January 2021

If you know governance and politics, this has been evident since the beginning of the pandemic. NSW’s strategy is not based on public health advice, it’s based on trying to keep the economy open. That approach has killed thousands upon thousands of people worldwide. Luck and the first national lockdown have bought NSW some time.

Buffalo skulls.

Question for my tradie friends. Back in summer storm season here again, when peoples’ appliances get fried by surges. Why isn’t household-level surge protection (at the main board) built into the standards by now? Surges are such a common thing, people go out and buy individual surge protectors for each power point, costing them potentially hundreds, and they’re not even always effective.

This is the sort of expertise that governments have refused to use in the pandemic, preferring to medicalise it. Meaning preferring to allow people to become infected, and then shoving them in hospital. The health system should be the *last* line of defence in a pandemic, not used unless absolutely necessary. We’ve made it the front line. Medicos do not have this (and other) expertise. Politicians are using them as human shields to keep businesses open, on behalf of political party donors.

“Wayne Errington and I discovered that early on members of federal cabinet were arguing for a Donald Trump style laissez-faire approach to the virus.” Governance is my job. People think I have a personal gripe with ScoMo. It’s not personal, I think he leads a government of Trump supporters, who are lethally dangerous to Australians.

Follow up to my post a few days ago, wondering if the lack of stories about victims of Covid is political strategy to prevent peoples’ anger at the public health fuck-up in many counties. That’s exactly what’s going on, FleetStreetFox is Susie Boniface, a senior journalist in the UK.

There are times I can see why fraudsters make so much money. People are extraordinarily gullible. For example, did anybody notice in this mask decision, that not one workplace is covered by it? That not one employer will have to provide a single mask, only individuals will wear all the cost? With the exception of hospitality workers. Workplaces have been exempt from most Covid requirements since the beginning of the pandemic. You could pack 15 employees into a toilet cubicle and not violate the NSW Public Health Orders. Why is this? Because the economy must come first, work must continue. We’re lemmings.

The Brits going where not even the Americans will go. They may still destroy the vaccines for everybody by doing this. What happens when you vote for people who think we live in an Economy and not a society.

NSW pandemic strategy. Covid hide-and-seek.

Zoë is an international expert on Covid in schools. Remember ‘schools are safe’? Only where there’s no community transmission of the virus. If there is, they act as superspreading sites. In the UK the government is forcing people back to school. Teachers may strike, and good on them. The government doesn’t care about education, like here it cares about getting parents back to work.

I still remember early last year people sceptical about NZ’s approach. It’s still working, superb. Meanwhile NSW is trying to copy the US and UK. Is it really that hard to understand that if you keep the virus out of the community, the ‘economy’ will boom again? Leave the virus circulating in the community (‘living with the virus’) and the ‘Economy’ tanks.

Makes me so angry. Have been trying for nearly a year to get the message across that NSW is following the approach of the US and UK, both complete catastrophes. And I think if you surveyed NSW people they’d overwhelmingly support stronger restrictions, a lockdown of all of Sydney, right now.

A reminder that NSW is using the UK strategy, for Covid.

The UK is in terrible trouble. This 6-week lockdown will barely scratch their horrendous numbers. Vaccines will take at least all of 2021 to roll out, maybe well into 2022. A pandemic is a marathon, this is where you eventually end up with bullshit ideas like ‘living with the virus’, to save your Economy. Their Economy is in lockdown too, because it’s just the people.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This inflatable character was used by emergency department staff in a US hospital to provide Christmas cheer. Unfortunately the staff member who wore the inflatable costume turns out to have had Covid-19, and the air blowing out of this thing has now infected 43 other staff.

To me home is a sacred place, my favourite place on Earth. I’d rather be at home than anywhere else. I see thousands of people drive in traffic jams for 1.5 days of a 3-day weekend, just to ‘get away’. Get away from what? Ourselves? We won’t understand our own culture until we understand this, I reckon. We live inside maps, not homes.

England would love to only have exponential growth happening. The curve isn’t curved. It’s straight up.

I’d recommend everybody read this short piece from Raina Macintyre about how public health action was fatally sabotaged in this pandemic. Worldwide. A vast range of expertise was needed, politicians and their backers ensured only a tiny subset of medical people got a say, and they used those as human shields. A pandemic is not a medical phenomenon. Medicine just treats the victims.

