May 2020

Who remembers this character?

So it turns out we were never fighting this virus, we were fighting for our economy. The intention was never to stop you getting it, it was to make sure the hospitals were OK to treat you, if you got it, so our economy could keep running. Our just-in-time manufacturing, retail, finance and labour systems now have a just-in-time health system to support them. That's all the last month was about. Tick tick, you can't 'manage' an exponential virus. You have to fight it. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-02/coronavirus-pandemic-exposes-just-in-time-economy/12206776

Another great investigation of why supermarket shelves emptied (hint: it wasn't 'panic buying'). It's also the same reason we had a pandemic: not a virus, but our just-in-time society. We're now trying to save the wrong thing - the just-in-time systems, instead of ourselves. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/economy/2020/05/02/the-real-reason-our-shelves-were-empty/15883416009759

Firtshand accounts from Bathurst and Lithgow shopping centres today. Teeming with people, little social distancing going on, whole families out shopping. Tick tick. https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/what-you-can-and-cant-do-under-rules/two-people-visitation-rule

How's that for a 1.5-metre gap. Another headline said 'no hugging mums on Mothers Day' (if you're visiting mum). The problem with choosing a controlled adaptation strategy is, you can't control society. And the controls get more and more complicated every day, and are different in every single place. Tick tick.

There's something joyously beautiful about this song and those Carpenter vocals. (Kell doesn't agree.) I always wondered if the Carpenters were fans of Freddie Mercury's harmonies, it's a very similar style. The way the voices blend was something unique and special.

Right now we're hearing a lot about how kids' education is being damaged by them not being in school. One of society's greatest secrets though is that, no matter which way you look at the data, schools make no difference to student learning. From the best-resourced privates to the poorest publics, they overwhelmingly register zero impact on student learning. Why? In a nutshell, it's because schools are not organised around pedagogy - the research as to what helps kids learn and what doesn't - but around timetables and containment. Keeping kids out of the community. Universities have the same problem, in fact they're even worse. I co-authored a book on that, it's a fascinating story. https://www.amazon.com.au/Transforming-Measurement-Learning-Teaching-Education-ebook/dp/B01C8R5BN8

I'm still bemused at the number of people who find sheltering in their homes a type of torture. All the stuff about 'mental health', from the simple act of staying at home a while? This is where I think we need to have a hard look at our cultures, whether they've lost a sense of a grounded 'home'. Healthy cultures have always had a sense of home, of connection to place. It seems pathological that many are experiencing it as restriction, rather than as that connection. Maybe being alone is forcing us to see ourselves more closely, and we don't like what we're seeing. We can't distract ourselves from our selves any more.

I feel explanations of domestic violence rarely talk about the domestic part of the term, focusing mostly on the violence. To me it's a violence intrinsically linked to our ideas of domesticity, not just to gender roles for example. Our ideas of 'home'. You can't understand DV without understanding what it is about our idea of home that seems to encourage this violence in some. We see and structure our homes as separate to society, as secret places, lacking connection. That's not necessary - it's a choice. If you see home as outside society, as only private, it will encourage prison-type behaviour. Violence. Millions of suburban isolated prisons.

Schools are safe. But parliament is closed for 5 months, for safety. Join the dots. If you want to introduce a vaccine, you test it for a year or more. But apparently a few weeks' of data is enough to say that schools are perfectly safe.

Controlled adaptation. Verb.

Yep, this.

Who remembers that this is the 3rd coronavirus epidemic in the last 20 years? SARS (2003) and MERS (2012). Both of those were far more lethal than Covid-19. Both were eliminated inside a year by old-fashioned quarantine. Why wouldn't everyone just eliminate Covid-19 then, using quarantine? Because this time it's hit countries who think they have to protect their 'economy' too. I'm a broken record on that, but it's the single belief we have that will keep us trapped by this little bastard for potentially 3 years. The countries this time who acted fast with quarantine have had - no surprises - by far the best outcomes. But even they now want to 'relax' quarantine with the job nearly done, to protect their (mythical) economies. (The pic is the hut 'Typhoid Mary' quarantined in, for 26 years. Her mental health was fine. Now 5 weeks apparently sends people bananas.)

Happy birthday! And so young.

When the park owner talks about all the safeguards and technology he has in place to control the dinosaurs, Jeff says 'um'. Cabinet and the CMOs talk about 'suppressing' the virus. Microbes are way more lethal and devious than dinosaurs.

Funny this, from Gladys today. They said schools are 'safe'. Funny too that they have to close entire schools if they get an infection and bring in professional cleaners for 'deep cleans', even though schools are 'safe'. Like the guys in Hazmat suits in schools during holidays, removing asbestos from 'safe' schools. And all those 'safe' unflued gas heaters in schools too. How long is parliament not sitting for again, for safety? 5 months? I know, I know, it's only kids and commie teachers, I shouldn't fuss. "NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said authorities expected to see more positive cases of coronavirus as students return to classrooms from next week."

I only recently discovered that Beelzebub translates as "Lord of the Flies". A story of our populist time, what happens when you let society be only individuals.

