19 September

Something that’s become clear in this pandemic is how invisible basic public health work, which goes on every day of every year, is to much of the community. Take the idea again, that it doesn’t matter how many people get infected with Covid, if the vaccines keep most of them out of hospital. That’s just nonsense. What determines whether you’re in an epidemic or pandemic is the number of infections, not hospitalisations. The vision politicians have given people, that we can live alongside masses of Covid infections, safe with our vaccinations, matches nothing in basic public health practice for the past 3500 years. If we don’t control infections, the pandemic won’t end. By definition we will still be in a pandemic, with epidemic numbers of new infections. Wave after wave of them. Measles a good example, we’re all vaccinated, but if we get an outbreak, we jump on it. We don’t allow hundreds of thousands of people to wander around in the community infected with measles.