August 2021
Complete authored posts and demonstrable self-threads.
#covid19nsw #auspol both 70 and 80% figures are insufficient coverage if it’s adults-only, isn’t that right @stephenjduckett?
#covid19nsw Government incompetence is what brought AZ back into play in NSW in the risk calculations, cynics would wonder if that’s the reason no further restrictions are being added. The first clotting incidents will be interesting for the public narrative, if even reported.
#auspol #covid19aus the genius of conservative politics (again) now has us quibbling over single numbers as some sort of pandemic success measure. Just as they transformed society and politics into a handful of statistical measures they call the Economy. https://t.co/ulXEXmjVUG
@normanswan @CrabbBrendan @profesterman this is interesting? https://t.co/9LOnUNAp0H
@stephenjduckett not seeing much commentary on this. https://t.co/9LOnUNAp0H
@sallymcmanus #auspol #covid19aus not sure which union covers contact tracers, but I bet if somebody were to look at their working conditions right now in NSW, we’d see the slavery saving the NSW Government’s flimsy Covid strategy from total collapse.
@auspol #covid19aus Dear ABC, if you're reading. Please ask Fran Kelly to stop dishing up Dorothy Dixers to guests, inviting them to blame ATAGI for the government's vaccine rollout.
@auspol #covid19aus conservative voters (including among experts) first mythologised mitigation (as opposed to elimination). Then contact tracing. Then vaccination. Then vaccination with AZ. https://t.co/7s7PK8zV36
#covid19nsw #auspol The Premier says the expert advice she's received from NSW Health and experts at National Cabinet is that Covid isn't a problem for those under 20. Let's release that advice, hey? Because right now it (if it exists) contradicts advice from across the globe.
#covid19 any paediatric folk know this obvious specialist? As an aside, I've discovered that those who refer to the 'Fat Emperor' are usually cognitively damaged. https://t.co/iQVXxfn4xi
#covid19aus GPs in my (regional) area apparently giving AZ recipients the choice of 8 or 12-week gaps to the second dose. While UK data suggests around 8 weeks may in fact be the sweet spot for the 2nd dose, it’s interesting that regional areas already moving to a choice.
#covid19 it’s all in the phrase. ‘My freedom’. Nobody has individual freedom, didn’t anybody read Robinson Crusoe? On your own life is slavery, just to survive. https://t.co/lTwG0gBGOl
#covid19aus #auspol we urgently need to sit our top political journalists down in a room with our top public health people for even half a day, so we don’t get this continuous barrage of un-researched confusion every single day. https://t.co/vdE2gBrIK4
#auspol #covid19aus when I was a teacher, some staff had kids climbing the walls while the classroom next door was quietly learning. I’m sure the staff with kids climbing the walls thought it was a resounding success that they at least kept them in the room. https://t.co/zUUZgPh3nO
#auspol #covid19aus I suggest we need a new ‘public health passport’, whereby politicians and journalists get no access to press conferences or decision-making until they have a basic understanding of public health principles.
#auspol #covid19aus modern conservatives have a rat cunning. Watch them daily steer Australia away from an elimination strategy, using the NSW and Queensland outbreaks as smokescreens, towards the idiot UK strategy. Let virus spread, use vaccines to try to stop it.
#auspol the bully pulpit is strong in this one. It's infuriating to those in bully pulpits to see others with expertise get a word in, in the public conversation. Still remembering it on Q&A. https://t.co/IW0rrWwJ62
#auspol #covid19aus I think it's only those with no understanding of basic exponential maths who think regular 100-200 cases per day (each of which may infect 8 others, or more) is something 'under control'. https://t.co/T0ebGkouZP
#auspol @profesterman @CrabbBrendan the CHO repeated this today. Why is there an assumption that Covid will achieve a steady-state endemicity? And that even if it did, it would be a relatively harmless one? Malaria is endemic. https://t.co/gn8xLK8psd
#auspol #covid19aus A beautiful representation of the spread going on. Fascinating and alarming to compare various versions of it. Proves yet again that you don't get to choose how hard to lockdown, you just get to choose how long you take to do it. And how many die. https://t.co/e3qWBsVXCC
#auspol #covid19 for all modelling and government reports, people get lost in the details, and ignore the framing. This report just operationalises National Cabinet’s 4-stage strategy for pandemic exit. It’s not advice on how to best exit the pandemic. /1 https://t.co/82575yinQ0
The clear (and surrendering) assumption of the National Cabinet plan is that Covid will become endemic. It ran up the white flag, with potentially catastrophic future outcomes. The assumption that an endemic Covid will be relatively mild and controllable has no basis. /2
Endemic disease is a multi-generational, enormous cost, in lives and resources, for any society. It’s a decision to embed a new, potentially highly dangerous, ongoing disease in practical perpetuity. A huge scientific and moral decision. Has attracted almost zero scrutiny. /3
For most, flu doesn’t seem too scary. Kills mostly the old and vulnerable. Yes the odd epidemic and pandemic, but not often in our lifetimes. The ‘just like the flu’ assumption for endemic Covid again has no theoretical or historical justification. /4
Endemic Covid could be like malaria, or even worse. Some estimate malaria has killed half of all humans who have ever lived, up to 50 billion deaths. Infectious diseases form complex ecological systems, enormously unpredictable and uncontrollable. /5
Allowing widespread transmission of Covid among the vaccinated is, many virologists say, about the most stupidly dangerous thing societies could be doing. It maximises opportunity for evolution to more lethal and transmissible variants. And yet it’s now our strategy. /6
It’s most of the world’s strategy. It could result in wave after wave of epidemics of lethal variants, for years into the future. None of this is precisely controllable. The only risk management approach is elimination of Covid, so as not to roll the dice of endemicity. /end
@auspol #covid19aus the single most important decision about this pandemic, to accept that Covid will become an endemic disease, attracted not one single criticism or even comment in release of the national strategy. Please read this. https://t.co/0jb8aVWjLy
#covid19aus #auspol At least one expert asking why we make the public health measures the problem, and not the virus. “I think the big focus should be protecting yourselves from harm and spreading it to your loved ones, not just getting out of lockdown.” https://t.co/maN40zvLF0
#auspol your chance of being a billionaire in Australia is about 1 in 700,000. It doesn’t stop economic zealots running the country with that as the defining rationale for the Economy. https://t.co/rS4vzW8SFH
#auspol #covid19aus the 70-80% target clearly well short of what’s needed. So the resurgence of the mitigation ‘live with the virus’ death cult continues. Meanwhile the public daily encouraged to think and feel those targets mean freedom. https://t.co/WCWxNvcxCM
#COVID19nsw #auspol when asked why the numbers in NSW aren't going down, the Premier blames - the people. No clearer proof of the direct conflict of interest in a political libertarian running for public office.
@covid19nsw #auspol I'm guessing GPs in regional areas of NSW offering second AZ doses at 4 weeks is just their individual judgement of the situation in the State? Not a wider NSW Health judgement call of the situation in the State?
COVID-19: Double-jabbed are half as likely to be infected with coronavirus, study finds | UK News | Sky News https://t.co/9bCavTbxju
#auspol #covid19aus The danger here is that people are being encouraged to think that target = ‘freedom’. When that doesn’t happen, public resistance to further effort will build. There’s no substitute for revealing the unvarnished, brutal reality of the fight. https://t.co/lPsA6u8Yzv
#auspol #covid19aus a bit of light grammatical Nazi relief for the daily press conferences. The singular of ‘premises’, is ‘premises’. A ‘premise’ is an assumption, like ‘we can live with Covid’. Usually tested inside a premises, where people inhale Covid and then die.
