12 July

I'm curious how many are aware of the difference between public health and medicine? They're different fields, staffed by different people, but so often I see people assume medical doctors and hospitals are responsible for advising on pandemics. They really, really aren't. Modern governments often choose them as advisers (as they have in this pandemic), because they don't want to do the public health work, which (they think) impacts their beloved 'Economy'. (Quick reminder that the Economy is a fiction, it doesn't exist.) Thus why we ended up with a strategy to protect hospitals, instead of people. Public health is only just over 200 years old, and was invented by governments to fight population-level health problems. Installing sewers, providing fresh water and air, etc. Your local NSW Health staff include public health professionals. They're not the doctors and nurses who treat you medically. The doubling of our life expectancy over the past 200 years is almost ENTIRELY due to public health. NOT medicine. Public health are the people who know how to fight pandemics. The people our politicians have deliberately excluded from our Covid response. We're governed by a political philosophy that doesn't even believe the 'public' is a thing. Why they say Covid is now a matter of 'personal responsibility'. That's a criminal lie, and deliberate sidelining of 200+ years of expertise.