I think it's worth thinking about why the trend in this graph is happening at the same time as a dramatic rise in aggressive nationalism and patriotism. And why this same pattern is happening in just about every country. Why do we go crazy about love of country at exactly the same time as we start leaving it in massive numbers, every day? (My two cents: I think we mostly travel not for the happy reasons we pretend, but to try to fill a void.)

Aside from the fact that it makes visible the true agenda in play here, can we stop and actually think about this? National income is dropping - yes. Why is that a disaster? Because without income we can't live? Actually, without food and water we can't live. And without shelter and clean air etc. Income is a *measure* of those things. We're mistaking the measure for the thing it's measuring. Who would do that? People with lots of income, who have much to lose. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-04/coronavirus-shutdown-costing-economy-$4-billion-a-week/12213612

Jeff speaks to National Cabinet, about their 'Covid-safe economy'.

Say you watch Netflix, the idea is that the show travels from Netflix along the NBN fibres to your house, where you watch it. But actually no show travels anywhere, cut open that fibre and you won't find the show. The show is everywhere from the Netflix server through the fibre to your TV set, all at the same time. Ideas matter - this is what's wrong I think with most of our ideas about communication, and even consciousness. The standard model is messages (or sensations too, for consciousness) travel between one point and another, and back again. But there is no separate message or sensation travelling anywhere. Both communication and consciousness are not things that happen between two or more isolated points. They're an immediate interaction between two or more things, that changes both of them, at the same time. Our 'mind' is not in our head, it's spread across that entire interconnection, just as the Netflix show is across the NBN. To 'communicate' isn't sending messages to another person, it's a physical interaction that shapes you and them, simultaneously.

So we honestly believe that something too small to see with an ordinary microscope can kill hundreds of thousands of people and bring a global economy to its knees, in a matter of weeks? Not a conspiracy theory, maybe the real problem is with all those big things, not with the tiny thing. Like them travelling way too much, and their economies being debt-fuelled casinos that collapse after one day of being switched off.

I use Jeff Goldblum's Jurassic Park character to illustrate what I see as the real dangers in our strategy to try to control the pandemic, in our 'Covid-safe economy'. It's gobsmacking vanity. Have a look at the basic science and maths of testing in this article. Testing is supposed to be our way of controlling the virus from this point on, while our economy (which doesn't exist) carries on. 'Life will find a way', as Jeff says. We're still thinking of this as just a temporary interruption to normal life. Tick tick. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-surprisingly-big-problems-caused-by-small-errors-in-testing-136700?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3W_z9lI9NuO61DzdwKmYFhCRdkf0GRJXVtqOksbl6h-tYZiGvxy73EceE#Echobox=1588678777

Curious whether when parents hear 'schools are safe'; they hear 'my child won't get infected at school'. Or whether they hear 'my child might get infected at school, but they probably won't get really sick', which is what the government is actually saying.

The UK Health Minister live on UK TV right now, asked about when UK schools will reopen. Quote: "although children don't suffer from the consequences of coronavirus nearly as much as adults - there have been a small number of very sad cases - by and large children are not affected by the disease, they don't go down with anything. They still spread it and that means colleges and schools are a place where lots of people from different households, children, come and mix and that proves to be a real spreader. So the colleges and schools were perfectly safe for the children, but it helped to spread the disease." So, either the time zone changes 'the science'. Or ScoMo is a fucking liar, who will pass the blame to his Medical Officers if this goes wrong. I wonder if they realise it.

Like many people I've been baking bread recently. It made me think about how we understand the world with models, mostly metaphors. For example our model of society tends to be little people-atoms that aggregate together to form clumps or groups. Folding dough is a much better model, I think. There are no parts in dough, you fold all of it, at once, and it mixes. Society is like that, it's not individuals or groups. It's a big lump of dough that gets folded daily.

I sometimes almost apologise for posting every day about Covid-19. I do it because - it's the greatest issue of the past 100 years, changing every day, why wouldn't we talk about it? Kids and schools, obviously a focus for me right now. Not because I'm terrified for my kids, as some assume (though of course I'm concerned for them, as every parent would be). But because I think that decision has the potential to drive the infection deeply and widely into our communities. Have a look at the summary the BBC did on the main issues about schools and Covid-19. You might find it doesn't match much of what we get told by the National Cabinet here. From day one their focus has been fighting for 'the economy', not fighting the virus. You can see it this week, an orgy of economy talk. Their focus has never been to stop you getting sick, they just wanted to make sure hospitals were ready for you if you do. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200330-coronavirus-are-children-immune-to-covid-19

The true meaning of 'balancing' the economy with health.

