January 2022

A prominent Australian Senator calls Nick Coatsworth the ‘Fabio of Australian medicine’. This is the Dr Nick who said Covid isn’t airborne, and that it’s fine to infect kids. He’s become quite the weathervane of idiot ideas, which suggests with today’s headline 2022 may be our worst Covid year yet.

In 2012, a Facebook group of more than half a million urged NBC to invite Betty White to host SNL. "When I first heard about the campaign, I didn't know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say it sounds like a huge waste of time."

Work can be fun, and it can also be boring, tedious, stressful, and just bloody hard. But what it increasingly isn’t, and why I’m glad to be closer to retirement than not, is meaningful. Look at St. Peter’s Basilica, in Rome. It took 120 years to build, often the grandsons of the the original builders finished the work their fathers and grandfathers started. They had a purpose, as a society, something that seemed bigger than them. Today the closest you’ll get to that is a career. I’ve never wanted a career, the whole idea of it bores me. Making work personal, bleh. We’ve all had to work for too many incompetent dickheads climbing career ladders. I want work to have meaning, beyond my own skin. For there to be a feeling of us all building something magnificent for generations to come. For that to happen, society would need to have some sort of unified belief system, that all of our individual beliefs could plug into. Without that, our lives become nothing but personal. The personal is so meaningless and boring, why I probably sound so negative about social media at times, with its focus on our personal lives and feelings. God used to provide that unified structure, but the idea got very debased and became about fairy tale men living up in the clouds. It really just meant something bigger than us, and you don’t even have to be religious to recognise that much of life is bigger than and beyond us. To have a sense of deference and awe. Of humility.

Happy Birthday!

Health staff being forced back to work to stop the hospital system collapsing should make us all extremely angry. Especially when accompanied with day after day of bullshit vomiting out of the mouths of politicians about how it’s all under control. Grown ups would care about this stuff, so what are we all now? Just eternal teenagers? Somebody else won’t fix this, us as grown ups have to engage with it and do it. Meantime the push is on to shift ‘hospitalisations are all that matter’ to ‘ICU is all that matters’. How stupid have we become that being hospitalised for a disease is considered ’mild illness’? How did we ever even allow ‘just like the flu’ to be used as a comparison, to describe Covid as ‘mild’? Flu is one of the nastiest diseases in the world, a scourge of our health systems that we’re always trying to fight and get rid of.

Was just the first of many. In the middle of another ‘it’s over’ right now. Maybe at some point we all realise we’re extras in a remake of Groundhog Day.

If you’re drunk on ‘live with the virus’ hopium, just always remember…this is what’s giving you that faux freedom.

Car crash investigation completed.

Driving those case numbers down, a day at a time.

Westfield Parramatta during Delta lockdown. Westfield Parramatta today. Let virus spread = no Economy. There is no such thing as an Economy.

Basic science lacking in the Covid news. Like ‘living with the virus’, Covid becoming ‘endemic’. Covid is an epidemic disease, it will never become endemic. Like smallpox. For centuries smallpox followed the same pattern, of repeated epidemic outbreaks, as we’re experiencing now for Covid. Politicians want us to think that by all getting infected, we’ll end the pandemic. That it will create ‘herd immunity’, we’ll stop catching it and it will be less severe, because our sickness will make us more immune. It won’t, not one disease in the history of the world was ever stopped by everybody becoming infected. Smallpox killed 500 million people in its last century alone. Only vaccines provide herd immunity, and the Covid vaccines aren’t good enough yet to do it. Our only way out remains what it’s been for 2 years - stopping the spread of Covid. Right now, what we’re living, these massive outbreaks, IS ‘living with Covid’. That’s what it will be like, for centuries, unless we stop it. It won’t settle into some nice common cold pattern.

Unless we stop it spreading, this can continue for centuries. Forget hospitalisations, ICU, the Economy, all of that. A pandemic is defined by how many people get INFECTED. Nothing else. That’s what we have to stop. Covid is using us as a breeding ground, the more of us have it, the more ways it can find to beat us.

Hospitalisations and ICU growing exponentially. Now nearly 200 more people into hospital each day. Oz politicians following the UK spin path, already saying ‘it’s not ICU, it’s how many on ventilators’. And then ‘some of these people are in hospital “with Covid”, not because of it.’ All meaningless bullshit. They get away with it because we’re too dumb, and/or too lazy, to stop them.

So you struggle to get a PCR test. And now if you want a RAT, you’ll be up for $10-$12 a pop. Which means for most working families, you won’t bother. At least NSW said it would provide these for free, let’s see how long it lasts. The UK and US are doing it. You know what’s free, Sloganator? Covid. Defies belief people will still vote for this deadly idiot. He’s about to hand out about $100 billion in tax cuts to the top end of town, over the next few years, that they don’t need. But if you want a Covid test, you’re paying.

Sorry, yes it’s Covid again. So many dimensions to the dangerous nonsense out there. It’s better to think of Covid like asbestos. You don’t fully recover from each infection, each one does more damage to your body. Infection doesn’t make you stronger, it doesn’t make you immune, and your body doesn’t fully recover, it gets damaged. It can take years off all of our lives, with repeated infection.

Dan is an immunologist working for NSW Health. He’s risking disciplinary action even posting this.

Living with the virus.

Next Covid prediction. Rapid antigen tests will be free nationwide within a week.

In today’s Covid news, in response to the exponentially growing hospitalisations for Covid, the PM wants National Cabinet to…redefine hospitalisations for Covid. As always, not fixing any problems, just creating spin to try to hide problems. Again imported from the UK, you’ll hear ‘people are in hospital with Covid, not because of Covid’. The facts: - the overwhelming majority of people being hospitalised for Omicron are vaccinated, and - the overwhelming majority of people being admitted for Covid, are in hospital because of Covid, not something else. The only way to stop Covid, is to stop people getting Covid. Anybody who gives you triple somersault with double twist spin that says otherwise, is lying.

