February 2022
Complete authored posts and demonstrable self-threads.
I believe some reinfections are also with Omicron, when the prior infection was also 'mild' Omicron. (i.e. to avoid re-infection, you should aim to almost die the first time.) Even without new variants, this is like a perpetual motion machine of infection. https://t.co/ENcB0LK0za
This is the intent. Make the pandemic invisible by ongoing suppression of data. The UK is always the crystal ball into our future. https://t.co/OS8e11Xt0z
Really the pandemic has been a Randomised Control Trial for our core political ideas. The virus is just an amplifier of how those ideas play out in reality. Politics generated the pandemic, and only politics can end it. https://t.co/uOnva77YUh
More social science and the humanities, please, to beat this pandemic. Who remembers the 1920 variant of the Spanish Flu? Nobody. A pattern repeated throughout the 20th century. https://t.co/9mZfocEylx
Watching my kids swab their noses twice a week, them hating it and the anticipation of what the result might be, I’m reminded of the fuckwits who thought this was better for them than the relaxed studying from home they did in the past 2 years.
This story, about the libertarians in Denmark declaring Covid over (again). One of several in the ‘we’re moving beyond Covid, towards endemicity’ vein. Not one mention of what’s actually happening with deaths, in Denmark. #auspol #COVID19aus https://t.co/h9RndgzNSr https://t.co/K7vASdkicB
One of 3 ‘endemic’ puff pieces from the ABC today. Highlights: 1) “Professor Jenkins believes the virus will soon become endemic on the east coast of Australia…/1 https://t.co/GFMPprFhJR
…(and many other developed countries) which means COVID occurs regularly, but it does not devastate the population.” Right, so endemic means mild: “Many people remain fearful but the evidence is that natural immunity added to vaccination is actually very good.” /2
Ok, definitely mild. O wait: “You can still have very, very serious outcomes from endemic diseases”. Right, so very serious, not mild. Then: “I do think we have to have a tolerance of death that we've been phobic about in this discussion.” /3
Yes, this death phobia thing. Move on, people die all the time. Let’s have that conversation, what’s the acceptable level of death? I nominate 600 per year, an average flu year. Any takers for 12-15,000 per year, at current Covid rates? But there’s more: /4
“People will hopefully build up their general immune fitness ... this can be done in a number of ways including physical activity, adequate sleep and a healthy diet.” Is that you, Pete Evans? /end https://t.co/sT6QZX219V
Remember when delays to elective surgery were used as a battering ram against lockdowns? Reckon the same battering rams will come out to oppose letting Covid rip? #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/KIi6Ib8ZMw
In years to come, Covid will seem a storm in a teacup. Because we won't be able to remember it. https://t.co/KPIJ96LGYn
Life in libertarian Australia. My wife is a teacher, and in the absence of any measures from the NSW Govt: - I put an air purifier in her room. I didn't ask. - I got her better masks, KF94. - I got her to measure CO2 levels in her classroom and adjust ventilation. /1
Her CO2 room readings are now excellent, with good cross-ventilation. Other teachers have asked about the purifier and the mask, and are ordering their own. They'll also use the CO2 monitor in their own rooms. All things the government should have done. 2/2
A good one for every single journalist in Australia to read. I've not heard one of them press a politician or expert in 2 years to say specifically what they mean by 'live with the virus' or 'endemic'. Press and press, make them spell it out. #auspol https://t.co/nYCEnZxXyg
Notice some in Australia talking about 'off ramps for masks' in today's papers here too. It's a global, coordinated Covid minimisation movement. https://t.co/aqJmAxDPZ6
Watch the UK. It's our future. Suppress everything except the virus. https://t.co/aLaPMfmiQY
Yesterday somebody was arguing with me about the need for more protections in schools. Their response was that very few if any ‘healthy’ children will die. Eugenics really is the new craze.
This particular political metaphor (spin), ‘alongside’. The virus lives *inside* us, not alongside us. You can’t wave to it in the supermarket. Unless Tim means alongside poorer suburbs infected with Covid, in which case yes, that is the strategy. https://t.co/vJjDbfpMaJ
There is an economic eugenics too. The one where you develop algorithms to pursue and harass the poor to the point of suicide for any apparent welfare anomalies, but allow businesses to keep $40 billion in JobKeeper payments that they weren't entitled to.