I think there's a lot of truth in this. Also I still think the main reason personal posts are popular isn't because people are actually much interested in other people. It just gives them permission to post about themselves. Nobody ever really liked slide nights. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/people-are-revealing-truth-behind-their-happy-looking-social-media-posts-its-heartbreaking.html

As the article says, pay attention Australia. This may be the most important decision we make in our entire history, and I'm not sure many even know what it is. Many could live or die on the outcome, and the rest of the country could be stuck in years of continuously shifting restrictions. https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/australia-can-eliminate-covid-19-20200502-p54pa3

We had a postal vote to decide on gay marriage. This is a MUCH bigger issue. Why aren't Australians being asked to decide our way out of the pandemic, between the options of 'controlled adaptation' and 'elimination'? It will be us who have to do it and pay for it. I was discussing this with a journalist at the ABC, and they said "the Cabinet has the AHPPC for expert medical advice, they don't need the public". Pandemics are not medical issues to solve.

Happy Birthday Ed!

In business, if an organisation isn't performing, serious questions are asked of the Board and senior management. I think it's a good principle.

ScoMo's own website, check the order of priorities. I don't make this stuff up. Hillsong, ScoMo's guide, preaches 'prosperity theology' - basically God will make you rich. There's number 1 of the priorities. From the church's website, on Covid-19, safety has been delegated to Jesus (number 2 on the priorities): "Ultimately, even as we pursue preventative measures and exercise wisdom in keeping ourselves and loved ones safe, our faith and security is in Jesus Christ. Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.” Psalm 91:9-10"

Sigh.

Happy birthday :) And Mothers Day tomorrow, a weekend of pampering.

Now we have our 3-stage strategy to all go and get infected to save the economy, anybody notice parliament is still closed, and isn't in the 3 stages? Presumably it's unsafe. Schools are safe though and in Stage 1, because 'the science' says so. You don't even need social distancing there. I think Jesus is helping out, through Pastor Brian.

See you all in Lockdown 2.

The velociraptors are hungry.

Uncomfortable truths we don't want to hear. Colds and flus are declining at the moment, while we're in partial lockdown. Rather than see infectious diseases as interruptions to normal life, we're not seeing that our normal life creates them. The disease isn't cold, flu or Covid-19, it's mass gatherings and mass mobility (travel). Quarantine is also seen as an interruption to normal life. Why we call it 'lockdown'. But it's actually pointing us to the 'new normal', much less mobility, much less gathering. I doubt we're listening, we're compiling our top 10 albums, waiting to get back to those planes and gigs. Big truths need death to make them sink in. Even science progresses one funeral at a time, as Planck said. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-10/annika-wells-first-twin-pregnancy-mp-future-of-work/12231354

'The economy' may be humankind's most lethal invention. If you don't believe that, remember that your life apparently needs to be 'balanced' against the economy's needs. Life and death, you don't get more lethal than that. Use your eyes, pious, boring men in suits believe in the economy. It's what makes them rich.

I think it's the 'road' in road to recovery that is the wrong metaphor. When we're sick we rest or shelter, we don't drive somewhere. I don't think we're seeing the vanity and danger of trying to 'control' a pandemic, while we charge along the economic road. Have a look at the list of the controls we're supposed to be using on this 'road' out. I've never seen a sporting club of 10 people manage much control, let alone a whole country. We've never defeated plagues, since the time of the Old Testament and before. We've just made temporary truces. https://time.com/5834741/outbreaks-germany-south-korea-coronavirus/

"She says that the phase where we see a tail – after we’ve gone from a flat curve to very low figures – is the most dangerous time to start assuming that life’s back to normal." https://med.unsw.edu.au/news-events/news/we-should-aim-zero-cases-lifting-restrictions-top-epidemiologist-says

An indication of how 'the science' is just a political phrase designed to stop people actually looking at it, is that our PM can call powerful and effective public health measures 'hiding under the doona', and not one journalist or other public figure challenges it. At the same time they fall over themselves about the 'economic emergency', based on mumbo jumbo that the nation's top economists collectively rejected as nonsense. What do the economists want? An extension of the public health measures.

"The science still isn't clear". The people who were happy for kids to sit in rooms with unflued gas heaters for the last 30 years may have a different definition of 'safe' to you or me? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01354-0

Countries in a good position like ours, losing control of the virus within days of relaxing restrictions. See the end of the article for latest modelling showing exactly the same thing - that aggressive elimination of the virus through lockdowns saves vast numbers of lives (including from suicide for those in isolation), as well as jobs and the economy. A lesson the virus will force every country to learn, no matter what else it believes.

And this related one for those concerned that lockdowns cause too much suffering, deaths through suicide etc. https://theconversation.com/the-calculus-of-death-shows-the-covid-lock-down-is-clearly-worth-the-cost-137716

Day 100 of the Economy Virus. In which Josh tells us that if people get sick, it could derail the economy. Looking after people could fix the economy too? It's like they're one and the same thing, hey.

Touching to see that kids being 'left behind' at school is a concern right now. When the economy is impacted. When it's not, they can sit in under-funded schools, breathing in nitrous oxides from unflued gas heaters, and asbestos, with flat-lining results, for years without anybody caring. We're learning more about this Economy Virus every day.