#auspol I'm not into ad hominem stuff, but boy, Fran Kelly questions are like Proustian sentences. They go for pages and pages, without a full-stop.
#auspol #covid19aus a disaster, spreading further every day, killing more every day, infecting more every day. Every day what does this change in the NSW approach? Nothing. https://t.co/TPggzLHMTu
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19nsw the Premier with the daily magical mantra about vaccines. Get vaccinated, yes. But it won't stop this outbreak, the NSW Government needs to do its job. What happens when you follow the wealth advice, and not the health advice.
@auspol #covid19nsw #covd19aus 'Delta is like nothing we've ever seen'. NSW Premier, who obviously failed geography. Victoria is next door.
#auspol #covid19aus fortress, hermit etc. Like restoring cargo cult tourism, slave labour through temporary visas and migrants with skills we're too lazy and stupid to cultivate here is some sort of 'open' Australia. https://t.co/D1d0axGCoG
#auspol #covid19aus can we remember Australia, that during much of 2020, when the federal government could have been improving quarantine and getting the best vaccine procurement deal for Australia, it…/1 https://t.co/YBVFcjZtxr
1) Dissolved the national parliament and replaced it with an unaccountable National Cabinet, whose deliberations are never published. 2) The true function of this Cabinet was to deal the feds into the pandemic discussion, where they had little constitutional role. Once there…/2
…they used it to persistently introduce economic counter-narratives to the public health narratives. 3) Established a National Covid Commission to replace parliament as the deliberative body to determine future directions post the pandemic. A commission…/3
…stacked with corporate heavyweights from vested interest groups, heavily skewed to the fossil fuel industry. A clear attempt to prosecute an anti-climate change agenda and other toxic policies, under cover of the pandemic. /4
The government is keen now to talk about the ‘benefit of hindsight’. Let’s talk about the benefit of foresight. Like the foresight to actually address the global emergency we were in. Rather than use it as a smokescreen to ram toxic policies through an absent accountability. /end
@juliette_io do you map doubling rates? Sorry if I missed it.
#auspol #covid19nsw the daily press conference, where we gather to watch the virus spread all over Sydney and beyond, while the NSW Government does little to stop it, and chastises us for not stopping it for them. https://t.co/sHW0GxeLMQ
@Peter_Fitz did you hear this? As a governance professional, I find the republic vs monarchy debates a bit jingoistic and simple-minded. Very pleased to see Altman, a republican, unpack some of the complexities. https://t.co/ge3b5q30KB
#auspol #covid19 much of this pandemic is playing out as Camus would have predicted. Only a novel comes close to capturing the full complexity of social life. Some excerpts in Tweets, today about illness and life in an ‘Economy’. /1 https://t.co/d6lMuVtnQl
“Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die…Out citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is…/2
…as they call it, ‘doing business’. Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money…/3
…, as much as possible…Certainly nothing is commoner nowadays than to see people working from morn till night and then proceeding to fritter away at card-tables, in cafes and in small-talk what time is left for living. /4
What is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in dying. “Difficulty,” perhaps, is not the right word, ‘discomfort’ would come nearer. Being ill’s never agreeable but there are towns that stand by you, so to speak, when you are sick; /5
in which you can, after a fashion, let yourself go. But…the exigencies of business…the very nature of its pleasures call for good health. An invalid feels out of it there.” /6
As Camus astutely recognises, living in an ‘Economy’ confines poor health to hospitals. Health and poor health cease becoming part of everyday social life, instead delegated to the medical system, to allow commerce to continue uninterrupted. /7
From the very beginning of this pandemic, those politicians who substitute an economy for society have been consistent. They see their role as making enough hospital beds available. Nothing else. Every day the NSW Premier talks about restoring our ‘freedom’ to work. QED. /end
#covid19nsw beginning with all the good news and by again telling the community it’s all their problem. Must be bad.
#auspol #COVID19Aus #nswlockdown watching the NSW outbreak is like watching Armageddon with your streaming set to quarter speed. Slow-motion train wreck. Seriously, the NSW Government needs to be constitutionally removed from power, for the sake of the nation.
#auspol #covid19nsw the difference between NSW and Victoria is that NSW will be dragged kicking and screaming to proper NPIs, infecting and killing along the way. The cynicism of these libertarian fuckers, to keep businesses open, and then preach to workers not to go to them.
#auspol #covid19aus Jack Lang was removed as NSW Premier by the NSW Governor in 1932, using the reserve powers (also used to remove Whitlam), because he wouldn’t follow a national plan agreed to by other Premiers. Can we think of another Premier not following a national plan? https://t.co/1caFYAuX36
#auspol #covid19aus to expand on this. Twice now the reserve powers have been used to remove elected leaders. Both were Labor politicians. Both for trivial ‘economic’ reasons. Nothing shows better how the Economy is really just a tool of conservative politics. /1 https://t.co/scPHSQO4Vj
We have a NSW Government and federal government who both have resisted basic public health action to end a pandemic. This threatens the life of every person in the country. Orders of magnitude more serious than the economic reasons used to dismiss Lang and Whitlam. /2
It’s testament to the strategic power of the idea of the ‘Economy’ that these two situations are perceived in such disproportionate ways. Peoples’ lives are way down the ladder of importance, with the right of unfettered commerce sitting at the top. /end
@OrinCordus @RichardfromSyd1 still seems to doubling roughly every 10 days? https://t.co/MiyD6yF629
be*
@Globalbiosec are you still tracking doubling rate, for NSW?
#auspol #covid19aus is there anything these vaccines can’t do? If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. https://t.co/0R0o32yxpR
#auspol #covid19aus this is the Brains Trust who daily listens to the wealth advice, I mean health advice, in NSW. https://t.co/fVYyNrK7ah
#auspol #covid19aus “The key message though, and the Doherty Model shows it, let’s get vaccinated, and that’s the path to freedom”. Stuart Robert on SKY, running the new strategic narrative for LNP governments. The old ‘live with the virus’ narrative, with jabs added. /1
Our health experts are sadly woefully naive in their dealing with politicians. The Doherty Model doesn’t say this, but that’s not what the public will hear. Many everyday folk I talk too are scathing about ATAGI for the same reason. /2
Notice also this continuous use of the word ‘freedom’, the corollary to calling public health measures, designed to keep us alive, as ‘lockdown’. It’s all in the framing. The early genius of the LNP strategists was to get the lockdown term into circulation. /3
It has meant for the entire pandemic many in the population were weaponised to oppose basic public health action, at every junction. That was the intent. The LNP behavioural ‘nudge’ units would likely have advised this. The new 4-step national strategy explicitly…/4
…describes its role as to get people out of ‘lockdown’. Not to end the pandemic or make people safe from the virus. The public health measures have from Day 1 been framed as the problem, not the virus. This is all copied in almost every detail from the UK. /5
The cause of this pandemic was libertarian politics. Without it, the virus would never have spread widely or killed so many millions. The fight we’re in isn’t against the virus - a virus is a puny thing, easily killed. It’s against libertarian ideas. /end
#auspol #covid19aus Australia needs its equivalent of Independent SAGE in the UK. A group set up by experts once they realised the UK government was using SAGE (our AHPPC) only as human shields. We need expertise unconstrained by National Cabinet spin. https://t.co/IGWxofYTiP
#auspol #nswcovid19 perhaps an oversight, but this is the first day untraced/under investigation cases haven’t been listed? https://t.co/K7DR10onDx
#covid19nsw #COVID19Aus the Premier says we don’t have exponential growth in NSW? We don’t have it with cases doubling every day, but it definitely seems to be there at a doubling rate of around 10 days?
Twitter often feels like a daily battle against sound bites and slogans. Putting flesh back on weaponised bones.
