March 2020

Still a favourite. Alex, Adrian.

This is a precision fermenter. These may replace most farming in our lifetimes, as they’ll be able to make any food (including meat), and a lot more we’ve never dreamed of, from the microbe level up. Food will become software, you’ll be able to share new ‘recipes’ for food-brews. And they can be used anywhere, even in the middle of a city. I bet these will start debates about ‘natural’ food versus ‘artificial’ food. But we already process ‘natural’ food to make it nutritious. This way we start at the nutrition end, with the microbes.

Good graphic design conveys a lot with a few lines :)

Today conservative parties in the Western world aren't really parties, they're lobby groups for big corporations, with simple messages - lower taxes, lower regulations. Corporations funded the overthrow of these conservative parties, accelerating from the mid-1990s, which is why all of them are in perpetual internal crisis too. Notice how no matter what the issue, these are the proposed solutions - cut taxes, cut regulation. That tells you who's driving. Look at the outcome in the graph, how corporations have been allowed to completely bankrupt the global economy, with proceeds going to shareholders and senior executives. (Note that recently corporations have been engaging in massive share buybacks, to reclaim more of the wealth even from shareholders.) The political battles of our day are nothing to do with Left and Right. If you don't believe me, think about what our countries have actually produced and built in this time. Next to nothing. 'Economic growth' is a bullshit term for manipulating financial instruments for the benefit of these corporations. Not one of them was even charged during the GFC in 2008 - the debt now is even bigger.

How can something so microscopically tiny destroy whole economies, and wipe out millions of people, in very quick time? Microbes don’t respect rank or wealth or any other human distinction. They keep telling us that they rule the world, and that they even make us. We don’t listen, we call them ‘germs’ and try to destroy them or lock them up.

This actual photo of Jupiter proves that the Van Goghs had a holiday house there.

I’m sure there’ll come a day when we’ll look back at running to go nowhere, lifting to lift nothing, stretching to reach nothing, and scratch our heads. Right now you see ‘ripped’ people who can’t even do basic things like sit or stand properly for long periods. The danger of divorcing the body from its activities and surroundings, I think.

Bats carry up to 130 viruses at any one time, none of which make them sick at all. They pass them onto us, including coronavirus, and we get ‘sick’. But that’s our own body doing that. What we call flu or a cold or coronavirus are all our own bodies, not the viruses. To me this is possibly the pathway to breakthroughs in understanding infectious disease. Maybe our immune systems are way too highly strung, they’re killing us.

At the lower end of the projections, a quarter of a million Australians may die of coronavirus. Similarly, one projected climate model this week predicts that all of humanity could become extinct by 2050, if projections of a 4-degree warming come true (we're currently tracking towards that, and even higher). Given that people tend to react either with claims of 'alarmism', or with a sort of fatalist 'she'll be right' indifference, what's a public administration to do? Many people simply refuse to get off their arses and actually think through a problem.

While on coronavirus, I hear a lot of people say “it doesn’t kill more than the flu does”. At the moment it has a mortality rate higher than the flu, but that may come down. But what people maybe forget is that 50-70% of the population don’t get the flu at once, there’s in-built immunity in the community. There’s zero immunity to coronavirus. We can hope it ends up a mild event, but right now there’s a sort of cocky ‘this is no big deal’ that’s dangerous I think.

Panic and smugness (at the panic) are phase 1 of the pandemic. I’m waiting for phase 2, crowd funding for ‘hero’ doctors and nurses. Phase 3, people drive utes of canned food and toilet paper to victims. Um...

This pic apparently represents betrayal. The weird thing is that we see betrayal as a deviation rather than as the baseline. No two people are ever ‘on the same page’. Whether it’s friendship or love, each person is fundamentally separate to every other person, and interprets everything from their own point of difference. Ignore that enough and eventually the whole lot goes bang and we have standard ‘betrayal’. The ‘solution’ here I think is to love that difference and separation. It’s what love actually is.

If you're one of the people calling people buying extra toilet paper stupid, what preparation have you done yourself for the coronavirus, except parrot ScoMo's "keep calm" line? Experts recommended people start stocking up on groceries 2 weeks ago already.

If domestic violence is really caused by 'toxic masculinity', how do we explain the variations across all of these areas (check the map), sometimes of nearly 50% in a given year? Is masculinity getting more or less toxic depending on where you live, each year? https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/women-s-safety-advocates-accuse-governments-of-failing-women-20200304-p546pf.html

Staggering that we stumble out of the catastrophic bushfires with the same pattern I think, which to me is - the strongest human desire is for certainty. Both the people panic buying and those mocking them share the same thing - certainty that they know what this virus is going to do. Neither of them actually have a clue. The only sane belief to have right now is ‘hmm, better keep an eye on this, do some research, and act when I need to.’ Nah, that’d involve work and thinking.