Greg Hunt told RN Breakfast this morning that the 70,000+ residents of aged care not boosted have chosen not to be. Can we confirm this? Most of what else he said this morning was a total fabrication. #auspol
Less than 1 week into the new school year, my youngest (10) is one of only 4 students in her class still wearing a mask. We can and should blame the NSW Government for this. But also, that's a lot of parents who aren't insisting. We get the governments we deserve. #covid19aus
Meanwhile, over at the dogmatic pursuit of infection camp... https://t.co/nQtO8t51te
From a public policy point of view, the only moonshot I see working longer-term against pandemics is ventilation. It's engineering. Behavioural and attitudinal change is a lost cause in populist neoliberal societies.
Thoughts @GeoffHanmer ?
Anybody else planning to off-ramp these political co-morbidities come May? Getting (this) government out of the lives of Australians? #auspol (No response needed, just a vote for anybody else. Except Clive and Craig.) https://t.co/D2OJPkUa4Z
The CMO's statements make proportionally more sense the further he travels from the PM's lectern. https://t.co/O39B3YkSGC
I prescribe end of life palliative care. https://t.co/Yv6FeZ5tTH
School cases building now in NSW, more each day. Parents notified of confirmed cases, but not of close contacts (close contact kids disappear, not even teachers are told why). Of TTIQ, only T is operating. It’s theatre. https://t.co/obvi7Z8pgq
With government messaging relentlessly focused on ‘live with the virus’, what did Professor Dore and others think would happen to vaccine urgency? #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/geVbrPacDz
“We’ve entered a new phase in the Covid-19 pandemic, which we can call bipartisan, unilateral surrender.” @thenation https://t.co/SycqvVjbdl
Every effort is being made by conservative governments globally to suppress attention to deaths. In the UK they're planning to not even report them. Even constant reference to 'cases' and 'hospitalisations', and the seemingly.../1 #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/90RiPKC00W
...innocuous R number, takes us away from the deeper social and political context of Covid cases. Overwhelmingly the poor and disadvantaged suffer the most from infectious disease outbreaks, worldwide. And categories such as 'endemic' and 'epidemic' do the same. /2
Endemicity is a highly fraught, political concept. ALl statistics are, it's in the name: stat-istics. Invented as an instrument of the State. I'm a fan of the State, this isn't a libertarian jibe, but data is politics. /3
Ultimately pandemics are about basic public health things. Bad air, bad water, bad food, caused by crowding, inattention to basics like income and inequality, hypermobility etc. We forget that too often, in my opinion. 4/4
"The people who have been saying “this isn’t over” have been ignored at almost every step of this pandemic, and they have also been right every time." https://t.co/UfXfhEW5DE
Over 3000 infections in week 1, and not all schools open until next week. "I'm so pleased", says the Minister. Come back to the reality-based community, Minister. Away from shock and awe infection. #covid19aus #nswpol https://t.co/fbl9bVdOFy
In some ways we have the French to blame for libertarianism. And they in turn probably have libertarianism to blame for this. Society is made of beliefs, it's the raw material. They can kill you. https://t.co/1LEaqlGuKg
Two (true) stories from inside NSW schools that highlight how RATs have become the new public health magic beans. 1) A teacher came to school for 2 days, with symptoms, 'because I tested negative on my RATs'. /1 #COVID19Aus
2) A year 3 child went home for the weekend excitedly, saying 'my sister is out of isolation today, she had Covid!' When asked why he was at school this week, his reply: 'Because I tested negative on my RATs'.