If you’re thinking ‘the vaccines will fix all this in 2021’, take a breath. The US and UK may be destroying the vaccines right in front of our eyes, by using them completely differently to how they’re designed. This may allow the virus to mutate to negate the vaccines. When you change your country into an Economy, there’s no limit to the destruction.

A plug I’m happy to give. I live in an old house with very thick walls, and we’ve always struggled to get decent wifi in every room. The Orbi Wifi6 units from Netgear are astonishing, I can sometimes get faster speeds in the rooms furthest from the modem than I do standing almost on top of the modem itself. 5 stars.

I think we need wide education in political language, the Greeks called it ‘rhetoric’, it was a cornerstone of their education. For example yesterday the acting Premier was asked about risks to regional NSW from Sydney people travelling widely in the regions, possibly with Covid. His answer? ‘We’re confident with the health resources in the regions.’ Not, ‘we’re confident we can protect people from infection.’ Just confident they have enough hospital beds for infected people. If you vote for a party who won’t even commit to people not getting infected in a pandemic, move to the USA right now and raise the collective IQ here.

I’m seeing this a lot in the pandemic. Cafes and restaurants packed with boomers, bars and pubs and mass parties packed with millennials. Boomers possibly wanting to deny that they’re old (as usual) and at risk, millennials convinced they’re immortal. Gen X doing all the heavy lifting, as always.

A very good question, in a very good (and funny) article.

Heh.

During the pandemic, Australians still fly overseas in the tens of thousands, and then sit at the other end and moan about not being able to come back immediately. Travel was the petrol that started this pandemic, and it still continues to be the biggest hurdle to stopping it, within and between countries.

Somebody yesterday said I wasn’t ‘positive’ enough with my FB posts. I talk about the grown up issues of the day, each to their own but I’m not here to curate some magazine-style online personality for myself, or to share snippets of my personal life which most of my newsfeed have no interest in, just as I have little interest in their personal life. To me talking about the grown up issues of the day is one of the most exciting things a grown up can do. The positivity crowd to me reek of anxiety and desperation, unwilling to engage in the major events of their lives and desperate to create a veneer of ‘happiness’ to make it all go away. Spoiled and privileged people have always responded that way to major change. The virus doesn’t give a shit, it will keep killing people until we confront the holes in our culture the virus has exposed. Climate change and inequality the same, in fact it’s all the same lazy ‘positivity’ causing these problems. (P.S. for the positivity crowd, who seem to equate life with social media, I’m currently enjoying screwing up balls of paper and watching the cat use them as soccer balls.)

This is happening, right now. Unsurprisingly FB is mostly unconcerned, people still talking about themselves. Maybe some positivity can make it all go away.

At least the US parliament was open. Do Australians remember that our own PM closed parliament completely for much of 2020, and a hand-picked committee of gas industry cronies decided Australia’s post-Covid future? The PM now with astronomical popularity figures, on holiday again in the middle of a crisis, leading a government full of unashamed fans of Trump?

Must find that t-shirt.

When Twitter is good, it’s really, really good. The Tweet and his own comment on it both superb.

Well, can’t say I don’t live what I talk about ;)

From Paul Bieniasz, a virologist. Worth a read, it’s only a page. How using a vaccine as a magic bullet in a pandemic could mean the vaccines end up worthless. Broken record I know, but when you turn your society into an Economy, you break everything.

Great observation from an information expert this morning, calling Donald Trump a ‘superspreader of misinformation’. Time to ditch all the free speech nonsense and start shutting down the loons in our midst, who play on the false idea of ‘balance’ and ‘both-sideism’ to fill our societies with toxic ideas. Ideas are way more dangerous than guns, we need experts to stop them enslaving us.

A good little earner for me. The motion capture work was awkward.

One of our elected LNP representatives. Apparently 40% of Australians would vote for Trump. Maybe some positivity would fix it.

Trump committed treason yesterday. It’s very clearly in the definition. This matters because treason can attract the death penalty in the US. Or 5 years’ jail as a minimum. Thus his big turnaround today in saying how naughty the protestors were. Legally that won’t save him.

Amazing how you can sound articulate, and still be a raving loon. https://twitter.com/ninnyd101/status/1347340335245111298?s=21

“Hospitals began to run out of masks for the same reason that supermarkets ran out of toilet paper — because their “just-in-time” supply chains, which call for holding as little inventory as possible to meet demand, are built to optimize efficiency, not resiliency.”

The promised cat picture. Watching videos of mice.

