November 2021
Complete authored posts and demonstrable self-threads.
Not seeing the varying duration between first and second doses amongst AZ recipients, in the ATAGI booster advice? Very many had compressed duration between AZ doses, as low as 4 weeks. Calculation seems to be all 6 months from 2nd dose? #covid19aus https://t.co/t3nko9ipTJ
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @Bertrandization @YouAreLobbyLud am i missing it? Possibly part of their January 2022 review.
The pandemic is caused by economics, not the virus. #auspol #covid19aus @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/CsIZ5rShBW
Not boosters, AZ + mRNA as second dose (Pfizer and Moderna). Some interesting reading, courtesy of @NobodyImpawtant . @RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization @OrinCordus https://t.co/nNwX7mohXT
@normanswan didn't see anything in the ATAGI booster advice about the varying duration between AZ doses in the Australian community? Everything from 4 weeks to 12 weeks. Possibly coming in their January 2022 update?
Based on reporting and public response, it appears this Covid thingy was mostly something about grounded planes and cancelled holidays. https://t.co/7uWKbBemE4
Blaming China for the pandemic is like leaving all of your windows and doors open, and blaming the rain when the inside of your house gets wet. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/SUeEhbPAqk
293 deaths yesterday in the UK. The government response: ‘get vaccinated’. The libertarians were always going to use vaccines like they use CCS for climate change - as a quick technical fix to restore business as usual. #auspol @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/CXyBNEHnz6
COP26 and Covid show again that facts and science don't unite societies. They only do that within a framework of wider beliefs, a worldview. The libertarians are winning because they sell a worldview. Worldviews are impervious to facts, alone.
I have decided that because the contribution of my income tax to Australian life is infinitesimally small, I should no longer pay it. It will not be missed. https://t.co/Ro8z1CF1At #auspol
The only thing that has become endemic in 2020-21 is stupidity. And I thought JK Jr. had been dead over 20 years. Maybe there's another one. https://t.co/67ZgriRFE3
Contemplating the number of hours of conversation generated on Twitter every day arguing over whether to do basic public health things. Like arguing whether to put out fires, or fix leaking roofs.
Let’s just park this ‘Freedom Day’ snap from the UK, 19 July. #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/F6AaSUAOrH
My son explaining why being back at school is better than online learning. “It’s easier to bludge at school, the teachers can’t tell if you’re doing anything”. #auspol #covid19aus
It would be naive to think something like this won’t happen here. Not only allowing children to become infected, but legislatively mandating it. A defining time for our societies. Choose your side. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/j9JJKnNkG0
Another libertarian triumph. The young lining up to fight against basics like public health. But not for affordable housing, secure employment and a living wage. #auspol https://t.co/3gbuBRcLYz
3 days isn't a trend. But we're maybe on the way up again. #nswpol #covid19aus https://t.co/NirrB4o1Dw
Track what libertarian conservatives do across the world. It's a very cosy plagiarism club. In the UK today for example, they're having their own Christian Porter moment. Owen Paterson, a Tory MP, was found to have taken money.../1 #auspol https://t.co/uuidAVXnsJ
...to promote the interests of two firms. Paid advocacy. Clear breach of the rules, and the UK parliament's accountability process found it to be so. The Tory response? Dismantle the entire accountability process and replace it with a small committee of 5, majority occupied.../2
...by Tories. Over 100 Tory MPs voted *against* this process, as an indication of how much it stinks. But it prevailed. Another bit of cosy plagiarism - the Tory spin doctors described this as an issue only for the 'Westminster bubble'. Where have we heard that term? /end
@9NewsAUS @7NewsAustralia @abcnews how about running this NSW breakdown past the Deputy Premier in NSW, to ask if he still thinks masks for kids in schools are 'ludicrous'? Would it hurt the NSW Cabinet to require masks in schools until Christmas? @RealOzSAGE #nswpol #auspol https://t.co/dPvcqX61cw
There is a fast-track way to change the world. It would take 10 minutes. Everybody join a union. And it’s not just about money. Political libertarian ideas are stupid. But they win because they’re organised. Unions have always been the only effective organised resistance. /1 https://t.co/14kaXNo9KF
We can all look on in horror as plainly venal and stupid people run the world. You can’t win arguments with them. They win because they organise, to have power. They need to be met with actual force, in resistance. Unions are that force, and always have been, historically. /2
Before unions there was no real politics. Just the privileged doing whatever they liked. The LNP for example only exists as a reaction to the establishment of unions in Australia. Before that landed wealth and industry just did what it liked. /3
If the millions who despair and protest every year went online right now and spent 10 minutes joining a union, the country would change. Overnight. It would be literally that fast. Nothing would strike greater terror in the hearts of the conservatives. /end
#QandA not watching tonight, just wanted to say hi.
In the battle of beliefs, one side organises. The other only speaks. This is why the bad people keep winning. They’re organised, they spent years building and acquiring access to every lounge room. It’s a completely unbalanced fight. You need to organise, to win. https://t.co/uSGOYkTD3n
All pandemics can be beaten, without a microscope. The basics: clean air, clean water, good food, less crowding etc. In some ways the development of medical weapons against infectious disease continually stalls attention to political causes of public health failure. #covid19aus https://t.co/TVETv9gNSA
Australia used Thalidomide. The US didn't, based on FDA advice. I'd recommend people follow the FDA strong advice to vaccinate kids aged 5-11 too. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/0rT6atxZ50 https://t.co/SG6NoiVrPE
That struggle to find a good present for Christmas. Last year the tourism industry gave Europe a catastrophic Christmas. This year? Projections say half-a-million more dead by February. https://t.co/2ZhQE43oYC
Anybody else getting double-posts because Twitter keeps saying 'Whoops you posted that before'? Even when you haven't.
Pfft, as if you'd close a business to stop infection. That's so 2020. #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/mKK3WIfKMl
NSW shifting to the UK model of turning much contact tracing over to private citizens and their phone notifications. With case numbers dropping and far fewer mystery cases, wouldn't this be the time to actually ramp up the gold standard tracing team again? https://t.co/jvf1hJwQ5W
@RichardfromSyd1 another way to look at it (this is the longer source document). Why scale back the gold standard tracing at a time when case numbers are low and mystery cases even lower?
