11 January

Most have swallowed the PR that there’s nothing that could be done about Covid, that we just have to ‘live with’ it, ‘like the flu’. (We don’t live with the flu, we spend billions controlling it.) Because of such widespread ignorance of public health, most think there are two alternatives. Either we ‘lock down’ whole societies, or we just let everybody get infected over and over. Lockdowns were emergency action. What *always* follows that (until Covid) is disease control. Where a whole range of methods are used to control the spread of a disease. Some still catch it, but it’s not spreading widely. True for any infectious disease: measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, flu, etc. Those are all being controlled, 365 days of every year, you just don’t see it happening. Here’s an example of the main control measure we need for Covid. This is the CO2 reading for my workplace. It’s an outstanding reading, meaning even though there isn’t an opening window in the entire working area, lots and lots of fresh air is still getting in there and old stale air is being removed. A superb air conditioning (HVAC) system. This was what made Florence Nightingale famous, the importance of fresh air. If I take this device on an aeroplane, it will read over 2000 ppm of CO2. Appallingly bad air. It will read well over 1000 in many public buildings too, particularly schools. There is simply no excuse for this. We know how to provide fresh air inside. Engineers have stopped most pandemics. For Covid they haven’t been allowed to because pathetic politicians want to play team sports with it instead. Scott Morrison wanted to go to an election pretending the pandemic is over and that he saved us. We’ve been living that disaster ever since. Over 20,000 Australians died of Covid in that election year alone, as a result. As a minimum, if you have kids in school and their teacher isn’t opening the windows, demand that they open the fucking windows. ALL YEAR. In winter they can run heating at the same time. Schools are the main breeding ground for Covid, and for most infectious disease.