The Land of the Free. If you allow freedom to be narrowly defined as just the right to say what you like, this is what you get. The cheapest, most insignificant form of freedom. Freedom is a decent wage, working conditions, proper health care, good education, clean air and food etc. The freedom to have an easier, healthier, more comfortable life. The great con is to make working people think their freedom of speech is freedom.

“...to be perfectly frank at the moment I really want the community focused on achieving no community transmission," Dr Chant said. Meanwhile the Treasurer opines about masks, an area in which he has zero expertise. This is the battle within the NSW government, between public health and the economic zealots.

One of the debating tricks the Economy people have used in the pandemic is to say we need to ease up our fight against Covid, because other basic health issues like cancer are being neglected. As it turns out, if you ease up fighting Covid, you reach the same outcome, but much worse because you now have all the Covid patients dying, together with the neglected cancer and other patients.

Do as I say, not what I do.

Happy birthday Mia :)

If you’re curious why the UK is in such a bad way, remember that for the last decade or more it’s been run by these people. This is what they looked like as students.

Thought you might like Jon’s response here, my UK friends.

The debates about lockdown or not to lockdown. Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘lockdown’, it’s not a public health concept. And notice that when somewhere won’t use strong restrictions, like NSW, that only works if they at the same time introduce hundreds of micro-restrictions to control our activity. Like in the pic. So it’s not the case that some places ‘lock down’, and some don’t. Everybody locks down activity, you either do it simply by stopping most at once, or you introduce hundreds of small controls into everyday life instead. It’s a false binary. And the lots of smaller restrictions approach is also hugely expensive, complex to do and an enormous amount of work to implement.

The ABS measures the stringency of each State’s public health response, and the corresponding economic performance, across the whole pandemic. With the exception of Victoria because of its super spreader outbreak, NSW dead last on both measures. It has the most restrictions, and the worst economic performance. The exact opposite of what people are told. As the WA Premier said today, NSW needs to stop farting around and eliminate the bloody virus.

The protestor in the white hat and backpack drags a police officer down the stairs, where he’s stomped on by the crowd and beaten with a flag pole, while they sing The Star Spangled Banner. Any Trump fans reading? Get a brain for Christmas? Now’s the time to unwrap it. https://twitter.com/billweircnn/status/1348395383916027906?s=21

I’ve said a lot here that ScoMo is Trump-lite. People think I just have it out for him. He’s the only serious world leader who hasn’t condemned the coup attempt in Washington. His cabinet and backbench are in the news this week saying poor Trump. In terms of proof, it’s like taking candy from a baby. This is a very dangerous government for Australia.

Crush and kill. If your kids get nits, you don’t ‘live with’ the nits. You kill them. It’s staggering to me that NSW, the most closed State with the worst economic numbers and the only State with circulating virus, is getting the applause in this pandemic, when what it’s actually doing is holding the entire country back. Kill the fucking virus, like the rest of the country.

Parler is an extremist social media group, where Trump went when Twitter banned him. Matt Canavan is a federal LNP Senator. How much evidence will it take for Australians to recognise that they haven’t elected a Liberal/National government, they’ve elected a Trump government?

It’s going to be very hard to beat ‘The Pillage People’.

No epidemic has ever had data like this. An absolute disgrace. The people responsible are trying to desperately to blame the ‘new variant’. The fault is all theirs and their mystical Economy. This is what prioritising fairy tales does - it kills people.

People understand that our climate change policy is purely about keeping the Coalition from breaking. If they take that same perspective to NSW for Covid now, they’ll see the same thing. NSW’s Covid strategy is designed to appease the warring factions in the NSW LNP. Like today’s statement - the first half (‘zero transmissions’) is the complete opposite of the 2nd (‘can’t eliminate’). She’s speaking to the different factions of her own party, throwing a bit of meat to both. Exactly what Boris is doing in the UK too. Gladys: Our goal is zero transmissions. Anyone who thinks we're going to eliminate this disease unfortunately does not understand what the pandemic represents.

UK scientists projecting 250,000 new infections PER DAY there within weeks. 😳

Short piece from the Lancet today which every person in NSW could learn something from. Confirming again that when you get a rise in Covid infections, you must smash them immediately. Not ‘live with’ them. And that conservative Covid strategy, like conservative climate change policy, is not driven by science but by internal party warfare. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/11/uk-covid-crisis-qa-with-the-lancets-richard-horton

Happy Birthday!