How epidemic diseases trick us. It’s all in the downwards part of the waves. The red arrows. This current Omicron outbreak for example will likely end in about 2-4 weeks. Will it end because Covid is beaten, the pandemic is over? No. But wait for the calls of victory when the curve turns, we’ve heard them 4-5 times in the past 2 years. All that stupidity does is prep the next wave. We relax our precautions, and soon we’re on our way back up the next wave, shutting everything down. This can continue for centuries, like smallpox did. What we’re experincing right now though is the blue arrow - refusing to even try to stop the waves at all. That will just create much bigger waves, it won’t stop the waves. The ’living with Covid’ people think this line will become flat, if we let people get infected. It won’t, what we’re experiencing right now, with this big outbreak, IS living with Covid. Repeated waves, forever, unless we stop them.

Compare week to week. Hospitalisations and ICU cases roughy doubling (hospitalisations nearly tripled). The only metric trending down is - testing. Not accidental.

Hot tip. Don’t vote for the party who opened up the country to mass infection, but didn’t order any tests. Just as they didn’t order vaccines. Just as they don’t do anything except rort grants to win elections. One-third of people who got a test in NSW yesterday tested positive. In health practice, less than 5% positivity is under control. We’re at nearly 30%.

Nostradamus hat on again. This time medium-term (4-5 month) prediction. Scott Morrison will: - wait for the Omicron wave to subside (all waves do) - run a March budget full of election bribes, and - call the election.

Who knew going out to get Covid would be so unpopular.

Paul McDermott (the comedian, ex-DAAS, Good News Week etc.) contracted Covid just before Christmas. He’s double-vaxxed. His story is worth reading (extract below). “On Christmas Eve I posted my PCR test results showing I was positive for Covid. There are currently many voices saying many different things about the experience. I certainly don’t want to add to the misinformation out there. This is a just record of what I went though. On Sunday morning, December 19th, I woke and my throat was itchy. It was a different kind of itchy and I felt immediately - ‘uh-oh, I’ve got it.’ After this initial response I really hoped I was wrong, and as the symptoms worsened I tried to convince myself it was a seasonal flu. I’d had two shots of the AZ, and was days away from the booster, but by Monday arvo I was bedridden. It was quick and vicious - Like the worst flu, with a touch of food poisoning. Headaches, burning eyes, full body aches and pains, hot and cold fevers, shaking, and feeling completely exhausted. I had a very unsettled night, hot and cold, tossing and turning, and was unable to get to sleep. I spent Tuesday in bed, rising occasionally but the smallest exertion left me exhausted. I was also finding it very hard to think, I couldn’t concentrate on any idea or thought. We attempted a local drive through PCR but were told it was 3+hr wait. While waiting in line, some sneaky cars pushed in front of us. Frustrated, we left to find another testing clinic, but lines were long and slow everywhere. We headed back home having achieved nothing. By now X was showing symptoms. Similar trajectory of illness. Crippling lethargy, tiredness, fatigue. Both X and M were doubled vaxxed with Pfizer. Which I hoped would offer them more protection. I mentioned I was bedridden on Twitter. Most comments were kind, some were not. Dropped some Nurofen for the pain, which helped, endured another sleepless night of real discomfort. I headed out early to see if a walk through clinic might be quicker for the PCR. I arrived round 7 for an 8am opening and the line was already hefty. M joined me an hour later, and 40 mins or so after that we were tested. Wednesday proved another difficult day. It was the third day of almost hallucinogenic agony, more Nurofen, I think I notched the regulation 6, shaking, sore throat, sniffle, congestion and the brain fog. Thursday, and I felt for the first time I was on the mend. This feeling was short lived. There was an upswing, less tiredness, less nausea and my appetite had returned but the thing was still in my system and was letting me know. I was overtaken and overwhelmed again… But struggled on, feeling the end somehow now in sight. What had been harrowing was less so, there were moments of lucidity and patches, over the course of the day, where I felt something akin to normal. But, then any elation dissolved as it bit hard again. Friday, Christmas Eve, and I was slightly brighter than Thursday. I felt I’d taken a step away from the virus back towards myself. Still inconsistent, still up and down, still crazy tired, but an improvement. X looked to be where I was on Tues/Wed, but he was coping better. Friday, Christmas Eve, and I was slightly brighter than Thursday. I felt I’d taken a step away from the virus back towards myself. Still inconsistent, still up and down, still crazy tired, but an improvement. X looked to be where I was on Tues/Wed, but he was coping better. So we’ve all been sick, and we’re basically out the other side. For me it was not a ‘mild’ experience. And M + X had it rough too. There’s a lot of people on line talking up the ‘mildness,’ it’s just a hangover, nothing more than a cold - that certainly wasn’t our experience.”

Thanks to Nancy for sharing. This is what’s happening in supermarkets, staff off sick with Covid. When will the farce of ‘living with Covid’ end? Why do we meekly accept such rubbish? Imagine if we had tuberculosis outbreaks in Australia, would we all be saying ‘let’s just get everybody infected’? What part of our brains is damaged, that ‘living with’ lethal viruses is considered a solution, to anything?

Sometimes I think it’s complete ignorance of infectious disease history that explains what’s going on right now. Take polio, as an example. Many I ask aren’t even aware that for the majority of people who caught polio, it was a mild illness. Did we: - allow everybody to get polio, so that we could ‘live with polio’, or - did we move Heaven and Earth to stop it, because of the damage it did to some people? We know the answer. What a disgrace of a society we’ve become. I’m disgusted every day that we’re doing this, and just as disgusted that hardly anybody speaks out about it. In an average year polio killed between 50 and 100 people. We’ve lost over 2000 people with Covid, in less than 2 years.