Tut, Sweden in red. That'll upset its new fans in the Covid-denier group. https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries?fbclid=IwAR2w5_sFJ-6UrrI5o16PCqztnMijVGzOMKhSK5PBqIrZ48lNvjPA09u9kb8

This is part of the old normal that we call 'the economy'. The push to rescue the economy is just a push to not change the (broken) old normal. The disease isn't the virus. It's the old normal. Otherwise we'll all be back here again, over and over. https://time.com/5819801/rethink-industrialized-farming-next-pandemic/

Apparently almost 10,000 households in the UK still use their old black and white TV set, even though colour has been available for nearly 50 years. Let alone the definition of the new versus old images. It's really interesting that you don't need colour to make any image seem real and engaging.

Debates now about merits of working 'from home'. If you work virtually, your work is not actually at home. Nor is your work 'at work'. Some people say you're working 'online', just as they say kids are doing 'online learning'. But online isn't a place either. All these space metaphors are wrong I think. Our presence, where we 'are', is not a place. Places are not places either, we're too in love with maps.

"Australia really focused on Singapore but Singapore is one of the greatest failures in the world now". Vitenam proving that if you use basic public health measures, rather than try to be half-pregnant by running your bloody 'economy' at the same time as you're trying to eliminate a virus, you win. People being healthy IS a healthy 'economy'. How many more people need to die and how much more debt will we need before that sinks in? You 'open up' before you eliminate the virus, you'll be closing down again over and over, until you realise your economy is just the people. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-13/coronavirus-vietnam-no-deaths-success-in-south-east-asia/12237314

Made an entire career out of voicing the desire of the immense older generation to suppress the interests of the young coming after them. His audience is now rapidly dwindling, demographics 101. No plaudits from me, piss off Alan.

Maybe the 'let's try to control everyday life in multiple dimensions' strategy wasn't the smart one. Go figure. I wonder if the CMOs realise yet that they're ScoMo's human shields.

How's your toilet paper stash? "Prof Talley warned the Australian Government’s strategy of suppressing the virus rather than trying to eradicate it has left us in a vulnerable position." https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/epidemiologist-says-business-as-usual-puts-australia-at-risk-of-intermittent-lockdowns/news-story/2f9bd33f014772c571a06e078730ed9e

No matter how you try to draw or define 'nothing', you'll always draw or think of something. Which I think is the secret to most important things. Death, for example, the idea of it being nothing. It can't be, because nothing doesn't exist. And it means there's no such thing as original; everything is a copy of something else.

Right now about 50% of Australians with cold and flu symptoms aren't lining up for Covid-19 tests. On the one hand they're told not to go to work if they're sick. On the other work is 'opening up' again, so many have to choose between not getting paid, or going to work sick. Can people not see the idiocy of opening up the economy - the country's work - while the country is sick, while at the same telling people not to go to work while they're sick? Public health is a thing - countries get sick, as well as individuals. That's what a pandemic is. Countries need to stop work, to heal, if they're sick.

Happy birthday, I hope you have a happy day!

Happy birthday!

Lots of talk about mental health and the pandemic today. I offended some people by saying that the idea we should scale back quarantine to protect peoples' mental health means we must have become a nation of snowflakes. I meant that though in a very specific context, the one General Sir Richard Barrons uses in the image. Ironically the people who use the word 'snowflake' a lot - culture warriors and shock jocks - are the greatest snowflakes of all, as they're the ones whinging loudest about quarantines.

I was disgusted listening to travellers saying on the radio they 'can't wait' to get back on cruise ships and planes. I wonder if we've learned a single thing. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/pandemic-humans-extinct-air-travel/

Scientists have developed software that will allow your phone to see around corners. I kid you not.

Free child care (not free - you pay for it through your taxes, conservatives are devious with language) isn't 'sustainable'. $150 billion in permanent tax cuts is though. Wouldn't it have been refreshing to hear him say back then 'we need to balance these tax cuts against the need for affordable childcare'. But balance is only for economies. More devious language, now we can be 'free' of 'restrictions' (public health measures to keep us healthy). https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/coronavirus-australia-june-28-deadline-looms-for-free-childcare/news-story/0090742c25dd3d9099d110cdaf8b042d

I was a teacher. This rubric for the country alarms me, because I know it'd be a struggle to get a room of 20 to follow it. I don't buy this bullshit about 'restrictions' and 'lockdown' - the language is designed to make us see them as obstacles, rather than as weapons working for us. I have no joy that 'restrictions' are being 'lifted', while virus is still circulating in the community. Forgive me if I refuse social invitations for some time yet. I strongly suspect we'll regret doing this, and our 'economy' will regret it just as much. Because it is us.

Here's a suggestion. The thing to fix our economies? Frugality. We don't save, as individuals or as businesses. Our economies collapse at the first whiff of trouble, in days. It's not just our mental health that lacks resilience, it's our entire society. 'Returning to normality' it says on the news today? We really need a new normal, not just sacrifice ourselves to try to save the old one. Our great grandparents did it, we already forgot.

Happy Birthday fellow Taurean :)

Rather than let people die to save the economy (what some call herd immunity), I suggest we let the economy die, to save the people. I call it debt immunity. A battle of 2 exponential functions - compound interest, and a virus. Let them kill each other, while we shelter.