Anybody else look at this and think 'now there's a country who wants to live with the virus'? Me either. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/FrBBvuTrx3
It seems Covid at least is really excited about Denmark's live with the virus strategy. https://t.co/d5k5jNjwBg
Well done to the ABC for this digital journalism piece. It highlights the trap of believing too much that the daily political debate represents underlying realities. It rarely does, maybe more than 90% of the running and changing of the country…/1 https://t.co/nYbyWf1E9n
…happens out in the community. For example I doubt many knew just how far advanced action already is in Australia towards zero emissions. 100% of our electricity, nationally on some days, in under 4 years, for example. Watch Yes Minister again, politicians…/2
…don’t really run the country. Bureaucrats and ordinary people do, and they mostly know their shit. Politicians have a valid role, as lightning rods for emerging issues, but they’re just the tiniest tip of the iceberg of what actually happens in a country, every day. /end
Short thread on some bits of National Cabinet yesterday. Note the graphic first, from the PM’s own webpage. Our safety comes second to the Economy. But we already knew that. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/V3RHWbIRAV
Doherty provided their final report to National Cabinet, the full details of which will be released in coming days. Summary findings here: https://t.co/4S4LNORMaC The clear framing from Cabinet to Doherty remains ‘live with the virus’. Nowhere is this defined, it seemingly…/2
…remains mostly a feel-good political slogan. Defining that is THE critical task at this point in the pandemic, but it won’t be done or allowed, because then the politics it really represents would be seen. Some other key findings: /3
1. Apparently 80% of 16+ vaccinated will be sufficient to protect us from outbreaks from cases introduced by international travel. (How this can be true I have no idea, 80% of 16+ hasn’t been enough to prevent big outbreaks even domestically, anyway where in the world). /4
2. Public health measures such as test, trace, isolate, quarantine, and restrictions more generally, are being devolved to a case-by-case triage type process. As we saw with ring-fencing LGAs, there seems a false belief that this is somehow easier, cheaper and less disruptive…/5
…than centralised processes. This hasn’t been empirically true at any point of this pandemic. In fact it usually just means everybody gives up, rather than try to coordinate the vastly more complex localised responses. You need extensive public health resources…/6
…out on the ground, to pull this off. Most towns don’t have them. 3. Schools. Multiple permutations of ‘infect the kids’ modelled (‘don’t infect the kids’ not modelled, we are after all ‘living with the virus’, which mostly means we’re infecting our children.) Anybody…/7 https://t.co/QVDvCIBJgm
…who’s worked in a school will know the suggested way forward, rapid testing of ‘close contacts’, bears little connection to how a school actually operates. Everybody is a ‘close contact’, in a school. ‘Minimise disruptions to face-to face learning’ gets another guernsey. /8
If you believe that’s an actual concern for the federal government, I have a used car you can buy right now. ‘Increasing caseloads’ is taken as a given, more live with the virus. Now caseloads are plummeting, you’d think would be the time to step UP the public health work…/9
…to grind Covid into total submission. Instead we’re retrofitting society to allow it to spread and give it a comfy place right at the heart of everything we do. Finally “National Cabinet received advice from the Chief Medical Officer on emerging scientific evidence of…/10
…the benefits of vaccinating for 5-11 year olds.“ This puts the CMO significantly at odds with a former Deputy CMO, whose ‘let’s infect the kids, it’s better for them’ think tank of key experts have been relentlessly hammering the danger of vaccinating the under-12s. /end
The most infectious thing in this pandemic is slogans. ‘Like the flu’ a particular favourite. https://t.co/qmuL0UEKUj
I call this the ‘You Had One Job’ curve. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/qSiZhb2dkB
@RichardfromSyd1 what’s your R showing? Seems we’re on our way back up. @OrinCordus @Bertrandization @rossleedham https://t.co/XWuRkxO0it
Why do we stick with our ideas about democracy as being rule by the public, when we keep voting for people who kill the public? Elected leaders are the tiniest tip of the democratic iceberg. A thread about our current madness. #auspol #covid19aus /1 https://t.co/POUqotdJ7j
It’s in our institutions that expertise and accumulated wisdom resides. Institutions are the emergent organisation of multi-generational experience. You don’t just create them out of choice. Language is an institution. Science is an institution. Institutions aren’t just…/2
…government departments. (Though they’re institutions as well.) They’re like society’s DNA, that helps to continuously re-create it for every generation. Libertarians generally attack institutions, it’s their defining belief, that institutions restrict individual freedom. /3
This is the place to understand the success and tragedy of Trump and Johnson-style libertarianism, also well underway under the LNP in Australia. They win elections by destroying institutions. Their strategy for many decades has been to paint institutions as ‘bureaucracy’, as…/4
…’red tape’, restricting your individual freedom. To paint themselves as the clean broom, sweeping away these ‘elites’ of experts and bureaucrats. (That these same libertarians live at the top of the pyramid of elite social life doesn’t stop their appeal.) /5
The problem with our ideas about democracy is that people *want* hierarchy, they want to be led by other people. Not just in politics, you can’t find a profession or part of life that doesn’t have a hierarchy in that way. It reflects the value hierarchy we maintain for ALL…/6
…things. We always value things, whether it’s work or ideas or shoes etc., along a hierarchy of bad to good, to best. And we ‘elect’ people along each part of this hierarchy of value too. The worst and best shoe makers, etc. This is where our insistence that democracy…/7
…is some value-less plurality of beliefs, ‘each to their own’, is actually destroying it. People will always re-create hierarchies, if they’re not available. That idea of benevolent pluralism is the seedbed the libertarians use to grow their own hierarchies in. Their…/8
…political opponents are so busy promoting the diversity of belief, that they forget to offer any hierarchy of value at all. Or the hierarchy they offer is purely negative and reactionary: to libertarian ‘aspirational’ politics they offer ‘anti-libertarian’ ideas as the only…/9
…alternative. Just about pulling down the libertarians, not about offering a positive alternative hierarchy of belief. Or the positivity is just that same pluralism of belief, which inspires nobody because it defies the basic logic of existence, that some things are better…/10
…than other things. The real danger we now face is about institutions. Because they emerge over generations, destroying them may be a terminal act. As Bruno Latour says here, about religion. Anti-libertarians relish the destruction of religion, with gleeful iconoclasm. /11 https://t.co/duhXEa13lL
Our societies may actually not survive the libertarian success, because it by definition eats the actual basis of our societies. Societies of adolescents, we learn our social ideas in high schools, where each generation competes rather than forms that famous ‘circle of life’. /12
Edmund Burke wrote brilliantly about why custom and tradition are the lifeblood of any society. Conservatives like Burke used to make that the foundation of their politics. Libertarians are not conservatives, that’s just the vehicle they’re using. They’re the vanguard of the…/13
…eternal youth culture, the culture of adolescence, that our societies have become. The boomers began it. But look at the deepest resistance to basic public health in this pandemic - it’s been in the young. The libertarians are winning. /14 https://t.co/GDV5pq2uuC
These libertarians are our culture. It would be easy if it was a clearly identifiable group of evil bastards oppressing us. It isn’t. Back to Tweet one of this thread. People vote for this libertarian nonsense. This IS our culture now. We may not survive it. /15
Our societies really are high schools now. Look at the fascination for adolescent life, in all age groups. People well into retirement age find going to gigs and drinking a pinnacle of social life. The intense comparison of adolescent life, of status and positioning…/16
