July 2021

My dad died 14 years ago, on this day. I post that not to get any sort of well-wishes, please don't, but because I think about him every day. His hands are typing this message, mine are almost an exact copy of his. It feels right to remember him in a pandemic, a man who spent his childhood pulling bodies out of bombed buildings, trying to cope with life under the Nazis, and then relocating to a strange country with nothing and building a highly successful life from the ground up. He's probably the reason I'm so contemptuous of those who make trivial things like staying home in a pandemic triggers for serious mental illness. You'll never convince me that's anything except laughable. Miss you Wolfie. I hope they have good headphones and a comfortable chair where you are.

As a kid, my dentist had a sign in his office that said 'teeth don't fall out - gums drop them'. It's stuck with me, the wisdom in that. The pandemic similar. Viruses don't spread, people spread them. When we talk about a pandemic, it's not actually a virus versus us battle. The pattern and spread of infection is 100% created by the social and political arrangements we have in place. Because of that a pandemic is a symptom of a certain way of running societies. In this case, the increasing growth of libertarianism/individualism IS the pandemic.

Fascinating that we smashed flu last year - you can see its death spiral at the start of the big national lockdown in Feb-March 2020 - but that it continues to be flatlined into 2021. It's just non-existent. Despite NSW being pretty much open for most of the past year. Wise heads I think would see that turning society on and off - what a pandemic lockdown does - can have powerful, positive, long-term effects. Both health and 'economic', if you like to make that distinction. It reboots society, just as you sometimes need to reboot your computer or other device.

I mean, Dannielle, who could have known this would happen?

Wanted to re-share this, because it can be life-changing. Notice how this hawk's head is absolutely still, even while its body is doing the most extreme movements. Its attention never wavers from what it's looking at. Bodies are elastically-sprung to release into movement, following our attention. You can try this in any activity, have your attention on what you're doing, and *simultaneously* (must be simultaneous) feel your body releasing to follow your attention out into the world. Not 2 activities - paying attention and moving your body - one, integrated activity of your body elastically releasing to follow your attention. At the same time you will lose all feelings of weight and effort, which aren't caused by gravity, but by you trying to do your movement as a separate thing to paying attention.

Happy birthday :)

Happy birthday :)

Sums up the entire pandemic, and why it's still going. My point for 18 months.

Social media is the old newspaper, pulled apart and the sections monetised into a particular app. Facebook is the old personal pages and classifieds. Instagram is the old social pages, where you'd look at pictures of the social events of the past week. Twitter is letters to the editor. Not analogies, very few people buy or read papers now. Social media has taken that place.

Australia’s 4-part plan released this week uses the same nonsense about the flu. We’re back where we started 18 months ago. We haven’t learned a single thing.

Happy Birthday :)

Have posted about this before I think, but it's becoming more topical every day. Do people support the idea of vaccinating adults, and then letting kids get infected with Covid, as a way out of the pandemic? Because that's the emerging model, globally. I think it's staggering, that nobody questions it.

"We now know that the idea circulating early in the pandemic that kids are extremely unlikely to transmit the virus was more wishful thinking than good science." Some of us knew that last year. And it's not just teachers who need to be vaccinated, it's kids. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/delay-the-start-of-term-if-that-s-what-it-takes-to-get-teachers-vaccinated-20210704-p586px.html

There are over 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks in the world, at last estimate. Shows just how much the world ran on shipping, forever.

“The key point here is not to think about the economic costs over a period of a couple of weeks, large as they are, but rather to consider the costs over a period of months if community transmission continues.” https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/07/06/coronavirus-lockdowns-australia/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020210706

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday :)

Happy Birtjday

We blame politicians for most of the problems we see, that are actually caused by us. For example, this pair of dimwits is the top-rating radio show in Australia. Meaning millions find them good to listen to. The prosecution rests.