Here’s why we need philosophers so badly. (And we don’t get this, in my experience.) Philosophy studies ideas. Ideas are what society is made out of. Whenever society is confused, it always - without exception - means its ideas need work. That’s what philosophers do. They create the founding ideas of society, and then fix them when they get broken. But you don’t mostly see this, it’s like earthquakes - the source is way out of sight, you just feel the effects.

(Disclaimer: I'm not hoarding toilet paper.) Somebody explain to me why we didn't have widespread ridicule of the moronic donation of thousands of things people didn't need during the bushfires, but the toilet paper hoarders are now considered idiots?

Toilet paper posts are like a vaccination against smart.

We turn all big issues into spectator sports. Bushfires - Greenies versus RFS heroes. And now with Covid-19: calm, reasonable people versus ‘idiots’ buying too much toilet paper. Why don’t we notice this pattern? We’re obsessed with doing it.

Not filled with confidence at our response to Covid-19 if the toilet paper experience is a trial run. Things could get a lot more disrupted than this, if people are going to hysterically find scapegoats at every break in routine, God help us. On toilet paper: - in normal times people replace it as they need it, which means demand is spread across time - stores have a small amount of inventory to meet this spread demand - toilet paper is one of the largest shelf space items, so shelves empty quickly with relatively few buyers - if everybody suddenly needs to stock up at the same time, even in small amounts, it breaks the logistics of small inventory and spread demand, emptying the shelves, and - empty shelves then disrupt the normal top-up buying as well, alongside the stocking up process, creating even more instant demand. Nothing to do with lots of people being idiots or selfish. The same pattern is repeating in many countries. It’s more about logistics than psychology.

I think the response to the bushfires was as dysfunctional as the response to Covid-19. Bushfire relief looked like people acting nobly, and Covid-19 looks like people acting selfishly and in panic. But they’re people acting in the same way. The $500 million raised for the bushfires is a much bigger mess than the disruption to toilet paper supply chains. Instead of focusing on the lack of coordination, we focus on the people, like true populist tabloid lemmings. We see heroes for the bushfires, and idiots for the toilet paper. In fact it’s just ordinary people doing ordinary things, in both cases, in the absence of any coordination. It’s the age of populism, and this is how it looks, coordination is seen as ‘bureaucracy’.

Rationing went on for about a decade during WW2 and more than 5 years after it (nearly 10 years in the UK). It’s an interesting system in the era of toilet paper hysteria. For example, supermarkets limiting the number of items somebody can buy doesn’t really work, because it doesn’t stop the same person or their family making repeat trips to the same shop. Rationing knew that, it prevented it. Not saying we need rationing right now, only that we used to have a sophisticated understanding of how to coordinate things, and of the need to do it. Now we’re populists, after decades of free market individualism ideas that make us think stuff just happens by magic, with no coordination. People fighting over toilet paper in a shop and others laughing at them is where those ideas lead.

Similarities between Trump and Henry VIII. Populists like Trump are bringing back arbitrary sovereign power, ignoring due process, nepotism is on the rise etc. Like Henry Trump is also a compulsive womaniser. Enter one of my heroes - Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell was one of the first bureaucrats, and basically set up Tudor England so that everyday life could carry on, while his boss shagged and hunted (the Tudor equivalent of golf). Henry eventually beheaded him, as Trump regularly fires his own bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are today’s true heroes. Try facing up to the outraged mob on the basic logistics of toilet paper supply and you’ll see what I mean.

I wonder if the Chinese view of the world might make us notice what populists we really are. Nothing will make you more popular in our society than outrage against the establishment, against tradition and bureaucracy (which is really just the past acting in the present). In China that’s what holds society together. Would you say our Western societies are holding together?

The only stupid thing in a pandemic? Blaming people for every broken routine. There could be lots. It won't be anybody's fault.

Day 1 of one-pack limits on toilet paper. Toilet paper sold out before lunch. The hoarding hypothesis (really just a tabloid fairy tale) needs to try a bit harder.

Populism to me is far and away the most dangerous virus in society, and I don’t think we see its full symptoms. From a recent post I saw on coronavirus in Oz. Populism includes ‘noble’ things like donating hundreds of millions to bushfire appeals, ignorant of basic social infrastructure, or that infrastructure already destroyed. Society eating itself, guided by no tradition, custom or knowledge, but only by huge waves of emotion.

I’ve carried a backpack most of my life. It’s only this year I realised I’ve been doing it all wrong, I should have been carrying it on my front, not my back. Like you’d carry a baby. What it does to your biomechanics is amazing, your body instantly and effortlessly straightens, and the backpack loses all sense of weight. I carry it over one shoulder on the front, not two, for better freedom of movement. I think we’re damaging people from an early age, loading up their shoulders with big weights hanging down their backs. Paradoxically this makes them slump forward later in life, as you can see in the pic their body gets so used to counter-balancing forward that it becomes a habit.