Liberace became a bit of a self-parodying joke, like a later stage Fat Elvis. But the man had talent, and could entertain. Also reminds me of a time when to admit being gay was social suicide. And watching all these clean-shaven, super straight white folks in the crowd start to really get black music. There was a fascinating fusion of white and black music in those days, both envious of what the other provided.

I’ve had both dogs and cats as pets. Loved them both. But on balance, I prefer cats. Dog love is doofus love, big and sloppy and unquestioning adoration. The sort that makes many dump a boyfriend or girlfriend. Cat love is unpredictable, tough love. Your cat is a literal killer, its love is unpredictable and a constant negotiation. I prefer that, I love that sense of independence in both cats and in my own relationships with people. Plus cats clean themselves, will go to the toilet themselves in the same place each day, and don’t bother people with barking. Cats are also so superb physically, astonishing reflexes and awareness.

The seduction of numbers. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have higher efficacy numbers of more than 90%. But those numbers are based on laboratory-based trials, not on real-world conditions of vaccination. This is where I think our populist thinking betrays us again. The vast, complex expertise of actually *administering* things seems almost completely invisible to our thinking. We call it ‘red tape’. Red tape actually does 99% of the world’s work. A vaccine is only ‘effective’ if it can actually be rolled out across a whole population, no matter how great it is in the lab. There are multiple reasons neither the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines pass that test right now.

One of the first rules of political strategy is, if you want to do something unpopular, do something else that looks unrelated, but will achieve the same thing. The federal LNP despise superannuation, just as they do Medicare, but they know both are too popular to dismantle. With super, instead they’re trying to undermine it a piece at a time, first by letting people withdraw from it in the pandemic (‘it’s your money’, same strategy and slogan they used for the tax cuts, nobody noticed), now by making it optional for some to contribute to it at all. They know many will love that, more in the paypacket each week. Never mind the best way to boost wages would be to actually boost wages - not on your nelly! And why do they hate superannuation? Because union-based funds are both extremely successful, and packing increasing clout in big national decisions. Never before have working people held so much of the nation’s capital. That needs to be opposed at all costs.

Happy Birthday Brenda :)

I love English muffins. They were invented by servants, who would take small bits of dough left over when making bread for their masters, shape them into muffins and cook them with a griddle. I’ve made English muffins, they’re quite tricky, you need a very yeasty, sticky dough to get the air bubbles inside the muffin, and then get the griddle temperature just right so you don’t burn the outside while leaving the inside raw.

George has just had a bad case of Covid himself, which his daughter brought home from primary school. George looks for a pandemic plan, but Economy governments never had one. Ask somebody to show you Australia’s pandemic plan - it doesn’t have one either. But Economy governments have very detailed economic plans for Covid, which shows you their priority. You watch, once the ‘high risk’ groups have been vaccinated, the rest of us will be told to get out from under the doona again, and get back to work.

Once again the men in the NSW Cabinet on the take from big industries like tourism, gambling, booze and real estate, are desperate to smash the public health restrictions open. Restrictions should be under the control of the Chief Healh Officer, we should have at least 2 incubation cycles of no transmission before lifting restrictions. Why it looks like the other States are being too cautious, the politicians are actually listening to the advice there.

Right to the end the corruption continues. Trump’s staff stealing White House artworks.

I love this version, and sometimes hearing a ‘cover’ reinforces just how good a song is. No matter how long I’ve been involved in music, I always get reminded that it’s the songwriting that is the most important thing. Everything else is second. https://youtu.be/6loiGq8pptI

ScoMo and his government did this with RoboDebt. Nobody in trouble over it, nobody even really said sorry. And their popularity has gone up, showing Australians’ understanding of politics is 3-word slogans.

In every other State this would prompt further restrictions. Not because they’re over-anxious, but because you can’t detect asymptomatic infection with testing, if you’re testing people with symptoms only, as NSW is mostly doing. The only way to control asymptomatic infection is restrictions, it’s invisible. NSW has been lying for a year now, that it’s trying to eliminate community transmission. Spin. It’s been very lucky, let’s hope that luck holds.

Trumpism/populism is like syphilis. A country can have it for years without realising.

I’d always had a feeling that underneath this guy’s humour was something nasty. The pandemic has flushed it out. https://www.elephantjournal.com/2020/12/the-trouble-with-jp-sears-influencers/?fbclid=IwAR2RFuScW6fzztySrpnHthqJh3VVe_q28txzRvasxIAa3MbNVxb9caSQnHk

Having spent a week with a recurring bloody painful foot injury, I was reminded again of the expression ‘take the weight off your feet’. It’s the weirdest idea, that our feet carry our weight. As if ‘me’ somehow stops somewhere just above the ankles, and the weight of that me is then carried by my feet. Sure our feet are our dominant contact point with the ground. But they’re connected to the rest of us too, those forces are distributed throughout the rest of us, they don’t just sit in our feet.