I was amazed they decided to push on with exams, just seems another example of how schools and kids are cannon fodder in this pandemic. I say don't be fooled by the appearance of care for education in Australia - Australians overwhelmingly use schools as a way to create status, and as childcare. Our education performance has been in free-fall for years, it took a pandemic to hinder the 'economy' for anybody to even notice schools were there. The risk management for back-to-school was lower than you'd use to hold a dog and cat show. https://www.smh.com.au/national/for-students-and-teachers-sake-it-s-time-to-stop-the-2020-hsc-exams-20200515-p54t88.html

After this is over, people who pushed to save our economy ahead of peoples' lives should be tried and prosecuted. Simple as that, like our own Nuremberg Trials, for the pandemic. I often challenge anybody to even define what 'the economy' is. Nobody has been able to answer. "Evidence from research, however, shows that this is a false dichotomy. The best way to limit the economic damage will be to save as many lives as possible."

Pre-pandemic article. Took only 5 weeks to discover that busyness was never the problem? ‘Get the kids back in school.’

Do you think at some point we might ask why we spent over $300 billion to get to one case a day, and then gave up before we got to zero?

Was laying in bed this morning thinking about how epidemics just start and stop, and nobody knows why. And I thought, these microbes are working together, they're communicating somehow. When I got up, I did a bit of research, and saw that only in the past 3 or 4 years, 'sociovirology' was invented. Turns out this is EXACTLY what microbes are doing. The decision to start and stop an epidemic is a social one, made by the viruses and bacteria, as a group, not individually. If we want to understand epidemics, we need to use our own social lives, which also go 'viral' often. This isn't just playing with analogies, understanding those social processes is the key to beating epidemics, I'm sure of it. Quarantine, for example - does it work because it stops viruses talking to each other? The beauty of this is, you don't need to be a scientist to figure it out. What makes our own social lives go viral? And what stops that? That will be our answer. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01880-6

Think I'm exaggerating when I say people don't give a shit about schools and kids? Gladys' daily press conference, talking about getting people off public transport and back into cars, or onto bikes, or walking. Great ideas to fight the pandemic. The one exception? School buses. Those should continue as normal. They're magic virus-free zones, apparently. Like schools.

AC/DC preceded and played alongside punk and grunge, and were way rawer and harder than either of them. They make The Sex Pistols look like what they really were - a manufactured boy band pretending to be rebels. And they're not a metal band (they hate metal music), though they're often lumped in with the heavy metal crowd. And they were harder and rawer than any of the English legends like Zeppelin, Sabbath or Deep Purple. All along their hero? Chuck Berry. Such a misunderstood band. Ask them 50 times what they play, and you'll always get the same answer - 'we're a rock and roll band'. I honestly think they believe - rightly - that people no longer understand what that means. And is there somebody with a bigger stage presence than Angus Young?

Scientists have invented a piece of software that can write any number of Beatles songs you want. I think if you believe in and understand education, then this shouldn’t actually be threatening or wrong in any way.

Most of our antibiotics were found in the soil. There are potentially millions of other antibiotics sitting in the soil. We’ve had almost no luck isolating others. The reason teaches us a lot about ‘germs’ I think. The second you try to isolate one of these in a lab, it dies. Microbes live in communities, like we do. A virus that gets out of control, like SARS-Cov2, is exactly like a lone gunman, shut out of society. It’s a social thing.

Remember the idea was, we'll relax some restrictions, then wait 2 weeks to see if there's any impact on infection rates? All kids back at school next Monday, announced just over a week since some kids started going back. No assessment of infection rates, that data isn't even available until the end of this week. The Premier admitted this was being driven by 'Treasury'. Leopards never change their spots.

Magic public transport buses! The magic is everywhere.

And the Telegraph is a deeply conservative newspaper. "The real Swedish coronavirus story is a story of poor preparation (along with most other countries), threat underestimation (unique for Sweden), strategic obfuscation to save face (common everywhere) and lack of government leadership". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/18/not-romanticise-swedens-ill-prepared-adrift-coronavirus-response/

Magic schools, magic school buses, magic public transport, now magic planes! Magic pliable doctors for hire! Masks optional, for 'peace of mind'. They forgot 'positivity', and 'being nice to each other'.

It wasn't until I was older that I realised the path my life had taken. I'd never wanted a career, never knew what I wanted to 'be'. And that was the problem, I didn't want to 'be' anything. I wanted to understand. The one true goal of life beyond all others is to understand. The only true source of joy and love, and the only real freedom. Not understanding is what creates all sadness and suffering. We resist thinking more than we resist anything else, and ideas then make us their slaves.

I find the most enjoyable thing about the '10 (whatevers) for 10 days' posts the fact that the exponential maths means everybody runs out of people to tag, who haven't already been tagged, after about day one or two.

Home schooling hump day with Mrs Berejiklian. Today we're protecting lives, 'and' livelihoods. Now class, can you have a livelihood, without a life? Anyone?