…yourself in a social group. The epidemic of cosmetic surgery and photo filters to retain our adolescent looks. Politics as adolescent gotcha debates, with no ‘programmatic specificity’, to quote a former (mocked) PM. The manic avoidance of disagreement, in favour of…/17
…’identification’ with any of a range of personal passions. The translation of all political issues into impacts on our personal feelings. The substitution of organised (union) political action into personal protest. Etc. This is our world. A high school. /18
High school is short, 6 years. It ends. That may be the epitaph of our societies too. The second the boomers straightened the circle of life into an eternal lifestyle-based youth, it was game over. /end https://t.co/O96I7pKfkT
Another expertise-free #Insiders, @andrewprobyn and @PhillipCoorey fresh from a European junket, opining that the rest of the world is leaving Oz behind. At the exact time Europe is descending into another Covid winter, with more than 500,000 projected to die. #auspol
Patterns. We often focus on individual country patterns of Covid infection. The aggregate world picture is fascinating. For example I’d assume A (red) is the period where case numbers build to a threshold - the low-hanging fruit of new hosts. #covid19 #covid19aus /1 https://t.co/IHkMdoczDF
Once infections reach that threshold, they then seem to oscillate between about 50 and 100 per million global population. Complete guesswork, but I do wonder if the pandemic will subside only when infections get out of that oscillation zone, a type of equilibrium. /end
1, 4, 5 and 6 on this list all told their populations ‘just put a bucket under where the roof leaks, you’ll get used to it’. 2 and 3 said ‘let’s fix the bloody roof’. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/8M2JpAci9M
People overseas see the public health achievement in Australia, of getting most of us vaccinated with minimal infections. The people here in OZ who opposed public health measures every step of the way are now claiming the victory is purely the vaccines. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/JeFC2fSHgR
The overriding reason given for surrendering to the spread of Covid is that we can't continue (apparently) to do the public health work needed to eliminate it. About 20 million people are so far thought to have died from Covid. That's more deaths than WW1. /1 #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/1okdoiAnvW
I don't remember anybody saying in Word War 1: let's just give up. Losing wasn't an option, it was unthinkable. It was more than 4 years of hell, but we persisted. Less than 2 years into the pandemic, where most hardship is basically staying in your own home, we're spent. /2
You know, I don't think WE are spent. I think a tiny minority of vested interests are tired of losing money, and want us to march into the Covid machine guns, rather than them lose another cent. This whining, immoral minority are very skilled at making a lot of noise, which.../3
...many mistake for mass feeling. They're just yelling, that's all, over the top of a crowd who mostly want Covid out of their lives forever. Look at our superb vaccination rates, this isn't people hankering to 'live with the virus'. Time to call enough on that nonsense. /end
If you develop a new weapon in a war, what do you do with it? You use it, to win. Vaccines are our biggest weapon against Covid. What are we using them for? To surrender. To 'live with the virus'. You can't make this stuff up. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/GOUEqiNJCD
Remembering 2 of our leading journalists, fresh back from Europe, said on the weekend Europe was leaving Australia behind. In coffin construction, maybe. Same continent, same ‘live with the virus’ from last year. Same lethal outcome. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/EoXo1lfKTM
Comparing pandemics with war. Before the 20th century, the biggest killer in wars was? Infectious disease. Like the American Civil war, where the biggest killers by far were diarrhoea and dysentery. Pandemics kill many more than wars. But wars are themselves epidemics #covid19aus https://t.co/7jMX4WjvCI
This is the only case numbers we should be looking at. The total world figure. Does the pandemic look over to you? Or just oscillating between idiot 'open up and live with the virus' euphoria and 'o shit' rapid retreat? International preceded national,.../1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/iMziLD79kF
...historically. Countries were formed via international agreement, not the other way around. None of our borders really restrict a virus. None of our lives inside our borders can continue for long without movement across those borders, of resources and people. /2
The only positive about people who have been throwing tantrums to get borders open is that it might force them to realise the pandemic was always international, never national. Sheltering at home has given them the ludicrous idea that the pandemic can be over, nationally. /end
680 children have died of Covid in the US. Over 100 in the UK. Experts in Oz say we need more data to assess risk to children from the vaccines. Those vaccines aren't going to kill hundreds of children. Get on with it. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/9hGaOXbz5K
The experts who say child vaccines aren't a priority, also argue against masks for kids in schools. Now they're slowing rollout of vaccines to under-12s, because of myocarditis and pericarditis risks. Didn't stop teen vaccines. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/N78HcbeqV7
It's become a sort of badge of honour for experts who also engage in culture war debates, to infect young children. They move Heaven and Earth to block any attempt to stop that infection happening. They dismiss ventilation concerns in schools, mask use by students,.../2
...closing of schools to control infection, extended use of remote learning while vaccines are approved, etc. Conservative blowhards have demanded children get into school and suck in the Covid since the beginning of 2020. Adults who weaponise childrens'.../3
...health for political purposes are a new lowest form of life on Earth. /end
Is hundreds of children dead of Covid 'real world data'? Asking for a friend. We need a name for people determined at all costs to infect children. Actually, it's 'National Cabinet' - it's in the National Plan. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/ehxanMiFHg
As we worship our big steel Gods returning to Kingsford Smith and Tullamarine, a basic stat about our travel obsession. An A380 burns 10-11 TONNES of fuel *per hour*. #auspol /1 https://t.co/31QlMZfcdK
Flying on one of these babies to London will therefore burn between about 260 tonnes of fuel. That's about half a tonne of fuel, per person. To fill one of these jets requires 6 or 7 of those fuel tankers you see filling up the tanks at your local servo. For one trip. /2
Obviously this is the 'normal' world we have pined for (nothing defines our whining about Covid more than our plea to get back in the air). A tonne of fuel for a jaunt to London and back, per person. Mathematical wonks say, yes but per km, this is still pretty efficient. /3
Uh huh. A flesh-and-blood creature who can walk at about 5 km/h, travelling 17,000km in a day is some indication of how fossil fuels allowed us to tap energy that took several millions years to form, and burn it inside 3 centuries. Our old normal can't survive. /end
Not sure the 6-month gap to a 3rd dose should be the blanket model in Oz. Lots of AZ in use here, and LOTS of people had their second AZ dose well under the 12 week mark, and were promised boosters as an incentive to do it. #auspol #covid19aus @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/VvO4ZZ5JbJ
@RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization @OrinCordus nice to see some AZ data.
Been in discussions with business today about the projected tsunami of compensation claims from staff who catch Covid at work. I wonder if those who backed ‘living with the virus’ read the form guide first. Goes way beyond health. #auspol #covid19aus
“We need to shift our focus away from always looking at the cases, and rather look at the daily hospitalised cases.” Has somebody ripped the chapter on prevalence out of public health textbooks? Infection matters, surely? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/ISmxhYojMZ
NZ is one of the few places left on Earth that hasn't gone batshit crazy. What they're arguing for here would have been considered common sense only 30 years ago. Libertarian politics is destroying our sanity and societies. #auspol #covid19aus @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/Uvt6TOJ4RG
@profesterman no more Sydney daily analysis?