Prime Minister Alan Joyce angry with the delay in ending the end-of-life lives of people in WA. https://t.co/LY5YwtyVh9
@RichardfromSyd1 @Bertrandization thoughts? Richard it relates also to our discussion yesterday with Simon Rowe (was that his name?) https://t.co/mONB2qTQaK
@djf0001 @rossleedham @longfacehorse
Influenza! (US data) 1) Plummeting mortality over the 20th century. 2) Pandemic influenzas after 1918-20 often less lethal than non-pandemic influenzas. 3) Vaccination not responsible (wide use only since 1980). Ecological causes suggested. From: https://t.co/aszvgjcOIu https://t.co/h18NfOONBs
We know the infectiousness of Omicron. Those in schools know how half-arsed the current ‘measures’ are being applied. So we also therefore know that, like the US and UK, a tsunami of infection is imminent. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/kGUdrq1tAo
Granville was called the ‘disaster that changed Australia’. 83 people died. We’re currently doing 7 Granvilles every week, with Covid. And leaders are ‘pleased’ with this. Look in the mirror, Australia. At what we’re becoming. #auspol #covid19Aus https://t.co/k6yrkY7z54
50 years of libertarianism. No meaningful action against pandemics, or climate change. Rampant inequality. Soaring cost of living, stagnant wages. ‘Getting government out of our lives’. Who put government *in* our lives? We did. To save us from the lives we’re now returning to. https://t.co/4tQ834PfCE
It feels like cruise ships bookend both ends of this pandemic so far. And explain a lot of everything in-between. 'We're ready to go': Retirees demand cruise holidays return https://t.co/7WHCRznKlP
In case there was any doubt left that infecting hundreds of thousands of children with a lethal virus and forcing them to take it home and infect their families kinda freaks the kids out. https://t.co/kXh6V7PRNP
We need to expose everybody to Covid, so that they can…catch it again. https://t.co/Io3Ec3QpCt
“Vaccines work!!” always means ‘and so we don’t need to do anything else’.
I may have been unfair to #insiders by wishing they had public health expertise on their panel during a pandemic. As the show’s name says, it’s about what happens inside politics. And we know public health expertise doesn’t happen there.
The only thing children seem resilient to in this pandemic is infection. Everything else, including public health measures to prevent infection, risks damaging them for life. Strip away this constant BS. The sub-text is always the Economy. Nothing else. #auspol #covid19aus https://t.co/awa4VUSBsm
Andrew Probyn trotting out the ‘balance’ line on #insiders, completely house-trained by government spin doctors. Such earnest pondering, as he weighs how many people we can kill to keep the Economy going. More eugenics, dressed up as reasoned decisions.
Don’t believe the spin about how well things are going in schools. Week 1 was badly disrupted in many, and that was nearly all infection carried forward from holidays. School spread is only just beginning. My local school is already unable to fill some teaching spots for week 2.
NSW Teachers Federation leading the charge on school infection. Remember this in the coming weeks. https://t.co/Mbz959CdXK
The decoupling of deaths from case numbers seems to reflect the collapse of comprehensive testing, as governments give up. We have form in fixing disasters by making them invisible. Plenty of genocides for example use that methodology. ‘Economic’ data excludes housework. Etc. https://t.co/aeCuVtaQfZ
A measure of the libertarian carnival of Covid this morning. David Littleproud described free Covid testing as 'largesse'. #auspol #covid19aus
I'm not seeing any connection between the first and second halves of this sentence. https://t.co/oC8i8CwiT6
Agree. So those who said 'only vaccines can end this pandemic' could: 1) argue for other additional public health measures, or 2) argue to try to manage the illness rampant infection causes. It looks like 2) is the choice. https://t.co/ZJyFHuODug
The trickiest thing for Covid minimisers in discussing Covid off-ramps, is that they still haven't admitted the existence of an on-ramp, after 2 years. https://t.co/To9Xb0du0Z
When conservatives talk about being 'better economic managers', ask what economic things they've managed. For example the current government - what 'management' of the Economy have they done in this term? Covid stimulus? At other times they'd call that socialism. #auspol
Benjamin Franklin said the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Modern conservatives got rid of taxes. They're happy to keep the deaths, provided it's people who vote for the other side.
Schools, week 2. Talking to a parent whose primary school aged child has Covid. Diarrhoea and vomiting so bad the child is hallucinating. And to what end? It won’t stop them catching it again. Children and staff disappearing every day, into isolation.
Imagine the view from a poor country. Developed world refuses to control pandemic virus when it emerges. Then hoards all of the global vaccine supply. Then declares it all over, while 50,000+ are dying a week, because they want their recreational lifestyles back.