Here's context for my pandemic views. Look at these numbers, State-by-State. Everywhere except NSW and Vic may have already eliminated Covid-19. NSW and Vic may be damned close. You can see why the other States aren't in a hurry to open their borders - they'd be insane to do it. NSW and Victoria just need a few more weeks to consolidate these brilliant low numbers. But instead NSW in particular is throwing everything open. Just have to hope that doesn't end up being the most stupid decision in the history of Australia; all that will save it is if NSW has already effectively eliminated too.

Next time a politician goes on about ‘balancing economic recovery’ against keeping you free of COVID-19, remember what the science says. Both the medical and economic experts called bullshit on this from day one. It’s like saying ‘he beats his wife, but from now on he’s going to balance that by buying her some flowers’. And yet people still believe it. Ideas can kill.

Many said this was the strategic role of the phrase ‘the science’ from the beginning of the pandemic. And here it is, exactly as predicted. Scientists as human shields for politicians. This will be exactly the line used if there are outbreaks in schools, or Oz loses control of COVID-19, just watch.

It's a shambles. Government by press release. I don't think many people see the bull-at-a-gate approach this 'save the economy' obsession is creating. All the caution used to close things has been thrown out the window with re-opening. When asked yesterday about risks to regional people, the Premier's response? "Our hospitals have capacity."

Guess how they introduced this one? A 'balance' of gas versus renewables. There's that balance word again. Works every time. Balance climate change action against the economy. Balance your health against the economy. Now balance fracking against renewable energy. If you see that word, bend over and apply the lube.

“This thing is like a fire...we can’t have medium case numbers, that doesn’t work. It is either very, very little or the whole thing is on fire with coronavirus. We could easily be the UK or the US; it is the exactly the same disease.” Dr Andrew Miller, Australian Medical Association, on the danger of trying to 'control' Covid-19.

You can see this right now. The same people who won't trust the experts on climate change, because it means interrupting 'the economy', are the same people who trust the experts on Covid-19, when they can make them say 'the economy' is suffering. I'm sure we can see their true belief that they never waver from - the economy. Unpack it just a little bit further and you always find 'the economy' means the status quo - who's making money from the current set of arrangements. Unpack it just a bit further again, and you'll find these people are the ones funding the political parties, who lobby for the economy. https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-were-prepared-to-act-on-covid-19-but-will-we-do-the-same-on-climate-20200521-p54v22.html

Mass unemployment at the moment. But the country is still running fine, the lights and power are on, there's food in the shops etc. It turns out millions of people around the world are in jobs that are actually unnecessary? What's the 'economic' emergency here? They need an income, pay them that. Their jobs were either really hobbies, or semi-slavery casual things making rubber ducks, to make rubber duck billionaires rich.

I’d hope what’s happening in the US, UK and Brazil right now might finally stop people calling a society an ‘economy’. I’m not confident, this delusion is very deep. We’ve taken one way of measuring society and made it into society. There are thousands of people dying right now because of that delusion.

"She'll be right" is sold as some great Australian laid-back attitude. I don't think it's that, I think it's the way Australia avoids thinking. It's a type of fatalism - if we have a hard problem, it's easier to ignore it. Ironically Aboriginal Australia was/is a culture that put thought at the centre of what it did. The greatest and longest-lasting civilisation of all time was trashed in just 200 years by yob-culture, which values booze, and sees thinking as the opposite to 'having a fun time'.

Aboriginals understood animals and plants and what they prefer, and would shape the landscape to appeal to the animals and plants. It was a contract, they'd provide what the animals and plants needed, and would get to eat some of them in return. We on the other hand fence land, and pay almost no attention to what animals and plants need, including free movement, beyond basics. There's very good thinking that says pandemics all derive from how we do farming. Notice we now do the same with 'germs', treat them as isolated things to be fenced off. We live in a country that has a culture that may stretch back over 100,000 years, the world's most sophisticated. It may have mostly been lost.

Germaine at 80. I'm sure this is mostly why people don't like her. Our ideas are our lives, challenge ideas and you challenge lives. We're mostly slaves to our ideas I think, we don't even realise how everything we think, do and feel is driven by our ideas. “Why people can’t hear unpalatable truths I don’t know. If you want to confute something, you need to hear it, you need to hear the argument, and then you need to actually spend brain power working out why that argument is not valid, or not tolerable."

Gladys wants the pubs and clubs open from next week (good luck getting them 'CovidSAFE' before then). Might leave it to Samuel Pepys, from a past pandemic. Thanks to Alex.

What is it that makes us so passionate about quarantine? We've been doing it for thousands of years. I think it's because moving around, whether that's travel or even 'going to' work, IS now our culture. I don't think we see that. We move around looking for something we don't understand, and never arrive. Which is why we squeal like stuck pigs when movement is restricted. For a lot of the poorer parts of the world what we call 'lockdown' is their ordinary life.

The Brits are much smarter at sniffing out bullshit than us. Politicians here still have another 4 months of time off parliament, on full pay and conditions, for their own safety. Ordinary working people and their kids are cannon fodder for the economy.