See and smell the fear. Trying to overthrow your own government with violence will get you sent to prison, who knew. Well, smart people knew.

Everyone except NSW seems consistent to me, they have zero Covid. Most of them for months and months. Like NZ. As always, just waiting for NSW to stop playing chicken with the virus.

“Anyone concerned about the economy should be pleading for fast, powerful lockdowns, not demanding a return to business-as-usual.” Yep, but some just won’t learn.

Did you know the trials on the vaccines didn’t meaningfully test for either reduction in serious disease, or immunity? They may do both of those things, but it’s likely an enormous amount of guesswork and prayer is going on here. Politicians will want vaccines to be a fast-track back to normal, as always we’ll need to be very wary here. Take the vaccines, but resist any attempt to use them as a silver bullet to relaxing all the public health restrictions.

"...as long as the state premiers continue to ignore the idiots in the federal Coalition and the Murdoch media and lock down as needed...It turns out that stopping the disease from spreading is the only thing that matters in a pandemic, and the state premiers did that. Their efforts should never be forgotten." Alan Kohler

Look at these hopeless testing numbers. It was a Sunday, but that should be taken into account. Last week of school holidays, people aren't going to faff around interrupting things by getting tested, it may prevent them getting home. Making testing the centre of your strategy is ridiculous.

Hands up if you still think 'the economy' is a thing, separate to the people? https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/victoria-s-economic-recovery-to-outstrip-all-other-states-as-nation-bounces-back-20210115-p56ufo.html

Some very smart people jumped on the anti-lockdown wagon last year. I thought they might have done a bit of checking and found out there is no such thing as a 'lockdown' in public health, it's a political term invented by spin doctors to obstruct public health action. Just as they do with climate change. They were taken for a ride. The damage has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Is it me, or does work feel very different because of the pandemic? Like the pointlessness of a lot of it has become more obvious?

Feeling your age. A new senior manager at work was being introduced to everybody. They got to me, ‘this is Nick’. Senior manager says, ‘o yes I know Nick, he taught me in high school’.

Gladys on radio this morning saying why can't Premiers let there be 130-180 cases per day, before closing borders? Like Covid accumulates in small, manageable amounts. How is it that while every other Premier drives Covid cases to zero *and* has an open 'economy', Gladys, who does neither, is seen as doing best on both?

Populism is when slogans beat reality. The 'adversity' Gladys faced was being found out for blatant and proven corruption, which she was apparently forgiven for because a dastardly man broke her heart. Then she ran the State with the worst Covid performance and worst-performing economy (the second caused by the first). Australia, if you wonder how on Earth somebody like Trump becomes a leader, this is it - when slogans and sentimentality replace facts and due process.

Happy Birthday!

Vaccines won't end this, your strategy will determine your long-term success. Even in the medium term NSW hasn't been as successful as any other State. The only strategy that works is Zero Covid. (NSW is emulating the UK strategy, food and entertainment vouchers will be released in March.)

Boris Johnson did this. (Corpses are now overflowing the morgues.) You know why NSW people aren't eating out or travelling as much? Because there's a lethal virus out there. Get rid of the lethal virus Gladys, it'll fix your economy too.

lol.

I want him to do so well. Farewell to the pig he replaces. But to me, our populist times focus on leaders to our own peril. Obama was a much more capable man than Biden, and his 8 years led to Trump. In a democracy who the leader is should be almost irrelevant. If it makes a huge difference, your democracy is badly damaged.

Politics isn’t Left vs Right. It’s Church vs State, a brutal battle going on for centuries and continuing today. Also not judging which ‘side’ should win, the Church built our civilisation, in many ways it knows what it’s doing better than the democracies that replaced it. This also isn’t just the US, our current PM and cabinet are committed evangelicals. “But I did come to understand the power of the Christian right in America and their 40-year project to take control of the government.”

If a person wants to be aggressive, go for it. Whack somebody, swear, throw something - whatever. Don't be passive-aggressive, is there anything more irritating than somebody who internalises their gripes and then gets to drag out their aggressiveness towards you over weeks, months or even years, under cover of faux cheerfulness? I once got rid of a staff member for being like that, it's toxic in any social environment.