Happy birthday Dan Martin!

Bathurst Coles, yesterday. Nobody is ‘panic buying’. The staff who make the goods, distribute them and put them on shelves - all of those industries are struggling with mass Covid infection.

The numbers speak for themselves.

Regions. Bathurst - 49 Orange - 89 Lithgow - 13

A pandemic is defined by number of infections. ‘Living with’ Covid means the infections never end, and the pandemic doesn’t either.

That’s 2 from 2 in the prediction game. (He’s still being a cheapskate with this announcement, just staggering that he won’t demand ineligible businesses repay $40 billion of JobKeeper payments they stole, but still quibbles over who can get a free Covid test, in a bloody pandemic.) The prediction about NSW being forced to lock down has already happened, the people did it, instead of the government. But I think the government will be forced to that position too, though they’re such cold-eyed zealots it will be when people are dying in hospital corridors and more people can’t get food in supermarkets.

Mike Ryan, one of the WHO’s most senior public health experts, on what we’ve done wrong in this pandemic. Really worth a minute of your time. Particularly on the last sentence, notice how our leaders have the whole time tried to paint efforts as ‘restrictions’ and sold every partial win as ‘freedom’. That’s not how to lead anything. Leaders in wartime steel their people for a prolonged fight. Pandemics kill hundreds of millions more than wars do. “The biggest collective failing has been that we’ve underestimated this microbe. We’ve always made judgments assuming the best-case scenario. And I’m not one for assuming the worst-case scenarios as a modus operandi, because otherwise, you can strangle society. But I think at every opportunity we’ve seem to have taken the best-case scenario as the basis for our policy. And this virus, I think, has sequentially exploited that. In the end, the virus doesn’t have a brain. It’s just, from an evolutionary point of view, exploiting opportunities. And we seem to have consistently and persistently given it the opportunity. There’s been tremendous social, economic, and political pressure to go back to normal. Time and time again governments have tried to get back to normal and have overshot that runway by opening up too early. Releasing restrictions too early. They haven’t really convinced people or empowered people to continue with these basic measures to reduce the risk of infection. I think that’s been a problem, the whole way through the pandemic. I don’t mean getting rid of lockdowns. To me lockdowns have been last resort measures in most cases. Many countries in the East have managed to forgo lockdowns. But they’ve maintained quite strict measures in terms of mask wearing, in terms of crowds, in terms of testing and other stuff. So they’ve taken a much more comprehensive, layered strategy. They’ve maintained an intensity of control measures without ever going for full lockdown, without ever going for full open. They’ve taken the corner without under- or over-steering. They’ve gotten people to buy into the idea that it’s going to take a long time and it’s going to have to be a sustained effort. I think if everyone had done that maybe we’d be in a better place. ”

Come on people, a prediction of your own. How long can this go on?

The NSW Government has an excellent Critical Intelligence Unit, which releases some of the most useful Covid stats. It’s where you can see how the trickery is done in trying to suppress hospital numbers, for starters, the 2 red circles. - over 13,000 people being treated at home instead of hospital - over 186,000 not being treated at all, but at home dealing with it themselves. It’s important to know that the 13,000 are in no way getting meaningful ‘care’ at home, the numbers are way beyond that. And the 186,000 have no idea if they have severe Covid or not, many in that category died in the Delta wave because they didn’t realise their oxygen levels were terminal.

In talking to people, the thing I find that is creating the greatest risk to us all is the old favourite - ‘live with the virus’. A political slogan, that millions repeat with no thought at all. Politicians have convinced people that if we choose to live with Covid, it will be just like the flu. The problem is, it won’t be. The flu we ‘live with’ is NOT PANDEMIC FLU. (‘Spanish Flu’ was pandemic flu. We didn’t live with it.) If we get pandemic flu, we do all the same lockdowns and other restrictions we’ve done for Covid. Pandemic means spreads exponentially, meaning everybody gets sick, all the time. Exactly like a fire out of control. Choosing to live with Covid WHILE IT’S STILL IN PANDEMIC MODE is like telling people to go back to their homes in the ‘emergency warning’ part of a bushfire, instead of the ‘all clear’ part.

What do the experts say? Delay sending kids back to school a few weeks until they’re vaccinated. What do the politicians say? I’m sure you can guess.

120 cases in Bathurst yesterday. LHD says that’s an under-count.

Up to half of truck delivery drivers for supermarkets are sick with Covid. The PM’s response: “We need truck drivers to keep on trucking”. While sick, presumably. We’re well beyond farce.

The previously healthy, double-vaxxed 20 year old who died of Covid today got surprisingly little attention.

From National Cabinet yesterday. On a day when everybody focused on a tennis star (like seriously, who cares), this was totally ignored. I suspect that was deliberate - as always, spin and deflect. This is staggeringly offensive. If people aren’t outraged by this, I give up.

If you’re on the ‘living with the virus’ team, how’s that working out? Ever read Lord of the Flies?

Many have asked about terms - endemic, pandemic, epidemic etc. The picture describes it well. Covid is an epidemic disease, and because it’s spreading across the whole world, it’s now a pandemic (pan - international). Epidemic/pandemic means infections will grow and fall exponentially, in repeated waves. Plenty of mention in the media about Covid becoming endemic. Meaning staying at a constant rate in the community (the green line), not in those up and down epidemic peaks. This is one of the biggest and most destructive lies of the pandemic. Covid is an epidemic disease, it won’t ever develop that stable disease pattern, without better vaccines and public health measures like masks, improved ventilation, and movement and gathering restrictions. If we just use the current vaccines alone, then we’ll experience endless epidemic waves, up and down, like we are right now. Not just once a year, like we do with flu, but all year, every year. The idea that getting us all infected will end the pandemic is a barefaced lie - it can’t and won’t happen. It will just create more and more of those red epidemic waves.

