June 2021
Complete authored posts and demonstrable self-threads.
#auspol #covid19 one of the simplest ways to understand why Melbourne has required more lockdowns than Sydney is to look at the volume of movement in each city. Melbourne much less congested, more movement to restrict to prevent spread. Sydney is a car park. https://t.co/sdsQvWHZpA
#auspol ask those constantly arguing for the importance of getting borders open and returning to 'normal life' whether their plan includes infecting the nation's children.
#auspol NSW may be about to discover that a whack-a-mole strategy won't work, when you have an exponentially-growing number of moles. https://t.co/ll46RGHKt7
#auspol #covid19 I think this sort of messaging is misleading, and undermines longer-term public health programs. It may not be the world's 'ticket out', alone. https://t.co/sblLIYvfew
#auspol deaths are minuscule because Australia has had next to no circulating Covid, largely because of the dreaded 'lockdowns'. Progress in this pandemic will be impatience with the virus, not with the lockdowns. https://t.co/dORtGssuCk
#auspol everything about this thread makes a mockery of the bizarre shift in pandemic framing in Oz, where you could listen to the news and think we're lagging idiocy like the UK and US, because they're vaccinating quickly. https://t.co/ZKPotZN4Wz
@ProfPCDoherty @profmiketoole @CrabbBrendan @billbbowtell one of the most powerful analytical threads on the pandemic that I've seen. https://t.co/ZKPotZN4Wz
#auspol #covid19 This is a significantly higher risk than the AZ clots, what to do with young men? And where are the ATAGI minutes from yesterday? https://t.co/6zyO5wApWj
#auspol @JaneCaro the obvious story is the pitiful amounts on offer. The wider story is, millions of kids were being left behind BEFORE the pandemic, and nobody cared. Still no priority vaccinations for teachers and students. Childcare for the workforce. https://t.co/ftk5vCMUxB
#auspol #covid19 first rich countries provide breeding grounds for aggressive variants. Then they spread them through vaccinated travel, and provide fertile ground for further variant evolution by not controlling transmission. https://t.co/MxYCbJNBVk
@Globalbiosec @rajah_mich @DrZoeHyde can I ask a question? 1/n
In the TGA weekly report today: "With the ongoing risk of COVID outbreaks in Australia and the potential for severe long-term effects or fatal consequences of infection, the benefits for the AstraZeneca vaccine continue to outweigh the risks." 2/n
Is the TGA actually quantifying the former risk, of outbreaks? Given that risk of adverse vaccine event is actually quantified. Serious question - can a regulator make a judgement like this, without doing at least some form of assessment or calculation of outbreak risk? 3/n
#covid19 #auspol the wisdom of the crowd not always a concept people are familiar with. The crowd has often been wise in this pandemic. e.g. the low mortality from TTS. Mostly due to early intervention. What prompted that? The crowd, forcing attention to that problem.
#auspol #covid19 alarming to see so many experts with seemingly no understanding of risk at all. The 'low risk' attributed to the AZ vaccine, for example. Entirely 'likelihood', no 'impact' at all. Risk to individuals must be 'medium' at a minimum, once severe impact is included. https://t.co/yhYXqfOkkx
@DrZoeHyde @rajah_mich @profmiketoole @CrabbBrendan https://t.co/ZDwxEbuVu8
#auspol calm clarity. The amount of time wasted in this pandemic over petty political squabbles dressed up as epidemiology. We need a Centre for Disease Control, and keep politicians of all flavours well away from the task. https://t.co/E7NY8jfJnU
#auspol #covid19 one of the few scientific voices strongly foregrounding prevention of transmission *and* vaccination. So many now guilty of vaccination boosterism, seemingly unaware of how politicians are playing them with their latest 'live with the virus/open up' disguises. https://t.co/5ViDpehml5
@normanswan @CrabbBrendan can you explain Australia's vaccination strategy? The messaging is all about risk of outbreak. The demographic most at risk of such an outbreak are those 50+. They're offered a vaccine for which 2nd dose if jabbed today won't be until after winter.
#covid19 #auspol the narrative about vaccination to prevent outbreaks. Is it dangerous? US, UK, Israel, the fast vaccinators. 5-6 months in, still only 40-60% of populations vaccinated. Vaccination isn't a speed tool to prevent and control outbreaks. 1/n https://t.co/SqPZTAuxmb
Surely the *strategic* emphasis now MUST be prevention of virus transmission? Borders, movement and gathering restrictions, social distancing, ventilation. Vaccinate alongside all of that. We have Premiers publicly saying...2/n
...vaccinate to allow the virus to circulate in the community. That's lethally stupid, surely? The surest way to cause viral evolution to defeat the vaccines. 3/n
The 'hesitancy' in OZ over AZ - the urgency to even use that vaccine based entirely upon the (false) idea that vaccination is our best weapon against outbreaks. If we vaccinated at Israel-speed, we would still not be at 60% coverage by Christmas. 4/n
Surely Oz must focus most heavily now upon tighter quarantine and social distancing, on prevention of viral transmission, into the country and within it? Removes the pressure on hesitancy too, by allowing a more considered vaccine rollout, as NZ is doing. 5/n
mRNA vaccine supply should be plentiful in second half of 2021. Let people use that, again forcing them to vaccinate now even at pace will do very little to prevent and control outbreaks anyway. The UK has 40% coverage and still gets outbreaks. 6/end
#auspol The forces of 'open up and live with the virus' are on the ascendancy again, using vaccination as their disguise. As they hinted from the beginning, 'only a vaccine can get us out of the pandemic'. Vaccine here, pandemic is over, apparently, get those jabs done asap. https://t.co/818EPI64LB
#auspol #covid19 Oz has reached a point where journalists understanding the politics and not the science, and experts understanding the science and not the politics, has stalled our thinking. 'Hesitancy' is the public sensing this.
#auspol #covd19 vaccination is an ecological tweak to a battle between 2 ecosystems, a pathogen’s and ours. We need to stop seeing vaccines as some static prophylactic.
#auspol #covid19 another day, another depressing spectacle of the developed world trying to vaccinate its way out of a pandemic created by its own way of life. A way of life it refuses to even look at, let alone change. A vaccine is only one component of an entire ecosystem.
#insiders 'debilitating' lockdowns. Know what's debilitating? Covid. And Oz hurtling down the idiot path of planning to allow the virus to circulate amongst vaccinated people. Surefire recipe to breed lethal variants.
#insiders globally the cashed-up status quo is determined to convince us that lockdowns are the enemy, not the virus. Lockdowns proven to be the cheapest, fastest and least restrictive method against this virus.
#insiders vaccination is not a tool to 'open up' with virus still circulating. You have to control transmission as well as vaccinate. The UK discovering right now you can't just vaccinate.
#insiders we need to ask the question why so many Australians are still travelling offshore in a pandemic and needing to be quarantined upon return. That creates much of the pressure on quarantine.
#auspol gee, and I thought we were in the middle of a pandemic. This sort of drivel is what the government has been doing while it hasn't been doing quarantine or vaccination planning. https://t.co/gQ8KI8vXDP
@liammannix The amount of international travel in 2020 was actually about the same as in 2004. Look at that growth trend in the past 15 or so years, unsurprising that so much pressure against public health efforts has come from tourism and airlines. https://t.co/CIgFNYHjAQ
#auspol both sides singing from the same idiot hymn sheet. The Economy has boomed after being starved of public investment for decades. The 'fiscal' rescue packages redress years of neglect. They should be the new normal. https://t.co/d4M9R8Fd5M
#auspol #Covid19 David is great. Highlighting the danger again of not controlling transmission *while* we vaccinate. Vaccines are not the silver bullet way out of the pandemic, alone. https://t.co/jJH8djU52i
#auspol #covid19 watching whining UK tourists on TV, 'what was the point of getting vaccinated if we can't travel?' The point of getting vaccinated was to try to end the pandemic. Travel is the developed world's most disgusting manifestation of entitlement.