I do love that there's a 'Bogan' Shire in Oz. And no, it isn't Lithgow. https://www.bogan.nsw.gov.au/

The oldest trick in the modern conservative's playbook is to knee-cap taxation (on the wealthy), and then claim the resulting budget deficit is due to too much spending. The spending doesn't change much at all, it's just that on the income side of the ledger the government keeps cutting income, by cutting taxes. Their ultimate motive for this is to remove government services. Which they get away with by saying we 'can't afford' it. They and their crony mates get richer, by paying less tax. The rest of us end up paying more and more out of our own pockets for services that used to be collectively provided. Education and health care, road tolls, getting more expensive each year. Etc. At the same time the average person doesn't know that the Budget isn't the 'Economy', though these conservatives want them to think that. It's just a balance sheet for a given year of income and expenditure. The 'Economy' is the wider productive wealth of the nation.

My holiday house in Spain.

A cynic would say that was always the intention anyway. A non-cynic would say, how incompetent does the NSW government have to be, for people to stop voting for them? Maybe Covid slaughtering a few members of people's families might get their attention. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-07/nsw-delta-variant-may-never-be-controlled/100273956

Hopefully Gladys rules out letting Covid rip today. Some in her Cabinet are desperate to, and have been the whole pandemic. A reminder to people what happened in India when the Delta variant was allowed to run free. NSW has an older population than India. (RWFW = Right-wing fuckwit.)

How quickly the worm turns. I mean, plenty of average punters think Gladys is doing a great job, absent any evidence. But when even the brown shirts over at SKY turn on you, you're really in trouble. https://www.2gb.com/peta-credlin-criticises-nature-of-gladys-berejiklians-claytons-lockdown/

I believe it's Proverbs 16:18. Pride comes before a fall. Unfortunately the fall in this case is millions of peoples' lives at stake. Well done you if you did no homework on the pandemic and just repeated the slogans this pair trot out each day instead. People under 35 laying in ICU right now as a reward.

Being rid of Covid is quite simple. The world could do it in a few weeks. Beating people who don't want to beat Covid is the challenge.

Genius. I'm sure many are struggling with this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrYFvE_mCU4

Look at that blue line. The childish rubbish about 'Dictator Dan' last year - people need to be deeply ashamed. He was doing the superb job that needed doing, and which NSW has now finally realised, 18 months into this pandemic.

"Portraying individual men and boys’ inability to be vulnerable, to express their authentic selves, and to form meaningful interpersonal relationships as toxic is a form of gentility or class politics, in which departures from educated middle-class gender norms are seen as pathological and dangerous. It relies on a middle-class disdain for working-class mores expressed in exchange for the perception of power." Bang. Pity some of the toxic masculinity loons un-friended me, be a good read for them.

Yup. Has been happening for about a year. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/get-ready-for-a-shift-in-the-covid-blame-game

It would have been so much better to not call it ‘classical’ music, genre labels drive people way from things they should hear. Figaro is the greatest of all operas, many think. God really was ‘singing through this little man’ (Mozart), put earphones on and listen to the voices swell and recede repeatedly, expressing the tenderness and absolution of love. A true wonder of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I do love dogs. And all animals. But I've often wondered at how the sort of 'love' a dog gives, is exactly the sort that repulses people in most human relationships? Slobbery, worshipping, the sort that people quickly push away if somebody in a relationship behaves in that way.

I liked this. There's also a serious point to it. Modern conservatives like to say that the government gets in peoples' way, restricts their freedom. But the government IS the people. Who else would it be? When the Premier pleads with people to not spread Covid, she's not doing her job. She should be putting plans in place that prevent them spreading Covid. No half-decent parent pleads with their children to do the right thing, they make sure they do. Any decent government is the same. Do the job, or resign and let somebody else who's willing to.

Hasn’t this aged well. Bile and Whacky-O, might be Cabinet advisers, it adds up.

I think the people who live in fear of lockdowns have never had a loan with compounding interest.

I study political strategy. It used to be part of every child's education, in Ancient Greece. I think we're suffering from the loss of that. Right now, for example, you'll see daily pile-ons at people not following Covid rules. It's our unthinking, tabloid side, just as with the toilet paper 'panic buying' ideas (it's not panic buying). The only reason we have many Covid rules is that they're papering over the void left by an absence of leadership. Like being a bad teacher or parent, long lists of rules mean you've already lost, because you're not doing your job properly. The irony is, the politicians doing this call themselves libertarians, passionately against rules. They love us going after naughty people not following rules, because it takes the attention off their lack of leadership.