NSW Government having a Crisis Cabinet meeting this morning, to discuss significant new restrictions. How many times do we have to go through this same charade, with every wave, before people realise if you open up without stopping the spread of Covid in the community, we just end up smashed by infections, and then locking down to contain the damage? Vaccines alone will NOT stop this. I’m hearing there’s a growing trend for people to ‘get Covid, to get it over with’. The herd immunity nonsense. Like the old chickenpox parties mums had to infect kids. It *will not work, for Covid*. You will keep catching Covid, over and over again, you won’t develop immunity from it. And it will damage your body more each time, and take years off your life, potentially decades. If this ‘get infected to stop Covid’ idea actually worked, colds and flus would have vanished from the face of the Earth centuries ago.

Why I suggest thinking of Covid as being like asbestos, not like flu. It does lasting, chronic damage. This is even for people who have such a mild case that they don’t even know they have it.

Today’s weekly comparison.

Wit and wisdom.

James is a smart operator, a very nice guy who also works inside the NSW Government. Has been in the press recently about his own experience with Covid. Nails it here, we’re back in 2020, except this time we’re paying for it all out of our own pockets. That’s what libertarians will do, if you elect them.

257 cases for Bathurst. More than doubled in one day.

Premier: expect 4500-6000 people hospitalised. Says that’s ‘within capacity’. No plan to reduce it.

‘Know any nurses?’ Doesn’t that fill you with confidence? Hats off to our nurses, trying to hold it all together while idiot politicians deliberately infect the entire State.

Average flu year NSW: 2000 in hospital. Covid: 20,000 in hospital. ‘Just like the flu’.

Let’s be smarter than this constant bullshit, hey? About this being about ‘panic buying’. It’s not. It’s about thousands of workers being infected with Covid. The politicians would like nothing more than for us to start blaming each other for a problem entirely of THEIR making, not ours.

THAT’s leadership.

From NSW Health yesterday. Three things: 1) those beds are required for everybody who is sick enough to require hospitalisation, and 2) ICU capacity in NSW is 1000 beds, but again that’s for all conditions. 300-500 Covid ICU patients breaks the system. 3) 6400 of the ordinary beds are already occupied, but not shown on the line graph. Over 300 of the ICU beds also occupied. Most importantly, it’s an example of political framing and spin. We argue over whether there are enough beds for the sick, and not over a much more basic question - why are we just allowing these people to become sick? What sort of society does that? It’s a first in our history.

The ‘Economy’ is the worst it’s been for the entire pandemic. Lockdowns would be less damaging. (There is no Economy, just more proof.) Here’s the thing. ‘Living with the virus’ isn’t the opposite of ‘eliminating the virus’. It’s the privatisation of eliminating the virus. Libertarian governments won’t do it, so the people have to try and do it for them - you can’t live with a lethal virus. Just as these same governments dump their responsibilities for education, health care, roads etc. onto us - the ‘private sector’ - they’re now doing it with Covid. Somebody has to pay for all of these things, and make them happen. If the governments we elect to do it won’t do it, it falls to us to do it. Out of our own pockets.

Kerry Chant explained the ban on dancing yesterday. When you dance, you mix with people from multiple social networks at once, rather than only with the friends and family you see every day. So it allows the virus to spread much more widely. What the NSW Premier won’t let her say though, is that there are two places that are far, far worse than dance floors for doing this mixing. 1) Schools. 2) Workplaces. Those do the overwhelming spread of a virus in a community. They refuse to close them or fix their ventilation, make people work from home, wear masks etc. Until they do, this pandemic will just keep going.

Excellent question that very few are asking. You can’t just keep giving booster shots. Ultimately you have to stop the spread of the virus. That’s what ‘elimination’ means. That’s why the smart people who deal with pandemics as a job have been asking us to do that, from Day 1. It doesn’t mean ‘lockdowns’ - lockdowns are what you get when you DON’T do the basics. It means fixing ventilation, stopping unnatural crowding of people into transport and office spaces, etc. The basics.

Happy 50th!

Today’s cases and weekly comparison.

Data is politics. If you’re wondering why your supermarkets are a bit empty, try the bottom two squares on the left.

The politics of language. ‘Living with’ natural disasters. Take floods. We live with floods, in that we know they will sometimes happen. We DON’T live with them WHILE THEY ARE HAPPENING. We live with floods, but we don’t live IN floods. We use emergency measures to save lives and mitigate damage. Covid is the same. ‘Living with’ Covid DOESN’T mean letting it just infect everybody. That’s like telling people to try to drive down a flooded street. It means using every tool we have to suppress the virus, and to prevent more people getting infected with it.

Today’s numbers + weekly comparison.

No people don’t realise this.

I have no idea what most people are thinking about the current situation, because they don’t say anything. This is what I see every day, a society that is broken. Generations of work being shit down the toilet. And a population desperately trying to post a veneer of positivity and happiness over the top of it, to pretend it isn’t happening.

Using Bathurst as an example. - 220 cases today. - actual infections are likely between 600-1000. - every person infected with Omicron tends to infect 3-4 other people. - today’s infections therefore may infect 1800-4000 other people, in Bathurst.

Smartest pandemic people in the country. We’re in a crisis, and nobody is listening.

This is where we’re at. ‘Go to work, even if you’re sick’. You wouldn’t say that for a cold or even a headache or stomach ache. Now we’re saying it for a lethal disease. Where are all the ‘live with the virus’ people, who were so sure of themselves this time last year? How do they defend this?

Living with the virus. This is Australia, 2022. AUSTRALIA.

Happy birthday Mia!