@covid19aus @covid19nsw so now we do have under investigation numbers for today, by the look of it. Another big jump. @RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus https://t.co/rskYSrx6Xc
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19nsw Camus: “…our townsfolk apparently found it hard to grasp what was happening to them. There were feelings all could share, such as fear and separation, but personal interests, too, continued to…/1 https://t.co/SorkREWaGJ
…occupy the foreground of their thoughts. Nobody as yet had really acknowledged to himself what the disease connoted. Most people were chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests. They were worried and irritated,…/2
…but these are not feelings with which to confront plague. Their first reaction, for instance, was to abuse the authorities….Could not the regulations be modified and made less stringent?…our townsfolk…persisting in the idea that what was happening was a sort of accident,…/3
…disagreeable enough, but certainly of a temporary order.” /end
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19nsw this advice to businesses from the NSW Government is interesting. They're seeing transmission even in fully masked workplaces. https://t.co/vstjVaYMpi
#COVID19nsw #auspol more dire numbers for NSW today, spread into even wider areas of the State. NSW Government response? Nothing. More blather about 'jabs'. May as well be Boris Johnson doing these press conferences. Whitlam and Lang were dismissed for much less.
#covid19nsw #auspol cases under investigation disappeared from the NSW public data yesterday (and didn't return today). Today break-down of cases by LHD also disappeared. Data issues? Or deliberate omissions?
#auspol #covid19aus hands up if you were disappointed this PM press conference wasn't to announce the removal of the NSW Government.
#auspol sometimes I think we made the same mistake with climate change as we have with the pandemic. Emissions, like infections, are the symptom, not the cause. We need to understand what it is in our beliefs and lives that causes both, to address them. https://t.co/Z4eyM5LX32
#COVID19Aus #auspol NSW Premier saying further restrictions won't work, because it's 'Delta'. How many days of this same repeated bullshit do we have to tolerate? And now, blaming the people. The circuit-breaker the CMO mentioned - time to impose it from without.
#COVID19Aus #auspol NSW applied stronger restrictions to the alpha variant of Covid than what it's using against Delta.
#auspol #covid19aus NSW presser degenerates into the usual tabloid blaming of the public approach. When you elect libertarians and their idiot ideas start killing people, isn't it astonishing how quickly their anti-rule passions convert into almost S&M compliance narratives. https://t.co/IibhI4dbGc
@auspol what a treat today. NSW press conference where their failure to do anything is rationalised as being the public's fault. Again. Followed by the PM solemnly re-parroting his climate change slogans in relation to the IPCC. Who is voting for this rampant stupidity? Save us.
#auspol #covid19aus @DrZoeHyde true. Let's vaccinate them for their own sake. https://t.co/QIXnAjdlro
#covid19nsw in bushfires, you fight the outbreaks, but you also put containment lines around the main fire. https://t.co/Fj7ZLsmmbA
#auspol #covid19nsw the best bit in the hearing today was Health Hazzard saying they had lots of work to do fighting the pandemic. I guess counting all those daily cases is laborious. https://t.co/3yVxgQB1lk
#covid19aus #covid19nsw #auspol today’s pop quiz. Is this: A. a virus spreading across LGAs unprotected by government, or B. LGA after LGA succumbing to an outbreak of not following rules? https://t.co/TVrDK1Qx1v
#auspol #covid19aus hey Premier, Brad. You’re libertarians, you don’t believe in rules. If you think there’s widespread rule-breaking, you should be applauding. The insane rabbit hole libertarian politics drags us down. https://t.co/IIAWjuGWzl
#covid19nsw this is what the libertarians in Macquarie Street (who, remember, don't believe in rules) want us to do. Blame the catastrophe on us 'not following rules'. Turn on each other, rather than on them. https://t.co/Av8J1JXkEw
#covid19nsw #auspol #covid19aus another day, spread into teh regions. Still no change to NSW strategy, in fact more fairy tale projections of freedoms with 70% of adults jabbed. National Cabinet or the Governor must step in.
#COVID19nsw #auspol is there a tipping point which will prompt the 24 members of NSW Cabinet to extract their heads out of their collective arses? https://t.co/OEgtkDCBgU
@normanswan https://t.co/DtRJ02f4KF
#covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol probably the most stupid thing I’ve seen in a while, and it’s a tough field. I also wouldn’t put it past the NSW Government to try this, as Trump did. The Premier has expressed this as her wish many times. https://t.co/NsIJ33vzlU
#auspol #covid19nsw #covid19aus in pink, the ‘ohfuxponential’ curve. https://t.co/LVgx8w7JsI
#covid19aus #covid19nsw in today’s art inspired by Covid competition, @DeadInLongRun wins with a piece called ‘clusterfuck’. https://t.co/kh03OpoDJv
#covid19 the pandemic was never a medical or even biological event. It’s always been a political event. We’re listening to the wrong experts. https://t.co/Yk4xdmyMRj
#covid19aus #auspol we need to be ruthlessly awake to new libertarian slogans in this pandemic. Here's another - 'a pandemic of the unvaccinated'. Seems innocuous, but is just another attempt to use an individual libertarian lens for a public health problem.
#auspol #covid19aus I can identify the 'handful' of people non-compliant with public health efforts. 24 of them. The NSW Cabinet.
#covid19nsw #auspol #covid19aus can somebody, anybody, at the NSW press conference just yell out for the Premier to shut up and ask if this daily bullshit is for real?
#auspol #covid19aus I was amazed when this story was published in 2020 that it got almost no attention at all. It shows very clearly why what we're seeing right now in NSW was always going to happen, and was never about 'health advice'. https://t.co/LXDytpOSnc
When given a choice between going regularly to the shops with Covid in circulation, or stocking up to avoid that, unsurprisingly the public choose the latter. As experts advised them to when the pandemic began. They protect their health, not supermarket supply chains. https://t.co/ZtBxSTkrFT
#insiders there are no silver bullets out of the pandemic.
#auspol #covid19nsw #covid19aus work in progress. Should be a top seller, hoping to get Glad and Brad to wear at the daily presser. Always open for business, they’ll be up for it. https://t.co/Plyf6X95xz
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus thought this was an interesting thread. Deepti's response also important I think. https://t.co/SxmI1RwprF
#covid19aus #auspol I had to read this several times, to assure myself that this really is an ex-Deputy CHO, using people on ventilators as the key metric of public health success. https://t.co/S19PTcfkmd
#covid19 "We knew that a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” could easily spiral out of control and become Pandemic 2.0. And look, it is...some pro-vaxxers are so convinced of their vaccine’s awesome power that they’ll tell me I’m lying. /1
They’ll say, “Everything’s perfectly fine.” They describe a fantasy where the vaccinated get to live their lives, while the unvaccinated suffer. Let’s face it, this narrow view smacks of the same selfish short-shortsightedness as the anti-vaxxers. /2
For all of our resentment toward the conspiracy theorists, we have to face the harsh truth that the pandemic isn’t over for us until it’s over for everyone. Nobody gets to leave early." /end Jessica Wildfire
#asupol #covid19aus really hope this press conference after National Cabinet goes beyond a Powerpoint to try to rescue the PM's trashed reputation for vaccine rollout.
#auspol seeing the vacuity of National Cabinet in this press conference. No decisions of note, Powerpoint summaries designed to promote the federal government. The national crisis in NSW gets mentioned, but no actions, no decisions.
#auspol #covid19aus the federal CHO re-states the NSW idiot libertarian line, that the solution in NSW is people following the rules. So, we just watch the exponential increase and spread daily.
The health advice for the Western and far Western NSW outbreaks? ‘We’re sending more vaccines’. NSW clearly into Tory-UK land now, no attempt will be made to control spread. We’re going to jab our way out. Sorry, we’re going to do vaccine-theatre, we can’t jab our way out.