This is dangerously out of control. Your life is literally at stake here, and that of your family and friends. I've spent 18 months criticising the NSW Government for a set of beliefs that were always inevitably going to lead to this situation. Most people I speak to have responded with some variation of 'Gladys is doing a good job'.

Who remembers this? I think we need to strongly oppose the idiot idea that our 'mental health' isn't up to a fight in this pandemic. Politicians use a behaviour model that says we're all fragile egos, individuals curled up in our homes, terrified. It's BS, look at what we did with bushfires, look at the tens of thousands going out every day for Covid tests. They use this model because it keeps us scared and compliant. The community is brilliant at mobilising against a threat. The politicians don't WANT them to. They want their Economy back, and to ignore the threat.

Djokovic will end up beating both Federer's and Nadal's records. It will irritate the prissy world of tennis, just as McEnroe used to. I don't have much time for Novak, but it's an extraordinary record and the sport needs to be less anal in what it admires. Still nothing touches Margaret Court's record, but the wokeness of modern times won't accept that.

ScoMo made 55 phone calls to help get the OECD job for Mathias Cormann. He couldn't make one phone call to the head of Pfizer to get us vaccines. Don't blame me, I didn't vote for the fatuous God-bothering windbag.

Nothing England does changes my deep-seated joy when they get beaten at anything.

NSW has been saying all along it does things differently. People just weren't paying any attention to what the differences were.

Not a bad achievement, for Virgin Galactic to build a low-orbit spacecraft, and still have no understanding of gravity. Gravity in that plane about the same as here on the ground.

Burnet Institute modelling showing that with current NSW restrictions (yellow line, Stage 3), NSW won’t beat this outbreak until Christmas time. With Victorian Stage 4 restrictions, it should take 4-6 weeks. Given the NSW reluctance (so far) to go to Stage 4, prepare for a long shut down. Toilet paper will be an excellent indicator, and yet again, it won’t be ‘panic buying’.

For more than 18 months the NSW Government has lied, just as Boris lied in the UK, about ‘following the health advice’. As the article says, “There has been…no admission that its business-influenced approach to the pandemic has delivered a protracted lockdown, put its citizens at risk and sent thousands of businesses into crisis mode.” Beliefs drive everything. Stupid beliefs are eventually exposed when the tide goes out. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/the-business-of-covid-gladys-berejiklian-hides-the-health-advice-as-pandemic-threatens-sydney/

This one flew under the radar this week. A proposed traffic light system for NSW schools and Covid. Follow the logic of this one and it's clear again the government plans to allow children to be infected. The amber level is key - Levels 2 and 3 are meaningless. Amber is 'cases in the community, beware'. The problem is anything that happens in a community is hyper-concentrated in its schools, they're the most densely circulating and mixed parts of any community. All of these traffic light systems and other metrics for 'opening up' in the middle of a pandemic are like having a shark attack at a beach, but allowing people to still swim 100m away, because 'the shark is over there'.

The accurate and sensible headline here would be “Businesses Struggle with Outbreak of COVID.” Notice that time and again conservatives try to frame public health measures as the problem, not the virus.

Elephant Rock, Iceland.

This is how society tends to develop. A bit like some kids put on weight before they hit a growth spurt, social things go through ‘mass’ phases - mass transport, mass shopping etc. - before then re-building ‘local’ services, but with the now globalised supply chains. I miss having a corner store, where you don’t need a car to shop. Hopefully this trend continues.

Happy Birthday :)

I don't advocate infidelity by any means, but it's astonishing to me that a person can be abusive, financially reckless, thoughtless, distant and non-affectionate, or even violent, and this will all still not trigger a relationship break-up. But them 'cheating' will. The ridiculous importance we invest in sex is what makes us the new Puritans.

When you're 'following the health advice', best to have it well harnessed to the carriage, and a good whip at hand.

You'll never guess, it wasn't Scott's fault. Nothing ever is. It was the 'medical advice'. You know, that medical advice he and Gladys always say they're 'following'. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/14/scott-morrison-blames-atagi-doctors-for-australias-slow-covid-vaccine-rollout?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

My little brother after getting his second Pfizer jab. This is bullying.