The same people who say masks damage children socially and psychologically, are now eagerly pushing a system where they'll have swabs shoved up their noses and down their throats multiple times every week, instead. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/lWxhKuwiLb
"Rapid testing is a ruse designed to trick people into agreeing to uncontrolled spread. Because that is exactly what has happened wherever it is widely available. The UK is a classic example...40K cases a day..." /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/GefWMvBazz
RAT is a great technology. But just like the vaccines, when the libertarians get their hands on it, it will be used like snake oil. /end
Imagine McKinsey advocating for crime and corruption to become endemic. You expect this Covid nonsense from a business consulting firm. But from so many experts? Any bad thing becoming endemic, is itself a bad thing. Let’s think. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/trcjJs7MiP
From what I understand, this current pattern of world cases *is* what ‘endemic’ Covid may look like? Baseline (here about 40 cases per million) being the endemic level of virus in the community, with then repeated epidemic waves? /1 #covid19aus @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/IaH19wNYeK
The welcoming of endemicity projects a rosy Covid future, where burden of disease will be ‘like the flu’. But have we already arrived at what Covid endemicity would look like, right now, with these repeated waves of debilitating infection? /end
Mr Hunt said while he expected children to be able to get vaccines shortly, caution was needed: "(Regulators) will work to make sure that there are no corners cut in ensuring the safety and protection of our children." (Corners = masks and ventilation. Nil action in NSW.) https://t.co/zQwkr6d5Hn
This from Yves Smith is worth pondering. Be interested to hear if the science checks out (seems OK, to me, but not my field.) #auspol #covid19aus @Bertrandization @djf0001 https://t.co/sph4v1LuBJ
I think when even the CMO describes removing public health measures as 'freedom', we may as well give up. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/U3dxRypv3F
Still not seeing commentary in OZ about wildly varying intervals between AZ doses. Very large numbers of people had compressed intervals between dose 1 and 2. The OS data suggests strongly this will matter. The US had compressed intervals (and this is Pfizer). #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/XDvbOWyyV0
Looking at Israel’s data last night made me think about how we look at Covid data as being about the virus. When actually it’s much more about us, the people. These epidemiological curves show social behaviour more than virus behaviour. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/pQYxRVs2PK
The virus on its own can do nothing, it uses us to spread and grow. Have Tweeted before (https://t.co/1stDMhEXNh) about how our societies are now adolescent cultures, incubated in our schools. You can see that in the curves. The yo-yo of euphoria and retreat. /2
No adult grit and determination, epidemiology driven by waves of euphoria, boredom and fear. In poorer nations without this high school culture, you see similar epidemic waves. But they don’t have the same extensive public health infrastructure as we do. These are the curves…/3 https://t.co/T7dGxpsvne
…WE *shouldn’t* have. Our public health institutions were designed to smooth or level them. Public health was never going to get much say in modern libertarian nations though, who don’t have any idea now of what the ‘public’ even is. /end
Are we confusing repeated infection with persistent infection, in the idea that us all being repeatedly infected with Covid will create ongoing immunity? Repeated infection seems more like a constant, damaging assault on the immune system. #covid19aus https://t.co/RvteWDIHWY
Austria, one home of free-market libertarianism. When you deny the public exists, you end up reinventing it one (incarcerated) group at a time. Libertarians hate the lockdowns their own ideas cause. /1#auspol #covid19aus @YouAreLobbyLud @polioandme https://t.co/UOJoVWW5b8
This ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ idea has always bothered me. A collective, public event - a pandemic - becomes a consumerist libertarian question of individual choice. Like shopping. This is what libertarians have done with the vaccines,…/2
…rather than use them as part of an integrated public health strategy, that recognises this is a public, collective emergency, they’ve tried to keep their fantasy world of free sovereign individuals, vaccinated or not. And now they’re going to lock up very specific…/3
…individuals who don’t make the right choices. ‘Right’ choices that can only be defined collectively, as the public good. But they won’t admit there is a public, or a public good. Better to lock individuals up than question your core idiot beliefs. /4
Austria could use public health measures to get Covid under control. But instead lockdowns will now get even more granular, in total contradiction with their idiot beliefs about freedom again. To paraphrase Planck, beliefs alas tend to only change one funeral at a time. /end
This is a gap in this pandemic. We really need an authoritative ‘measures’ tracker, to go alongside all the cases data. https://t.co/QF9iVNAAGs
What’s the point of our lives? Grant captures the libertarian shift. We have no collective goals, only individual goals. Identity politics of the self. Why we can’t solve climate change, or Covid. All diversity, no unity. No unity *of* diversity. #auspol https://t.co/d3jUFZlGjy
When dams overflow, there’s lots of anger about needing bigger dams to capture this ‘wasted’ water. The concept of downstream, of the global health of the waterway? Ha. Using dams for water security is like buying a bigger wallet for financial security. https://t.co/uu7VGjNybK
How to know what to think about waning vaccine efficacy? Revisiting the Oxford study of only a few months ago, showing that AZ may in fact maintain better protection against symptomatic infection than Pfizer, over time. And even providing an explanation for that. /1 #covid19aus https://t.co/cs7JzLAy6T
And they controlled for pretty much all of the confounders. /end https://t.co/druCusx8wP
@RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization @OrinCordus @djf0001 wanted to go back to this Oxford/ONS study, it’s well worth reading. Also interestingly they found no effect of dosing internal in efficacy waning. https://t.co/E1eOa64GeT
I doubt anybody is surprised that vaccinations for under-12s were pushed back to 2022, and we hear confirmation now we don’t have any paediatric doses in the country. #insiders #covid19aus #auspol
“It must never be taken from us again.” I think he genuinely sees the past 2 years as economic life, stolen by pesky public health measures. The ‘can-do capitalism’ and ‘don’t-do government’ speech. Clearly he leads a don’t-do government, nobody would argue. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/O7dOBskVNd
The slower approval of vaccinations for kids for ‘safety’ reasons is a risk management triple somersault with double twist, being almost oblivious to risks already under our noses. At a minimum how about rigorous PH measures in schools in the meantime? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/8PLgwyrU8x
h/t to @RichardfromSyd1 for highlighting this one. The UK infected: - nearly half of its babies under 1 - nearly 60% of its toddlers aged 1-4 - 81% of its children aged 5-14. Something I want to understand. A short thread. /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/b6IvvpTRxE
Some medical professionals are very casual about child infection, manifested in a range of ways, such as saying school is more important than avoiding infection, and not agitating for even basic PH measures in these schools. Or now, demanding a level of caution…/2
…in vaccine approval for children that appears completely absent in the acceptance of mass infection of the young. Is this the old Hippocratic ‘do no harm’ thing, where as a physician you shouldn’t harm anybody by your actions? But then it’s fine to allow them to be harmed…/3
…in other ways, such as by infection? Or is it more venal than that, and some medical professionals are wearing their political hearts on their sleeves, backing their ‘side’. The conservative side of politics, which sees getting kids into fish bowl schools to be infected as…/4
…an article of faith? To get the Economy going again. A type of initiation rite for entry to this conservative medico-political group? Or is this the wider social/political/cultural thing of basically just screwing the young in every possible way? They can’t afford…/5
…even a roof over their heads, have insecure and underpaid jobs etc. Look at that breakdown of infections across the age groups again. A perfect indication of where society’s priorities lie? Maybe it’s all of the above. /end https://t.co/Pa7haU57Iv