An entire country in lockdown. And Australia stuck in an endless loop of meme and counter-meme on toilet paper. A lot of people are ‘calm’ now because the virus will likely only have a mild effect on their body. But panic is not the problem here, being calm won't fix it. Social chaos, potentially hundreds of thousands of people without income, hospitals collapsing under the load, basic services interrupted, small businesses going bankrupt (maybe large ones too), the global economy crashing. Pandemics are not about 'me'. They're about 'us'.

A journey into the heart of populism. Here’s an interesting thing - the law refuses to define ‘administration’. It says it can’t be defined. Most of us therefore hate something that doesn’t even exist.

Happy Birthday!

Are we amused and angered by toilet paper Australia? Time to move on, and really fast.

Trivia! With Cameron Nicole Chelsea and her bloke.

Few more posts about coronavirus, it’s important. Right now the number of cases in Oz is maybe somewhere near where I’ve put the arrow on the pic. An exponential function. That means it all seems still a bit fine, we’re mostly calm. But that also means it’s about to explode, unless we start isolating as many of us as possible. And that explosion could crush the health system and a lot more besides.

I think we should be cautious about these graphs and numbers circulating online. I have serious genius mathematician friends on FB, they’ll correct any of my thinking! Also sorry it’s hard to do this stuff in Twitter-sized sound bytes. Many relax when they see the numbers on that column graph, because they’re not in the high risk groups. That’s our populist mind at work, thinking only of the individual. The graph with all the illnesses on it is key though - while CV19 is lower on the fatality rate, the second anything gets past that infect more than one person line, it’s exponential growth. The real risk with pandemics is not the lethality of the virus itself (really lethal viruses don’t often cause pandemics). The risk is the scale or number of people infected, which quickly (exponentially) overwhelms our standard processes, like health care. The small percentages of people in those high risk categories become many *thousands* of people, all getting sick at once. That’s a disaster even for people in the low risk categories, because even though their PERCENTAGE chance of getting critically ill is low, the sheer number of people infected means hundreds or even thousands of people even in the low risk categories will become critically ill, and may not get care in a swamped health system.

Getting well into the week now of limits of one pack of toilet paper per customer. Shelves still empty. If you think hoarding is causing this, over to you to explain.

“What we've seen is people are cherry-picking data. So they look at the lowest possible case fatality rates and say, "Oh look, it's like seasonal flu." Or they pick, "Oh it doesn't spread so fast because of this," or "Oh it only affects the older ones, I'm safe." And none of those propositions are true. There's no reason to panic about this disease, but you have to be deeply concerned. This is not seasonal flu. It's an order of magnitude [with] tenfold — at least — higher mortality rate. Yes, it does strike vulnerable populations, but it can strike any age, let's be very, very clear — especially between your 30s and 60s and the older population.” Bruce Aylward, one of the leaders of global efforts against Covid-19

Coronavirus should prove that the economy doesn’t exist. The economy is just people doing stuff. When they can’t do stuff, it crashes.

Distribution, you’d think it was as simple as an equal share for all. Alas no, if there’s only food for 20 people sharing it equally among 100 means all 100 starve. These are the impossibly complex sorts of questions administrators around the world are having to take right now, like in the Italian health system. You know, the people everybody hates - bureaucrats. That ‘red tape’ might be the thing that lets you see Christmas.

Boris Johnson tells UK they should expect that many will lose members of their family. ScoMo tells us to relax and go to the footy. Lots of Australians are following ScoMo's lead in their understanding of what's going on. That's a mistake.

The announcement today was a disgrace. Lock down the country now. Peter Dutton’s sickness might make them see sense.

I’ve spent all week listening to people say dismissively that this virus thing is just media hysteria. Have a read of what Italian hospitals are facing right now. You want to see real hysteria? Let it get to this in Oz.

I did an experiment this morning because I'm sick of the 'hoarding' idea around toilet paper. I got up early and went to observe the rumoured 6am rush to buy fresh supplies at the local Coles. It was real, maybe 20-30 people queued up outside the shop. When they got inside, there was one pallet of toilet paper, which all went in about a minute. Maybe 20-30 packs. That wouldn't be enough toilet paper to supply even ordinary daily purchases at a big supermarket. We love goodie and baddie stories, the hoarding idea gives us somebody to blame. But all that's likely happened (with toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitiser etc.) is that products that normally only a proportion of people want each week, are now products people ALL want, every week. It's not rocket science. We're so collectively ignorant of the basic logistics of society that we can't seem to understand any situation without turning it into a tabloid story about goodies and baddies.

This pair have both been exposed to people with Covid-19. Both refused to be tested or to isolate themselves, as would be the legal requirement of any other person. People vote for these dipshits. No wonder most Australians seem to think the whole thing is a bit of a storm in a teacup, and can't we all just get back to the footy? Stupid is as stupid does. I suspect ScoMo delayed the advice on large gatherings until Monday because of the NRL. An outrageous decision - if you're going to the footy today, as others have said the Coronas are on ScoMo. Or as one of the infectious disease experts said, "what, he thought the virus would have the weekend off?"

