In Australia, which seems to have put all its eggs in the vaccine basket, and squandered the last 2 years by doing almost zero prep for opening up, there are ne

In Australia, which seems to have put all its eggs in the vaccine basket, and squandered the last 2 years by doing almost zero prep for opening up, there are news reports about people who are confirmed covid cases are being asked to work in certain industries like meat processing. My wife works in childcare and isolating waiting for a result (36 hours and counting for a PCR test-in some states tests aren’t being processed for 7 days and then are thrown out) has been told by her supervisor that Covid-positive staff may have to work. We have a pack of RATs and she was negative on one, but they are extremely scarce, so we’re not using a second. Daycare and, soon, schools are going to allow covid to spread through with no mitigation attempts. The same lack of exposure to the world that allowed it to escape earlier waves has also led Australia to adopting extreme parodies of policies in place everywhere else: for example they opened up without any rapid testing and without improving PCR testing availability (you can’t get tested outside of weekday office hours). Lockdowns of any sort, school closures and remote learning have been a totally ruled out because that’s what the Australian state and federal governments imagine has happened in the rest of the world, despite the reality being more complex.