#auspol #covid19 If we get an outbreak of Ebola, in Africa, these same developed countries demand immediate lockdowns. Privilege is the demand to continue to travel recreationally in the middle of a pandemic. https://t.co/7OABKmolzy
@rajah_mich I'm after any summary data on time between vaccination and development of VITT, median or average time etc. The 28-day figure they quote, it's not clear there where the majority of cases onset, within that 4-week period.
I see here median presentation time is 10-12 days: https://t.co/30YlmZsvGs
@DrZoeHyde @GidMK 'effectiveness' of vaccines, are you able to clarify something? An effectiveness of 70% *doesn't* mean 30% of people who get the vaccine will not be protected?
#auspol #covid19 Pandemics keep killing until the social and political arrangements that cause them are changed. Right now rich countries want their old lives back, and assume vaccines will give them that without other significant change. Yeh, nah. https://t.co/znwusUtfKC
#auspol #covid19 @profmiketoole @GregDore2 good summary animation of the UK situation. Shows yet again that unless you control the virus, it controls you. Have to maintain ruthless transmission control, alongside vaccination. https://t.co/jUqNKXze9G
#auspol #covid19 if Covid was a tax, the world would have smashed it a year ago.
@profmiketoole @CrabbBrendan @DrZoeHyde one of the biggies in this interview I think is Drosten's belief that herd immunity is never possible with humans and their mobile societies. That it's a concept inappropriately transferred from animal studies. Is that a common view? https://t.co/uaizFt7O5N
#covid19 a pandemic at first allows a bit of purchase to specific disciplines, like virology, medicine, public health. Then as it goes on, it overflows the boundaries of all disciplines, and forces them and society to re-evaluate all of their first premises.
@ProfPCDoherty have you done any work on the concept of immune amnesia? I see that measles infection can sometimes 'wipe' the immune system's memory of other diseases a person had been immune to?
#auspol #covid19 know what causes mental health distress? Giving people a vaccine that could cause a lethal clot, and making them sit there for the next 4-5 weeks hoping it isn't them. https://t.co/42iShyLeFj
#auspol #covid19 the UK data suggest the cut-off for AZ vaccine should maybe have been 60, as it is in some other countries? https://t.co/F6jFxf0r0K
#auspol more Economy-driven nonsense, for other natural events. This an advisory yesterday for snow-impacted roads. I was on this particular road, there's no way it should have been open. What's 'necessary' travel? School? Work? Who knows? https://t.co/3zkkgRiXtI
@CrabbBrendan @profmiketoole if prevention of harm from possible outbreaks was the strategic priority, would it have made more sense to vaccinate over-50s with the current Pfizer supply? Full immunity within 5 weeks. As it is many won't reach full immunity until well into Spring.
#auspol #covid19 a re-Tweet of sorts. I'm surprised at the discussion of risk by experts in this pandemic. For example, a tiny likelihood of a clotting event from a vaccine, is NOT a tiny risk, once you factor in impact. With impact, it's a medium risk, at best. https://t.co/FCIipry3MZ
#auspol #covid19 not only does a pandemic overflow any discipline, the longer it goes on. It also forces those within a discipline, epidemiology for example, to lay bare their political beliefs too. Decisions are based on values, not facts, because the values frame the facts.
#auspol #covid19 Nobel laureates are usually very welcoming of debate, as are experts without a prominent public role. But those who have gained a profile during the pandemic in the mid-range are often show-ponies, who use Twitter for mutual likes with other show-ponies.
@liammannix #covid19 I'd wager that the key to pandemics will end up being virulence, not immunity. About the agency of the pathogens themselves, immunity is all about us. Viruses talk to one another. https://t.co/mEV74rH7vw
#auspol #covid19 it's clear many here in Oz are just as casual about infecting children. Many of us were deliberately infected with measles and chicken pox and mumps etc. as kids, because it would 'do us no harm'. Now we vaccinate for all of those diseases. https://t.co/nzrvcEXg5A
@normanswan @teegstar @rajah_mich vaccine 'hesitancy'. I've worked extensively in risk management, and suspect the public is actually being more sophisticated than much of the expert advice. Everything in the public narrative is about likelihood - the odds of a clot. 1/3
But even basic risk management knows that likelihood alone is not very useful as a measure. It has to be triangulated against impact of an event to be meaningful. As in this simple and common risk matrix. 2/3 https://t.co/OvgwsZEoAg
Looking at the matrix, a vaccine clot is very unlikely (likelihood), but the impact is severe (impact). That makes the overall risk medium, not low, or 'tiny' as many say, when they use only likelihood as a metric. 3/3
#auspol #covid19 on the left, vaccine risk assessment based on likelihood of clot only. (Overwhelmingly what we see in public debate.) On the right, risk assessment with likelihood + impact. Risk management 101. https://t.co/GkTyDHHeJF
#auspol #covid19 the ABS' stringency and economic output reports are some of the most useful of the pandemic, but are rarely noted. The latest again challenges all the public narratives about lockdowns and economic impact. NSW mid-pack at best. https://t.co/54HTwEtRVc
@JohnQuiggin I'm a little surprised this data series hasn't got more traction in this pandemic. Goes right to the heart of many of the debates. https://t.co/54HTwEtRVc
#auspol @Peter_Fitz this is messy. Haven't read the publication yet, though framing it as hunter-gathering vs farming is a binary I think Gammage's masterwork showed us how to bypass. https://t.co/A4kEKIT4AQ
#covid19 #auspol possibly worth reflecting that the virus has been relatively easy to defeat in the past year, for countries who tried. It's the people within those countries opposing that fight who have been the true obstacle.
#covid19 @billbowtell the pandemic mostly a battle of competing political philosophies, not a medical battle. https://t.co/Yk4xdmyMRj
#auspol #covid19 @CrabbBrendan @Globalbiosec very disappointing piece from @AlanKohler about #ZeroCovid. Having a 'few cases' *is* ZeroCovid, elimination is not eradication. You can't finesse an exponential with continuous ongoing circulation of virus. https://t.co/m4VklOHlFn
#auspol #covid smart people need to stand up and smash the idiotic use of the 'hermit kingdom' insult, the 'we need to live with risk' spin from economic thinkers. As if Oz is running away from some more grown-up 'living with Covid'. 1/3
The dream of these imbeciles for a year is to have 'normal' life back, and contact trace outbreaks. Whack-a-mole. It's an EXPONENTIAL virus, that is IMPOSSIBLE. Basic maths. It hasn't been achieved, anywhere, because you can't beat the exponential curve. 2/3
Oz is *already* 'living with risk', that's what an elimination strategy is. You will still get cases, and you control them. The only alternative is the virus smashing you. There are no other alternatives, except widespread death and economic destruction. 3/3
#covid19 #auspol it's not clear whether the destruction of the pandemic will be enough to force us to realise that extracting a tiny number of social transactions - the economic ones - and relabelling the whole of society as these transactions, is the cause of the pandemic.
#insiders let's remember wars. People may want clear and simple promises. The situation doesn't allow it. The messaging has to be about collective, ongoing fight against a lethal foe.
#insiders there is no magic vaccination rate that will allow international travel again. Journalists need to take responsibility here too, and stop demanding the impossible.