Fan of Ga Ga. But boy she butchered that anthem this morning, ouch. I wish singers understood that an anthem is most powerful when sung straight and powerful, no dicking around with melisma. Julie Anthony always understood that.

My whole life I've struggled with shoes. (They really did once x-ray feet in shoe shops, to fit shoes.) So many debates about what's best - arch support, cushioning, flat shoes better etc. I've now decided a 'supported' shoe is best. The opposite of my previous view, which was that it should be flat to mimic the ground. The problem with flat shoes I think is, your foot is still constrained by the shoe. So it's trying to cope with a flat ground by spreading, while at the same time being constrained in other directions. It's trying to be barefoot and shod, at the same time. A supported shoe makes the shoe just an extra external layer of the foot, working as a single unified thing. It's not supporting the arch, it's just an extension of the arch.

Julie Anthony (and Freddie Mercury) understood anthems. Look at this, at a footy crowd, she has the whole (singing-reluctant) audience on their feet inside a minute-and-a-half. Anthems are supposed to energise you, fill you with passion and power. The singer has to deliver them with a total sense of presence and command, they demand your attention, drag you to your feet without realising. Very little popular music has the humility to create that sense of power and magnificence. Mercury had it, he knew people want magnificence and power, not just little introspective musings about existence. In religious terms, they want glory. The glorious.

Re-posting this because the news is full of stories of Australians stranded overseas. Sure some of these people have legitimate reasons for being OS in the middle of a pandemic. But look at the numbers - they tried to bring them home, but nearly twice as many Australians then left, at the same time, in the middle of a pandemic.

Try as they might, the NSW Government cannot get higher testing numbers in W and SW Sydney. (Note this is actually a daily testing figure of only about 11,000, 6,000 are carried forward from yesterday.) There are all sorts of complex socio-economic-psychological reasons for that. This was one of the main reasons skilled and experienced public health people were arguing for movement and gathering restrictions there. Testing and tracing alone can't beat a pandemic.

Who said this? (No Googling.) ''A. You will see to it (1) that my clothes and linen are kept in order, (2) that I am served three regular meals a day in my room. B. You will renounce all personal relations with me, except when these are required to keep up social appearances.'' And: ''You will expect no affection from me . . . You must leave my bedroom or study at once without protesting when I ask you to.''

This is exactly what the Democrats should do. Progressive politics is far too nice.

Greg is another leading Australian public health expert. You won’t get ScoMo or Gladys to this day to admit they were wrong about eliminating Covid. They told us all it was impossible. They said that because they didn’t want to fight it, they wanted to focus on the economy. Millions swallowed it hook, line and sinker, I lost track of the number of people who said to me ‘we can’t eliminate this virus’. A disgusting chapter in Oz history.

A re-post, because it’s so wonderful. “Today I can measure the folly and malice of those who affect to despise money, that divine institution. Money spiritualizes all that it touches by endowing it with a quality that is both rational (measurable) and universal, since property reckoned in terms of money is accessible to all men. Venality is one of the cardinal virtues. The venal man suppresses his murderous and anti-social instincts - honor, self-pride, patriotism, political ambition, religious fanaticism, racialism - in favor of his need of his need to co-operate with others, his love of fruitful exchanges, his sense of human solidarity. The term, the Golden Age, should be taken literally, and I see now that mankind would swiftly achieve it were its affairs wholly in the hands of venal men. Alas, it is nearly always high-minded men who make history, and so the flames destroy everything and blood flows in torrents. The plump merchants of Venice afford us an example of the luxurious happiness possible in a state governed solely by the law of lucre, whereas the evacuated wolves of the Spanish Inquisition show us the infamy of which men are capable when they have lost the love of material well-being. The Huns would soon have checked their advance if they had known how to profit by the riches they acquired. Encumbered with their gains, they would have stayed to enjoy them, and life would have resumed its course. But they were disinterested savages. They despised gold. They rushed onward, burning as they went.” Michel Tournier. Friday, or the Other Island.

If you give up higher super (funded by your employer), the employer will give you higher wages. Pigs might fucking fly. Even if this disgusting fantasy were true, it would mean you’re paying for your own wage rises. The LNP is attacking super relentlessly because for the first time in human history, working people hold most of the nation’s wealth. A genuine, unnoticed revolution. They’ll throw the ‘it’s your money’ strategy at it, as they did for tax cuts. And like lemmings, we’ll swallow it.

