Wake Up Australia Its Over...

I have been watching this thread and seen comments from other DPI staff. I have horses and am suffering like the rest of us. I was hired this week by DPI and have had the opportunity to work at a command centre, a great bunch of people with no direction.

Before this I had little hope that DPI was handling the outbreak well, understaffed, under resourced and the inability to make any form of decision. DPI NSW and Qld knew about EI on the Wednesday before the lock down - 4 days! Inside those four days were the beginnings of the end. Now having been "at the coal face" my concerns are well justified. Experiencing the chaos and poor co-ordination going on there is no hope. DPI can’t respond efficiently, can’t track outbreaks efficiently, can’t plan buffers or mobile teams. All they are doing is creating a paper trail as they "document" the outbreak.

Lots of duplication, outdated systems and lack of know how. Ask anyone who has been contacted by DPI - 3, 4 or 5 times from different people asking the same questions.

They have control centres in many locations that are all working independently and more scarily - independently of what other states are doing. Just look at Queenslands buffer zone and how astray from NSW it is. ( and how it follows the border and has no correlation to what a buffer in that area should actually look like.) Just chaos. So many people who have so few understanding of horses, horse people and our way of life.

There is no way to stop this - lets let it go and move on. The way things are going this will be extended out for the next 6 to 10 mths. Don’t expect life to return to normal before March /April - that’s if it doesn’t jump to new uninfected areas in the months ahead.

DPI will shuffle along simply extending the inevitable. It is now to big to be controlled, our infected areas cover some 3000 properties the size of western Europe. Lets just let it go no , let those who want to vaccinate vaccinate, - let the others let the horses get it and move on as a country that has to vaccinate - like the rest of the world. Taking this path this will all be over in 2 to 3 mths, with a long, long road to recovery.

If not we will be will be under tighter restrictions for a long, long time, While the industry dies a fast death, there will be one lock down after another as spot fires break out left right and centre. We will waste months and months trying to control. South Africa took 10 months to control - how many times does South Africa fit into infected NSW and Qld - do you get the picture yet? (SA now vaccinates anyway!!)

While it moves quickly from horse to horse, the real danger is that people spread this even further, followed by vehicles - forget all the other possibilities, which are minor in comparison. Infected properties spread down along the roads - carried by passing traffic. Simply look at infection maps (those that have access) DPI now acknowledges this. A buffer works if all activity stops and people follow bio security procedures. That will never happen in a real world - think about it - buffers 1000's of KM long........ Get the picture Yet??

Look where the Qld buffers run - thru state forests that have huge horse populations (lets gloss over that hole in their strategy - obviously those crazy brumbies don't get the flu, and they don’t move around, preferring to stand still and let the grass grow around them.)

Keep this in mind as we go into week 6 - look how big the spread is in NSW, growing rapidly in QLD. Say it suddenly shows up in Vic the day after Melbourne Cup (no, gosh really???). That means they then begin the lockdown process. Effectively that means quarantine counters will all be reset to zero in other states, and off we go again extending the restrictions. Get the picture yet?

This will be an endless circle.

We have reached a point where the cost to fight this exceeds the cost to the industry and any benefit of winning!

Wake up Australia - we are all being had for suckers.

Tricia