Political strategy 101. Thanks to Matt Lucas for his brilliant impersonation. Boris appears a bumbling fool. He's sharp as a tack. The NSW Government is copying him. Pretend to be doing public health work, but twist the public health terms to mean anything you want them to mean. The upshot? Business continues as normal, because every employer can do whatever they like. The terms are all meaningless and support anything you want to do. This is all deliberate strategy, cunning as sewer rats. https://youtu.be/sfrThV6DJu4

To me the most brilliant graph of the pandemic. Countries who ‘lock down’, who refuse to ‘live with the virus’, get to actually live normal lives, with very few people harmed. Countries who try to live with the virus end up sheltering in their homes, from it. None of the critics of lockdowns understand this, and still don’t.

All those protests have paid off, people. I am aware 'I told you so' makes a person extremely irritating. I think I'm that anyway, what's to lose.

The fact below may help some decide on whether or not to be vaccinated. You will get COVID if you don’t.

There's nothing quite as disgusting as Boris' latest spin. 'Levelling up'. The idea being, rather than address rampant, outrageous inequality, with the top 1% of society wallowing in all of a country's wealth, he will instead 'level up' everybody, to be billionaires. It's nothing but the Amercian Dream bullshit, where if you're poor it's your fault for not being clever enough, translated across to the UK. The same push is happening here. And these governments get more and more popular, the people who vote for them getting more screwed every single day. Really profoundly dangerous and stupid times we live in.

Happy Birthday :)

Happy Birthday :)

Melbourne lockdown. When supermarkets finally fix their supply chains, the panic buying turns out to have been an optical illusion. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ZS2I-VgAApAxE?format=jpg&name=large

All on board fully vaccinated, 2 doses. 'Vaccines are our only way out of this pandemic'. Don't buy a used car off people who say that.

I didn't make it. People aren't dumb.

Marble floor from a first century Roman domus.

I do like Twitter.

Al Buraymī, Oman. (National Geographic image. )

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see who is writing the NSW Government pandemic strategy.

One of Gladys’ most endearing traits is that condescending snigger you can see here a few seconds in, when describing other States. Only a month ago. Such disgusting stupidity and arrogance. Every death and lost dollar in this outbreak is on her head.

A photographer from regional Victoria. Her anger is at a public health measure, designed to save thousands of lives. That isn’t even mentioned. Her collapse in income is her only focus. No doubt that’s extremely stressful for her. But the wider point here is, you can see why this pandemic happened, and why it won’t end. Our way of life is incompatible with our collective wellbeing. When you turn your society into an Economy, even killing millions of people is casually accepted, so long as incomes carry on.

Rugs. India. (National Geographic.)

NSW's gold standard contact tracing overwhelmed. Not their fault, contact tracing is only a viable process with a low number of cases. What gives you a low number of cases is 'locking down' peoples' movement and gathering. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/open-request-nsw-pleads-for-contact-tracing-help-as-sydney-locks-down-hard-20210717-p58akb.html

Have a look at this city in Morocco, and then these trees exhibiting what is called 'crown shyness'. Trees leave distinctive gaps between themselves, in their crowns. It's a pattern almost identical to streets in old cities, before cars were invented. When you allow people to determine how urban spaces are shaped, you get a beautiful, 'natural', weaving together of life and buildings and movement. Once you introduce cars, suddenly movement takes over everything, and these patterns disappear.

Even robots dance better than me now. (P.S. engineers rock. We need more engineering, and much less business studies and marketing.) https://youtu.be/fn3KWM1kuAw

Those who don't believe in God, inevitably replace God with laws. Scientific laws, mostly. (Please don't mistake me for an atheist, theist, agnostic - none of those things. I reject the whole lot.) The thing is, if you want to replace God with laws, you have to explain why those laws exist. Why does matter, which we define as inert stuff, behave in such precise and patterned ways? And why does it constantly resist these same laws, creating exceptions?

Yes it's satire. But there's a serious point here. Like many or even most senior managers in organisations, when times are good, your dog could run the company. It's when times are bad that leaders' true ability is exposed. Conservative politics today knows how to actually do nothing, except plunder the Treasury for themselves and their donors.