Superb thread showing again the power of maths to do politics. How our focus on rates instead of absolute numbers is enabling the removal of all public health measures, except vaccines. Many people are dying, fully vaccinated. #auspol #COVID19Aus https://t.co/Jrd1Vaej8J
Imagining the people who would still be alive today if we'd admitted Covid was airborne, and NSW hadn't decided to let Delta rip. https://t.co/xeUxGPoVK4
Fine example of the use of rates to minimise the scale of a problem. This is children too, what moral backbone. https://t.co/YSMAEUXvM5
In our success against HIV, did we make condoms: A) free, or B) tax deductible? (Hint: we had a government then who didn't think their job was to 'get out of the way' of a virus.) https://t.co/8nMf8oGyQS
Ethical question. Masks with exhalation valves are pretty useless for Covid control. But in a workplace where others are either not bothering with a mask, wearing masks badly or using cloth rubbish, are they justifiable?
The only public health measure NSW Cabinet can be bothered organising in schools, will be gone. After only 4 weeks. Refusing to use public health measures to beat a pandemic. And now suppressing the evidence of that refusal, at pace. Not even data now to rein these zealots in. https://t.co/glI0S3ZpRS
Stacks of RATs at my local chemist today. $11-$12 each. Nobody is going to pay that longer term. And nor should they. Testing in NSW is now beyond a farce. And that's the plan, hide all the evidence of what's going on with infection.
Who qualifies for a (free) Covid test in NSW? Outside schools. Nobody. Once chemists are stocked with RATs, only a doctor can get you a free test. Even the vulnerable groups listed need to do a RAT first. The LNP were outraged by 'Mediscare'. But here it is. #auspol https://t.co/KGl1G3fNu4
Commonwealth concession card holders will still qualify for free RATs, to clarify. I’m talking about the vast majority of people not on those cards.
Conservatives undermine universal health care by saying ‘free’ health care should only go to the disadvantaged. Sounds fair and balanced. But it undermines the entire foundation of universal healthcare. RATs another LNP Trojan Horse to erode Medicare. https://t.co/1xA3UVgCRA
National Cabinet still treats the vaccines as some great barrier to Covid transmission. If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. #auspol https://t.co/baAI8K6AV2
From a public policy and Covid strategy point of view, those advising government have been wrong every single time they’ve called an easing of the pandemic. Those that haven’t are repeatedly called alarmists and doomsayers. How about we swap sources of advice.
Half the town I live in is isolating not because of asymptomatic testing, but because at least one member of the family is sick with Covid. We can do this the smart way, with testing, or just wait for widespread illness to do the isolation for us. I know which I’d choose. https://t.co/T9oSXwQ0f4
Of course the hope is that by mid-to-late 2022 Covid will have settled into a low-prevalence, low-morbidity endemic state. I keep coming back to the fact that the only vaccines we currently have, are waning for Omicron as well. Even the 3rd dose. /1
Vaccines based on earlier versions of SARS-Cov-2, which could just as foreseeably be out of puff by mid-2022. And then what? A 4th dose might buy time, but data on those isn’t great. And is there the public appetite for another population-level vax rollout anyway? /2
It seems to me that this current round of ‘it’s over’ is the most dangerous of all. Because it really may mark the endgame of meaningful action against this virus, because populist governments have consistently undermined public capacity to meet this challenge. /3
Leaders have, right from the beginning, deliberately framed action against this pandemic as some form of oppression. And that’s cumulative, and now many say (maybe rightly) that ‘people won’t go through this again’. So we may reach the second half of 2022…/4
…with ineffective vaccines, and…nothing else? Civil unrest, and widespread infection and disease. It’s one not unlikely scenario. And public policy is about scenarios. But libertarian governments don’t believe the public is even a thing. Buckle up. 5/5
*bangs head on desk* Just out of a meeting with senior managers in an organisation. 'Thank God' masks will soon be gone, they say. Then, Long Covid implications for business in the UK and US. 'That's just like the flu, some get over it quickly, some take a bit longer'.