So Covid will only be allowed into the regions with a permit now. A ring of tin foil maybe. Still, it’s something. https://t.co/rSxNKK0yCD
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19 the pandemic will be a trilogy. Year 1 - epidemiology (epis) defeat the Empire (Economy). Year 2- the Empire strikes back, using vaccines to try to ‘live with the virus’. Year 3 - the return of the epis, when vaccines fail to end the pandemic. https://t.co/IZZdXX4EgO
@DrZoeHyde what did you make of the CHO and leaders today saying children mostly catch Covid ‘from adults’? Isn’t this just an obvious attempt to deflect attention from the safety of schools?
#auspol #covid19aus is it just me, or are pandemic experts saying less, the worse the situation in NSW gets? Shouldn’t they be saying more? Why can’t they organise some sort of united group to call out the tragedy unfolding?
#covid19aus #covidnsw #auspol people of Australia. Meet the NSW Cabinet (2019 photo). Bringing Covid to your town soon. https://t.co/LTnremyPbH
#covid19nsw can somebody explain how ‘Operation Stay at Home’ will restrict movement, when most people are just going to workplaces the government refuses to close?
#Covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol NSW lockdown from this afternoon looking very likely.
#covid19aus #auspol I’ve always found CEOs relating to the little people are mostly interested in them coming to work. https://t.co/92d3B2WBGl
#covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol are we getting a bit too excited here? No real changes to the restrictions in Sydney (that aren’t working), with this just hopefully keeping the regions out of harm’s way a bit longer? What did I miss? https://t.co/DUC0E05PgD
#covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol NSW is not in ‘total lockdown’. It’s extended its existing lockdown measures - which aren’t working - to the entire State. Delta isn’t the problem. This is the Economy variant. Businesses remain largely open. People are getting infected at work. https://t.co/hKxOn5sR6O
#covid19aus #auspol NSW restrictions predominantly limit social activity. They do much less to restrict work. The NSW Cabinet still wallows in the fantasy that the ‘Economy’ is separate to the lives of its people. Until that last fantasy falls, these graphs will keep heading up. https://t.co/VDQFOifMcZ
#auspol #covid19aus SKY News right now, exercising the next mythology. With 80% vaccination, we can ‘live with’ some cases. ‘Like the flu’. Misrepresents the Doherty recommendations, misunderstands endemicity, just the latest live with the virus re-routing.
#covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol close all non-essential workplaces. All the rest is compliance theatre. People are getting infected at work. https://t.co/gSAEsXhPGs
#auspol #covid19aus the UK has ceased offering AZ now to under-40s. Clot-related deaths fell to zero. We’re still to see the impact on the vast number of under-40s now grabbing AZ here. The risk profile justified it in many situations, but it should never have come to that.
No @andrewprobyn, ATAGI shouldn’t have assumed Covid would enter the community. It assumed governments would maintain NPIs and quarantine to prevent that occurring. Those who deflect blame from the incompetence in government to expert groups deserve our contempt.
#auspol from Day 1 of this pandemic, leaders have been allowed to suggest that fighting this virus = making hospital beds available to those who catch it. Nearly 2 years in, those in the community who say ‘um, maybe we shouldn’t catch it?’ are still seen as mavericks. https://t.co/rP2gg3Ouh5
@covid19aus #auspol Belief that the ‘Economy’ is an actual thing separate to the lives of people is now going to kill many of them, and destroy the livelihood of many more. And yet everybody still talks about ‘the Economy’. Our most stupid, lethal belief. https://t.co/vgYAOMaMeC
@covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol contact tracing is broken: NSW Health is introducing a new measure to ensure people continue to receive prompt notification of their COVID-19 positive test result. Confirmed cases will receive a text message from NSW Health.../1
...as soon as a positive result is reported by private and public laboratories. This will contain advice for them to continue to isolate, and for their household contacts to get tested and isolate. A link to information resources and a phone number will also be provided. /2
The text message will also prompt people to seek medical care if they are unwell. NSW Health will follow up with the confirmed case as soon as possible to conduct an in-depth interview to identify additional close contacts. /end
#covid19nsw #auspol #covid19aus it takes phenomenal gall to stand up there every day and blame the community for this disaster, when you see testing numbers like that. There are only 24 people not doing the right thing here. They're in the Cabinet room. https://t.co/o8D9Umj4Ko
#covid19nsw #auspol we 'live with' Covid the way we live with any other infectious disease. We have cases, and we prevent those spreading to other people. Zero Covid does NOT mean 'no cases of Covid'. Deliberate obfuscation. Bullshit is the technical term.
#auspol #covid19aus vaccine passports carry the assumption that vaccination is a type of bubble that insulates the person from the pandemic raging around them. They seem an extension of the idea of 'a pandemic of the unvaccinated'. /1 https://t.co/xXSOjrtkzb
That idea is actually quite noxious, and counter to basic public health practice. A passport isn't just a vaccination record, it again carries an assumption that you return to 'normal' life, inside your vaccinated bubble. /2
It's really another flavour of the 'live with the virus' idea. The pandemic can rage on, but if you're vaccinated your normal life will semi-return, with your passport. Vaccines extracted from an integrated public health strategy, focused on ending the pandemic.../3
...and re-focused on restoring pre-pandemic life, while the pandemic is still active. Never mind that it won't even work in doing that, for example the unvaccinated will quickly absorb all health resources the vaccinated need for their other ailments. /end
There really isn't an infectious disease that would survive if we did the basics. Clean food, water, air. Decent housing. Lack of crowding. The true medical heroes for all ages? They look a bit like this. https://t.co/dgai3jDe9P
#covid19 #auspol Camus is a good guide at every stage of the pandemic. He observed that a plague isn't a feeling of being locked down, as it goes on. It's a feeling of exile, from all society. Nobody keeps a vantage point. Hope, blame, despair, choice - all disappear. /1
"Thus week by week the prisoners of plague put up what fight they could. Some...even contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power of choice. /2
But actually it would have been truer to say that by this time...the plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. /3
Strongest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation." /end
#auspol #covid19aus It's beyond time we ditched the politically-loaded term 'lockdown'. Deliberately designed to make people oppose public health measures. 'Locked out' is more accurate, we're locking the virus out of society. Sheltering also a good term. Like from a bushfire.
#auspol #covid19aus as NSW case numbers continue to climb the exponential curve, I do worry that the Premier has already reached PLS (my new public health term). Peak Lecturing Shrillness. So far PLS hasn't slowed case growth. Closing workplaces (more of the 'Economy') might. https://t.co/ZCHp0Q2Mf8
#covid19aus #covid19nsw #auspol the public is continuously being sold the idea that vaccines will mean they can return to normal community life, safe from severe harm. Like a full-body Covid condom. Is it that hard to see this is just another new flavour of 'live with the virus'?
@covid19aus the glory of a pandemic is that all of society's greatest dickheads self-identify. Like in this Tweet and most of the comments on it. Who needs a census. https://t.co/81HENPIcfH
#auspol Afghanistan's aftermath is a lesson in modern conservative politics. Populist, reactionary decisions that play out across decades, leaving others to deal with the mess. Like flogging off public services and assets. The villains long gone when the shit hits the fan. https://t.co/P4NOLgapRN
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @CrabbBrendan what this chart suggests is that the ‘stronger’ restrictions in the 12 LGAS are essentially doing - nothing. Maybe slowing the same outcome, that’s all. They need to close workplaces. https://t.co/s7E0XRuRf9
@covid19nsw @auspol take that data wizards. https://t.co/nH6L1vzprh
#auspol #covid19aus money is a wonderful vaccine. https://t.co/VuRIvaOw03
Congratulations to @aclennell for trying to interrupt the continuous barrage of BS from the NSW Premier.