Bezos flying into orbit in his rocket-powered dildo is where society ends up when you turn it into an Economy. The vast majority of people can’t afford to take basic shelter in their own homes (if they own one, which increasingly they don’t) from a lethal virus. The wealthy few can watch from the safety of orbit. The ultimate endgame of travel culture, the original moon program was a victory of collective culture. Everything is now flipped, now the tiny rich elite go to space.

‘Ring-fencing’ suburbs and even whole regional towns is about as effective as trying to avoid a fart in an elevator, by standing on the opposite side. The NSW Government again asleep at the wheel. Watch the toilet paper, it will know. And it won’t be panic buying.

When the Economy crowd take over government (regulatory capture), this is what happens. Never, ever trust somebody who believes the Economy exists. They will kill you, and your family, without blinking an eye.

It's only people with comfortable homes who complain about lockdowns.

The truth really isn’t a very popular thing. I never actually bought this gadget, but I did notice something rotten in the reviews. In addition all but one of the reviewers received the gadget for free, thus me asking for my own freebie.

Do people remember Trump trashing Fauci in the US during the early days of the pandemic? Morrison continually does the same with ATAGI. Do we notice? Do we care about what this means? https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/a-constant-appeal-experts-reject-pm-s-vaccine-frustration-20210721-p58bl7

Why Scott Morrison wants ATAGI to update their advice. These deaths are now his responsibility, and he wants them to be ATAGI's. He doesn't like being responsible, for anything except good news.

Another major industry doing its bit to undermine basic public health measures. Alan Joyce was back at it again yesterday too. Gerry Harvey is a regular. There is no society for these people, just an Economy. The closest they get to the public is shareholders.

Here's a way I think to understand what our future will look like, after we're vaccinated. If a child or an adult turns up to school or work with whooping cough, do we say "come in, we're all vaccinated here!". Nope. The person is sent home to isolate. Politicians have encouraged the idea that vaccination will lead to the return of 'normal' life. If your normal life involves most of the people you know at work or school wandering around with whooping cough, then maybe you believe them.

Really interesting article about how the development of universal schooling led to the emergence of a separate culture for children, that then went on to change adult culture. The growing adolescence of adult life. Clear example right now, the pandemic. Why are many anti-‘lockdown’? Lockdown is the adult version of being grounded. Many adults respond like adolescents, because that’s the only world they know.

Would you rather ‘die in battle’ with Covid, as Joe says? Because he shares the same political beliefs as the government. You can’t fight a pandemic virus with political beliefs. The virus has no political beliefs, it just wants to spread, and to kill. Exponentially. You don’t ‘battle’ the virus by letting it infect you, to save the businesses of NSW, that’s surrendering to it. You battle it by doing what every State government except ours does. Unfortunately this means Covid is coming for us. Every single one of us. Unless the NSW Government gives up trying to fight a virus with idiot political beliefs, that Joe describes well, it’s sadly just a matter of time. This was also always going to happen - tick tick, as I‘ve posted a lot. Unfortunately too many have wanted to avoid thinking by just backing their political team. The virus will kill all teams, it has no interest in politics.

You’re born old, and get younger every day you’re alive. How does that work? You are the accumulated inheritance of all of your ancestors, going back billions of years. Babies start with this ancient inheritance, you’re born ancient. The social things you then learn, like language and customs, are also ancient. Your ’life’ is pushing back against this ancient legacy, creating tiny new deviations from it. Your life creates new things, it acts against time, the more you live the younger you get, by going against this ancient legacy.

Out of control, has been for weeks. The government refusing to do anything more, growing and spreading every day. Yesterday trying to steal vaccines from other States, who rightly told Gladys to piss off and do her job. This doesn't need vaccines, it needs the NSW Government to do its job. Victoria controlling the same strain right now.

😜

Articles like this see this as an amusing analogy. But it isn’t, life is high school. The social world we all live on our way to adulthood is school, it gives us the framework we use in adult life. It explains yesterday’s protests, all protests really. Adults in our society think like adolescents. People well into their 50s and beyond still obsessed with their favourite bands, going to gigs, having ‘besties’, getting drunk etc. And when it comes to social emergencies, they think like teenagers - how this thing impacts me, how my feelings are affected etc.