Another disallowed narrative right now is what the lives of the ‘vulnerable’ (of which there are millions) will be like if we allow the ridiculous prevalence of disease we currently accept, for Covid. They won’t be able to hide. https://t.co/lKsYK4eBXu
The libertarians are pushing on, relentlessly. Dropping all Covid measures, the same trend across multiple countries. I still believe all of this hangs upon existing vaccines holding the line. If they wane sufficiently, we’re back at square one. #auspol https://t.co/oMTwQlWQ6P
The UK has decided that about 200 deaths per day, for Covid, is ‘pandemic over’. About 70,000 deaths a year, at this baseline. A bad flu year there is about 1500 deaths. The same push is on in much of the developed world. A disgrace. As are experts cheering for it. #auspol https://t.co/DBuTNWVhaS
People in Oz mostly follow government health orders. They may have no interest in the science, but people will assume it's safe to not wear a mask, for example, if the government says you don't have to. So much for 'wanting government out of their lives'. #covid19aus #auspol
Hearing anecdotally that many schools are already not even bothering to notify parents if a child is positive in a class. I know it from my own school, several kids are positive, but nothing has come from the school. #nswpol
The Murdoch sewer belches on. Deaths still rising in South Africa. Sounds like the pressure was well-founded. https://t.co/qgOdFdceOT
A lot more talk about excess deaths now. Very few draw the obvious conclusion from the data that countries who stopped their 'economies' were the healthiest they'd ever been. You can spot where the 'Economy' came back, around February this year. https://t.co/zcE0Tzg03m
Democracy is failing not because politicians are rorting and lying and pursuing only what is popular. They've always done that. /1 #auspol https://t.co/4uoofWcyzn
It's failing because all the checks and balances to control the populist, elected arm of democracy have been sidelined, damaged and/or removed entirely. All of the institutions. The 'bureaucracy'. /2
Because of that the only recourse to outrageous actions, like letting a lethal pandemic virus just run through a community, is 'if you don't like it, vote us out at the next election'. Everything is 'mandated' by popularity, without exception. /3
If you get the votes, the next 3-4 years are yours to do with as you please, without restraint. Policies, expert advice, procedures, laws - all will be bypassed with various loopholes, or even ignored entirely. /4
Modern populist democracies are like schools where the school captains are allowed to run the school. Everybody knows school captains are mostly symbolic, and that large numbers of other people actually keep a school running every day. But we've forgotten that is.../5
*exactly* the designed and expected role of elected politicians too. To symbolically represent the public, but to leave nearly all the running of a country to their (tens of thousands) of expert officials. /6
I know many look on in horror with climate change and Covid, and ask 'how is this inaction allowed'? It isn't allowed. But populism has severed the link between elected leaders and their officials. So again, all that can stop it is more elections, more popularity contests. /7
It doesn't matter who we elect, while that link is severed. The Sir Humphreys of our societies were there to prevent popularity becoming the sole determinant of what gets done. The populists made sure to demonise them as 'bureaucrats', for decades. And here we are. 8/8
@KateEMcCann
Worth resharing this, after discussing Covid vs flu yesterday. Many quote flu + pneumonia for flu deaths. This is because many pneumonia deaths are triggered by flu. But Covid pneumonia has tripled pneumonia deaths as well, so people need to compare apples with apples. https://t.co/rOAZJ9sO4i
To flip the endemic death narrative back upon itself. This is US data, from January 2020 to 4 February 2022. Overwhelmingly (outside a pandemic too), people don’t die ‘of’ influenza’. They die ‘with’ influenza. Of pneumonia, mostly. /1 https://t.co/ziLiY2NX2V
Thos who want to claim flu + pneumonia numbers as influenza deaths, to compare with Covid deaths, need to drop the ‘dying with not dying of Covid’ nonsense. Otherwise they’re stuck using influenza deaths only in their comparisons, without pneumonia. 2/2
I’m already rehearsing my response at work when the NSW Government removes all masking mandates. “I take my scientific advice from scientists, thanks, not politicians.” https://t.co/CxGMlEbiJm
Democracy has been an embarrassment in this pandemic. Whereas China has smashed it. We need to rethink our ideas around what ‘authoritarian’ means. It says a lot more about us, than it does about China. Telling people what to do is not authoritarianism. https://t.co/5xAEssDNui
You can just feel National Cabinet following Boris down the ‘no need to isolate’ rabbit hole. Already in NSW so few people are bothering with testing that the horse has probably bolted. https://t.co/XUtInkBhOr
Questioning the failings of democracy triggered the libertarian loons. The difference between democracy and authoritarian countries is simple. In one you elect the leaders, in the other you don’t. Both have leaders. Leaders direct people what to do. It’s what leadership means.