I’m not convinced any of the ‘live with the virus’ people will change their view, despite society crumbling around them in clear evidence of the bullshit of that idea.

The daily statistics that actually mean something.

Might need to contextualise these. John Snow was the father of epidemiology i.e. the study of disease patterns and causes, in public health. Most famously he discovered that cholera was being spread by dirty water in London, and specifically via a water pump in Broad Street (residents used to pump their water, it wasn’t piped to their houses). All that explanation because this is obviously a parody account, based on his work. But super important, because I find people with no knowledge of public health think what’s happening right now is normal. It’s not, modern ‘neoliberal’ politics is destroying public health, because it doesn’t even believe the ‘public’ exists. Only individuals. I’ll post 1 or 2 of these a day because they’re funny, but also to highlight how insane what we’re doing right now is.

That was SOME rain. 😳

Australia letting Covid rip for the Economy.

Christmas 2021. When the people of Australia, tired from fighting Covid for 2 years, were thanked by their governments by infecting them with it.

Every day, this is how reality is re-framed. Going to hospital IS serious illness, that’s what hospital is for. In the meantime, experts have advised governments what to do to bring the current crisis under control. Governments are ignoring all of it, and pushing ahead with even more ways of forcing people to work while sick.

I’ve given up with the adults. Good on the kids.

There are so many ways to end this pandemic. We’re doing none of them.

Ordinary working day in Australia, 3-4% of staff are sick. Right now? 20-40%

I have to pinch myself to believe this stuff is actually true, every day. The catastrophe of ‘living with the virus’ will be fixed by…hiring grannies and grandads to do the work.

There is no Economy, just people. Have been saying it for 2 years. The disgraceful, disgusting mess we’re in right now, caused by this idiot belief in an Economy. National Cabinet meets today to make decisions that will make this mess even worse. Forcing people to work while infected and sick. The greatest failure of government in Australian history. And it’s a long way from over.

School has been back in the UK for about 2 weeks. 315,000 children already in isolation for Covid. Wake up Australia.

A peek ahead of the joys to come. Canada.

The ‘regulator’ of aged care homes is the federal government. Living with the virus.

I’m convinced people still have no idea of the magnitude of the disaster we’re in the middle of.

National Cabinet today decided the best approach is to return to the 19th century. - no isolation period at all now for key workers - ‘key workers’ is now just about everybody - Chief Medical Officer of Australia says ‘we can’t protect everyone’ - PM says it’s not their job to stop everybody getting infected, it’s their job to provide hospitals for sick workers. Not one measure to reduce people getting infected. They literally could not care less about that. It’s about making sure you slackers all work, and you can bloody well work sick with Covid too. He’s probably off on holidays again now.

The ‘solution’ to the present problems, of allowing infected people to work, has only one possible outcome. And we’re already seeing it. All it does is accelerate the shutdowns.

Numbers cut through political spin. It’s difficult to see anything except complete social breakdown within a month. We’re already a long way down that road. The only alternative is the UK and US model, where we just allow hundreds to die every day, and call it ‘normal life’.

Happy Birthday to you :)

When you read these, I’m sure some think ‘ok, more than 63,000 infected yesterday, but that will speed up the end of the pandemic’. It won’t, it won’t stop them getting re-infected, again and again. Pointless infection of the entire population, for no meaningful end. Like giving everybody a bag of asbestos to breathe in every day.

The US providing free N95 masks and free RAT testing, to the public. We’re doing - nothing.

There were 54 Covid deaths in NSW and Victoria today. Those people contracted Covid around the last week of December, leading into Christmas. There were around 8000 cases per day in the 2 States, at that time. There are 125,464 cases in NSW and Victoria today.

“Turns out the economy is more than just a bunch of numbers in the budget. It’s made up of twenty-five million or so living, breathing human beings and if they all catch the same virus at the same time and find themselves having trouble with that whole living and breathing deal, they stop working, they stop consuming and some of them even stop living and breathing.” John Birmingham

NSW Health confirmed today that you can be re-infected with Covid after only 4 weeks. Infecting the whole country won’t end the pandemic.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7580081/not-rocket-science-hit-the-brakes-on-omicron-explosion-experts-warn/

I wanted to talk about 2 things we’re told not to talk about, but I think we must. Politics and religion. My views on them, so people have a reference point. Politics first. My personal political leanings are to conservatism, but not in the way people now understand that word. Conservatism means putting custom and tradition at the heart of running your societies, for the simple reason that any custom or tradition has emerged over multiple generations of testing. Nobody invents a custom or tradition and we all live it tomorrow. Multiple generations live and test it, and keep it if it works. So I’m a conservative because I think road-testing something for generations is a good test that it works. People will have noticed my constant criticism of the NSW and federal LNP. This isn’t because it’s the LNP, and I’m Labor or Green, or whatever. Couldn’t give a toss about any of that. Politics isn’t footy, with your favourite team. I’ve criticised the LNP in both of these places in recent years because they’ve been hijacked by an extreme group, the libertarians. The ideological cousins of the UK and US libertarians, ruining those countries for decades. A libertarian thinks only individuals are real. So they’re obsessed with destroying government, regulation, taxation etc. This has NOT ONE connection with political conservatism. Right now you can see our libertarian PM’s and Premier’s handiwork, in the lethal chaos of our pandemic response. We also saw it in the bushfires. ‘Leave it to individuals’ is a recipe for the destruction of society. Libertarians WANT that, they don’t believe in society. Several prominent Liberals resigned from the party when John Howard introduced this libertarian focus. Its damage can be seen here, in the UK and in the US, right now.

Please everybody. Read this. Throw away every other source of information and advice you may be using to understand this pandemic, and read this.