Olympics, Day 2. Observation 1. I suspect skateboarding is a lot more fun to do, than it is to watch.

Olympics observation 2. The face masks the US team are wearing look like egg cartons, and were probably built by NASA and cost a few thousand dollars each, for one-off use. Olympics observation 3. The medal winners removing their masks to cuddle for the camera, isn’t Covid kind, holding off for those few moments.

Olympics observation 4. Swimmers increase their stroke rate, when they get near the finish. Heh.

Talking to a manager of a Big W store the other day, and they revealed that annual stocktake regularly reveals a discrepancy of about $500,000. Mostly attributed to shoplifting. Shoplifting is interesting, it was negligible in old shops, retail was a relationship between a customer and the person behind the counter. Part of the change has been big reductions in staff together with big growth in profits. That’s what the Economy is, strip mining of basic commerce as part of a social system, to funnel wealth to a tiny few.

Wow, Katie Ledecky is quite the graceless bitch.

Q: how many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb? A: stop oppressing that light bulb.

This may be the first time a German has volunteered to put more clothes on. Seriously though, the world would be a much better place if we let the Germans run it.

This is why NSW is not making progress against this outbreak, these dipshits are still talking about the ‘Economy’. The evidence is in, smash the virus, your ‘Economy’ booms. Know why? It’s just society.

Imagine your plumber saying ‘I’m so proud to be gay, and to have fixed your toilet’. The dreary self-obsession of identity politics.

Victoria is lifting their lockdown today, after only 2 weeks, job done. We have the NSW Government. 5 weeks in and getting worse every day. If you think this is because 'people aren't following the rules', remember your hypothesis is that an entire State - NSW - can't follow rules, but the State next door - Victoria - can. Or...the difference is the governments. Occam's Razor. If it helps, it's people following the NSW Government rules who are getting infected.

If you have a glass political jaw and any criticism of NSW is seen as a partisan political thing, remember other LNP States are doing what Victoria does.

One for my Alexander-savvy friends, on habit. AT often talks of habit and intelligence as a binary. That's not what the research finds. @[1348521951:2048:David], @[732583111:2048:Ben], @[585851453:2048:Adrian]. https://psyche.co/ideas/in-praise-of-habits-so-much-more-than-mindless-reflexes

If you know anybody who feels we need to 'learn to live with Covid', some sobering findings out of the UK. People who have been infected with Covid (remembering this includes many who are vaccinated, the vaccines don't necessarily prevent infection) have neurological damage that is worse than somebody suffers when they have a stroke.

Speechless. Just despicable. Rather than introduce properly strong restrictions, the NSW Government strategy will be to encourage thousands of under-40s to get a vaccine they shouldn’t be having. The bitter, disgusting irony here is that it won’t stop the outbreak. Meanwhile, the construction industry, a big LNP donor, gets to re-open.

Australians spend more on alcohol than on gas and electricity, or petrol. We spend more on booze than we do on clothes, and almost as much as we spend on health.

The LNP are masters of spin. Take ‘taxing and spending’. They’re already dusting off the ‘Labor love to tax and spend’ lines for the next election. Any primary school kid could understand from the graph what a load of porkies that is. Again, I say this not as a Labor person, but to point out that the LNP has been hijacked by vested interests. It isn’t a political party now. Menzies would have been disgusted.

The lockdown in Orange, Blayney and Cabonne lifted overnight. Went for a week. The news said the focus will now be on peoples’ ‘mental health’ during the lockdown. I’m sorry, but if a week-long stay-at-home impacts our mental health badly, we have no hope.

Compare with the graph for NSW I posted yesterday. Truly criminal incompetence in NSW, already killing people. Those people would be alive right now if the government had done its job. Many more deaths and lifelong injuries to come. This stuff matters, just astonishing to see nobody much talking about it, as always. This virus is coming for all of us, we're not safe.

Why masks are so important. NSW, again, only doing it half-arsed and reluctantly.

I spent 18 months putting the PM and Gladys at the top of my ‘risk to every Australian’s life’ list. Gladys saying exactly why, in just a few words, here. And making it quite clear that she and the PM are working together on this. Many will die in NSW now, for this idiot belief, that the economy and society are 2 separate things.