Most expert debate on the pandemic is in the political-social-cultural area, not separate to the facts. There is no separation. An expert claiming facts clinch the argument for them is a Wally. https://t.co/rr7Pc9LkPD
The R number globally has oscillated around 1 for just about the entire pandemic. Covid has been endemic, internationally, the whole time? With localised (national) epidemics? #covid19aus #COVID19 https://t.co/0XpObkZdJ6
Let’s shift our vaccination strategy towards control of transmission, make it a key tool in an overall suppression/elimination strategy. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/gRApvIA3ph
One symptom of entrenched privilege is the anxiety disagreement causes. 'Division', as we call it. Yet to divide also means to share. When the world appears divided, it's because it's not dividing things fairly. Division restores division. https://t.co/gjYXMVy5w6
Clear explanation of relative risk in relation to vaccine efficacy percentages. #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/7yXXut6a1m
Worth watching this SKY News UK debate, to see Lord Downer copping an absolute pasting from all assembled. #auspol https://t.co/hU7WXj8Su9
It won’t be an endemic Covid world. ‘Living with Covid’ will be like taking Covid in as a flatmate, then discovering it throws huge rave parties regularly and unexpectedly. #auspol #covid19aus @RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @djf0001 @Bertrandization https://t.co/SMPVwIW7Yk
Some still point to Sweden as a Covid role model. So far Public Health Sweden has killed more people than died in World Wars 1 and 2 there, combined. Public health is under assault, worldwide. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/7HCDaOgNRb
I suppose I should be grateful people are wearing masks at all. In my workplace people wear them when they get up from their desk and go somewhere (like the toilet or copy room), and then take them off when they sit down or talk on the phone. Hygiene theatre. #covid19aus #auspol
We have doses sitting there, unused, right now. Why do we have to wait until vaccine efficacy has fallen off a cliff before giving the 3rd dose? Because (live with the virus politicians) say, all that matters is hospitalisations and deaths. Bullshit. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/MhSglwNOmI
Spent yesterday dealing with a single Covid case in a business. Via SafeWork Australia and NSW Health. Tied the whole business in knots, for 2 days now. It's clear now the PH burden is being deliberately shifted to business,... /1 #auspol #covid19aus
...neither NSW Health nor SafeWork Australia offered much help at all, except to flick responsibility for most things back on the business. Which means, if you have any experience of business, that it won't be done by many, if not most. Particularly small business. which.../2
...employs the overwhelming majority of Australians. It doesn't have the resources or often the understanding or even willingness to undertake this daily PH work. Politicians want this off their desks, PH be damned. 'Live with the virus' is just buck-passing, by them. /end
When simpletons appeal to other simpletons by saying 'living with Covid' is 'just like the flu', they mean non-pandemic flu. The more accurate comparison would be trying to live with pandemic flu. We know how that ends. #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/A2eOjX2NXe
We all remember this? People mocked for worrying about clotting risk, with AZ? 4 per million. The same mockers now say extreme caution is needed with Pfizer in children. Oz running at about 10 (mild) myocarditis cases per million. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/pOT5Cfeb4o
50 million people are infected with Covid worldwide, every 90 days. Prevalence matters. #auspol #covid19aus
The only thing endemic right now is stupidity. https://t.co/tijr4ID9Aj
Australia's Covid ball and chain continues to do what he does best. Get in the way. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/uwSSiCARfl
The real politics of the nation are seen in our footpaths. Anybody who works with footpaths knows that the old collective public service ideas build and maintain them. Libertarian ideas are destroying them, with the smallest trip triggering punitive litigation. #auspol https://t.co/rwM3Gp4s7Y
Do you think the spin merchants who came up with 'pandemic of the unvaccinated', as a libertarian dodge to get rid of PH measures, now think about kids being the only unvaccinated left? The group they're 'cautious' to vaccinate? #auspol #covid19aus
NSW makes it official. The gold standard of contact tracing no longer much bothers with it, because 'vaccination'. Pandemic must be over, somebody better tell Covid. #auspol #covid19aus @RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus https://t.co/5ESL02XWOi
The question for NSW seems to be, where to from here? Most of the cases in the blue circle are children, so cases may decline as they get vaxxed. If enough of us get a 3rd dose, it may drive NSW towards elimination. We know Covid is an epidemic virus, so…/1 #covid19aus https://t.co/7ptezCOvDc
…it won’t just sit at a steady state. That alone suggests elimination remains the only option. There is no set-and-forget COVID, vaccines or not. Why don’t we do it right now? We’re either going to accidentally eliminate, or be driven back to lockdowns. /end
The mythology of the ‘moderate centre’ in politics is widespread. The centre is an entirely relative position, easily shifted over time. The ecological fallacy, in politics. Attributing averages to individuals. #auspol https://t.co/uxX2c0rmqe
Winning is about power. Power comes from the organisation of belief. Logic won’t defeat the libertarians. Only unions can. It would take 10 minutes to change the world. Join a union. Even the RBA is saying it. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/tsMnKyr1EH
Progress might be for us to stop pretending experts and journalists have a ‘view from nowhere’ unshaped by their other beliefs. It’s those other beliefs that need to be discussed, rather than pretending we have to hide them behind a faux objectivity. https://t.co/Y7DldpUMNH
All medicine is political. All science is political. Not 'influenced by' politics. Intrinsically political. 'Facts' never speak for themselves, and all facts are value-laden. #auspol #covid19aus @laurelleoz https://t.co/vgWNC7na9D
From the guidelines the NSW Government has issued to business to manage Covid in the workplace. Note the continued fantasy of 1.5m. But airborne included in residence time in a room. Vaccination makes all contact casual or low risk. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/YyyvOEJhB8
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @drbecs @Bertrandization seen these yet? Have been implementing this week.
@RealOzSAGE has there been an assessment of these guidelines yet? Full document here: https://t.co/9lOKRQun7E
I think plagiarised, but at least somebody there may not have been a cold-eyed zealot. #auspol https://t.co/IhDZCcKEZo
Will vaccines paradoxically extend the pandemic? Developed nations almost universally have used them as an excuse to drop most public health measures. They’ve fuelled a ‘live with the virus’ resurgence. And by allowing the vaccinated to become infected, we’re generating variants. https://t.co/O1omSUlage
Drosten here says vaccination can prevent the development of endemic Covid. But can Covid ever be endemic? I see so much confusion over this, so a few questions for those who might know. /1 #covid19aus @RealOzSAGE @c_drosten @ArisKatzourakis https://t.co/e1MBfu6kHP
A clear and logical counter view in the thread below. Is disease pattern intrinsic to the pathogen itself - how infectious it is, its mode of transmission etc. - or is it a hybrid outcome of pathogen + environment, including public health measures? /2 https://t.co/SMPVwIW7Yk
Can you modulate the disease pattern for a given pathogen through the use of public health measures, including vaccination, or is a pathogen always going to exhibit a particular pattern, no matter what? Influenza for example remains an epidemic disease, after centuries? /end
Something has gone very wrong in Victoria, over many years. Have to wonder if it’s the same as the UK and US, libertarian leaders planted seeds decades ago, that are now reaching maturity. Kennett in the 1990s. The idea of the ‘public’ is terminal. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/l1HokOBdFN
“Let business determine their own risks, let’s get government out of peoples’ lives”. Stuart Robert, SKY News. The government is us - we created it. Most people I know do much better with government in their lives than they do with business in their lives. #auspol
And yet ANOTHER #insiders free of public-health expertise. Why are we all talking as if the pandemic is over? Don’t we see this same idiot trend every summer, overseas, the declaration of victory with lower case numbers? Europe again heading for a gravedigger’s Christmas.