Know how when you're a dickhead, and your partner gets angry, and you tell them to 'calm down'? Like their emotion is the problem. Shoppers are being told to calm down. They look perfectly calm to me. Emotions aren't the cause of anything. The cause here I think is not enough coordination from shops and authorities. So people are taking matters into their own hands. https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/everyone-needs-to-calm-down-chaotic-scenes-as-coronavirus-panic-buyers-swamp-supermarkets/news-story/d9e718c507d9e7df617fb1ebebfbc32d

The Great Chinese conspiracy, they created Covid-19 to bring down the West (heard it a few places this week). Looking at the logic: 1. China creates killer virus to destroy the West. 2. China infects own citizens with virus. 3. China mounts massive emergency effort to save own citizens from virus. o...k.

I’ve posted lots here about the wisdom of crowds, the now well known phenomenon where crowds, under the right conditions, are smarter than any of the people in them. What smug people with superiority complexes are labelling ‘panic’ right now I think is the crowd being well ahead of decision makers. It’s not their fault shops and other organisations aren’t responding quickly enough.

Happy Birthday you :)

Watching the Chief Medical officer this morning make a dog's breakfast of his brief. He even shook peoples' hands. I firmly believe the best weapon against a virus like this is viral society. Social media. Nothing else acts fast enough.

And the reason the NRL is a financial trainwreck, not mentioned here? Enormous player salaries. Never come between an NRL player and a bucket of money. Like Aussie cricketers. Gobsmacking they want government assistance to keep the princesses paid. https://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/sporting-world-reacts-to-nrls-contentious-coronavirus-decision/news-story/d19c7c6c15c08862a72fce9ae4f9ec88

Finally an Aussie PM admits the true function of schools. Childcare for working parents.

Some people think it's mad to shut down society for this virus. Maybe they don't know maths. I think this guy maybe misunderstands flattening the curve - it's meant to be a reduction in infections, not just spreading them out. I don't think flattening the curve is the same as the herd immunity camp. But the essential point he gets right - we need to prevent infections NOW and RUTHLESSLY. https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727

This is the national governance scheme for response to the pandemic. Lots of committees, lots of levels. All of this does add up to a not bad system, there’s a lot of expertise in that picture. But it’s all very boxy, reflecting institutional territories rather than real-time priorities. Know what isn’t there? The public. This is the gap in all emergency planning now, with social media the public self-organises incredibly fast, which is a phenomenal benefit if it’s understood and used well. Right now most decision makers look down their nose at social media, like it’s some sort of distasteful dumb noise. That’s a terrible mistake, the ‘public’ includes all these same experts and more. It’s the only way for humans to act like a virus, against a virus.

Good on you, Norman Swan. "I have a personal view on this: there is no time to waste. Each day that goes by we're going to lose control of this. We have been too late in banning large gatherings. We have got to stop, we've got to shut down schools. And my feeling is, to be blunt, we're dicking around and we've just got to shut stuff down now. The worst that could happen is that six weeks from now, the shock jocks are going to say, 'Well, I told you nothing would happen!' Because when prevention works, nothing happens. The mathematical modelling is very clear: if you look at all of the things that you can do to control this epidemic, the one thing that changes the trajectory is social distancing. And social distancing in an extreme form. That is, that you just don't mix with other people for a period of time. And that is what's going to control this epidemic. This is centuries-old epidemiology. We're back in 1918. There's no vaccine, no treatment. We've got to resort to what they've been doing since the year of the plague."

Again tonight leaders saying when virus case numbers get to a certain number, then you act more strongly. Why is that? They’re not even pretending they’re isolating all the cases, so all waiting does is exponentially increase the future number of patients. The ‘experts’ advising them to leave schools open aren’t even medical experts, they’re economists. Who with even 5% of a brain would claim kids will have more social interaction outside school than in?

Try this reality filter. These shelves are empty because the crowd already knows the future. Lockdown. The crowd knows, people really do refuse to believe that. They think the crowd is dumb. They speak of the crowd as if it’s some separate mass of people, acting stupidly. The crowd is all of us, acting together in mysterious ways, each of us knowing something and modulating it according to the realities each of us is living in each place. A percolation of wisdom.

Smart people kinda rock. Let's hope this pans out, unlike all the other possible cures, this one is already approved drugs so can skip those years of clinical trials. Was going to donate to this and noticed they have almost double what they need, in one night. Made me mist up a bit. https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/coronavirus-australia-testing-of-covid-19-cure-to-start-in-hospitals-within-weeks-c-748464

Same headlines all around the world. Either tens of millions of people became selfish arseholes overnight, worldwide, or the ‘selfish panicking hoarders’ idea is dumb. In Australia it gets even more stupid, it was only a couple of months ago we were wallowing in how Australian it was to look out for each other, with the bushfires. There’s much more going on here I think, and little of it related to how selfish or unselfish we are.