If you want a flavour of just what low-life bastards the NSW Government are, this is one of many, many stories I’ve heard about parents trying to buy air purifiers for their kids’ schools, to protect them from Covid. Because the government won’t provide them. But they won’t let anybody else provide them either.

A few people last year told me India was approaching herd immunity. Like most of the live with the virus crowd, they’re all really quiet at the moment. But wait until this current wave starts to head down, when they’ll be back with all the same ‘it’s over’ gibberish. Until the next wave. Rinse and repeat.

Think it’s worth saying again that Covid and climate change are the same issue. Clean air. All known life in the entire universe is in that thin blue line. You can’t see the Economy from space.

Last day of a great 3 weeks off. Reminded me again that we focus on the wrong things. Sure we went to the moon, we can fly anywhere in the world in comfort, we have all human knowledge at our fingertips via Google, our medicine is good at fixing a lot of things. Life is pretty good. But the best we can manage is giving people a few weeks off work, every year. 4 is generous by world standards, many are lucky to get 2. What’s the point of it all, if so many are stuck in meaningless, bullshit jobs? (I quite like mine, I should say, but I doubt I’m in the majority.) The real ‘technological progress’ we need is political. All of that work, all of that ‘Economy’ nonsense, is supposed to be a means to an end. What are the ‘ends’ of what we’re all doing? Why can’t we say ‘let’s do less work’? Really most of that work is about enriching a tiny handful of people. Not ourselves. We’re their servants. The basics like food and shelter and water were all easily organised with technologies we had hundreds of years ago.

Novak was strategy, people. To distract us all from the total chaotic disaster of our Covid response. Worked exactly as planned.

Political slogans about living with the virus have people now actively going out to try to catch it. We may have reached peak stupid. But I’m not calling it, we may find even more stupid things to do yet. This won’t stop the pandemic. It won’t make you immune from Covid. It may take years off your life. Politicians should be in jail for what we’re seeing right now. It’s beyond disgraceful.

Look at the wording, straight out of the 'Stop the Boats' playbook, trying to weaponise the Novak saga into a border control issue, for the election, and a 'don't look at the Covid shitshow' distraction. Laughably, Djokovic was deported because he might become a 'lightning rod' for anti-vax sentiment. By the LNP of Craig Kelly and Matt Canavan, who use their anti-vax sentiment to reel-in more votes.

'Mild'.

The real power of FB is as a contact tracing tool, to trace all of the 'please infect me' moments from our social lives.

I walked some of the streets of Bathurst in my lunch break today. Pubs, restaurants, cafes - many deserted. Not a soul inside. Very few shoppers about either, eerily quiet. Infection has destroyed the ‘Economy’. Today the Premier said NSW has to ‘push through’ the Omicron wave. Meaningless gibberish. Still encouraging the lunatic idea that you beat a pandemic virus by infecting everybody with it. Shirtfronting it, ‘staring it down’. Successfully convincing people that’s how we ‘live with’ flu, when in fact pandemic flus (not the garden variety seasonal flu we know) are a public health emergency, just like Covid. Soon the State’s children will be thrown to the Covid wolves. Where does it end.

Parents to supervise classrooms with mass staff infections. (Let’s see how many volunteer to do that.) Kids to be swabbed twice a week. Come on people, let’s be grown ups. Just as you wouldn’t send kids to school in a bushfire zone, you don’t send them in the peak of a pandemic. Yes, ‘parents have to work’. That’s what JobKeeper was for. Get the cheap bastards in Canberra to restart it.

Think about the logic of this. A test paid for by government is not ‘free’ - it’s OUR money, buying a test for us. What we’ve ended up with instead is us paying twice - once in taxes, and then out of our own wallets at the chemist, for the tests. The libertarians love to say ‘it’s your money’, when they’re giving away tax cuts to the wealthy who don’t need them. But when it’s about something basic, like a Covid test in a Covid pandemic, this is a ‘freebie’. It’s suddenly THEIR money, that they refuse to give to us. Which is exactly the point. These aren’t politicians, they’re pirates. Plundering Treasury for their donors. Giving your money away to people who are already swimming in it. Over $100 billion in tax cuts to the top end of town alone, in the next few years. But you can’t have a $5 test.

The Australian virologist Ian Mackay produced the 'Swiss Cheese Model' of Covid control, an excellent tool to understand why vaccines alone aren't enough. They're just one slice of the cheese.

This false choice the Premier offers, between what we're doing right now (nothing) and a 'lockdown', is one I hear parroted by his supporters too. There are about 500 things we could do without needing a lockdown (see my previous Swiss cheese post). But then this is the Premier who calls people wanting to do anything at all to prevent infections 'bedwetters'.

She missed the Don yesterday. We need to ‘push through’ this. Get the canteen volunteers at the hospital to scrub up.

From the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Definitely not bedwetters. Letting case numbers explode much worse for the Economy than lockdowns. And takes much longer to recover too.

The government has been on strike for over 2 years.

Kerry Chant: - we don't know when the peak might be - schools will drive case numbers - current vaccines won't make the pandemic end, and - NSW should expect a year of continuing epidemic waves.

Advice from Treasury (yep, pesky bureaucrats) to government about opening up.

Omicron is ‘mild’ Covid. Apparently. So tired of the endless, relentless, gaslighting bullshit.

Returning to this, over 100,000 people caught Covid in NSW between Christmas and New Year. It takes about 3 weeks for cases to start translating into deaths. That’s what that explosive growth in deaths line now is. That infection of people was a deliberate political act. It’s what analysts call ‘social murder’. I hope the dead enjoyed their last weeks together, with their families. Though they were likely in hospital for most of it.

Anybody with connections to schools knows how almost impossible it’s been in recent years to find even casual staff to replace sick teachers. Imagine what will happen when Omicron is allowed to let rip, in the schools.