#auspol #covid19 Sir Richard Barrons, previously Commander Joint Forces Command in the UK, said this before the pandemic. It's why I think the pushback on public health action so often is framed as individual inconvenience. We've had no practice with existential threats. https://t.co/ThXW7wNb5N
A really fabulous, extraordinary film. I've followed Galison's scholarship on scientific imagery for years, and some of that is in this film too, about the first ever image of a black hole. https://t.co/jwMJImpUZ4
#covid19 #auspol the BBC on exponential growth. https://t.co/ZxVxQfbPsJ
#covid19 #auspol If the developed world pursues travel bubbles, and the virus continues to spread and mutate elsewhere, and dangerous variants develop, watch rich countries demand the locking down of poorer nations. As with Ebola. The locking down it refuses for itself.
#auspol #covid19 not a formal statement from the EMA themselves. But seems indicative of a view of top officials within it that AZ vaccination should cease in the EU for all ages? https://t.co/EYqq9Cr5Jc
@profmiketoole @CrabbBrendan am I reading that correctly?
#covid19 #auspol viruses spread through social activity. Social activity is governed by political systems and ideas. The seriousness of a pandemic is therefore deeply implicated in the political ideas used to address it. 1/3
The clear message of Covid is the total failure of libertarianism. In reality no country has ever been run with libertarian ideas, it's a fairy tale. The big death numbers in this pandemic? The countries with the most libertarian i.e. anti-government rhetoric and actions. 2/3 https://t.co/8UB9P2p50u
Vaccines and NPIs are seen as the weapons against Covid. But the deeper battle here is political, between ideas about how we're governed. Libertarianism is bankrupt, a philosophy of grown ups not wanting to clean their rooms, while wallowing in the collective comfort of home. 3/3
#covid19 #auspol no clearer example of how the real foe in this pandemic is libertarianism, not the virus. 'Freedom', as if sheltering from a lethal virus is some authoritarian oppression. Societies run by these ideas don't survive. https://t.co/CzSOyxoiOW
#auspol interesting how quickly Oz shifted to the inevitability of endemicity, after being so strong on elimination in 2020. Strategic slippage, driven by economic 'live with the virus' thinkers, expert at continuously re-disguising their true aims. https://t.co/WAuk0t55ZN
Once we have an idea of the origin, let's move on to how some of the richest nations on Earth knew the virus was coming, and did nothing about it until hundreds of thousands of their own citizens were dead. https://t.co/it01IQSwEd
#auspol it's extremely frustrating, at age 53, to have waited weeks for the TGA and ATAGI to follow the European example and set the AZ age cut-off at 60, with clear UK data in particular showing the 50-59 age group to be at increased risk. 1/2
And then to watch @abc730 tonight with a story from @normanswan, with some of our leading experts arguing exactly the same thing. A week after I'd given in waiting and had my first AZ dose.
#auspol #covid19 "This race between the vaccines and the virus, it isn't over yet." Matt Hancock. Vaccination is orders of magnitude slower than viral spread. The danger of having a single-pronged pandemic strategy, based on vaccines. https://t.co/fohR7TBR9s
@KateEMcCann sorry if I missed it, but which vaccine did you get?
#covid19 #auspol maybe only half of half of America is fully vaccinated. Gives some perspective to the feeling that 'normal life' is returning in the rest of the world. If this were a world map, nearly all of it would be shades of red. https://t.co/cuTMqXJ6Gr
@gvconroy hey, in your fine piece for the ABC on AZ and clots, can you expand on what 'peak time' means, of 6 to 14 days? Does that mean most clots have occurred in that time period, after the first dose?
Credit where it's due, this really should be called the Reagan-Thatcher pandemic. The architects of societies of such lunatic individualism that the basic act of sheltering from a lethal virus is seen as oppression. https://t.co/Zu41E0dCNc
#covid19 #auspol superb numbers. https://t.co/U7ZUA0KxE2
#auspol Australia would find it a lot easier to face reality without the ICEG. https://t.co/qITi5a49I8
Climate change. The volume of combustion gases humanity has released into the atmosphere in the past two-and-a-half centuries; I think it hasn't really registered with many the scale of what's occurred. Take the 2019 mega-fires in Australia as a reference point. 1/3
The volume of combustion gases released by those fires was staggering. But the volume of combustion gases released by humanity since the Industrial Revolution? More than 100 times that released by those fires, *every year*, for the past 263 years. 2/3
That means the world has been literally on fire, with a fire 100 times greater than the 2019 bushfires, EVERY YEAR for the past 263 years. How did we not notice that? Because the combustion happened inside. Internal combustion. Engines, furnaces. 3/3 https://t.co/lTPER8x2sU
Climate change is really humans consuming time. Using energy that took millions of years to accumulate, inside a few centuries. We focus on emissions, but those are symptoms, not causes. The cause of climate change is us wanting to be free of time and space. To be gods. https://t.co/EAKPAtoyd9
#covid19 #auspol many politicians around the world now talking about a 'race' between the vaccines and the virus. Isn't it obvious that this framing removes every public health tool, apart from vaccines? Narratives reveal agendas. https://t.co/CNKj5l2hXS
#covid19 #auspol will the TGA/ATAGI push the AZ cut-off age to 60 this week? Wouldn't stall the rollout too significantly, and the data has been suggesting this for quite some time.
@normanswan @teegstar is there any research on how long a person can delay a second dose? For example, if somebody has had AZ now, but wanted to wait until there's mRNA vaccine supply later in the year, for dose 2? So several months, potentially.
A prominent Australian infectious diseases expert was on radio this morning, being quite cavalier about the chance of children becoming infected in Australia. Does most of them little harm etc. None of this would get ethics approval for even undergraduate research. https://t.co/FBwWZ95kDZ
It's cute that a member of the LNP still believes in society. Mustn't have got the memo about it being replaced by an Economy. https://t.co/GRdScVLZvE
#auspol #covid19 this is the debate we need to have. Experts lining up either side of a line here, between vaccinating and letting the virus circulate, and continuing to rigorously control transmission alongside vaccination. https://t.co/9C3mgTSEBZ
#covid19 #auspol people at work in their early-40s, low risk for Covid, got Pfizer jabs last week. Second at start of July, fully vaccinated inside 3 weeks. Full protection through bulk of the winter. Over-50s in the office, higher risk for Covid, no 2nd jabs until Spring.
#covid19 #auspol Anybody see a TGA update today?
#covid19 #auspol dedicated quarantine facilities have 100% efficacy against all variants of Covid. And can be made locally with 12th century technology.