Christian Drosten is Germany’s leading pandemic adviser. Governments who started the pandemic saying ‘only a vaccine can end it’ (a lie), will now also vandalise the vaccine rollouts. Already happening in the UK. You watch even here, once the high-risk groups are vaccinated, the pressure will be on to drop all the public health measures. To get that ‘Economy’ firing. These people are fanatics, hugely dangerous to us all.

The world would be a much better place if boomers would admit they’re old. Their quest for eternal youth is like a vampire squid, sucking the life out of societies.

Most of the ‘developed’ world has completely screwed up this pandemic. Now faced with both horrendous virus numbers and deaths, and economic catastrophe. And repeatedly trying to fix it by ‘opening up’ what they call the economy, which then causes the virus to smash and kill even more. Pandemics are wars, in fact they kill more people than wars. Until we’re really prepared to fight, through even huge hardship, we will lose. In wars businesses cease to exist entirely, there is no economy.

Some historical perspective on what true emergencies do to business. In WW2, conservatively over 650,000 small businesses were destroyed in the US, because of the war. There was no alternative, the fight was the priority. Until we recognise the same fight in pandemics, they’ll keep winning. The only way to save economies is to eliminate the virus. It’s a marathon. Wars take years.

Andre Rieu is kitsch. Add Alan Jones on vocals and...yeh there's no word. As one reviewer put it, the standing ovation was limited by the number of people in the audience able to stand on their own.

Superb work from the ABC here, the entire pandemic in Australia in words and graphs. You can see very clearly here that Victoria’s big outbreak was due to spread into the areas where essential workers live. The people who have to keep working in a pandemic, to keep things running. This is why a pandemic is really an economic problem, not a health problem. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/covid-19-spread-through-australia-over-year/13078574

In Manaus, the family of anybody arriving at hospital with Covid is given an oxygen tank and told to go and find some way to fill it, or their family member won’t be treated. Of course there is no way for them to fill it. This is where you end up when fuckwits who think societies are economies run the world. Their time of reckoning is coming.

Countries screaming for more vaccine. It doesn’t exist, there’s not enough. It could take years to vaccinate everybody. Which brings us back to the basic point nobody wants to face up to - ‘normal life’ will not return any time soon. This is a war, we’re not accepting that basic fact. We don’t have the appetite for the hardship needed to beat this. The virus doesn’t care. We better develop that appetite soon.

The Economy is ordinary commercial transactions, stripped of decent wages and working conditions for workers. The modern ‘lean supply chain’ business. That disrupts basic social conditions of life and work, which in turn generates pandemics as the working poor can’t shelter from the virus. Here’s the proof, these lean supply chain businesses have had huge leaps in profits, in a pandemic. The pandemic *is* the endgame of their business model.

If true, that’s our vaccination here in Oz hit for six. This is the vaccine we’re mostly planning to use.

Boomers are already some of the most non-compliant with public health measures. They may soon become Covid missiles, with their early vaccinations.

I live in an electorate that gets many of these vote-buying grants. The local members spend most days publicising more new spending. Makes them look like great members. It’s corruption. The Blue Mountains didn’t get one cent of the bushfire relief grants. You know, where most of the fires actually happened. We can’t blame poor Gladys, her boyfriend was mean to her. Australians, the new Trumpians in waiting.

Defeating a lethal disease is now against our way of life, apparently. Has there been a bigger fuckwit in Australian history than Tony?

Bit hard to argue with.

Hmm, not sure the UK is a country. Boris talking today about people in the ‘front line’ of the pandemic, health care workers. It’s a revealing and common metaphor. Pandemics happen in clusters, not lines. It matters, people like Boris have refused to act on the clusters, because it means public health restrictions throughout the community, and that would damage their beloved economy. Instead they just let the virus spread, and victims then ‘lined’ up at the hospitals.

Happy birthday!

For those who think NSW is doing the best Covid job, because (it says) it's protecting its economy as well as fighting the virus, more disappointment I'm afraid. Still running almost dead-last economically. There's no such thing as the economy.

Over half of Australians currently saying they won’t get a vaccination when it becomes available. Trump should move here and run for PM, he’d probably win.

https://www.croakey.org/the-hijacking-of-public-health-and-the-price-paid-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

My greatest pleasure. The need to be always doing something seems a disease to me. Like being permanently ungrounded. We’re human beings, not human doings. Just being, the essential life skill. Like big cats sitting half-awake all day and night, soaking up the savannah. (Human doings have ‘mental health’ issues in lockdowns, because they have to actually confront themselves.)