Happy 92nd birthday Wolfie! I hope wherever you are you can figure out the computer well enough to read this.

It's all about who gets to tell the story.

For those without a 3rd booster shot, you now only have to wait 3 months to qualify at a State hub or clinic. Go now.

This is the point normally when the death numbers really go North. Let's hope not this time. Who runs aged care again? Asking for a friend.

Remember when politicians pretended schools had to be open in a pandemic, because of childrens’ education and mental health? They don’t even pretend that’s the reason now. The PM, yesterday. In the meantime, administration staff in the Department of Education have been asked to cover classes if needed. The farce is beyond belief. Governments calling it ‘Covid safe’ reopening. Like ‘safe drink driving’.

Happy Birthday Peter!

At first I thought this was a joke.

Just let the kids run the countries, and banish all the middle-aged lawyers, businessmen and party hacks. Then we won’t need children driving forklifts and trucks. https://abc7.com/teens-drive-big-rigs-semi-trucks/11483898/

So many Covid updates. Now the NSW Government wants to waive RSAs for bar staff in pubs. Because the interruption to the free flow of booze is obviously a State emergency. (P.S. guess who's a big donor to political parties in NSW)

I suggest replacing National Cabinet with kids, and getting the politicians to drive the forklifts. Pandemic over.

I wish the people who argued the Economy is a separate thing were still arguing the point. They’re all so quiet.

Like all service professions, teaching is treated like dirt. Nobody, not ONCE, has asked teachers about Covid in schools. Just as they don’t ask nurses about Covid in hospitals. Instead we have opinionated paediatricians and other non-school experts who basically need to be told to fuck off, unless they’d like teachers to advise them on their practice as well (we know how that conversation would end). And politicians for whom schools are just childcare for business.

46 not living with the virus today.

This is a beautiful gadget. Measures CO2, as well as temperature and air pressure. An excellent way to tell if the building you work (or live) in is adequately ventilated. Anything above 1000 = not enough fresh air. People might remember my passion for air quality, the more people focus on it, the more chance something might get done. The only thing distinguishing life from the barren void of most of the universe is air. We’re criminally complacent about it.

In other Covid news, the 4th booster dose data in Israel shows it to have been a failure. We got nothin’. And people think it’s all over.

The whole story of life is of everything eating everything else. The idea that only eating plants is the solution to anything is crazy.

TMZ reporting MeatLoaf died of Covid. And this was his support for the Clapton/Van Morrison Covid minimiser song. He was also reported in the past year saying masks are oppression. Your beliefs can kill you.

Over 40 people at my workplace have Covid. Meantime I have some friends who have been allowed to work from home for the past 2 years, or who are retired, telling me the whole thing is not as bad as is made out. I’m sure it isn’t, from the comfort of your couch. The overwhelming push to ‘live with’ a disaster while it’s still a disaster is more evidence that society is a giant high school. It’s an adolescent way of thinking about things, not adult responsibility. Society would rather not tidy its room.

Infecting NSW to save the NSW Economy, um, trashed the NSW Economy. Almost like the ‘Economy’ is just the people of NSW. Go figure.

Watched a bit of BBL last night, and struggled to see a single person in the stands. BBL crowds have been staggeringly low this year, as few as 480 people. I don’t think it’s the format, which people still like (though there’s far too much cricket). It’s people saying ‘actually, I don’t want Covid, thanks’.

Virologists like Teng say this so that people understand Covid won’t just go away because we ignore it. Even though the measles vaccine gives near sterilising immunity, and catching it does for years too, we’re still fighting measles. The Covid vaccines are nowhere near as good as the measles vaccine. Catching Covid gives you no real immunity from it. And Covid is a much more dangerous disease.

Drove past the Lithgow drive-through Covid testing at the Showground yesterday. Not one person there. Use it, don’t spend your own money on RAT tests that aren’t as good. We don’t want government to have an excuse to close it.

The real reason people are discouraged from getting free PCR testing are inside this article. It’s mind-boggling incompetence by NSW and Canberra, and there’s much more besides.

Diseases that were endemic in Australia 100 years ago. Malaria Tuberculosis Rubella Diphtheria Polio Measles None are endemic now. Societies don’t live with nasty pathogens. They get rid of them. We can do it now with Covid, or wait until it infects and kills millions more. But we will eliminate it. For the same reason we did all of these others.

Happy Birthday :)

In populist democracy, numbers = power. In Western democracies, numbers = boomers. Boomers are about to face widespread infection in their own demographic, for the first time in this pandemic. Let’s see how that plays out.

The great public health story of the 20th century was the huge reduction in child mortality. The great 21st century public health story is ‘let’s send kids back to school not even fully vaccinated, in the middle of a pandemic’.

Do we all think 'we're all going to get TB or HIV eventually'? No? So don't do it for Covid. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/16/no-intention-of-getting-infected-understanding-omicrons-severity

https://youtu.be/JBUU_HuXfsE

This will follow the same pattern we've seen in every country overseas. Mass infection, of staff and students. Astronomical levels of infection, if the overseas experience is anything to go by. All because we couldn't wait a few more weeks for the outbreak to subside and to get kids fully vaccinated.

The 3rd vaccine shot is your best protection right now against dying from Covid. Don't delay it even a single day.

Pictures tell stories. In this outbreak, more people have died outside ICU, than in ICU. If you talk to the doctors at the front line, this is because those who are marginal are not even being offered ICU beds, and are being triaged straight to palliative care, to die.

Imagine walking into this room.