Suddenly conservative politicians lining up behind ‘the science’. When it’s something that might kill *them*, they take notice.

I keep coming back to the shops because it’s much bigger than shopping. It’s a window into the group mind. Take this meme, this is the populism virus in action. Complex social, collective problem, highly individualised and personalised response. This is why I think the Trumps of the world win. We see society as a big tabloid newspaper.

Facebook removed my post on Australian research on a Covid-19 cure as 'spam'. My apologies if you linked to it [Edit: It now seems FB has a technical problem.] In the meantime, here's another link to the research. There are lots available: https://www.livemint.com/news/world/coronavirus-update-australian-researchers-claim-2-existing-drugs-could-cure-covid-19-11584369580246.html

Watched ScoMo's update this morning. I'm still staggered by the Australian response, it's mirroring Europe's, and Europe has lost control (see link). You CAN'T beat an exponential curve, all this rubbish about needing to stretch it over 6 months. When numbers climb they will exponentially, crushing health care, in the space of weeks, not 6 months. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/flatten-the-curve-coronavirus/2020/03/12/a648883c-6460-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html

Medicine is 5% of what beats a pandemic. A pandemic is not a medical issue to solve.

What's happening in supermarkets is mostly about logistics - supply chains. Not as much about people and their panic or selfishness. Finally some common sense on this topic. And it's not just food, most products use the same supply chain logic. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-the-perils-of-our-just-enough-just-in-time-food-system-133724

This is the paper that some say made the colour drain from both Trump and Johnson’s faces, and made them do a super-fast U-turn on their virus strategy. If you want a deeper connection to the ideas in play here, it’s an excellent option. You’ll see that without a vaccine or cure, this could go on for a long time, and may require degrees of suppression turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ during that time. School and uni closures are a critical element that get turned on and off.

It’s been maybe 70 years since we had to face up to the complete disruption and even destruction of our societies. The last world war. What we’re experiencing now, they experienced then. Nobody knew if they’d live or die, goods had to be rationed, there wasn’t a clear way forward etc. I feel that recognising we’re back there now actually gives a bit of comfort. We should remember that disruption will become the norm, and be ready for it.

Well now, 'supply chains'. Who'd have thought. Who will people play social media ping pong with now the hoarders and busloads of evil foreign supermarket pirates are off the hook?

Latest estimate for duration of the Covid-19 pandemic is end-2021. Unless a vaccine or cure becomes available before then.

Another way to look at the days we’re living right now is that it’s really a battle of microbes. The microbes that created and are us, versus a new microbe that wants its own place in the sun. I hate the term ‘germs’ because it misses that it’s really all microbes. From the microbe point of view, there is no time - they’re often immortal. There’s just jostling for position, re-shufflings.

Happy birthday! Enjoy the heat

Aww, sniff.

As a kid I lived in Germany for a while. The bakeries are wonders of the world. The rye breads, drool. And the desserts, sigh.

The extraordinary power of a tiny microbe. The Tory government in the UK is now paying 80% of ALL wages in affected companies, up to a limit amount. That's Universal Basic Income, here at last, introduced by a libertarian ultra-conservative government. Still don't think microbes rule the world?

Australians have shifted their outrage from hoarders to the 'Chinese' and inter-town supermarket raiders now. What doesn't vary is the outrage. As one scapegoat gets stripped away, another one is generated quickly. It's a virus of its own. Knowledge will set you free of that virus, would be nice if people used their upcoming social isolation to learn something. Astonished at the number of stories about the 'loneliness and boredom' of quarantine, as if people can't survive without constant stimulation and entertainment. That's what drove the obsessive travel which in turn drove the crisis.

I spend a lot of time thinking about outrage. Think I'm getting closer. Humans desire hierarchy, and they should - a scale of value. At the same time they set up 'open democracies' where (supposedly) everything is equal. Those two desires are fundamentally contradictory, outrage occurs when they collide. Strip away tradition (hierarchy) and you get tabloid outrage as a substitute.

I think John Daley nails it. https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/coronavirus-tough-choice-australia-faces-that-could-help-it-avoid-an-epidemic-yoyo/news-story/fefb6eb8a17608202d704b40bb4e2dff

Research is suggesting the people who get the worst cases of Covid-19 might get it in the guts first, not in the head and lungs. The stomach and lungs work intimately together, the microbes in the stomach are crucial to the immune system. So a simple tip to stay as healthy as possible is - eat your fibre. Fibre is the food the good microbes eat. Good advice at any time anyway.

A bit tired of infections as a topic too, but it’s the times we live in! This is simple, good advice. Get out there.

These stories smelled like bullshit from day one. Use your brains for something useful people, it’s pathetic that in the face of this crisis the best people seem to be able to do is look for a new scapegoat every day.

Thought and calm does happen online.

For quick action on anything, tell people footy games will stop, unless something is done quickly.