#COVID19nsw #auspol #covid19aus every day I'm staggered at just how naughty we all are in NSW. It's an epidemic of naughty, apparently. Imagine if your working hypothesis is 'one State in the Federation is much naughtier than the others'. Laughable that anybody buys it.
#covid19nsw #auspol 100%. The reason NSW can’t turn its numbers around is that it refuses to close more workplaces. Still trying to save its Economy, rather than its people. Doesn’t even occur to it that those are the same thing. https://t.co/XxHUhnQQQO
#auspol #covid19aus booster shots show the real politics in play here. Rich countries, and the rich within rich countries, see the vaccines as their ‘passport’ out of the pandemic, while the poor can be left to die. It’s standard developed world practice. https://t.co/itDNX59M06
@auspol #covid19aus pandemics are the RCT for all human beliefs. Turns out libertarianism is a lethal rationalisation of the status quo, via a set of statistical metrics it calls the ‘Economy’. That Emperor has been stark raving naked for a long time. https://t.co/8TYJSn1ntj
#covid19 #auspol The ignorance of how political strategy works, the pandemic is about politics, not science. How did so many not see that the same libertarians who tried to 'live with the virus' by infecting millions, would use the vaccines in exactly the same way? https://t.co/DpnRPnBV2J
#covid19nsw #covid19aus #auspol new messaging from NSW today. No 'as low as we can get the cases'. Just 'learn to live with Covid'. NSW as Australian pioneer, showing the other States the way! Exponential growth will put an end to this fucking insanity, within a week.
#COVID19nsw #auspol can even one journalist call the Premier out on this compete misrepresentation of the Doherty Report?
#covid19nsw #auspol and right on cue, when asked why cases are growing exponentially with the current strategy? Blame the public. Compliance porn. Libertarians are immoral, ruthless bastards.
Does anybody else ever pause and think, 'I'm arguing with people about the need to stop the community from becoming infected with a pandemic virus?' The gobsmacking genius of the 'Economy' as a mass persuasion tool, that millions now see infecting entire populations as normal.
#auspol #covid19asu NSW Premier and PM both still peddling the fantasy that there's a manageable amount of Covid. The old live with the virus, mitigation fantasy, they've been itching to have it back. https://t.co/lkgBjLW0Te
@auspol #covid19nsw let’s send @Lisa_Wilkinson to the press conferences. https://t.co/6zUixvpemF
#covid19 Sort of sums up whey we’re still in this pandemic. No resilience, no backbone for an existential challenge. A society of adolescents, chafing at being grounded. https://t.co/pVpIZy40Hp
#covid19aus #auspol representative democracy works if political representatives operate within a web of public institutions that embed the expertise accumulated over generations. Watch Yes Minister, the show is all about that web. If that web breaks, you get NSW right now. /1 https://t.co/xyUFPA7qrM
When the web of expertise that actually does 99% of the daily running of a State is sidelined or destroyed, all that is left is the representative. This is lethally dangerous, because it’s like the Minister heading off without advice or expertise to pursue his own fantasies. /2
The public only see the Minster, they’re often even not aware the web exists. This is populism, a public focused only on the representatives, drunk with the illusion they’re running the State. They will back their favourite, in exactly the way they back a football team. /3
The analogy is exact, because notice that people will follow a football team across multiple generations, even if it has a long history of never succeeding. NSW now and the US and UK under Trump and Johnson perfect examples. /4
Unswerving allegiance to the team, irrespective of how incompetent or destructive they are. People who understand the pandemic situation in NSW know drastic change is needed. The unswerving Gladdies pay not attention to details, just their team. /5
And so, as with climate change, populism (which libertarians have piggybacked a ride on - it will eventually consume them as well, as Trump consumed the GOP) is destroying our societies. It’s the cause of the pandemic and climate change. Whole societies…/6
…divorced from the basic realities of the situations they face. Focused daily on the battle between their teams, a complete sideshow. Twitter shows this every day, it’s Morrison this, Gladys that. We don’t need new or better leaders, we need our institutions…/7
…to be allowed to function again. For CHOs to be allowed to run a pandemic response, without political interference. For expertise to operate, accumulating wisdom over generations. We see the Chinese as ‘authoritarian’, but what we see there is strong institutions. Despite…/8
…the cronyism and weaknesses in Chinese governance, they simply don’t tolerate individual freeloading over custom and tradition. They graduate more engineers than we have espresso coffees. They build things, with multi-generational time perspectives. Contrast this with…/9
…the idiot 3-year populist cycles of Western democracies now, flailing in the face of existential threats, or even basic work like renewing social infrastructure. Infected with ludicrous libertarian ‘let them eat cake’ fantasies, believing the important thing is…/10
…our ‘freedom’ to live how we choose, totally divorced from the logistical, practical work of how those freedoms are generated and maintained. Through our institutions, themselves just multi-generational expertise embedded in process and procedure. How did this happen? /11
It’s what happens to most privileged peoples. They live for so long without any serious existential challenge that they forget about the basic hard work of peace and prosperity and health. They assume that’s the default state, rather than the engineered state. /end
#covid19nsw #auspol #covid19aus the only 'balance' in the NSW approach is between the competing factions of NSW Cabinet. Our strategy is piecemeal because it's about protecting the Premier's leadership, not public health.
#covid19nsw #auspol journalists got a bit more fire in the bellies today. Keep at it.
#auspol #covid19aus we need a leading journalist to convene a roundtable of top public health experts once or twice a week, to comment on NSW's approach. How about it @David_Speers? At the moment they're just individually tearing their hair out on social media and in TV grabs.
@normanswan?
@auspol #covid19aus the fundamental uselessness of National Cabinet illustrated by the fact that the debacle in NSW doesn't even appear to be on its agenda today. The 4-stage national plan is already redundant, thanks to NSW, and they have nothing to say.
#covid19aus #auspol #covid19nsw Covid cases now in the 3 largest WNSW regional towns. And in many smaller regional towns. This is what click ‘n’ collect looks like now in regional NSW as well as Sydney. Looming catastrophe. https://t.co/cz3yBbvLDC
#covid19 Covid is like an earthquake, a disaster mostly of the built environment. How many people work in a building where there are no opening windows? Hospitals almost universally now. Field hospital patients during Spanish Flu had much higher survival rates. https://t.co/qaj8YUT5cM
#covid19 #auspol it does seem that antibiotics were one of the main drivers of the end of basic cross-ventilation in medical settings. Fresh air and sunshine. Florence Nightingale’s passion. Many public buildings today have no opening windows. https://t.co/IwQt7lXN0s
#covid19 #auspol I sometimes think of Dresden, when the public narrative shifts to a bit of stay at home time being too hard, less than 2 years into a pandemic. The bombing was 6 years into horrendous suffering and sacrifice. https://t.co/b08toNWsHF
#covid19nsw #auspol to be brutally honest, these protestors are orders of magnitude less dangerous than the NSW Cabinet. What they do pales into insignificance next to what the NSW Government refuses to do, every day. https://t.co/E428k9pnkk
#auspol I’m certain non-Western nations watch on and feel that the democratic model is in its last gasps. Protestors against public health measures, governments actively allowing whole populations to be infected to protect business interests. https://t.co/7k29Lbh2k1
#auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/C3mYNx7W9x
#covid19 who knew that the FDA still hasn’t approved Pfizer for US use? They’re still injecting under emergency use authorisation. https://t.co/tUO1kf1YiG
#auspol #covid19nsw #covid19aus police would have orders of magnitude greater impact on containing the pandemic in NSW if they sent only 2-3 officers to Macquarie Street to arrest the NSW Cabinet. Cabinet cares even less about viral spread than the protestors. https://t.co/SCWikc8iiJ
#covid19aus the genius of modern libertarian, populist politics is that both of these trending topics refer to the people being progressively infected by the government in charge, and not to the government doing the infecting. Fight among yourselves, people. https://t.co/1DhCboCtjY
#auspol #covid19aus disappointing interview with Jodie McVernon on SKY this morning. The closer experts get to power, the more washed-out, ‘do whatever you like’ their advice becomes. Too scared to call a spade a spade. https://t.co/bndP9usqHP
Professor Makris has reinforced this several times now. I’m surprised it hasn’t filtered through into discussions in Australia. @CrabbBrendan @Globalbiosec https://t.co/awI21SxDYS
#auspol #covid19aus I wonder what other States feel about NSW saying that unless every other State follows the NSW strategy, they’re not acting as a true federation. Just staggering arrogance, from the State already using the national strategy as toilet paper.
