27 June

I’ll use Lithgow as an example. The idea that Covid will become ‘endemic’. The term was first used to describe out of control disease in poor countries, that we couldn’t be bothered helping. Just as we often say crime is endemic in some neighbourhoods, that we don’t want to fix. It means out of control disease. Politicians have tried to make us think it means disease that is like the seasonal flu we experience each year. Seasonal flu is…seasonal. Outside winter you hardly see it. You get a small peak every year, in winter. But look at the graph, for Covid. We’re into our 7th month of it spreading and killing with Omicron, and it’s not going down. It’s an epidemic pattern, not seasonal. It may continue like this forever, unless we stop it (smallpox for example killed in epidemic waves for centuries.) We have to stop it spreading. The vaccines won’t do that, though they’re vital to the battle. We have to stop people becoming infected.