Do you think we'll ever connect in our minds tens of millions of people wandering the Earth every day looking for somewhere to live, at the same time as tens of millions of others travel the same Earth sightseeing? Might we eventually realise those are the same problem? And could we then connect those dots a bit more, to widespread degraded landscapes - our 'climate'? And to pandemic viruses from displaced wild animals? Our relationship to land connects all of these?

When tax cuts to the well-off are on the table, government money is 'your' money, that they apparently want to give back to you. When the money is being used to save your job, it's not your money, it's the government's money that needs to be rationed. I think we're too stupid to survive. https://7news.com.au/business/finance/pm-adamant-double-dole-will-be-wound-back-c-1005785

Next time you hear somebody whine about the current restrictions, remember that the people who do the important work in society have been at work the whole time. No luxury of lockdown for them. So who are these whiners? That's a very interesting question, worth some of your time.

Wham.

Between 1800 and 1802, 69,980 gallons of spirits and 33,246 gallons of wine were landed in Sydney, and was consumed by a population of less than 6000. Australians drank then to forget the alienation they felt from the land they were living in. Booze still is the national solvent. (Paul Ryan, Fieldsy, The Rum Corps II)

Covid-19. Where libertarians protest not being allowed free access to the society, that they say doesn't exist.

Only 5% of people have lost their jobs. But the 'economy' has collapsed 🤔

Happy Birthday!

'Germaphobe' is the latest insult from virus-deniers. The deniers could volunteer in ERs, without PPE.

Me every time I open the dishwasher when it's done. There's magic in there.

I'm one of the world's biggest Queen fans. But I have to say it. The rhythm section is rubbish on this song. Flabby, the whole song (as recorded) lacks punch. The song should rock, and it just sort of plods along.

Finally Aussie kids can go back to what they were doing before this bloody pandemic. Failing at school.

There are only 2 things a highly infectious virus can do. Either it gets suppressed so much through quarantining that it only has tiny outbreaks here and there. Or - it's completely out of control. There's no middle option of a 'manageable' amount of virus. You can't 'control' it, you can't be half-pregnant. The 'CovidSAFE' idea for public spaces and workplaces is the half-pregnant option.

Queensland under attack on borders, from a State that believes changing a clock changes the amount of daylight.

1 day in to the big re-opening, 2 schools down. I call it Covid-19 pin bowling - strike! These students need to be disciplined, for ignoring the science.

This suggests a woman would be torn between sex and chocolate. Ha.

Talk of the economy being in desperate trouble mistakes the economy for the budget. The old normal was a tiny group of each society hoovering up most of the money, and the 'economy' then unable to function because the job of money - to exchange - can't work when most of it is being hoarded by a tiny few. Everyone else then needs debt to even survive. A business-led recovery is putting the cart before the horse. Tax the hoarders and spend, and watch that 'economy' hum. Business doesn't create jobs - customers with money create jobs.

Here's a chicken and egg question with an answer. Which came first - business, or jobs? Here's some cavemen. Doing jobs. Not a business in sight. Workers are the economy. Business is just a roof over their heads while they work.

There is no longer a conservative side of politics. (You'd be lucky to find anybody who remembers what political conservatism is.) Conservative politicians have been replaced with lobbyists for various industries. In the past they would lobby politicians - now they've cut out the middle man entirely. No conspiracies here, just look at the policy platforms of all conservative governments worldwide. Only 2 or 3 main policies that aren't even policies: cut taxes, cut regulation, increase subsidises to business.

I find it's surprisingly doctors who sometimes argue that Covid-19 is being blown out of proportion as a health issue. A big drop in billable hours and therefore income for them during pandemics, that could explain it. Look at the differences between full suppression (single digit mortalities), mitigation (tens of thousands) and do nothing (hundreds of thousands). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30854-0/fulltext

I talk a lot about how I think our societies have no real understanding of time or space. Another example - 'where' does a Zoom meeting occur?

Thanks to Rell for this. We'll be forced to confront this at some point, there's desperation right now to try to restore the old 'normal'. The old normal was broken.

Experts describe the current phase of the pandemic as the 'most dangerous' phase. My sense from the community is - yippee, this is all over. And ffs, we blame the Chinese for our economic/travel virus. The old normal will be back before we know it.

We either have tiny amounts of virus, because we're suppressing the crap out of it. Or it's out of control. No other options. Until the day this thing is over, I'll want to bang my head against a wall at the idea of 'relaxing' restrictions. There's only one way that ends. The exponential curve, you can't trick it.

Business caught up with the internet. I waited a long time to finally get NBN at home. Once it arrived, I thought goodie, what to download now? Couldn't think of a single thing.