A pandemic is over when we stop widespread infection. It’s in the definition. That’s the Tweet.
The Herald is barely fish and chip wrapping now. This was them in October last year, parroting the ‘hold our nerve’ nonsense. As if the pandemic is about us all being big chickens, afraid of getting infected. Doesn’t dumb triumph always age well. #auspol https://t.co/L2Oi01IrKJ
If we stopped celebrating the removal of public health measures, and started celebrating elimination of widespread infection, the pandemic would be over. Those celebrations are what generate the next wave. The same pattern, in every wave. https://t.co/a1hWz1E4Sm
The UK had such fabulous Covid data. The Tories are kneecapping it to maintain their fiction of living with the virus. The push is on to do the same here. Journalism is focused on PMs playing ukuleles. https://t.co/8P7sXrSqWD
Why do we celebrate removing public health measures, and not removing infections? Because society is a high school. Worth repeating that, as I do. It’s not an analogy. A society of teenagers will always see PH measures as being ‘grounded’. https://t.co/l1OFfr1BUB
What do you get the libertarian who has everything? A dictionary. https://t.co/MCPYs1fnNW
Waning in VE against hospitalisation and ED admission for Omicron, for 3-dosed mRNA, after 4 months, in the US. 2 months: ED 87%, hospitalisation 91% 4 months: ED 66%, hospitalisation 78% https://t.co/aCrrWemqWs
‘A new way of thinking’ in Denmark. Not really, it’s the same way of thinking they had late last year, when they declared the pandemic over. What’s new I guess is the ignoring of death. That’s all the rage. https://t.co/BjGkvhZypp
With Australia’s huge Covid prevalence now, an Australian Covid strain isn’t out of the question. But good luck spotting it. https://t.co/Pnp7dxLLBr
The out-of-body experience of the pandemic today. A thread on the decoupling of thought from reality, with Covid strategy. And why we only ever needed about 3 days to be totally rid of Covid, but we’re into our 3rd year of it. /1 #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/IN7K3xyfrF
Those who want to minimise or even deny Covid’s seriousness, often speak of the virus as some sort of independent being. It lives ‘alongside’ us, we ‘live with’ it. Scientifically we know the virus survives about 3 days, on its own. If you deny it bodies to incubate in i.e us. /2
This is the deepest layer of the deceit the minimisers and deniers ply every single day. The decoupling of Covid from bodies. From people. Covid isn’t a virus, it’s an ecosystem. SARS-Cov-2, the virus, is a puny thing, easily killed with soap and water. /3
But if it gets into bodies, it becomes Covid. And Covid doesn’t live inside a single body. It lives inside a community of bodies. Without that community, it would again die, inside a single body. Fresh hosts = Covid. Community = Covid. It’s an ecosystem. /4
It’s people interacting with other people, that creates ‘Covid’. People being SOCIAL. The laughable idiocy of Covid deniers and minimisers is that they’re mostly political libertarians. The individual freedom crowd. But the freedoms they fight for are *social* freedoms. /5
Their entire vision of society, as individuals living freely, is a fantasy. The freedom they crave is socially generated. The public health restrictions they’ve been so vehemently fighting against during the pandemic overwhelmingly target social, not individual freedoms. /6
They’re freeloading hypocrites, they love the individual freedom social cooperation gives us all, but they don’t want to do the social cooperation to get it. Some are just genuinely ignorant, and don’t understand the social underpinnings of the individual freedom they love. /7
The triumph of this fantasy is the ‘Economy’. Another bodiless entity, existing alongside the people who work in it. They began the pandemic saying we need to ‘balance’ the Economy against public health action. They’re still saying it, the resurgence of that view *is* 2022. /8
A statistical construct, extracted from the social activity of the entire community, is substituted for that community. Nearly everybody swallows that sleight of hand, it’s a political triumph of fantasy. We’ve all seen what happens when the bodies, the people…/9
…in our communities get Covid. The ‘Economy’ stops. It was just people, doing social things (work is a social invention), the whole time. This is the real libertarian agenda, not individual freedom, but the freedom of employees, to work. The only individuals they actually… /10