Tonight I'm gonna party like it's March 2021. https://t.co/d4EAe9UhvK
#covid19 #auspol when you use vaccines to try to avoid other public health measures, the public health problems reappear at the back door. https://t.co/2d0nZDLbcy
#auspol a century ago, the metric for successful business was the ability to pay a living wage. Really there's no such thing as 'business', just as there's no such thing as traffic. There are just customers, with or without money to spend. https://t.co/515JV7KMNQ
"Resilience has been built out of our health systems, and replaced by just-in-time systems designed to run at close to 100 per cent bed occupancy in normal times." Also the reason toilet paper sells out in outbreaks, blamed on 'panic buying'. https://t.co/KNaw101kTK
#auspol there is no such thing as a political 'centre', it's a myth used by conservatives to drag all politicians further to the Right. https://t.co/lB1Gc2P9x5
#auspol leaders and experts need to be asked right now if they plan to infect children and young adults widely, when opening up. Quite staggering that it's even contemplated. https://t.co/8wLhcdlY6S
#covid19 #auspol interesting to see the TGA unpack a bit more the onset of clotting. Most cases appear within two weeks of first dose, some that take longer are suspected to have occurred earlier, but were masked by co-morbidities or other factors. https://t.co/Azna9GCL2p
#covid19 #auspol the Delta variant will test just what 'proportionate' means in NSW. Until now it's clearly been political code for 'we don't do lockdowns'. https://t.co/ujLkUWYqu9
#covid19 #auspol dumbfounded by the ongoing advice on risk in this pandemic. Lots of patronising simplifications from supposed experts. 1/8
The risk to an individual of a clot with the AZ vaccine is tiny. That individual risk is used to frame a narrative that implies that this is the risk of clots to the community, not the individual. At the population level, the risk of a clot becomes? Actual clotS. Plural. 2/8
On current numbers, and rolling out only to those over 50 or 60, about 10-20 people per million vaccinated. So anything from 50-100 people who *will develop* clots. Not have a tiny risk of clots, will DEVELOP clots. 3/8
Of these, some will die. Many will be critically ill. This is known, even calculable. In public narratives, all we hear is that the risk of a clot is tiny (individual risk), which is irrelevant to the population-level risk that government and experts work with. 4/8
This is done, again, to create an impression this is a tiny problem. Irrational to be concerned about it, etc. At the same time, risk is described only in terms of likelihood, with consequence or impact omitted. With those, risk is medium at best. Basic risk management fail. 5/8
The public IS factoring in impact. For this sin - doing basic risk management - they're regularly mocked as 'hesitant', as if they're naive and overly anxious about such 'tiny' risks. Any company who found a medium risk and called it insignificant would be deemed negligent. 6/8
If government and advisers won't be honest and say 'yes some of you will become critically ill, and some may die' - if they're HESITANT to say that - then whose hesitancy is ethical here? Theirs or the public's? 7/8
So far more people have died from the vaccine than from Covid in 2021, in Australia. Is that good public policy? If we're saying outbreaks of Covid are immiment, and this will change the risk profile, why aren't we preventing them? Where's the PPE, new quarantine, masks? Etc. 8/8
#QandA small business as the backbone of modern economies is the reason they have little resilience. They can't stop for a day to avoid a lethal virus without bankruptcy, wages and conditions flatline. The hobby farmers of business.
#QandA what an underwhelming panel. And Australian business demonstrating again its lack of imagination, responsibility and its rent-seeking laziness.
#auspol saw multiple leading journalists run the line yesterday (again) that NSW somehow does public health differently. It's the job of journalists to take that sort of spin and unravel it.
#auspol #covid19 let's be really clear what this decision means. The public and some experts agitated for this for many weeks, and were ignored. The public was right, again. If you're an expert who didn't agitate for this, why didn't you? https://t.co/kIyL9GGyOa
#auspol #covid19 the world already struggled with anti-vaxxers. Imagine the damage that's been done to future vaccination campaigns by the persistence with a clearly risky product, which has traumatised and infuriated even those strongly pro-vax. 1/3 https://t.co/mDTatE9R29
Experts have often got behind the AZ shot because they fear the pandemic will otherwise overwhelm us. But there was another option, to collectively pressure governments to increase and strengthen other public health measures. 2/3
As it is they've given support to the economic forces in our societies that want to use vaccines as a way to bypass ongoing public health action. And in the process possibly critically damaged long-term faith in vaccines. 3/3
#auspol let's place a marker in the sand right now. This data on 2nd dose AZ suggests a problem. The TGA, ATAGI and government ignored these early signs for 50-59 for the first dose. I wonder whether we can be ahead of the curve this time, for once. https://t.co/I6hSgVVC7H
#auspol #covid19 This is the risk assessment ATAGI used when first recommending use of AZ in Australia. The critical thing that I haven't seen mentioned is, at no time was the risk of an outbreak actually estimated. 1/3 https://t.co/y6Qc3AXjnK
The risk assessment scenarios all assume that an outbreak has already occurred. There's no assessment of the risks of an actual outbreak, at all. So an assumption of inevitability. That shifts the whole risk profile. 2/3
If we had assessed the risk of virus entering the country - an outbreak - we may have had to remediate quarantine and PPE, for example. Perhaps that's why it wasn't done. We can still strongly shift the risk assessment by addressing those things. 3/3
#auspol NSW fires up the gold standard again. I think that may even be a non-N95 mask. https://t.co/wd6DXjIYsM
#auspol how do you have a lockdown, without having a lockdown? By asking the public to do it for you. https://t.co/6K4Ea5VbOa
#auspol I've had first dose AZ, just as context. This isn't a pro-vax/anti-vax question for me, or even pro-AZ/anti-AZ. Twitter turns everything into debating binaries. It's about public health strategy. 1/7 https://t.co/vj7QfwoECO
This idea, for example, about how we need to keep using AZ because otherwise (apparently) the country will be overrun by Covid. Why did we go from more than a year of grit and determination to keep Covid out, to suddenly believing outbreaks are inevitable? A dangerous shift. 2/7
NZ has refused this path. With calm determination it's listened to public concern and prioritised fairness and longer-term public buy-in. What damage are we doing to future vaccination campaigns in Oz by ramming a deeply unpopular vaccine into a pro-vax nation's arms? 3/7
The risk profile for our current strategy is predicated on an assumption that there will be outbreaks. There has been NO risk assessment on those outbreaks themselves. They're just assumed. Doing that assessment might force action on known problems, like leaky HQ. 4/7
Australia, like NZ, could put the strategic focus on preventing virus entering the country, while it rolls out the optimum vaccines. It could even stop arrivals completely, while it does that. It's only a few months until sufficient mRNA vaccine supply should be available. 5/7
The world is not racing ahead of us in some fairy tale 'opening up', another narrative used to justify the existing strategy. The pandemic is worse now than it was in 2020. Countries with rapid vaccination, like the UK and US, are being hammered by variants. 6/7
A pandemic is a marathon, not a sprint. Australia knew that in 2020. In 2021 it seems to feel that waiting a few months and shifting strategy to allow that will usher in some sort of apocalypse. The anti-lockdown/open up economic status quo folk are responsible. (not @drvyom) 7/7
#auspol #QandA and other similar formats end up stifling a productive clash of ideas by just providing a platform for speeches from different viewpoints. Not much interaction. The Pledge puts prominent advocates of viewpoints around a table and lets them interact. https://t.co/smBf1F6CBm
#covid19AUS #auspol a game the whole family can play. Take the expression 'we need to learn to live with X', and replace the X with: - Covid - paedophilia - Ebola - people smuggling - organised crime - welfare fraud - drugs. Why don't we laugh at people who say number 1?
#auspol #covid19 https://t.co/0habf8V8xZ
#auspol the problem here is the same experts told them the first dose was safe. https://t.co/WehFKn5v7U
#auspol #covid19 serious question. Do the words 'strongly encouraged' have any meaningful role in public health work? https://t.co/ggwDIa2TWC
#auspol I'm sure everyone will join me in 'strongly encouraging' the virus to go away in NSW. https://t.co/VAo0LKlucM
#auspol there are so many culture war bores on Twitter who refuse to believe this. https://t.co/7k6rcYzxmv
#auspol pop quiz. Should we 'learn to live with': A. this family, or B. a lethal pandemic pathogen? https://t.co/HBORuhmj7p
It's only the extraordinary genius of Gabriel Tarde that can really explain why the greatest existential threats to humanity are infinitesimally tiny. https://t.co/RdTxR7JKQv
#auspol extreme libertarian politics has no place in a pandemic. It slaughtered hundreds of thousands in the UK, US, Brazil and India, and now NSW's leaders describe their public health approach in libertarian, political terms. https://t.co/hirDvJFBmJ
#COVID19Aus Yep. Still to see experts here say whether they believe herd immunity is even an achievable thing in a modern, mobile population. Risk management suggests shutting this virus down with basic restrictions is the urgent need. https://t.co/KtVbjrlBLW
#auspol #covid19aus from day 1 politicians looked to medical expertise only, preferably pliable and able to be house-trained to support underlying political agendas. That lack of diverse expertise for this most complex of all human emergencies is being exposed as we go on. https://t.co/tBfjvuPq1s
#covid19 The problem with the idea of herd immunity is, humans don't live in herds. Every major city has an airport where you can contemplate this basic fact at your leisure. https://t.co/jwfWkFqsWY
#auspol remind me again why how fast Australia is vaccinating is some critical issue? Because we substituted 'opening borders' for 'ending the pandemic'? https://t.co/EXNVRT3KT8
Am a firm believer in the wisdom of crowds. An empirically-studied phenomenon. Another example, the apparently 'slow' vaccine rollout. That speed forces authorities to maintain other public health measures. Measures they'd love to drop.