The new NSW Health guidelines regarding ‘venues of concern’. If your kids are wondering what to train for when leaving school, I suggest WHS litigation, based on the underlined bit in red. Decades of guaranteed income. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/FIeAlKAtP9
@RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @drbecs @Bertrandization what do you think Bert? Nice little earner here?
If ‘living with the virus’ will require big annual population vaccine coverage, flu vaccines are a guide? We only tend to get big coverages for vaccines administered at childhood. Flu vaccination estimates for <65 years, for Oz. #covid19aus @RichardfromSyd1 @MackayIM https://t.co/Ub8pKnprA5 https://t.co/CeulP0zluw
When they talk about purity and pure blood, I’m not sure if they see themselves as Voldemort, or Joseph Goebbels. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/hFTiO37M3f
@chrischirp is there data on how many have had multiple infections with SARS-Cov-2 in the UK?
‘We’re waiting for more data’ here in Oz. Is it coming by post and stuck in the Christmas mail? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/A2bexF1FN3
This is what happens when you don’t have vaccines, and actually have to take Covid seriously. Public health networks a likely cause of success. Giving libertarians vaccines in rich countries was always going to prolong the pandemic. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/mQYzwcwpKX
Erm, I’m not a public health professional. But that looks a strange endemic curve there, on the left? @RealOzSAGE @RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization @djf0001 #covids19aus https://t.co/TFYqXjShza
Remember the same libertarian ideas that call it a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated' are responsible for the unvaccinated being unvaccinated. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/xnYogmxC8y
For a brief period (May-November 2020), Australians were the healthiest they'd ever been. The period the libertarians described as oppression, and 'we can't live like this forever'. The Empire Struck Back in 2021. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/zVZThLaAyL
New @RealOzSAGE modelling for NSW through to June 2022, taking into account degree of contact tracing and under-12 vaccination. Still to my knowledge the only peer-reviewed pandemic model we’ve seen used. #auspol #covid19aus @RichardfromSyd1 @djf0001 @OrinCordus @Bertrandization https://t.co/63xP4jKJ5v
It would be interesting to know what proportion of employers have actually provided masks to employees, and what proportion required employees to buy the masks themselves. #COVID19Aus
On the libertarian Right, parties are splintering into micro-factions of grievance. On the Left, purity of micro-factions has been the business model for years. Mirror images. Democracy will never work as only a diversity of views. #auspol https://t.co/xI1xSv8EJy
Some Liberals remember that government is about people. And that the 'Economy' is these same people. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/yfTGUfNCch
Christian Drosten in January 2021, about Germany. 'Pushing the numbers way down', what the wise have said for 2 years, and every politician has ignored except in short bursts. #auspol #covid19aus @RichardfromSyd1 https://t.co/7Uav8gZV8Y
Thank you @MarylouiseMcla1 (in response to news many vaccine doses are going to waste). #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/3ONo1Y3BSr
@RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization
Source article. Also, this continued reliance upon the GP network. It's a minimum 6-week wait for me, to see my GP, even outside a pandemic. https://t.co/ufKtw0OBL0
Second dot-point. I still can’t believe we’re using the word ‘lockdown’. Could there have been a worse choice of word to encourage support of restrictions? All quite deliberate spin. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/yfvWlJWUjY
The latest perverse way England is rationalising its Covid disaster. Calculating the numbers of people left to kill, compared to other countries. And on that metric, it’s leading Europe. Rule Britannia. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/hc2bcIACwj
@YouAreLobbyLud the other one.
England is mid-pack for vaccinations amongst the same group, and only a handful of countries have meaningfully lower vax rates. In a nutshell, it slaughtered its own people and now says ‘hey we’re better than you, because we have far fewer people left to kill.’ https://t.co/KkzpJaBtPS
Now that libertarians are reframing PH metrics towards killing of people as a success measure, look how bad those Germans are, so many left to kill. If they’d killed more steadily and ruthlessly through 2020-21, they’d be leading Europe, together with the UK. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/gGT1vqpdS9
@YouAreLobbyLud this one and my previous Tweet might interest you. How inverting sanity means death = winning.
In which some paediatricians argue that what a government puts in a PHO is the gold standard for scientific advice. These same governments zealously removing all measures except vax is why some are now zealous, with vax. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/leaypFALhV
The 3 most pointless weeks of school remain this year. Send the kids home out of Covid’s way, ffs. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/CXY17dNyV7
Covid reminds me of asbestos. Hardly anybody showed ill effects from asbestos, when it was introduced as a wonder material. (My father was one, he died years later of the effects.) Airborne = maximum precaution. /1 #auspol #COVID19Aus @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/lZYo0mfvwR
Engineered benchtops and silicosis a current example. Who thought breathing in that dust would end well? (My gut feeling is that photocopier toner is a sleeper issue too.) This is where medical science meets standard WH&S. Lungs are for oxygen. /2 https://t.co/BT8vovHBXG
It’s not coincidental that our two current existential crises, the pandemic and climate change, both involve the air we breathe. All known life in the universe is in that tiny blue gaseous veneer at the surface of Earth. Let that sink in, when people talk about air quality. /3 https://t.co/wLjQzNZlMV
This isn’t a modern issue either. Air quality has been a trigger historically for major social change, in many countries. Rather than only seeing ventilation as a mitigation for Covid, we can see air quality itself as a marker of social breakdown. /4 https://t.co/EoNDDgoPTl
We swim in air. There’s a tonne of atmospheric pressure on every part of you, right now. Fish only know water exists when they’re beached, as the saying goes. We’re starting to understand that again, for air. /end
Nothing is as bingeworthy (rhymes with cringeworthy) to view as the UK. The death spiral of a proud nation, hijacked by libertarian pirates. https://t.co/bZSxhtk1Df
Lovely. Taking to work. https://t.co/uekQmv1VKM
"Minister for Health Brad Hazzard said COVID booster shots would be an important part of keeping the community safe through the summer and New Year." Most of the NSW community won't qualify until well after New Year. #auspol #covid19aus #nswpol
Will there be a reckoning one day for those in prominent medical science positions who call to 'live with' a novel pathogen while it's still uncontrolled? You can understand the average punter doing that, but so many who are paid shedloads to know better? #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/5Rqxf05oHy
This Department of Health national Covid restriction checker is a pretty useful tool. NSW will soon have nothing left to populate it with, but 10 points for trying. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/OQf4hZdM9S
Struggling to find clarity on endemicity/epidemicity. Many references say it's all about rate of infection. And/or they say it's also about being self-sustaining in a geographical area, for endemicity, but epidemics can be geographically constrained and prolonged too? Anybody? https://t.co/oV94yaskAS
Libertarians don’t solve problems. They re-brand them as non-problems, or as faux problems they can manipulate in strategic ways. They can’t solve collective problems, because they don’t believe the collective is even a thing. Quick thread, using UK boat arrivals. /1 #auspol https://t.co/ZwK4s8mCBW