…care about are the people who employ these employees. Political libertarianism is a smoke screen, a philosophy weaponised by vested interests to sell widespread erosion of social rights and responsibilities. /11
We can see all of this even in the most basic of pandemic discussions, about cases and deaths. The statistics. It’s vital we don’t look at pandemic curves as the ‘virus happening to us’. These curves chart social behaviour, and the resultant infections. /12 https://t.co/2FEQR1bLTf
The up-and-down slopes of epidemic curves are the outcome of social behaviour. Caution on the way up, triumphal abandoning of caution on the way down. Countries who instead adopt a social behaviour of ‘fighting the pandemic’ don’t experience these curves, and/or they dampen…/13
…them hugely. Countries who focus on people, people living in communities, doing social things. Who don’t separate that from individual freedom, as most of those freedoms are also social, communal. Try living in a desert or a jungle, as a lone individual.
/end
It’s early still, but worldwide the only decoupling we seem to see in a sustainable way is deaths, from hospitalisation and ICU numbers. People are dying at a pretty steady rate, but not in hospital? https://t.co/q0COYqDDip
I thought Grace Tame’s speech at the press Club was one for the ages. Like Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech. The only ‘but’ for me is a more general observation. As we’ve lost the ability to think and act collectively, the neoliberal white-anting of our societies,…/1 https://t.co/YqVuLfhIk4
…so that we’ve all become customers rather than citizens, the inevitable breakdown of social processes leads to anger. As it should. But we’re less good at channeling that anger into organised change, politically. /2
We get stuck at individual expressions of emotion. Anger, mostly, but also sorrow, anxiety etc. We become emotive customers. That’s part of the same neoliberal trap. The suffragettes for example a century ago organised - they formed a union. Why to this day I think the single…/3
…simplest way to change the world and to do it fast, is for people to join unions again. Unions are the organisational arm of the downtrodden. And they already exist, it just takes a membership fee, a few minutes, to energise them. Nearly every political problem of our times…/4
…is the outcome of an imbalance of power relations, between existing vested interests, and everything else. We already solved that problem, historically, we invented unions. But they’re the last place sadly many look to redress current problems. /5
Conservatives attack them relentlessly, it’s their number one priority. That tells you what we need to know, what actually makes a difference. 6/6
After the first week of school this year, the NSW Government quantified the infection numbers in schools. Have we seen an update since then? They hold that data, it doesn't appear to be available elsewhere. #nswpol
Political journalism is largely infected with the same populism virus as the rest of society now, so we'll struggle to get much useful analysis while elections are underway. Let's talk about the ONS survey and trends here. /1 #auspol https://t.co/KkTV0KxSpV
In the UK, which has some of the best public health data in the world, experts are already saying much of it is now almost worthless, because of the deliberate, ongoing erosion of basics like testing. 'Flying blind' is a common saying to describe the situation. /2
Here in Oz, a question a political journalist should ask, today, is 'how are infections going in schools?' I've not heard one question on that critical topic. The way the RAT system was rolled out, any data that exists is unlikely to be more than indicative anyway. /3
These are deliberate political decisions, to remove any remaining resistance to 'live with the virus', by suppressing visibility of the impact of that strategy. Leaders have been quite explicit that they don't like the data, that it hinders their messaging. /4
The ONS survey in the UK was the last gold-standard data remaining, after the knee-capping of testing. Of course the Tories there are planning to gut its funding. Tory MPs openly attack the release of Covid data, saying it prevents the 'live with the virus' push. /5
Politics is now data. We've been very badly let down by most of our political journalism, which seems both disinterested in the data, and totally incapable of making sense of it. /end
South Africa was considered the epicentre for Omicron. The pattern there needs watching, despite inter-country comparison complexities. Case numbers never returned to the old baseline. Deaths still rising. https://t.co/311DuTkf3d
