of life as much as is birth. Without death we couldn’t live. We should be happy about people dying by natural causes rather than by guns or war. If anything, the more people die by a natural cause like COVID the better for the world, because imagine how much carbon we set off by every person less eating beef, driving a car or flying a plane. Lockdowns are the most ridiculous and inefficient stupid thing.

> The people who are meant to die from COVID will die when you open up again.

Absolutely not true. The lockdowns have bought my family and friends valuable time for them all to get vaccinated, despite our shithouse federal government vaccine drive.

> By the way death is part of life as much as is birth. Without death we couldn’t live.

A meaningless platitude. Why not take it to the logical conclusion and consider all medical care unnecessary?

> If anything, the more people die by a natural cause like COVID the better for the world, because imagine how much carbon we set off by every person less eating beef, driving a car or flying a plane.

wtf lol, it's possible to simultaneously address climate concerns whilst having a half-coherent pandemic response. Unless this is just antinatalism a few steps removed.

> A meaningless platitude. Why not take it to the logical conclusion and consider all medical care unnecessary?

Because context is not meaningless. Someone taking pills or getting antibiotics doesn't impact the health of others. But locking healthy young people up, depriving them from education, exercise, social contact and work does decrease their life expectancy in order to increase someone else's life expectancy. That is just pure evil.

> Instead of putting the information that people need on peoples phones in the COVIDSafe application everyone in Australia has had to tune into regularly scheduled TV broadcasts

I thought it was just me who finds this incredibly stupid.

This shows how weak the media in our country is. Instead of focusing on news-worthy events, it acts like government's bitch and just gives them air time for a daily conference whose sole purpose is reading out empty numbers. A lot of people say Dan Andrews (Victoria's Premier) worked very hard. Based on what? The fact that he shows up on TV everyday reading statistics out loud? A busy man would not do that.

> If you think these lockdowns are not a concern, I'm going to flat out say it here - you are sitting in an immense position of privilege

I'd even say if you work from home then you should not have an opinion about lockdown. Because it's more about protecting other people and it's neither you who has to make any kind of decision, or trade-off because of lockdown.

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