During the Black Plague, whole towns were quarantined (what libertarian loons call ‘locked down’), not to protect the people in those towns, as quarantine is designed to do today, but to protect the people outside them. The people in the towns were left to die. This is what the NSW Government has reinvented for Sydney. Residents of W and SW Sydney, welcome to the Middle Ages. Your noble sacrifice for the Economy will be rewarded by massive tax cuts for people living East of you.

The coldest place on Earth, this experience. We’ve all been there.

The tabloid theatre (like toilet paper selling out) which political libertarianism generates. Everything is about the individual. At a time of collective emergency, the pile-on starts, on ‘naughty’ transgressors. No sense of ‘we’ at all. Hardly surprising some people try to break the quarantine when it’s sold to them as a ‘lockdown’. It's tragically amusing to see libertarians smash people for breaking rules, they're not the sharpest tools in the shed.

Watching the Olympic swimming, it changes (for me) how you look at it when you remember that even in the sprints, they’re going much slower than even an average person can walk.

The basic flaw with democracy is, that people actually like being told what to do. They expect those smarter and stronger than them to lead them. If you don’t offer them that, they will find it where they can. Remembering the Korean POW camps, where killing of a handful of leaders among the prisoners made the rest utterly compliant to the only leaders they had still in view - the Koreans.

The good thing about social media is that it cuts through the BS very, very quickly.

Contact tracing has become contact chasing. Just as vaccines won’t end the pandemic, contact tracing was never going to have a hope. More spin we just swallowed in our lazy way, to save us thinking for ourselves.

Great piece from a public health professional about what our lives with Covid may look like into the future. The 'burden of disease' point is critical. Politicians and business people are desperate for people to believe vaccines are the doorway back to normal life. They're a big part of that doorway, but it's much more complicated than that. 'Living with the virus' i.e. the virus becoming 'endemic', is not desirable, nor is it inevitable. http://peterenglish.blogspot.com/2021/07/will-covid-19-become-endemic-and-what.html

David Astle asks what we should call a doubly-vaccinated person. Suggestions include 'binoculated', and 'a complete prick'.

What have my fellow over-50s with one AZ jab decided about the timing of their second?

Testing the public messaging. Who hears in the public announcements and discussions that the Covid strategy is to get as many people vaccinated as possible, so that the virus might still be there but we won’t get very sick or die or need to go to hospital?

National Cabinet’s new 4-stage plan (this is their third if you’re not keeping count, the first 2 failed miserably) to ‘re-open’ relies upon % of people getting vaccinated. It doesn’t include children, it’s a joke. It won’t work, it will kill thousands of people. You can’t predict the weather more than about 3 days in advance, and these ridiculous plans predict 6 months or more, in a pandemic. There’s only one pandemic plan that works, and here it is.

If only people took a pandemic as seriously as they take kicking a ball around a field. A society of adolescents, again. (By the way women had more cases in the earlier stages of this graph, because women in the UK get tested more often than men).

Watching the 100m, similar thoughts to the swimming. Most human sports target things humans are actually pretty hopeless at. In the animal world, we’re very slow runners and swimmers. And we’re not strong. The endurance events are more a human strength. Physically though what humans excel at is dexterity - it’s their hands. Nothing in the animal kingdom could touch us for needlework. There’s an Olympic event that won’t ever happen, but would be less laughable to animals.

This dam in the UK was failing, they evacuated the entire nearby town while it was fixed. Nobody suggested ‘living with’ the leaking dam, it was clear the dam failing would have flooded the town. Now ask why the same basic logic hasn’t applied to the pandemic. Small amounts of virus in the community are exactly the same as a leak in a dam wall. It will break, causing massive damage. In fact the virus will kill far more.

The ‘Economy’ and economics are the most deeply brainwashed ideas. Here’s another example. The word ‘economics’ comes from the ancient Greek, meaning ‘management of a household’. Who does that? Overwhelmingly, women. How does modern economics recognise that work? Zero. Not at all. Not one cent in it, for women. What we call economics, and The Economy, was hijacked by men to do politics. All the caring jobs that keep society running get paid bugger-all. The jobs the word economics came from.