#auspol #covid19 conservative governments see vaccines the same way those people who badger their GPs constantly for antibiotics for a sniffle see drugs. The quick fix: “I don’t want to look after my health, just give me the drug’.
I think it’s worth repeating regularly that we weren’t prepared to ‘live with’: refugees terrorists communism schools not raising flags or singing anthems borrowing to fund public investment. But we are prepared to ‘live with’ a lethal virus.
We mock this sort of thing. And it angers us. Rarely do we ask, how does it happen? It happens because democracy was only ever all of us getting to choose certain positions in hierarchies of expertise. We turned it into all of us being our own experts and leaders. https://t.co/xcIMLwynbs
#covid19aus #auspol the Doherty Report modelled vaccination of those aged 12+ only as a ‘thought experiment’. Not because the Doherty people are bastards, but because National Cabinet specifically excluded anybody below 16 in Doherty’s scope of work. /1
Note that the same National Cabinet has now requested updated modelling based on massive case numbers, which the original report said would invalidate most of their findings. No updating though to incorporate health effects on children. /2
The report is appallingly written, an alphabet soup of jargon and passive-voiced prose. You couldn’t have designed a document better to prevent scrutiny. I doubt National Cabinet members understood half of it. /3
Most disturbingly, it asks a group of epidemiologists - disease experts - to act as the lynchpin of the nation’s pathway out of the pandemic. None of the ethical, political, economic, or any other socio-political considerations get a single word. /end
@RichardfromSyd1 morbidity climbing in Israel. Suggests NSW’s hospitalisations have a long way to run. https://t.co/p10R4GE9ju
#auspol #covid19aus the ‘live with the virus’ loons are in the ascendancy again. At every fork in the pandemic road they’ve weaponised public health advice towards letting the virus rip. Idiotic extraction of “70/80%” free of all context the latest fork. https://t.co/pa3vLD1wxn
#auspol #covid19aus wonder if #DoNotInfectOurChildren could get some momentum behind it. About 6 months’ worth of momentum.
#auspol #covid19aus Josh Frydenberg’s whinge about turning off government support, like all ‘we can’t live like this forever’ whines, needs to be looked at with this data as context. /1 https://t.co/MkWzvjXRUe
Look at that spending in WW1 and WW2. The ‘Economy’ boomed for decades afterwards. Compare to right now? Our GDP has gone *up* during the pandemic. There’s mountains of fiscal firepower there to be used. People say ‘but they were wars’. Pandemics kill more people. /end
#auspol #covid19aus if you're a bit light on the political machinations that lead to train wrecks like NSW, this will help. https://t.co/D7Wa8LPWeS
#covid19nsw #auspol the transition (back) to full 'live with the virus' strategy in NSW now complete. Unrelenting lies and bullshit every day. Misrepresenting Doherty yet again. The only thing that can force a change is people refusing to get vaccinated. Which puts them at risk.
#covid19aus #auspol #covid19nsw is there not one fucking journalist there that can say 'that's not what the Doherty Report says'? Has even one of them read it?
#covid19nsw #auspol how you feeling out in the small regional towns, NSW? When asked about maintaining no spread in regional towns, the Premier's answer? "Get vaccinated".
#auspol social media is brilliant in many ways. But what it's also done, which may mean we should seriously turn it off, has allowed vast pockets of ignorance and intolerance to mobilise and organise. It may be the tipping point that ends Western democracies. https://t.co/wXhWhRZVUY
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19nsw the key elements from the Doherty Report which are not being prosecuted daily in NSW press conferences. For those who don't understand it or are too lazy to read it, which appears to be most political journalists. /1
The report models degree of public health restrictions (PHSM) required to maintain hospital capacity, at different levels of vaccination for those aged 16 and above. It uses 4 categories of restriction - baseline, low, medium and high. /2
It also models two strengths of test, trace, isolate and quarantine (TTIQ): partial, and optimal. Partial when case numbers are high and compromise the ability to TTIQ. Optimal when case numbers are low enough to allow maximally effective TTIQ. /3
Before we get to the pictures and numbers, the report calibrates partial TTIQ capacity as that available to deal with the Victorian 2nd wave outbreak on 4 August 2020. (I wonder if they mean 5 August, as that was the peak.) /4
The 4 August case numbers in Victoria were 403. 5 August was 687. Remember this is when Doherty says TTIQ will be only partially effective, at this number. Obviously NSW has gone well past this already. /5
So, if TTIQ is only partially effective, this is how things pan out. 'Control' of the outbreak is the horizontal dotted grey line towards the bottom (R=1). At the magic 70% and 80% vaccination marks, medium and medium-light restrictions are still needed, respectively. /6 https://t.co/prEy8kFPda
(Don't forget NSW has already gone beyond the case numbers that calibrate this model.) Here are the definitions of baseline, low, medium and high. Current NSW restrictions are a blend of medium and high. /7 https://t.co/1pR4wwwiyQ
To quote the Report: "...light or moderate restrictions will likely be insufficient to regain control of epidemics even at 70% coverage for only a partially effective TTIQ response. Prolonged lockdowns would likely be needed to limit infection numbers and caseloads." /8
Remember the NSW Premier and PM have been saying that significant 'freedoms' will begin to return from 70% vaccination levels. Bears no relationship with what the Doherty Report says at all. /9
Also again NSW is already significantly past the caseloads that calibrate this model. And cases are growing exponentially, and doubling rate is dropping. Pushing that 'freedom' threshold even further from reality. /10
The report shows that should NSW open up completely with current case numbers, strong lockdowns would still be required up to 60% of the time (70% vaccination coverage), or nearly 40% of the time (80% coverage). (It bears repeating regularly that.../11
...these models assume case numbers significantly lower than what NSW has already.) If NSW were to retain light restrictions, full lockdowns would still be required 20-40% of the time (for 70% vaccination), and may be mostly unnecessary at 80% coverage. /12
The report and models make clear that at 50% vaccination coverage, the other carrot dangled by the Premier ('6 million jabs'), opening up would completely overwhelm the State with infections, without total lockdown. /end
#auspol #covid19aus in which the Professor dodged the bus the PM was trying to throw the Institute under by fudging. Saying opening with large case numbers just makes the public health system work harder. It’s past the tipping point of working at all. Anything times zero is zero. https://t.co/Vk3dQve4iH
#auspol #covid19aus I remember Nick and Sharyn tag-teaming on Q&A. Sweet. Drunk with access to the seat of power. It’ll eat them up and spit them out, they haven’t realised that yet. https://t.co/HEiY91t2Ic
#auspol #covid19nsw When asked late yesterday whether opening up with hundreds or thousands of cases still active in the community was a problem, the Director of the Institute said ‘the outcome is the same, but the load on the public health system is higher’. Unpacking that. /1 https://t.co/dqpt5Pzpa0
In layperson’s terms, what the Director said was ‘you can open up with a higher number of cases, provided you close immediately again with public health measures, to control them’. You read that right. You can open with more cases, provided you close straight away again. /2
Also, from her own report: "...light or moderate restrictions will likely be insufficient to regain control of epidemics even at 70% coverage for only a partially effective TTIQ response. Prolonged lockdowns would likely be needed to limit infection numbers and caseloads." /3
Says what I just said. If you open up at 70% with only a partially effective TTIQ system, as NSW has now, you’ll have to lock down again immediately to control the massive spread. What one of the co-authors of the report said yesterday as well. That TTIQ system is breaking…/4