Bill, Hilary, Jeremy, thanks for joining us. How are you feeling after losing those last elections?

If you want a sense of how expensive a cocaine habit can be, look at the reluctance of many NRL players to stop games.

Wondering if they’ve tried playing Wind Beneath My Wings to the virus. Nothing can survive that.

Your name can be Gladys Alphabet, and you might have close-set eyes, but you can still be a hero and tell ScoMo to shove his mythical economy up his fat arse. Well done.

Happy birthday Amanda! I got you a pandemic as a present :)

I bet they'll discover that Covid-19 is actually also an airborne virus. The rate of infection seems too fast to me to be surface contact only.

I think the AHPPC updates are far and away the best insight into the Australian thinking behind the decisions the National Cabinet make. This is the 'medical advice' ScoMo and the Premiers refer to. Well worth reading every update. https://www.health.gov.au/news/australian-health-protection-principal-committee-ahppc-coronavirus-covid-19-statement-on-22-march-2020

It's up to each person, but my children won't be going to school after today. I understand that for some parents that's not doable with their work arrangements, and that's understandable. But it incenses me to hear that some kids are getting messages from their parents and teachers that this is all alarmism. Pull your heads out of your fucking arses.

Summarising my own 3 tips leading up to the virus possibly spreading. 1. Get some sun and fresh air every day. Cloudy is still sun. Stay away from groups when you can. 2. Eat fibre, like fruit and veg and wholegrain stuff, and my own favourite - porridge. This stuff really matters, much more than you might think. Remember people who had Spanish Flu who ate well and got fresh air and sunshine survived much more often than those who didn't. Germs need closed spaces to thrive, fresh air and sunshine and good gut microbes fed by fibre drive them bananas. 3. Read the regular AHPPC updates (listed on the following link) for the best background of why things are happening in Australia the way they are.

Yep, definitely worth looking at. Hospitals are tin cans of disease. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-plea-from-italy-treat-patients-at-home/

Words on a page are shadows. It takes some work to get your head around it I think. This shadow of a fern is not directly the word ‘fern’, but the idea of ‘representing’ the fern by dark marks on a pale surface came from shadows. Every book is full of the shadows of real things. Every book is a box of light and shadows.

Why fibre is so important. The gut-lung axis, as scientists call it now. Have a look at this if you’re interested, studying relationships between infections in the lungs and microbes in your gut. https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201503-133AW

The exponential function in action. It took 3 months for the first 100,000 people to be infected with Covid-19. It took 12 days for the second 100,000. It's taken 4 days for the 3rd 100,000. As the WHO says, if you don't act hard and act fast, the virus will beat you. It also works in reverse, if you can get the transmission rate to lower than 1 (1 person infecting one other person), the rate of infections exponentially declines too. That's what shutdowns try to do. If you have even one infected person wandering through society, the exponential function will start its work.

I think there’s a scale of human response to disasters, which varies with the numbers of people impacted. With a smaller group impacted but most of the rest of us are OK, like the bushfires, we get ‘everybody pulling together’, the ‘great aussie spirit’ and all that nauseating rubbish. Then with a virus, as all of us are about to be impacted, in the early stages you get scapegoating. Hoarders in supermarkets. Unemployed bludgers getting extra benefits. The Chinese. Then when the virus actually impacts, there are no little places to stand to blame people from. It’s everybody for themselves. We’re arriving there now. All 3 stages though are really ‘I’m looking after me’. It just changes form. Pandemics reveal the true nature of us. And this isn’t some noble thing about how selfish we all are. We always look out for ourselves, no matter what else we call it. Sometimes the best way to do that is to help others. Another one of those pointless binaries, selfish/selfless.

If you went out and bought a stash of masks for the bushfires or now for Covid-19, how about donating them ASAP back to your local health authority? Particularly those P2 masks.

I'm not a grammar Nazi, but for all Covid-19 public spokespeople, the singular of 'premises' is 'premises'. Not 'premise'.

Patrick Collins was a soldier in World War 1. When his camp became infected with the Spanish Flu, he took his tent and went to the top of a hill by himself, with nothing but his rum ration. He sweated and shivered and was delirious for days, on his own. He was one of the camp's only survivors. Fresh air. Powerful stuff.

Maybe a dumb question, but why is getting your hair done an essential service?

In the face of bad news we often try to escape into concocted good news, or booze. But that’s just fake distraction I think, we know the problems are still there. There is a way to embrace the problems themselves. By being a witness to the events in your life, without trying to own them. When pain or anxiety strikes, witness them and your thoughts and feelings about them, rather than identifying with them or trying to control them. Takes practice but is the doorway to infinite peace and calm. It’s the way you can occupy eternity in every moment, there is only joy in witnessing.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday :)

These are the words by which ScoMo will ultimately be judged at the end of the pandemic. If he's getting this judgement wrong, his government is toast. “We are not going to do things to a business or someone’s job and livelihood where at this stage that may, and is, not necessary.” My own two cents - drastically reducing the number of infections makes economic as well as health sense. Note that China is now re-opening for business. If numbers skyrocket we could end up locked down for many months. And the UK got around this economic problem by paying peoples' wages - protecting their 'livelihoods' - during lockdown. Here they want people to raid their super.