I’m not a huge fan of commemoration and remembrance. It gives us a day once a year to emote, it’s more about us. To me the important thing is to take terrible events and find their meaning, in everyday life, every day. Horrible things don’t happen because a small group of horrible people make them happen. They happen because we - all of us - allow them to happen. There isn’t a day I don’t try to understand how, in the most basic acts we all do, every day.

The government vaccination ad campaign seems badly conceived. Featuring prominent talking heads who are just the sorts of people anti-vaxxers don't like. At the same time members of the same government fill the airwaves every day with anti-science BS, which the PM refuses to stamp out. Public health used to be much, much smarter than this, before the Economy crowd took over.

In which Tony moans about 'orderly queues' as being anti-Australian. The same man who said the greatest risk to Australia was immigrants not forming orderly queues. I call Australia Day Australica Day, because I think Australia is past the tipping point to becoming America. We vote for governments who slash taxes and public services, who beat up unions, and who go on with all this 'values' rubbish. The Australia we celebrate ceased to exist about 50 years ago.

I think it's important to remember that our PM told us all last year that Covid couldn't be eliminated. Our Premier still says it, still trots out the 'live with the virus' nonsense, said it just this morning, again. The other Premiers are the true heroes of Australia's success.

Kinesiology tape really interests me. It’s not strapping, its job isn’t so much to restrict movement. Its job is to provide an elastic, movable envelope of support to allow movement to be as normal as possible, while carrying an injury. It really seems to work, I’ve been able to restore almost normal movement even with really painful injuries. The body is elastic, and this adds a modifiable layer of elasticity.

Meanwhile in Australica, the bastard child of Australia + America, the Prime Spinmeister continues to add layers of meaningless patriotic drivel over total inaction on any important issues.

Good on the doctors for seeing that our PM and Premier are focused on the economy (which doesn’t exist), more than they are on beating the virus. There have been 2 ‘roadmaps’ out of the pandemic now, from National Cabinet, both have been all economic, nothing about the virus at all. The first roadmap led to Melbourne and Avalon.

Anybody have much experience with ocular migraines?

The super casual approach many Australians are taking to Covid is disturbing. People happily organising and attending social gatherings with little protection, just because the government says it’s ok. The UK government told their people they’d be ok. Do not trust any government whose interest is saving businesses and not you, or this could one day be you, in one of these beds. The pandemic is a long way from over.

Australia’s 2 greatest enemies in this pandemic are the federal LNP and NSW government. Both have spent the whole pandemic trying to force Australia to use the UK approach to the virus. Both have taken credit for Australia’s success, which was created entirely by the big lockdowns they at the same time criticise. Gladys doesn’t even act in a way consistent with her own BS, she closed NSW’s borders when they needed to be closed.

The pandemic is taking its toll.

“What I’ve learned is that we all need a place we can put our heart in. A place where we can build our habits and routines.” Our only glimpse into the true wonders of life is habits and routines. Travel is the breaking of habits and routines.

Vet: “That’s $340, thanks. Oh and the cone has to stay on the cat’s head for 10 days, if it comes off and it plays with its stitches, it might die.” Us: O...K. Take cat home. Cat removes cone 5 times in 10 minutes. Ring vet: “Hello, the cat can take this cone off really easily.” Vet: “O yeh, they’ll do that.” Silence. No suggestions. Us: “OK”. Hang up. Modify cone ourselves to keep on cat’s head. That’ll be $340 please, somebody.

850 medical staff have died of Covid in the UK. Over 52,000 of them are currently on sick leave, with Covid. Hospitals are full of young people dying. Often whole families are dead. We’re not safe from this happening here, the complacency is alarming.

It’s fascinating that on the one hand, travelling (crossing borders) is a global passion. But on the other hand easily the most powerful politics of our time is stopping people crossing borders, internally and externally. Understanding that complete contradiction is the key to our entire culture, I think.

Those of my friends who went to KHS but haven’t seen the recent project to re-build the old school virtually, you can see the end product from about lunch time today, at the link below. There are 2 things to look at, a video fly-through of the school, and also 26-27 scenes where you can navigate around using your computer or device. Those who didn’t go to KHS, the school was an architectural wonder, which burned to the ground in 2005. 3 of us, another ex-student, myself and an ex-teacher, in conjunction with 3D Walkabout, a digital production company in Perth, ran a project to re-build it virtually. 3dwalkabout.com.au/kelso