#insiders 9-10 am Sunday, where the holier than thou Tweet for an hour about how they're not going to watch Insiders.
#insiders zoom out ffs. The WHO says the critical issue right now is that most of the world has no vaccine at all. And we obsess every single day about how fast we vaccinate here. A truly global strategy wouldn't even be vaccinating zero COVID countries AT ALL, at this stage.
#auspol @yaneerbaryam the same dimwits who've denied this for over a year now desperately trying to shift the metric to hospitalisations. 'We'll let people catch this, but vaccines will keep them out of hospital'. Criminal, lethal incompetence. https://t.co/3tuhj4R6N9
#auspol a measure of how stupid most pandemic discussion is, that we would seriously not laugh at the idea that vaccination is a meaningful tool to halt an outbreak already underway. https://t.co/0d4LZAsboo
What's the difference between a lockdown, and asking everybody to lockdown?
#auspol be immediately suspicious of those who paid no attention over the past 10-15 years as educational outcomes in Australian schools went backwards, now calling to get kids back in school in the middle of a pandemic, for the sake of their education.
#auspol #covid19australia I wonder if this will create a situation where an assessment will need to be made about just how long a person with 1st dose AZ can actually leave their 2nd dose, if they wait for an mRNA shot? https://t.co/ySGNGDV0HX
#auspol this is whack-a-mole. A high-risk strategic choice. When the word 'proportionate' is used, why does nobody ask 'proportionate to what'? With exponential functions, every part of the curve = 'out of control'. https://t.co/ARJRpSVvh6
#auspol #COVID19Aus National Cabinet to discuss vaccine hesitancy today. Reminds me of the public discussion on consent. Did anybody suggest that the answer to somebody hesitant to have sex was an ad campaign to persuade them? The public defeats pandemics, all flows from that.
#auspol no means no. First rule of consent. Sexual or medical. Vaccine 'hesitancy' isn't an ignorant public. It's a public having reasons for resisting something, and those reasons not being listened to. Their risk assessment is actually textbook, the expert narrative isn't. /1 https://t.co/xofKogB6L8
Broken record, when you factor in impact as well as likelihood, the risks from the AZ vaccine are medium. Not low, or tiny - those are likelihoods, minus impact. A medium risk IS hesitancy. Low risk is just do it. High risk is stop. Medium is, hmm, not sure. Hesitancy. /2
Seeing this situation as medium risk should change the national strategy. My hunch is it will continue to be paternalistic, won't consider the practical strategic consequences of a medium risk, and instead just try more ad campaigns to persuade the public, seen as a bit dim. /3
Only the public can defeat a pandemic. The first rule of all pandemics and public health. If you place your leaders and experts on one side, and the public on the other, it's game over. /4
There is no such thing as a pandemic expert, pandemics overflow all social and discipline boundaries. The public includes the leaders and experts. It's all of us, the only expertise to defeat a pandemic. Hesitancy is a clear symptom of us not understanding this. /end
#auspol a victory for coal farmers everywhere. https://t.co/EPWifMu1H8
#auspol and yet, somebody will be that 1 person. That's what the public is thinking. "Not me". It's not likely to be them (one half of risk), but if it is them, it's game over (other half of risk). https://t.co/wJFqJmh2ev
#auspol #COVID19Aus conservative governments began the pandemic not trying to prevent infection, but just making sure there were enough hospital beds for those infected. We've arrived back there again. /1 https://t.co/8ZmmWVqVIT
I saw even a leading Oz epidemiologist suggest hospitalisations are the key metric. Is this the first time in history even experts advocate widespread infection of people with a pathogen? How is this not unethical and outrageous? /2
Do we no longer have the stomach to fight existential fights? Are we all Neville Chamberlains now, looking to appease the enemy? /end
#auspol #COVID19Aus we must fight rampant stupidity, it kills people. Australia IS 'living with Covid', that's why we have all the protections in place. Like you wear oven mitts for cooking. https://t.co/lycjtVtsMy
#auspol #COVID19Aus the most urgent strategic need is for ongoing virus suppression, with vaccination alongside and second. Vaccination even at speed will be woefully insufficient alone to protect against Delta outbreaks. https://t.co/GVXdu6Z31f
#auspol #COVID19Aus a good article. However many of these other drugs are used where there is imminent harm to a patient. There is no imminent risk of contracting Covid for most in Australia. If we're saying there is, why is there still no risk assessment of border 'leakage'? https://t.co/VqS7hLrXtJ
#auspol because our strategy is to find people once they're already infected, rather than to prevent them from becoming infected. https://t.co/p6qkXKRlXm
#COVID19Aus @CrabbBrendan very disappointed to hear yet another Oz expert on radio tonight say that we need to move away from 'zero Covid' and accept that we will have some virus in Australia. That IS zero Covid. We're already 'living with Covid'. We're not letting it spread.
#auspol The tragedy that we didn't get to 'live with' it. https://t.co/lSWUHwTpvZ
#auspol #COVID19Aus the pandemic is a battle between the public and the pathogen. Neither of those is manipulable by any individual or group. All individuals are just spectators to that battle. Tolstoy saw that about war.
#auspol #COVID19Aus when the history of this pandemic is written, will you be a person who fought against infection, or a person who fought to keep the social status quo? https://t.co/Iddr1UctPt
#auspol #COVID19Aus the model (too flattering) the developed world is stumbling towards is continuous re-vaccination while allowing the virus to circulate. It takes serious time to develop and manufacture variations to vaccines, and then to re-vaccinate everybody. /1 https://t.co/B2r66bnF2J
Enough time that societies may be forced into continuous start-stop motions, which they ironically think continuous re-vaccination is the key to avoiding. We've seen already that it can take the best part of a year to vaccinate an entire country. /2
Add vaccine development time, and it's no progress from where we are right now. Prevention of transmission still the main game in town, no matter how much our economies and 'mental health' squeal. /end
#auspol and with school holidays imminent. When NSW has pulled this off before, the fact they did was taken as a sign of good management, rather than the absence of risk management. You only get so many rolls of the dice... https://t.co/pWwRz632oE
#auspol The Premier of NSW today again saying that her government resists lockdowns because it respects people's 'freedoms'. To me freedom includes freedom not to be infected with a lethal virus. But that to one side, why don't we.../1
...point out more often that the freedoms being spoken about are collective freedoms, not individual freedoms? The lockdowns these libertarian loons dread restrict SOCIAL ACTIVITY, not individual activity. Society and the State create the freedoms. /2
There are no free individuals. Freedom is intrinsically, definitively social. Collective action to protect us from a virus gives us the freedom to live without being infected. /end
#auspol anybody seen the Public Health Order for NSW that came into effect at 4pm today?