It's hard to feel sorry for people stuck on cruise ships right now, who went on their cruises knowing that we're in the middle of a pandemic.

I wonder about the people who sit at home constructing these posts about the Chinese, that are fake rubbish. Next we'll have stories about 'busloads' of Chinese turning up at supermarkets, buying all the toilet paper and spitting on all the food.

Another reality filter. Our ideas about germs. The virus doesn’t actually hurt anybody, it’s how our body reacts to it that determines whether we get ‘sick’. Microbes live in communities, like us, no microbe on its own can hurt anybody. How we live, how we build hospitals etc. changes those communities in different ways. That to me is the way forward in the battle against pandemics.

Australia is an island. We knew this virus was coming. If we’d closed the borders immediately before we had any known cases, and used the tests we have for any citizens who would then return from overseas, we’d have no real virus problem right now? And yet we’ve had this approach of gradually letting it grow in ‘stages’, it seems unfathomably stupid. Maybe in hindsight.

If you want to see just how much the conservative side of politics has been hijacked by big money, worldwide, go no further than the Republican senator in the US who suggests grandma and grandpa take COVID 19 for the team, to avoid having to damage ‘the economy’ with lockdowns. ScoMo here is just a watered down version of the same trend. Anybody who thinks the economy and health are two separate things is a danger to us all.

The apocalyptic danger of populism. The Imbecile in Chief is making a disastrous dog’s breakfast of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. And guess what? His popularity is climbing.

Haven't seen boyfriends and girlfriends mentioned in the social distancing guidelines? They shouldn't be visiting.

I'm waiting to see senior staff of major organisations announce they will be taking significant pay cuts to help keep staff in jobs. Many of these senior managers, including at my previous employer, could easily afford to live on only 10-40% of their current salaries. That saved 60-90% would keep several people in employment at this time. In a University I would extend this to senior academic and general staff too, many on hundreds of thousands per year, only a fraction of which would be needed to keep their lives functioning pretty much as normal. Not holding my breath.

People here know I talk a lot about our unhealthy obsession with travel. Try this reality filter, particularly if you think it's the Chinese who did all this: - every single case of Covid-19 in Australia right now is the result of travel. All pandemics in all of history result from either war, or travel. Both break subtle ecosystems of living. - even small towns like mine now have cases, for a single reason: returning travellers - there are currently 50-60 THOUSAND Australian travellers still overseas, wanting to come home - many of these people went on their trips knowing we're in the middle of a global pandemic. Many went even after the government said to them 'don't go'. Those that went before that decided to take no responsibility themselves.

I wonder if these months of children doing their learning online might change education. I was watching and helping my kids yesterday, and it was a fundamentally different experience to what school is. More personalised learning, more agency for the student in the learning etc. Current online learning tools like Google Classroom are mostly just organising software, without any pedagogy built in, but the experience is still very different. One of my research areas has been looking at why education is the last area to embrace technology in sophisticated ways, maybe this pandemic will help change that.

I criticise how much we travel because it reflects that we’ve lost a lot of meaningful connection to the spaces we live in. They’re all just places to ‘see’, points on a map. It’s our imperial conquering past, of 'accumulating' territories, that we don’t see. And I see pandemics as one outcome of this, this frantic and constant mobility that severs our biological connection to our landscapes.

Happy 50th! A birthday you won't forget? Hope you're feeling better.

Some of these guys will be 'reduced to' "only" $3000 a month through the pandemic. Down from $50,000 a month. Them and senior managers everywhere - come and join reality again, the weather is fine. Still waiting to hear CEOs and other senior managers take a trim to help keep some of their staff in jobs.

The problem with using case numbers to guide our Covid-19 response is that it's like driving only looking in the rear-view mirror. It takes about 2 weeks for people to show symptoms and get tested. They show us Australia 2 weeks ago, not now.

I remember when Australia used to build things. Before the country was transformed into a casino, using houses as the chips. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/tech/dyson-ventilators-coronavirus/index.html

Another reality filter. We're all eternal beings, and our dreams are the experience of that eternity. Eternity is living a life where everything is possible, as in a dream. Being 'awake' is when a tiny subset of those possibilities are acted out in cooperation with other eternal beings - it takes effort. Death returns us to eternal dreaming, to 'resting in peace'. Pictures like this are so misleading, you don't dream 'in your head'. Dreams are a full reality, they're eternity. In our 'waking lives' little parcels of eternity still appear - our memories, colours etc., what some philosophers call 'eternal objects'.