I've noticed in this pandemic the necessary tension between medical people, and public health people. They're not the same. Medical people (doctors, nurses) will tend to be focused on the health of an individual. Public health is about the health of an entire population. They do very different training and work. It explains why sometimes prominent doctors have spoken out about quarantine, because they see it as harming individuals, medically. Public health people though are 'treating' the entire population, using methods that are more political than medical. Why we need to be so careful with the idea of 'the science' - it depends whose science we're using, and for what purpose. Often they'll contrast the views on lockdown of an epidemiologist, and a doctor, and people will wonder why they disagree. They're looking with often very different perspectives. In Australia the two disciplines are pretty well managed together in single health services, but they're not the same and never will be. The tension is always there. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/about/public-health-medicine/

For those you know who still try to compare seasonal flu with Covid-19. Though it may be faster to just block them. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/comparing-covid-19-deaths-to-flu-deaths-is-like-comparing-apples-to-oranges/

We tend to think freedom is the opposite of slavery. If you actually look at what happened though, in history, that bondage of one person to another didn't lift to give us freedom. We enormously expanded and diversified that bondage, and made it more mutual. It's what makes us free, to be mutually obligated to each other. You and the butcher, banker, supermarket, school, tech company, electricity supplier etc. etc. are all mutually bonded to each other now. It's what creates peace. Libertarians don't get this, they think freedom is being free from all bonds.

Happy birthday!

The global heatmap of Covid-19. A long, hot summer for the US, tragic. You can use this map to help identify which countries are really franchises for the super wealthy.

From the news: "Accelerated reopening of the economy, earlier easing of restrictions and larger gatherings are expected to be recommended to national cabinet within two weeks, if the trend in low daily coronavirus infection rates continues." I saw the UK making similar arguments last night. This is the half-pregnant stuff. Low numbers of infections mean 'controls are in place'. Lift those controls, and what do you get? High numbers of infections. Explain how that's wrong?

So much wisdom in wit. Still nobody went to jail for the GFC or the Banking Royal Commission findings.

NZ 7 days with zero new cases. Only 1 active case left in the country. Australia, still over 400 active cases. Look how similar our curve is to South Korea. See that little blip at the end of the Korean curve? They've just lost control again, it's heading up. "We did just as well as NZ and we didn't lockdown as much" - worth remembering some people said this, as time goes on.

That 'period of euphoria' is palpable here in Oz right now. Why Israel thinks it lost control? Schools. Yesterday ScoMo said: "Eradication? Elimination? These are not the goals that we have". We love pandemics so much we've spent a couple of hundred billion just to keep ours going, apparently. You can't make this stuff up, leaders for the first time in history saying 'we're not even going to try to beat this plague, people are losing money'. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-update-64-new-cases-284-dead-36-on-ventilators-629628

Riots in the US. 'A country divided'. Actually it’s more division under definition 1 - sharing - that fixes the division under definition 2. Division creates unity.

It may actually be good for us to take antibiotics regularly. Most chronic and acute disease may actually be due to microbes. It’s been shown that those who take more antibiotics can have lower rates of disease of most kinds. Our reported overuse of antibiotics is actually due to their enormous use in farming.

One sentence from Tony Blakely sums up exactly why the people who say we should 'balance' the economy with health should be held to account when this is over. Well done to the States who didn't buy that bullshit, they may be about to be free. “Suppression will never fully see us opening anything near normal. But if states have eliminated then they can pretty much have a near normal situation.”

If most human disease is infectious disease, even the big chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease and diabetes, you'd expect antibiotics to have an impact on some of them. And here it is. We've been living in a pandemic of infectious disease for more than 50 years. Time to ditch the chemical, mechanical and computer (DNA) metaphors for living things, and treat them as communities of living beings. https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-big-common-antibiotics-can-also-kill-off-a-range-of-cancer-cells

UK opening up. With 50,000 new infections a week. 'Open up' is politics, not science. Wherever you live.

Happy Bitrhday!

Actually an elbow. The suggestion of something is normally more desirable than the thing itself. And there I think you have the secret of why tens of millions will vote for the promise of riches, that they'll never see.

Civilisations last 336 years on average. Australian Aborigines were left out of this graphic - their civilisation lasted 100,000 years. (They would have gone right off the edge of the graph, by about a metre and a half.) My feeling is reconciliation will come when we understand that staggering achievement. The most sophisticated culture in all human history, by a country mile. Going to the moon is piss weak compared to having a civilisation last 100,000 years - seriously nothing. While we treat them as primitives or wallow only in symbolic 'recognition', we won't understand them. We've only really just begun to scratch at the surface of understanding them, it's all still to do.

Gladys and ScoMo and friends are furiously trying to get State borders open. Have a look at the vast numbers of Australians who don't agree with them. I suspect vast numbers don't agree with a lot of the 'opening up' going on either. To give an indication of how rushed this economic orgasm of opening is, the new Public Health Order that agencies needed to prepare for the re-opening was released when? This morning.

Know that feeling of 'wtf is happening?!' right now? That's called privilege. When you don’t gotta think and fight to live.

"...newly released economic modelling says a rise in pay packets will generate more jobs than spending on construction projects...About 0.97 direct jobs are generated for every $1m spent on building projects, according to ABS data. Conversely, 1.79 direct jobs are created for every $1m spent by consumers." The economy is just people, with money (good economy) or without (recession). Go figure. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/pay-rises-generate-more-jobs-economic-modelling-shows/news-story/139601a1a3295bc7e1f10df01f7f67e7?btr=0342eeece9369be085356188d44a96b2