Anybody who watches the news outside their own country will see what the UK government is doing right now with boat arrivals is a complete carbon copy of what the Australian government has been doing for years. They don’t even deny it. /2
Re-branding a problem of international displacement of millions of people as a problem of ‘people smugglers’. This plays right into the standard libertarian ‘law and order’ playbook. The business model of people smugglers is millions of displaced people (the actual problem). /3
This re-branding then excuses pretty much anything, to shut down the ‘crime’ of smuggling. Essentially, turning the flow of people around i.e. no refugees. But it won’t look like that, it’ll look like ‘stopping evil people smugglers’. /4
Libertarians are masters at this sort of reframing. By far their most impressive reframing is that of our whole society, as an ‘Economy’. Vast numbers of social problems are completely ignored, or pseudo-managed by reframing them as tweaks to statistical economic indicators. /5
And of course in the pandemic, the libertarians have been framing the whole time. ‘Just like the flu’, ‘live with the virus’, ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’, etc. Not actually fixing anything, but framing inaction as action. They don’t fix collective things, because…/6
…they don’t believe in them. ‘There is no such thing as society’, as their Empress Maggie T said. Instead they constantly create collective mythologies, spin and framings, to deflect attention. Literally misdirection, as magicians do. /end
You have to wonder how much this isn’t about ATAGI guidelines, and all about the political reality that allowing 3rd doses at < 6 months would mean an admission that 2 doses isn’t ‘fully vaccinated’, just prior to the election. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/quk8c7Vy2T
Laura Tingle makes the point that our truly essential workers don’t wear high-vis or hard hats. They’re nurses, teachers, supermarket workers, cleaners, sewage workers etc. The ruling LNP code their true allegiances in their rapid return to these photo ops. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/RkRQJ4UFvD
I wonder if Omicron might be the thing that forces the government to relax its 6-month requirement on 3rd doses. #auspol #COVID19Aus @RichardfromSyd1 @OrinCordus @djf0001 @Bertrandization @YouAreLobbyLud @RealOzSAGE https://t.co/LR9BuGOByS
Australia’s public health team swings into action. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/uFWJUSoUFc
“No containment lines needed people, there are spot fires everywhere already.” Said no RFS captain, ever. https://t.co/iaRJE8ClLf
‘Finally will have a Saturday off’. The genius of libertarian strategy, to get even the young to think slavery to a job is freedom, and sheltering from a lethal virus is oppression. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/TlVG51Xp9e
Greg Hunt. ‘Most significantly’ we have hospitals for when we (let you) get sick. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/FDFvtpeOWq
The data calls out the lie of these protests. The overwhelming majority of Australians have no time for it. But ideas are a type of virus, libertarian fantasy is getting its claws into many Australians, aided and abetted by populist politicians. Danger. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/02wUhnCIxb
The tiresome individuals vs government debates. It’s the same people. The people invented governments, because they wanted them. They’re staffed by - the people. They’re led by - the people. There’s no binary. It’s all just the people.
“"...the infinitely minute...everything that constitutes the visible universe, the universe accessible to observation, proceeds, as we know, out of the invisible and inscrutable - out of a seeming nothingness - whence all reality emerges in an inexhaustible stream.../1 https://t.co/MypCJPbiDy
…we shall be astonished at the strength of the prejudice, both popular and scientific, which regards the infinitesimal as insignificant, that is, as homogeneous, neutral, and possessed of neither soul nor individuality. How persistent this illusion is! /2
And it is all the more inexplicable because, like everything else, we, too, are destined soon to return, through death, to this despised infinitesimal from whence we are sprung - which may be (who knows?) the real beyond, that haven in the hereafter…/3
…so vainly sought for amid the infinities of space." /4 Gabriel Tarde
The UK to shorten the gap between 2nd and 3rd doses. And look at the massive caseload and that 7-day case average for the UK: 44,193. ‘Living with the virus’. Imagine 45,000 new flu cases, per DAY. Spin and bullshit is winning. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/jhdX7UUAom
There are a lot of pretty (useless) cloth masks in the Australian community. https://t.co/DfePTsAiSd
That’s some jump in positivity. #covid19aus https://t.co/o1hCaPqNBL
Yes. Rich nations live with the delusion that we get to choose the way out. Like a large bushfire, we don’t. Pandemics are worse, the trees (infections) regrow quickly and can be ‘burned’ multiple times in a short period. You can’t ‘live with’ a bushfire. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/J8efwKj7Up
A leading political journalist on #Insiders describes vaccines as ‘our only protection’. There’s a due diligence requirement to learn even basic public health ideas, in a pandemic. Massive fail, week after week, from our Canberra gossip columnists. #auspol
EU, US, Canada, Israel all now have approved vaccines for 5-11s. Several million children already vaccinated. Is the only obstacle for ATAGI approving it here the embarrassing political question - do we have supply? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/2Ayzku1sEO
Superb wider look at the deep shit we’re all in. We have the very worst people leading us at this critical time. https://t.co/lVUcD8JhyQ
Twitter so often is just another venue for supporters of political parties to slug it out. Each to their own. The International Space Station (ISS) is an example I think of how politics, and our lack of understanding of it, hides realities. A thread. /1 #auspol https://t.co/kzDGYGY9ce
Building the ISS took 3 million people-years, or 26 billion work hours. For comparison, it took 400,000 people-years to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. We’re cooperating in ways and at a scale that is unparalleled in human history. /2
But at the same time, what we call our politics gives the appearance of total dysfunction. Widespread conflict and disagreement. It seems anyway. But I suspect we’re looking at it in the wrong way. For starters, we live in privileged societies. We…/3
…have all lived lives largely free of major conflict of any sort. No existential crises, no struggle for food or health care, no major wars. Our baseline is peace and prosperity, lifestyle-lives organised around having a mostly good time. Argument and disagreement can be…/4
…dismissed as unnecessary, some sort of character flaw in those who pursue it. At the same time our representative political systems further encourage this perception, as by definition we delegate most of our complex problems to our representatives to deal with for us. /5
Everyday life in a privileged nation is therefore supposed to be mostly free of conflict. Sport for ordinary folk becomes dismissive contempt for their representatives, as they fight and argue over all the difficult problems we ordinary folk flick-pass to them to deal with. /6
If it was just a sport of mocking representative politicians, it would do little harm. But it gets a lot more dangerous. In our total absence of education in civics, we come to think our representatives actually run things. Let’s go back to the ISS. Does anybody seriously…/7
…think that the politicians in multiple countries who approved the construction of the ISS know a single thing about how it was built, or how it’s maintained in orbit? Of course not, it’s not their job. But nor is running a country, a town etc. Most of us have watched…/8