I never have much enthusiasm for Australia Day. Jingoistic claptrap most of the time. Culture wars about flags and invasions etc. We turn everything into sport. Yes the country was invaded, stolen. Yes many love the flag and fought under it. All true. But it’s just debating points. I deeply love Australia. My thoughts on Australia Day are the same as on every other day. We landed on a continent carrying the most extraordinary mystery in world history. A civilisation that lasted tens of thousands of years, the only one who managed to last indefinitely without killing each other or the landscape they lived in. Nobody is probably left who really knows how it was done. It’s humanity’s greatest and most important mystery story. That may have no ending, because the knowledge will be gone.

Happy birthday Chels!

"Until the very moment when catastrophe overtook everything and everybody, it was covered up not by realities but by the highly efficient talk and double-talk of nearly all official representatives who...explained away unpleasant facts and justified concerns." — Hannah Arendt

https://www.gofundme.com/f/fighting-for-covid-safe-schools?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet

In the UK, 400,000 kids are off school, infected with Covid. Some are being infected multiple times. What do we think will happen here next week?

Happy Birthday!

Politics 101. When reality contradicts your spin, hide the reality. Where are all the 'live with the virus' people, by the way? So vocal in 2020 and 2021. Grow a pair, face up to the bullshit you asked for.

And when that doesn't work, just stop reporting the deaths and hospitalisations. Lie.

There was a pile-on last year when the Queensland Premier said 80 people could die of Covid, per day. 'Alarmism', 'doomsayer', etc. Guess how many are dying of Covid per day in Australia, right now?

Nobody says the quiet bits out loud about Eddie. Most of the last 30 years of his career and life was drug and alcohol-fuelled mediocrity. He spent more time building and merchandising guitars and guitar gear than he did playing anything interesting. Fame destroyed him, literally.

A week ago the NSW Government quietly signed an exemption to Public Health Orders to exempt employers from reporting Covid acquired in the workplace to SafeWork Australia. Now they only need to if an employee is hospitalised or dies.

In August last year, Australians were surveyed as to how many deaths per year would be acceptable, from ‘living with Covid’. 86% said less than 1000. 61% said less than 100. Living with Covid in 2022 killed over 1000 people before the end of January.

A re-share. If you think the world seems crazy and there’s no way out, you may be right. It’s nothing to do with who people vote for. It’s because for the past 50 years we’ve been smashing all of our institutions. Including politics. There is actually no way back. It hasn’t dawned on us yet that we’re living in the ruins of our own civilisation. And remember the old conservative reaction to the Woodstock generation? They knew more than we know now. It was the beginning of the end. They launched an all-out assault on…ourselves. ‘Freedom’, from ourselves. We’ve been eating our own society ever since.

Happy birthday mum! Have a wonderful day :)

The 3rd vaccine shot. Get it, ASAP. This is the data from the UK, well ahead of us with Omicron. I've highlighted in yellow the effectiveness of 2 doses of vaccine, against hospitalisation and death, for Omicron. Those aren't good numbers, you're at possibly serious risk with only 2 doses, and it gets worse the older you are. Notice the sudden panic from politicians about getting that 3rd dose, as the death toll climbs. The same politicians who told you the vaccines protect you against hospitalisation and death, so no need to worry, the pandemic is over, we're 'living with' Covid. That spin will get you killed.

A tip for those who have to share homes with people who have Covid. In the rooms where they spend their time (their bedroom, bathroom etc.), put an ordinary fan in the window, blowing outwards. That will creative a slight negative pressure in the room, drawing house air into the room and out the window. It will help prevent Covid moving in the opposite direction, back into the house. For the same reason use the exhaust fan in the bathroom, if you have one, as well.

98 Australians died of Covid yesterday. They were living with the virus. Until they weren’t.

Pollies said don’t focus on cases, focus on hospitalisations and deaths. They’re not saying that as much now.

Michael Jackson copped so much flak for his cosmetic surgery. He had nothing on Cher. Act your age.

Betty Blythe in The Queen of Sheba, 1921. Blythe said: “I had 28 costumes in that picture, and if I'd worn them all at once I couldn't have kept warm.”

Tennis fans are such a prissy crowd.

An excellent and so important point. The most effective and most equitable way to produce change, is through rules. Mandates. Ignore all the freedom rubbish, without rules the hierarchies of advantage just stay where they are. This is a basic lesson from mathematics.

The politicians told us all to focus on deaths. So do it, people. Focus.

705 people have died of Covid in NSW in January 2022. That’s more than died in the whole of 2021. It’s 23 times the road toll in that time.

BA.2 is a new variety of Omicron. It has arrived in Australia but is still at small numbers. Remember the Premier has asked us to ‘push through’ Omicron. That’s BA.1 Omicron. BA.2 is waiting. (P.S. Denmark has the same 2-dose vaccination coverage as us. Over 60% of its population has had a 3rd shot. Only 35% of Australians have had a 3rd shot.)

2017.

So far deliberately infecting the whole nation with a lethal disease isn’t polling well. Come on Australia, reject the attempt to turn us into the train wreck that is the US and UK. That is actually what’s at stake here, this current group of leaders have been trying for decades to import ideas from those two nations.

This is what so angers me with the mindless ‘live with the virus’ slogan. Look at the carnage in aged care. AGAIN. The government did nothing last time, and staggeringly has done nothing again this time. Why would anybody with a brain vote for these lethally incompetent idiots? Their belief system is poisonous to all societies.

‘Following the health advice’.

The most democratic, free way out of the pandemic is rules. Mandates. Public health orders. All the stuff the nongs who marched on Canberra yesterday hate, for example, and our politicians campaign against. Rules apply to all people, in the same way. ‘Personal responsibility’ is entirely reliant upon your personal circumstances. Which means if you use that as your pandemic strategy, all that happens is that Covid impact is stratified according to existing social hierarchies.

I refuse to pay for Covid tests. Not content with letting the virus rip, government then forces people to pay for their own tests. Even in AGED CARE HOMES. You can't make this stuff up.