#auspol #COVID19Aus the 'non-essential activities' NSW most needs to abandon are the deliberations of NSW Cabinet. https://t.co/d96VDb3CKn
#auspol #COVID19Aus imagine the long, late nights in Macquarie Street, where government spin doctors agonise how to spin an imminent lockdown, while Kerry Chant bangs on the door and asks them to hurry. /1 https://t.co/eNMMxvunNN
'We're carrying the heaviest burden through HQ" is getting a bit tired and old. 'Proportionate' sent too many scrambling for the dictionary. Some sort of athletic or Olympic metaphor, like gold-medal long jumping viruses, might do.../2
...though disturbingly it would mean NSW has had to follow Victoria and use a lockdown to contain the variant. Obviously a need to spin that as NSW being better, in some way. Such wicked problems. /end
#auspol #COVID19Aus great response from @CrabbBrendan to the question on 7.30 last night, about whether NSW is paving the way to us all living with Covid. "I don't think anybody wants to live with Covid." (possibly paraphrasing, going on memory.) /1
When that question is asked, it could be answered with a series of counter-questions? Like: Can you explain what that means? Exactly how much virus should we live with, and how will we regulate its amount? We already have some cases, how many more did you have in mind? /2
Will the virus be lived with equally across all socio-economic groups? How many children should we infect? Are you saying live with the virus before we're all vaccinated? Aren't we already living with it, isn't that our strategy and why Oz has pretty much normal life? Etc. /end
#auspol #COVID19Aus something rarely noted in this pandemic is that workplaces are consistently exempted from Covid safety requirements. Take the NSW Public Health Order released yesterday: /1
Same basic text as the entire pandemic: "When calculating both the space available for each person on premises and the number of persons on the premises, the following persons are not to be included in the calculations-... /2
...(a) a person engaged in work on the premises for the occupier of the premises...". /end
A fish rots from the head. https://t.co/Sv76w3P21D
#auspol listening to the up-talking BS from the NSW Premier. Be 'cautious' with the virus. Can't see it. Unbefuckinglievable.
#auspol #covid19aus Sydney NOT locked down. Spot the difference, to a lockdown. Whack-a-mole costs more, harms more people, creates even greater restrictions on freedom. https://t.co/AqRUNr9YZv
#auspol this whole pandemic the righteous have called this 'panic buying'. Really the crowd (public) is just telling the humble observer what's coming. When a just-in-time supply chain meets a public planning to live not just-in-time, for a while. https://t.co/8wSR9OBBEF
#auspol #COVID19nsw The Prime Minister: NSW shows the way to contact trace your way out of an outbreak without using lockdowns. The same nonsensical binary for more than a year. Contact tracing works up to a certain number of cases. After that it's exponentially overwhelmed.
#auspol the same script across the world, coming to Oz now too. Always a new flavour of 'live with the virus'. The same people and strategy as those who choose to live with climate change. Apologists for the privileged status quo. https://t.co/0TRO5FtaV7
#auspol #COVID19nsw public health measures form an integrated system. Conservatives have extracted one tool - contact tracing - and weaponised it, portraying it (like vaccination) as a cure-all. That same silver bullet thinking is the problem, the virus will win that game. https://t.co/nkrytuzJgk
Contact tracing and vaccines so far tried as silver bullet fixes for the pandemic. Like hoping a bunch of flowers will paper over a dysfunctional relationship. Why don't people see that a pandemic is a complex socio-political event, not a temporary interruption to the status quo? https://t.co/CkTuMctBdA
#auspol #COVID19Aus join us tomorrow when Peter gives tips on painting and decorating, another area he has no knowledge of or experience in. https://t.co/7x9X2E0dAC
#auspol #COVID19 the longer a pandemic goes on, the less it becomes about science. In fact it's never really about science. A pandemic is a social phenomenon, driven by patterns of interaction between people. 1/
Science can help understand these patterns and treat the sick, but the patterns themselves are produced by everybody, including scientists. There's no vantage point on the patterns, society is a percolation of social transactions including every single person. 2/
There is a science as well of social interaction. But it isn't a vantage point either, just part of the percolating mix. Politics is broader, but again, is not a vantage point. There are no vantage points. 3/
As a pandemic continues, every attempt to construct or claim a vantage point upon it gradually collapses. It exposes underlying assumptions and beliefs. Scientist's own political views come more to the fore, with the pathogen overflowing all discipline boundaries. 4/
Political boundaries eventually collapse as well, and the military is often brought in as a last-ditch attempt to create that illusive vantage point. It doesn't work. 5/
Ultimately the battle becomes (and always was) a 2-horse race. The pathogen, and the public. The public includes all expertise and political leadership. The crowd. Only the crowd defeats a pandemic, an uncontrollable mixture with, again, no possible vantage point. 6/
Pandemics reboot society. All of it. They're the on/off switch. No matter what we think, or feel, the outcome is not one we or anybody can personally control. All hierarchies eventually dissolve. We can laughably try to re-start 'normal' life mid-pandemic. Traffic lights, etc. 7/
None of that will work. Our hubris will have waves of optimism, smashed by new waves of death. As with Tolstoy's characters in War and Peace, we can only each hope that the percolating mixture doesn't consume us individually. And resist all the vantage point bullies. end/
#auspol #covid19nsw NSW Health doing fantastic work. But why is it acceptable that the Premier can still stand there every day and quite explicitly say a priority is 'keeping the Economy open'? Does anybody seriously still believe the Economy is a separate thing to the people?
#auspol ultimately you need X amount of social restriction to quell an outbreak. You either apply it immediately ('lockdown'), or spread it out over days/weeks/months. What differs is the time scale, though the second approach is more expensive, restrictive and harms more people. https://t.co/cAHILuBw1e
Transmission chains identified early, so at the moment there is some support for the idea that TTI is the proportionate response, + masks. But 900 customers in a salon with 3 infected stylists - that sort of thing is uh oh.