…Yes Minister, which showed so well how the officials surrounding the Minister actually run the country. They have the expertise, accumulated over many generations, to do it. They remain at the wheel of State through multiple governments of elected representatives. They’re…/9
…the long-term that is what keeps society running. We elect our representatives to be in the room when that running happens, to refract decisions in certain ways according to current popular beliefs and feelings. Democracy is 99% officials, 1% pompous elected windbags. /10
If you’ve worked closely with politicians at any level, you’ll know this to be true, and the honest politicians will admit it. They know almost nothing about most of the decisions they make every day, they need long briefings and simplifications, and complexity winnowed…/11
…to 2 or 3 simple options, to function. Not because they’re stupid, but because the complexity of modern societies needs thousands of expert officials to keep them running. Things functioned OK, because politicians enjoyed the limelight and a perception they were in charge,…/12
…while officials continued to run the show, managing complexity. What’s changed now though is that these same politicians, and the public who vote for them, have begun to believe the mythology. This is populism. Populist politicians and those who vote for them genuinely…/13
…believe politicians run countries, or towns, or States. They bypass the officials - expertise - almost entirely. Many decades of targeting this expertise as ‘bureaucracy’ softened societies up for this shift. We’re seeing some of the endgame of this, in the ignoring…/14
…of expertise in major crises such as climate change and the pandemic. But the shift has been underway for years, manifested in practices such as outsourcing ‘advice’ to biddable private consultancies, rather than public officials. It’s our own simplistic ideas about…/15
…democracy that are corroding it from within. Look at Covid, how most of the pandemic has been a tug-of-war between expert public health teams, and populist politicians pretending to run the pandemic response. (Really just getting in the way, mostly deliberately.) /16
Our upcoming election is empirical proof of who runs the place. In ‘caretaker mode’ the officials get to run the country with minimal interference from politicians. Nobody notices, because they run the country outside caretaker mode as well. Next time political argument…/17
…is getting to you, remember the ISS. It’s a microcosm of our entire society. Most of the work of the world happens outside the debating chamber of the politics we see. And it should. /end
‘Proportionate’. Like ‘balance’, for a libertarian politician this means ‘not doing anything at all, to protect the Economy’. https://t.co/YoyoB5AT7O
The ‘let’s infect the kids to save the Economy’ UK is now requiring masks in schools. In the monkey-see, monkey-do world of live with the virus zealots, maybe it will change the rhetoric from our homegrown child-infection cheer squad. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/jodGVns9QP
‘Live alongside’ a virus. The simple, lethal appeal of the metaphors used by spin merchants. To unpack this one, how do you live ‘alongside’ a virus? Does it sit on the seat next to you on the bus? Can you wave at it in the next aisle of the supermarket? /1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/UlmOueABy4
Of course the reality is, viruses live *inside* us. So the only way to live alongside them is to be next to an infected person, who will then likely infect you. Sydney tried a version of alongside, by trying to ring-fence the poor out West, so that the wealthier East could…/2
…live relatively Covid-free ‘alongside’ the infected Western suburbs. The virus of course leaked out, because LGA boundaries are just lines on a map. Covid welcomes living alongside us, as pirates welcome coming alongside a boat they’re about to board and ransack. /end
It needs explaining why mass infection is the chosen option, when mass vaccination is already available. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/7OAeb8NW1k
A government with a laissez-faire response to pandemic viruses, and a DEFCON-5 response to unfriendly Tweets. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/TTM7LQg3a1
My useful transmission vectors enjoyed their dinner. How about everybody else? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/KgDpFo0ITj
From my walk yesterday. This is resilience. Would that we had more of that, right now. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/aDwoF0pGIf
“The World Health Organization, noting that the variant has already been detected in many countries and that closing borders often has a limited effect, called for frontiers to remain open.” The countries who have done easily the best against Covid... /1 #COVID19Aus #auspol
…used border controls as a key weapon. It took far too long for the WHO to acknowledge airborne Covid, why is it still holding onto its opposition to border controls? The politics of global health. For a highly dispersed pathogen, movement control is critical. /end
Faster than the variants is the development of political strategy and spin to head-off economic damage. Within a day of the announcement of Omicron, the 'it seems mild' spin-variant was already set to go. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/mpO0azWo6K
The JCVI in the UK (often very 'cautious') has approved 3rd doses from 3 months since the second dose. Let's see how fast ATAGI are. Still waiting for update on child vaccinations from them as well. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/DwlnfpN4Ni
The daily spin. Take the phrase 'mild Covid'. The focus is all on the 'mild'. Compare it with the phrase 'mild stroke'. Does anybody want to have a stroke, no matter how mild? Language is politics. #auspol #covid19aus
Reckon experts read that headline and get the pecking order here? It won't matter what they find. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/eT5Wwg0zBP
So we’re one away from pi, an endless number. Seems about right. https://t.co/lW1V4bYvDZ
“National Cabinet agreed that the Commonwealth and state and territory governments will continue to pursue a suppression strategy, noting the objective is to limit the rate of Omicron incursions into Australia, rather than eliminate it at the border.” Ha! /1 #auspol #covid19aus
What a triumph of Orwellian doublespeak. ‘We have to learn to live with this virus’ is NOT a suppression strategy. By definition. Talking out both sides of the mouth, as always. We’re not ‘eliminating at the border’ (whatever that means), we’re stopping ‘incursions’. /2
We’re not stopping incursions of Delta into schools or even the wider community. We’re ‘living with it’, apparently, or ‘alongside’ it, depending on your spin of choice. No doubt if Omicron is found to be less concerning, it will be similarly invited to make incursions. /3
I bet barely one political journalist will comment on the doublespeak here, the self-contradictory nonsense and spin. Yesterday (Professor) Mark Kenny was quoting social media ‘Covid is mild’ memes in describing Omicron. Stumbling into the same stupid as Europe and the UK. /end
“National Cabinet further noted that the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation are in late stage consideration regarding when Pfizer can be rolled out to 5 to 11 year olds.” Focus on the spin. ‘When’? /1 #auspol #covid19aus
The regulators’ job is to determine if, not when. Can we read from this the real strategy in play here, using them as a shield to hide that we still don’t have the supply? This way it’s them responsible for the delay. This statement says it will happen, which was apparently…/2
…what we were waiting for ATAGI and the TGA to determine. As many have suspected, there was never a need for ‘more data’, there was need for cover for the government, who didn’t have paediatric doses to distribute. /end
Great example for ‘mildism’ here. Repeated ‘mild’ brain injury from concussions. We’ve seen where that ends up. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/OvUILTafBp
Running out of people to vaccinate? I can think of a few million sitting in infants and primary schools right now willing and able to get the curve going up again. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/NPvAs0AZSe