You can see here Australia is currently tracking between the Asian countries who responded quickly to the virus, and Europe and America, who didn't. The curve seems to be flattening a bit, but we could go harder. ScoMo's rhetoric about 'protecting jobs' - the best way to protect jobs is not let the virus spread further. It's not either/or. Many can't 'just stay home' right now because ScoMo's 'keeping jobs going' means they're forced to go to work.

Seeing across the world a desire to 'flood' FB with 'positive' messages. I don't think it's a smart idea to want to flood FB with anything. Every post is another bit of load on FB's servers, and it's the critical channel for many socially isolated people. The post office used to have the same problem with chain letters.

Happy Birthday Kym :)

Dr Nick's gym #1. With gyms closed, I'd like to convince people that just by changing some ideas, you can get much fitter and stronger simply sitting at home. Breaking down the ideas a few at a time. Firstly, have you noticed that unlike any other structure, the more forces you put on a body, the *stronger* it gets? Other structures are opposite, they strain and weaken under loads. So there's something very different about the way bodies work. That difference is the key to lifelong fitness just by sitting on a couch.

Mozart can teach us about resilience. I think we often approach life situations backwards, choosing the emotion we want, and then trying to shape our life to get that emotion. We ‘want to be happy’ or positive, or whatever. But emotions are effects, not causes. Look at Mozart, died at 35 at the hands of a microbe, lived like many at that time a very hard life, not always with enough money to feed his family etc. His response wasn’t to try to be happy, his response was to just keep doing what he did, in his case create probably the greatest music of all time. That made him happy, as a side effect. Resilience is about thinking, about shaping the bitch that is reality in beautiful and unexpected ways. True joy comes from understanding, and nothing else. https://youtu.be/xYHJRhRym1U

Dr Nick's gym #2. Your body is unlike other structures, because it gets stronger when you load it up. (Why you get ripped when you work out.) This means one very important thing - EVERYTHING we do is shaping our body. There aren't people getting 'in shape' and others not, we're all shaping our bodies, all the time, we can't not. Super importantly, this means it's not what you do, it's *how* you do it - even basic things like sitting or standing - that determines how you shape your body. You don't need weights or exercise to do shaping.

Bloody awesome idea, I feel for the public health people doing all that contact tracing manually. And it's open to gaps, whereas this would be fairly automated and fast. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-30/coronavirus-track-infection-spread-mobile-phone-technology/12101960

The 'retreat to relationship', only one week in! O dear. One of the reasons I left education was its idea it's all about the personal relationship between teachers and kids. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-online-learning-novelty-is-already-wearing-off-warn-principals-20200330-p54fe1.html

Women of Australia, what did you think? Last night ScoMo was asked if his kids are still at school. He said no, his wife had finally won. Let that sink in. He’s saying schools are fine and kids should go there, unless your nagging irrational wife overpowers your reasoning.

I think there can be a lot of wisdom in humour. We see the world as a big map to be explored, with countries like animals in a zoo, to be ‘seen’. Look where that belief gets us.

The barrage of complaint about unemployed people now getting more money? All the old dole bludger lines. Want to know what a bludger looks like? Somebody getting all of their super payout tax-free, or a bank being bailed out by the taxpayer, or tax 'refunds' for excess franking credits that were never actually paid, or a large corporation paying no tax at all, or people negatively gearing multiple properties while others can't afford one. The list could go on and on. These other true bludgers own media companies which endlessly flood us with vile smears about the lowest paid people in our community.

I'm sure I sound like The Grinch sometimes. But this teddy bears in windows thing. Doesn't it just encourage people to leave their homes and wander through the neighbourhood, in large numbers? Spotted last night locally - a crowd of about 30 people checking out the teddy bears. A rule of thumb that works for me - if it's a mass display of emotion, it's usually not a good idea.

We had world wars that lasted 4-5 years, and what happened on the other side of those? The greatest ‘economic growth’ in world history, usually shuffling winners and losers at the same time. The people who have been the winners for the past 50-70 years are usually the people now pleading for the economy over peoples’ health. Let them suffer, the ‘economy’ is just a code word for the status quo. This guy (link) gets it. https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/there-is-no-trade-off-between-the-economy-and-health

I’ve been playing guitar for about 40 years now. One piece of advice I’d give to anybody learning an instrument, that you don’t usually hear much in music teaching. Learn songs. All this stuff about scales and chords etc. is fine, but it’s a projection of theory back onto the instrument. Playing songs will teach your ear and hands everything they need to know. Or as my friend David Gorman would say, practice what you intend to eventually do, otherwise you just become expert at practice exercises. As a bonus you’ll end up with a huge repertoire.

I've always loved Kenneth Galbraith's observation about money and work. We're told rich people need more money as an 'incentive' to work harder, like lower taxes and higher incomes. Poor people on the other hand are said to need less money as an incentive to work harder. You can figure out who came up with these ideas (hint: it wasn't the poor people.) Those who do well often attribute that to their own hard work and merit. They're usually not cleaning shit out of public toilets.