#covid19 #auspol pandemics about the only thing in all of history that alter the distribution of wealth. https://t.co/jrqJqOBExq
#covid19 Pandemics kill orders of magnitude more people than wars. You can spot a privileged person by their furious desire to get an OS holiday back, in the middle of a pandemic. Like demanding a jaunt to Vietnam in 1973, or the Somme in 1916. https://t.co/F4ftjgMppU
#covid19aus you can lock down a city to prevent people becoming infected. Or you can do it a suburb at a time, as they become infected. Hard to see the superiority of the latter. https://t.co/0E6NmzKqfu
#auspol #covid19aus haven't seen the mobility data in a while. https://t.co/GB0Z3Wl9iv
#COVID19nsw #auspol even grown-ups get to play colouring-in. Another day where we wait to see if not locking down just leads to locking down, but one LGA at a time. 1/ https://t.co/DAYlamS0Tv
'Lockdown' isn't a public health term. It's a political term. Containing the virus requires restriction of social activity. You either do it fast, by restricting most of it in one go. Or slowly, by restricting activity a piece at a time. 2/
The second 'proportionate' approach costs more, infects more people and ultimately creates more restrictions on social activity, when you factor in the much extended time the action is needed. 3/end
#covid19 #auspol it's nice to see this data getting the attention it deserves. Showing comprehensive 'lock-down' action is cheaper, faster, harms the fewest people and restricts 'freedoms' the least. 1/ https://t.co/N2FTr3mIcy
One thing the opposing 'proportionate' approach does that is less commented on is apply restrictions disproportionately to different social groups. The virus knows no geographical boundaries, but 'proportionate' restrictions do. 2/
A pandemic becomes then not a collective public challenge, but a stigma and burden carried more by those unlucky enough to get outbreaks. More broadly, it paints a pandemic as something that happens in tiny pockets, inside a wider 'normal' life. 3/
In reality, normal life is gone in a pandemic, and it's dangerously delusional to try to live normally a suburb at a time. Data shows, again, that it's cheaper, faster, and ultimately LESS restrictive if all of us down tools when there's an outbreak. 4/end
#COVID19Aus #auspol the dangerous delusion of maps. LGAs, like suburbs, are not physically bounded locations. They're administrative constructs. 'Ring-fencing' these rarely works, for that reason - beneath those boundaries, social transactions are city-wide. https://t.co/k1F7nzwISF
#auspol #COVID19Aus watching the NSW presser. Offering this to help with the 'proportionate' response. Rate of growth proportional to existing value. Exponential. Not linear. https://t.co/NkX7hbYcFn
#auspol the idea that you have contact tracing OR lockdowns was an idiot idea when first weaponised by political spin a year ago. More lethally idiot now. How have more prominent voices not challenged this long before now? Asleep at the wheel. https://t.co/9LJWSxx02N
#auspol @normanswan an article from the SMH last year revealed NSW Cabinet deliberations about 'lockdowns'. Ministers choosing random lockdown-trigger figures, like 250 cases/day, divorced from any public health advice. https://t.co/EeFegxhrmn
#auspol #covid19aus @normanswan this article surprisingly attracted very little interest at the time. It shows a NSW Cabinet completely dismissive of public health advice. We were warned. https://t.co/LXDytpOSnc
#auspol #COVID19Aus the people I feel most for are those doing essential work, who never get to shelter. Who have to carry on risking infection, to keep society's lights on. I've not had a single day away from work the entire pandemic, even in the middle of lockdowns. https://t.co/DjM02rxsdz
#covid19aus I'm certain the abysmal numbers in the double-dose data is our choice of AZ. 12 weeks between doses is going to make that number lag terribly. https://t.co/NU13J7ZhAm
#auspol #covid19nsw still the same mistaken belief in 'panic buying'. People aren't panicking, they're preparing. Nobody wants to go to the supermarket with a lethal virus circulating in the community. https://t.co/BTpGRprPNH
#covid19nsw Those in the regions who have travelled to Greater Sydney since 21 June required to isolate for 14 days. Not seen anything about whether their family members must now do the same?
#auspol #covid19aus Covid 1, libertarian political bullshit 0. Given Covid comprehensively smashed the libertarian teams in the US, UK, Brazil and India, it's not clear why NSW felt selecting a live with the virus team would work better here. https://t.co/c6iS3Omhw4
#auspol #covid19 it's amazing that the same experiences, repeated multiple times, teach us nothing. Symptomatic of us using our 'normal' life thinking to try to understand a pandemic, the thinking that actually created the pandemic. About toilet paper.../1 https://t.co/NMjo2IVCxg
This isn't 'panic buying'. Logistics experts have said (but aren't listened to) multiple times that this is the result of a too-lean, just-in-time supply chain. Another facet of our gig economies, engineered to maximise profit and minimise resilience. /2
Every time we've had a major outbreak, this has also been a 100% reliable indicator of what's about to occur. Crowds are wise, in the right situations, smarter than anybody in them. Google the research on this, collective intelligence, crowd wisdom. /3
Crowds have hugely supported strong virus suppression as well. What idiot libertarian political thinkers call 'living under the doonah', has actually turned out to be the cheapest, most effective and least restrictive of all Covid methodologies. Again, the crowd was wiser. /4
This pandemic will only be defeated when we finally realise that what we call the 'Economy' is only a politico-statistical construct, designed to rationalise existing hierarchies while bypassing traditional political scrutiny. /5
Pseudo-objective numbers that make society look like a manageable machine, just needing to be tweaked here and there. The Economy is just a tiny subset of commercial transactions in society, extrapolated to become all of society. /6
All actual wealth is just the people. Why preventing them from becoming infected and providing them with financial assistance has created an economic boom, where tried. Only a death cult talks about 'balancing' the Economy against public health. /end
#auspol why have (many) experts and journalists alike not pointed out long before now, that the NSW 'proportionate' idea is in direct contradiction to WHO advice, from the beginning of the pandemic, to 'go hard, and go early'?
#insiders maybe after 18 months somebody might point out that 'lockdown' isn't even a public health term. It's a weaponised political term. And we're already 'living with the virus', enough of that Trojan Horse for a switch to a mitigation strategy. Won't work.
#auspol #insiders every time somebody says 'we need to learn to live with Covid', ask them what it is we've all been doing for the past 18 months. What they really mean is let it rip. Terrorists.
Progress will be us questioning what 'the Economy' actually is. We give it an agency, but don't question that agency.
#auspol the war metaphor has been criticised, when used. It's hard to know why, pandemics kill many, many more people than wars do. We mobilise for the long-haul fight if it's a war. We whine about missed trips to Bali when it's a pandemic. Citizens now customers. https://t.co/AJKcMdU1ui
#auspol sigh, unless we can vaccinate at exponential speed, vaccination won't be the solution. Longer term it will be a strong part of any solution, but for now controlling transmission is the critical task. While we vaccinate. https://t.co/lRCUNV4RHj
#covid19aus a global emergency, which goes away if people stay home. Worth pondering.
#auspol #covid19 we need leaders to stop promising 'back to normal' and start talking about a prolonged, collective struggle. https://t.co/BpXKODN7wt
#auspol #covid19 when we turned our societies into economies, they lost the resilience to do the most basic act. Taking shelter. If societies had that resilience, to allow most to stay home for weeks, the pandemic would never have happened. The 'Economy' doesn't allow it. /1 https://t.co/fwNzCI3dXa
What we call the Economy is really the continual displacement of people and things from their 'home'. Whether it's the daily commute, or the international circulation of goods and people, the Economy is really code for movement. And movement in turn displaces, literally. /2
That displacement is political. The old saying, a person's home is their castle. Forcing the continuous displacement of people and goods is designed to remove that sovereignty from peoples' lives. 'Go where the jobs are'. /3
Many of us sit in cars, buses, trains or planes for hours every day. Just to 'get to work', and home again. The separation of work from where you live is a defining feature of the Economy. Intuitively we know this is a disempowerment.../4
...because millions then vote for parties that promise 'strong border protection'. Our sense of sovereign space, our idea of 'home', homes continually weakened by economic displacement, has been weaponised into nationalism. /5
This feeling of a loss of sovereignty, of an idea of home, begins with our 'job'. A job is work, divorced from location. Meanwhile he beauty of where we live declines as roads in particular come to dominate, to maximise economic flow of goods and people. /6
This drives us to travel obsessively, to try to find again the beauty of what we once had in our own locations. The travel industry is a major opposition to public health action in this pandemic. Many say the basic act of sheltering in their own home now causes mental illness. /7
The real illness here is what we call The Economy. A pandemic that would not have started if our social lives had the resilience of not needing to move everywhere to do the basic acts of survival. Movement is displacement, political dispossession. /end
@CrabbBrendan @profmiketoole #covid19 this seems the danger in allowing virus to continue to circulate widely, amongst vaccinated people. Something much of the developed world seems determined to do. https://t.co/q4bd1MNNTr
@dgurdasani1 @DrZoeHyde https://t.co/vsoRFVeOqv
#auspol @RebelWilson the obvious question is, what's the alternative? Every country who hasn't done this has been forced into it eventually. Or they've just let hundreds of thousands die. https://t.co/ruowwYe2QB
#auspol by vaccinating off a zero community transmission base, Australia is among a handful of countries leading the world's pandemic response. You must do both. https://t.co/DfAabWMKEZ
#auspol #covd19 vaccine passports carry the assumption that a pandemic can carry on merrily alongside vaccinated people, going about their normal lives. This should strike us as dangerously perverse. The key to beating a pandemic is accepting you’re in it.