…more each day, with cases doubling about every week. This is a pretty shameful attempt by the head of the Institute to maintain favour with the PM, who is paying them to do this work, and who wants the country open no matter what. /end
#auspol #covid19aus one of the co-authors of the Doherty Report contradicting what the Institute Director said late yesterday. Experts (like the Director, and Brendan Murphy) will discover that aligning yourself with libertarian politicians will burn you. https://t.co/D3PeIpXugb
#covid19aus #auspol and another expert clearing the spin surrounding the Doherty Report. https://t.co/NWlKIy1KpG
#auspol #covid19aus the thing to remember about a pandemic is, it only gives you an illusion of choice of action. You can go 'softer' or 'harder', but the former becomes the latter, in time, with added deaths, morbidity and economic damage. /1
The current debate in Australia about vaccination thresholds is really a non-debate. Those like the PM and NSW who feel it's open up time at 70 or 80% of adults vaccinated, if they're wrong, will rapidly have to back-pedal when reality bites. /2
A pandemic reboots society, not as an an analogy, but literally, because all belief systems that don't match the reality of the infection eventually crumble in the face of it. The tragedy is wrong beliefs kill and maim many in their wake. /end
#auspol #covid19aus there's a depressing predictability to the same experts surfacing every time the government finds its politics clashing with the public health advice, to back the government. https://t.co/s39UxfkbHG
#auspol #covid19aus ventilation in the news. The longer the pandemic goes on, the more we see it isn't a medical thing at all. Like all great public health events, it represents decades of neglect and lack of care for some basics of life. /1
Fresh air. Secure and well-paid employment, that allows us to shelter from a threat for extended periods. Spaces built with an individual rather than mass gathering focus. Work not de-coupled from community, with massive displacement of people every day to 'get to work'. /2
I've said before, and firmly believe, that the pandemic would likely not even have occurred if these basics of a peaceful and prosperous and equitable life had been followed. They certainly *at least* mitigate its impacts. /end
#covid19nsw #auspol please NSW journalists, please interrupt the Premier to say not suppressing case numbers violates both the Doherty Report and the National pandemic 4-stage plan.
#covid19nsw #auspol sadly NSW now rapidly approaching the point where the BS and blather from the NSW Government is exposed as utterly powerless against the catastrophe it generated. The only silver lining in pandemics, BS has nowhere to hide. But we suffer the consequences. https://t.co/egyMrS5KiR
#auspol #covid19aus the clear message here for the other States is, infect and kill your citizens, and they'll get vaccinated really fast. https://t.co/7ja7gZMAif
#auspol Birmo on afternoons with @PatsKarvelas talking about people getting their 'freedoms' back. Public health restrictions give us freedom from infection. Not freedom for untrammeled commerce, which is what conservatives mean.
What's your current Reff calculation, @RichardfromSyd1? https://t.co/C023cRHOic
#auspol a tip for journos interviewing employees of the NSW Government, like NSW Health staff. They're not allowed to speak about what they know and see. It violates their employment conditions.
#auspol #covid19aus adding @PatsKarvelas to the list of journos who didn't do the basic homework, nearly 2 years into the pandemic, and still mistakes elimination for eradication. No country ever 'lives with' a highly infectious lethal virus. They all eliminate community spread.
@YouAreLobbyLud @OrinCordus nothing to worry about after all, one of Twitter’s top culture warriors is on top of it. https://t.co/YBOwQTapdG
#auspol #covid19 in a few year’s time might actually be close to the truth. In our pincushion pandemic strategy - vaccinate our way out. https://t.co/ze9hrQwMpV
#covid19 #auspol a metaphor for a vaccine rollout, once you've done the low-hanging fruit. The US right now. https://t.co/irCvufAwWb
#auspol #covid19aus is it too much to ask that we go back to listening to experienced civil servants, and ditch the hand-picked expert consultancies with pre-determined briefs? https://t.co/I7kezt1ERX
#auspol #covid19aus #covid19nsw nearly 1000 cases infectious in the community today in NSW. And the government's response? Talking about opening up. Only health system collapse may stop this lethal madness.
#auspol #covid19aus we had the PM quoting Batman this week. The NSW Premier is surely Macbeth: "I am in blood stepped so far, that should I wade no more returning were as tedious as go over"
#auspol #covid19aus I think the whole country knows we'll have to live with Covid. Like they live with impetigo, and head lice. It's never meant epidemic levels of impetigo and head lice in the community. We stamp them out. https://t.co/lTnSpcIk7x
#covid19 if libertarians keep running pandemic strategy, we’re all going to be pincushions. And if they keep refusing to control transmission at the same time, we’ll be possibly selecting for a virulence that will mean Covid can drop you at 20 paces. https://t.co/uspOMHa3BV
#auspol #covid19aus LGA boundaries exist nowhere except on a map. Using them as a barrier to Covid transmission is like using fishnet stockings to bale water out of a boat. https://t.co/hsHNb5g33y
#auspol #covid19aus like they care less about education or children's' mental health. To a modern conservative, a school is childcare for the workforce. Or it's a hugely subsidised private networking tool for the upper classes. https://t.co/huiIvfghNv
@auspol #covid19aus not one word about ventilation in schools in the NSW school re-opening timeline. Knock me over with a feather.
#auspol #covid19aus the Premier saying that all States should support the Doherty model, because they 'signed up to it'. The triumph of spin over reality is that the community believe she and the PM are following the Doherty model, and the other States aren't. It's the reverse.
#auspol people are misunderstanding the UAP. Starting a new raving loon party that then fails gets you a permanent slot on SKY news after dark. https://t.co/vxY7kCDJi7
@juliette_io @RichardfromSyd1 @Mike_Honey_ the announced threshold for allowing NSW school re-opening when stay at home orders are lifted and the community transmission in an LGA is lower than 50 per 100,000 population. Do we have that data to hand already?
Viewing the UK from afar (Oz) the past nearly 2 years, that's almost the government strategy in a nutshell? Over the top straight into the German machine guns, with apologies to Blackadder?
Thanks to @rossleedham for digging this out. The current metric NSW is considering for deciding whether a school should be re-opened, from the CDC, is the cases per 100,000 LGA population. NSW suggesting 50. That’s in the high risk range. #auspol #covid19aus @JaneCaro https://t.co/YyJTrRdSFC
#auspol #covid19aus Look at how on both sides of the world libertarians have now weaponised Delta’s transmissibility as another shift towards ‘let it rip’. For Gladys, this is ‘Delta is like nothing we’ve seen before’ i.e. nothing she can do. https://t.co/GosXbJ16IZ
#auspol #covid19aus I still remember a time when staying at home was called a holiday. The homicidal cunning of the modern political libertarian, to reframe ‘freedom’ as going to work, and oppression as being in your own home. Gotta love the Economy. https://t.co/79ktmVNt9U
#auspol #covid19aus weasel words. ‘Optimising’ public health measures = reining in uncontrolled spread in NSW. You’d hope. https://t.co/GoNwvPzTGr
#auspol #covid19aus Australia can’t. But it will, if the PM and NSW Premier get their way. https://t.co/gB61GAXXQb
#auspol in the true tradition of secretive crap, what was actually decided at National Cabinet yesterday? Are the simplified and lethal 70 and 80% vaccination targets still happening? Anyone? https://t.co/P3EJbXS1pY
I’m one of thousands of experts on Twitter. Some engage with the public and with other areas of expertise, others, not so much. The thing to remember with a pandemic (I think) is, it’s the public who will physically end it. With what they understand and then do. Not the experts.