#covid19 a symptom of privileged societies out of touch with basic realities is their tendency to label any sort of analysis as negativity. Life isn’t supposed to have existential problems by this logic, just good times. Why even the tiniest challenge triggers mental illness. https://t.co/5Jntnb9kd6
#covid19 all pandemics are really about territory. About ‘home’. Destruction of the homes of living things, by ungrounded cultures of obsessive travel. Cultures whose own homes are increasingly jet planes and hotels. We need to ‘come in to land’. https://t.co/c8MLhu3pEC
#auspol aged care isn’t just a sector of the Australian economy. Without immigration, the entire continent is just an aged care home. https://t.co/g6UV86GZHF
#covid19 #auspol has anybody told Singapore that the definition of pandemic is that it’s an international event? You can’t end it at home. You can’t live with a pandemic virus as if it’s an endemic virus. You have to make it an endemic virus. https://t.co/x0QRhXK9Hw
#covid19 #auspol many who argue against public health action against Covid use influenza as the example of how we should 'live with' a virus. We didn't live with flu last year either. There's nothing necessary about living with any dangerous virus. https://t.co/YXfxRO1QjQ
#auspol #COVID19nsw workplaces a critical risk. Employers not bound by the public health orders on how many battery hens they cram into cubicle farms. Many telling staff they can't work from home, and to pay for their own masks. https://t.co/mzf1At6TJw
#auspol #covid19 watching the UK news is a jaw-dropping experience of seeing the regulatory capture of democracy by venal corporate interests, in real time. /1 https://t.co/1JSpOEODdE https://t.co/eRUZ2jXitZ
A story about the apparent disgrace of sending 250,000 students into isolation after COVID outbreaks in schools, because ‘only 9000 were actually infected’. Only! /2
In the same bulletin, CEOs given quarantine exemptions to sign major business deals to help the UK economy. And employers urged to allow workers to finish work early so they can watch a fucking soccer game. /3
So you can give people time off work to watch a soccer game, but you can’t give children time off school to avoid infection by a lethal pathogen. CEOs can go and infect other people, and conservative MPs argue to remove even basic social distancing, to ‘save business’. /4
Choose your side here, history is watching. Be on the side of the regulatory capture pirates, who for 18 months have tried every rhetorical and political trick to prevent effective public health action against a pandemic, and are now happily infecting children as well. /5
Or call this venal, lethal scum out for the human shit they are. They’re running rings around our democracies with their highly-paid spin masters, and are the same smegma incinerating the planet at the same time, to avoid climate change action. /6
Nothing is allowed to stand in the way of their regular flow of profits. They’re INFECTING CHILDREN WITH A PANDEMIC VIRUS, did I mention that? Draw a line in the sand here people, civilisation is at stake. /end #
#auspol #covid19aus NSW planning for the next term, clearly making noises about a mitigation strategy for schools, while the strategy for the wider community is elimination. Not only contradictory, schools will become engine rooms of spread in the community, but also unethical. https://t.co/XtV9xagA9R
#covid19aus #auspol tens of billions are being spent on transport projects in major cities. Few begin with the basic assumptions. Why do we need so much transport? Why do people require so much mobility to undertake basic everyday life? /1 https://t.co/zkwhGP1bSW
Imagine that money being used to develop new models of decentralised work, people working from home, neighbourhoods strengthened so that they’re no longer just overnight carparks for commuting workers. /2
Conservative governments love transport projects. We don’t often question why, everybody seems to share the assumption that it’s normal for people to need to move so extensively every day. Meanwhile our living spaces outside major transport hubs wither on the vine. /3
They love these projects because ‘business’, rarely defined, is really the process of gradually stripping away all territorial boundaries, to facilitate the free movement of goods and people. This leads to incredibly fragile social environments…/4
… where the basic supply of everyday goods and services requires just-in-time supply chains, ferrying along these transport routes. Any interruption to these routes means that people become unable to do basic things like eat or buy other groceries. /5
At the same time work itself has become more fragile, the gig economy. Workers not only commute to their work every day, that work itself - their job – can change from one day to the next. /6
Not only do households rely upon fragile supply chains, keeping little in reserve for emergencies, but financially they also have increasingly less capacity to stop work in an emergency. I’ve Tweeted before that this is I think the actual cause of the pandemic. /7
Those strenuously pushing to get economies reopen again are strengthening the very mechanism that created the pandemic in the first place. They will stop at nothing to get everything moving again, including killing millions of people and infecting children. /end
#covid19aus #auspol I mean, this is fine. But as always there's that 'living with the virus' subtext, where we whack-a-mole it while trying to live 'normal' lives in the midst of a pandemic. Like a holiday to the Somme in 1916. https://t.co/ofQ8imdxgT
#auspol #covid19aus we have to challenge the ridiculous idea that Australia is now (apparently) lagging the rest of the world. The extreme narrowing of public health strategy towards speed vaccination as the metric of success. /1 https://t.co/QUJt7SJXoh
Take a look. You'll struggle to differentiate the Australian line from the X-axis. Laughable to see places like the US and UK seriously described as now ahead of us, unless nearly a million deaths between them is a footnote in your thinking. /2 https://t.co/sJHb5e2Y0r
Australia's vaccination is slow, mostly because of lack of supply. Like most of the rest of the world, struggling to get vaccine doses from the great vaccine-hogging pigs in the UK and US. /3
The countries who will 'win' here will do two things. Control transmission, and vaccinate. In that order of priority. The US and UK are entirely reliant upon vaccines ending their outbreaks. That's already failing, the UK in a 3rd wave, vaccination stalling in the US. /4
If that mono-dimensional strategy of using vaccines as treatments rather than preventative measures fails for them, they have nothing to fall back on. No appetite for basic public health measures, populations whipped into a frenzy of lockdown-hatred. Screwed. /5
Politicians encouraged people to think that vaccines will end the pandemic, and articles like this are written with that assumption. It was a lie, and makes all of this catastrophism about Australia's position ridiculous. /6
Take a reality check. Don't read national assessments of how everybody is going, read what the WHO say. There's none of this developed world's wet dream of a couple of quick jabs and then back to Ibiza. /end
#covid19 #auspol extraordinary paper in Nature highlighting that we should be listening to a much wider range of expertise in a pandemic. A study of patterns of movement in Colombian cities during the pandemic, triangulated against socio-economic factors. /1
For starters, look at the way schools drive social mobility. Nothing else comes close as a driver of people mixing. Remembering that schools are also the areas of life most governments are most casual with in this pandemic. Thousands of children becoming infected every week. /2 https://t.co/EfoHEY44U1
Prior to lockdown, wealthy areas have greater mobility than poor areas. When restrictions are applied, that mobility is much more elastic than that in poor areas, who need to keep moving for work. /3 https://t.co/y4uSwGkAJG
For partial lockdown, look at the greater dispersion of points, corresponding with different strategies applied by different localities. A critical finding of the research is that even in lockdown, mobility continues. Borders and boundaries are administrative constructs. /end https://t.co/XCcVYWC7JV
#covid19 #auspol there are no ‘tracks’. Left to itself a virus can’t move anywhere. People are its transport. People mixing and moving. Usually ‘economically’. https://t.co/vTLSLnFXHy
#auspol #covid19aus every day I ponder the past 30 years of almost national emergency action to stop a single refugee getting here by boat, contrasted with the apparent emergency of us needing to be able to travel freely across everybody else's borders. https://t.co/5blBr5r8Hf