#covid19 #auspol the libertarians have cowed even most experts into believing Covid eradication is impossible. Most surrender at the idea of the social costs. /1 https://t.co/ItnhmWwxLE https://t.co/LZ4VhMp3FA
Let’s consider those, generally. We’re not yet 2 years into this pandemic. The hardship experienced by just about everybody pales into insignificance against what societies endured in the two world wars. And yet everybody seems agreed that it’s all too hard. /2
Much of that is the repeated wearing down of social life by libertarian politics, which began the pandemic by weaponising the most powerful weapon against any novel pathogen - basic quarantine - as ‘lockdown’. /3
Now even sensible people and experts will regurgitate slogans about the Economy and mental health, precisely designed by the political libertarians of the Right to undermine global action. It had form, with climate change. The same strategies. /4
Get people to believe, astonishingly, that action against a pandemic (or climate change) has to be ‘balanced’ against normal life. A normal life that is *producing* climate change, AND pandemics. What I think isn’t being considered is - we may have no choice in any of this. /5
Just as we don’t get to choose to ‘live with’ climate change, like choosing a milkshake flavour, we actually don’t know if Covid will agree to be ‘lived with’, in any form. Smallpox and malaria have killed more than half the people who ever lived. No ‘living with’, for them. /6
Our masters of the universe assumptions, that we get to actually choose major existential outcomes, are those shared by every civilisation that has ever collapsed. Historians will tell you that. But we barely even listen to epidemiologists. I’m not sure anybody is considering…/7
…that our fate may already be out of our hands. That Covid may not be something we can choose to accommodate in our societies. It may destroy them. Not even entertaining that possibility is poor risk management. Idiocy. /8
This is several decades of political libertarian philosophy, becoming real. The idea of collective fates and collective action almost destroyed. The struggle against Covid overwhelmingly framed as individual inconvenience, like bad customer service. That’s our true enemy. /end
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus that rise in positivity rate, even with test results consistently over 100,000 per day, tells a story? https://t.co/ONUYAK9iLD
#auspol #covid19aus have always found the hysteria about vaccination rates curious. It’s not where you start in a race, it’s where you finish. We’re going to round the US and UK up in the bend and win in a canter. https://t.co/tbyAh0ih7v
#auspol #covid19aus Greg Hunt regurgitating the laughable ‘kids need to be at school for their mental health’ line. Why would anybody believe conservatives on schools? Oz school performance has been in free fall, and they just fund privates. True experts say there’s no problem.
#insiders we should immediately discount any leader who sees the task ahead as ‘ending lockdowns’, rather than ‘ending the pandemic’. Do the latter, and you do the former, without infecting people.
#insiders #auspol ok, so let’s draw the line in the sand here. People casually infecting children, rather than waiting a few more months to get them vaccinated. Not me. ‘Chronic, debilitating lockdowns’, ffs, Labor as bad. Try Covid for chronic and debilitating.
#insiders another fact and knowledge-free Insiders, no public health expertise there to mediate the free flow of meaningless Covid slogans.
#auspol #covid19nsw is it too much to ask that even ONE journalist can confront the Premier with her total misrepresentation of the Doherty recommendations? Just once? Or that she’s violating Phase A of the National Plan, every day? Anybody?
#auspol #covid19aus the UK a great example of what happens if your obsession is avoiding lockdowns. Lack of virus control means repeated, yo-yo lockdowns. There is no binary between lockdown and ‘living with Covid’. https://t.co/IpyCLmJ0js
#auspol #covid19aus a message for the NSW Government and our PM. https://t.co/jdPUbikYIM
#auspol #covid19aus come on Australia, you know how to do this. In a pandemic that number 30 absolutely must stay at 30. https://t.co/sVmuTMOSSj
#auspol #covid19aus another great intervention from Allan Saul. Summarises the entire NSW situation in under 5 minutes. Fascinating how vaccination also makes contact tracing harder, because more people become asymptomatic. https://t.co/1dlTJQwGLV
#auspol maybe the most beautiful and powerful data visualisation ever. https://t.co/ZxBKU0AnSv
#auspol only economists could blame administrators for the political fuck-ups of the pandemic. Maybe they hadn't noticed that the FDA only approved Pfizer for use in the past fortnight. https://t.co/WHhEryZ12V
#auspol #covid19aus imagine saying ‘it’s not about the number of kids being hit by cars, it’s about the number of kids being badly injured when hit by cars’. https://t.co/uXrqQIjNMD
#auspol #covid19nsw #covid19aus cases under investigation in NSW hitting new records every day. How about at least one question at today’s NSW press conference on the overwhelmed contact tracing, and how that means the 70% and 80% figures are now meaningless? https://t.co/6wQqEP3zJQ
#covid19nsw #auspol here's a tip NSW journos. Read this and throw away all the other questions you had planned for 11am today. This is all you need. https://t.co/tn6gOP0szD
@covid19nsw #auspol the NSW Premier saying (again) that case numbers aren't growing exponentially. It's hard to keep track of the lies, there are so many. Again lying about Doherty modelling and the National Plan as well.
#auspol #covid19aus so Premier Berejiklian, if all Premiers have 'signed up' to the National Plan, why are you the only Premier that isn't following it? https://t.co/Ae4Y2JEt3Z
#auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/nWy2iKnWP2
Curve now stretches to beyond Christmas. https://t.co/jZLfxfSAzx
We talk about variants. Every variant to date has been produced by a political ideology, generating mass infection and mutation. A new variant today: the 'let's bring Aussies home at 80%' variant.
@theprojecttv if you talk about ‘living with Covid’, can you define precisely what is meant by that? A disease becoming endemic is much more complicated than that slogan.
#covid19aus #auspol this seems to match the UK experience, where last time I checked haematologists haven’t seen a single convincing TTS case for a 2nd AZ dose. https://t.co/w4MprLBGBW
#auspol I felt moved in a way I haven’t felt since I walked in on my parents having sex. https://t.co/jsLkTtMhCk
#auspol so good. So, so good. https://t.co/fNsDvRewmt
#auspol Antti’s animation updated to 2020 data. https://t.co/QoMjsTulZL
#auspol #covid19aus so transparent. The National Plan always was just a re-election document. It shifts attention off both of his failures - vaccination and quarantine - claiming that at 80% it’s vaccination job-done, and people can quarantine at home. https://t.co/bHoFyiAGwV
#auspol #covid19aus 4.3 million a week globally becoming infected. 67,000 of them dying. That’s 67,000 families losing loved ones, per week. The Economy crowd want you to believe with a jab, this is all as good as over. Our disgusting and immoral privilege on full display. https://t.co/OeHgEA3xI8
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @rossleedham this one is interesting, modelling globally. Look at the summary under Findings. https://t.co/glYyrzP1FW
#covid19nsw #auspol "Delta is like nothing we've ever seen before". G. Berejiklian. NZ, only 14 days in, and already smashing it. https://t.co/zB6dfGy4lS
#auspol #covid19aus here's a proper National Plan, not just focused on winning the next election. https://t.co/JZcPweNFdA