I'm getting a bit misty-eyed remembering the days when a Premier would refer to 'health advice' when making decisions like this. It's naked industrial farming now. Buckets of antibiotics in our food next. https://t.co/BT6QCNVn6U
Those long Nordic winters can make people go a bit crazy. https://t.co/VQV0vqktKZ
Ongoing ANU polling shows how populism fails. The country is clearly unimpressed with 'Let it Rip' Covid, but is powerless to do anything in real time because populist democracy is only constrained by elections. /1 #auspol #COVID19aus https://t.co/QMKyAl09gM
State Governments, as part of the National Cabinet Let it Rip cabal, are faring almost as badly in public opinion. /2 https://t.co/CYvzezv31L
Our faith in institutions, the real guardians of public health, is less impacted. Institutions the State and federal governments have been progressively sidelining during Operation Let it Rip. /3 https://t.co/rDd9Xa3fur
So we have some political leaders whose zealotry and capture by vested interests has forced the Let it Rip shift. Others are probably fearful of very loud loon minorities, whipped into a frenzy by far-Right US groups. /4
The data suggests Australians are not Brits, or Americans. Or not yet. They're not at war with their own institutions. They're not political libertarians, mostly. My gut still says Let it Rip violated the implied contract Australians have always had with their governments,.../5
...to keep them safe and not outsource core government responsibilities such as public health to individuals. NSW by-elections support this gut feeling. A federal election to come.../end
The government relentlessly attacks super because it’s maybe an even greater threat to them than unions. VAST amounts of the nation’s wealth is now in super funds. And we - me and you - own those. /1 #auspol https://t.co/owb063cMgA
This is unprecedented in history, the massive shift in wealth to working people. Paul Keating designed super to do this, and is one of the few to still see the politics of doing it. The LNP see it, it terrifies them. The history of all politics is a tiny handful of wealthy…/2
…people finding ways to convince everybody else that their poverty, relative to them, is the natural state of things. They’re vastly outnumbered, and they know it. As Nick Hanauer always says, they lose sleep at the thought of the [pitchforks’ coming for them. /3
The LNP do everything they can to facilitate the gorging at the super feast by the financial industry, some of its top supporters, and to cripple everything that allows the will of the shareholders (me and you) to be expressed politically. Right now, they’re losing. /end
The Twitter algorithm doesn't pick it up. But what's really trending in Australia? Death. https://t.co/6fqWxiPrvP
I'm preparing for civil disobedience by circulating manuals for the revolution. https://t.co/vFWPkDfyS9
The only thing we know with certainty about schools and Covid in Australia, is that we know almost nothing. The data is suppressed. If there's nothing to hide, publish the data. https://t.co/rE64wLETgN
Los Angeles from above tells us a lot about our cultures. That vast grey washed-out colour is mostly roads. Roads occupy between 20-60% of urban space in modern cities. Quick thread looking at a different aspect of what that means. /1 https://t.co/oQUdeLwO13
A road, in spatial terms, is a space that is always directed *somewhere else*. That street outside your house is a no-space. Its purpose it to take you somewhere else. Its value as space is never at any point ON the road. It's in where *else* it will take you. /2 https://t.co/za5HOeAX1M
Combining Tweets 1 and 2, it means 20-60% of the space in our cities is devoted to taking us somewhere else. Cities are gradually becoming non-places, car parks. Our 'home' is increasing mobility, not a place. But mobility is also displacement. /3
For centuries occupying land was a marker of security and power. It still is. But as we can see in LA and other major modern metropolises, for most people their dwelling is little more than an extended garage, for their vehicle(s). /4
Much of the patterned structure of cities is given over to roads, and transport. Moving people around. And this (for me) is where it gets most interesting. Because most of those trips are not really taking people anywhere. They're round-trips, to work and back. /5
The best way to disempower people throughout history has been to displace them from the land under their feet. To sever their identity from their location. With vehicles, work was severed from community, and from peoples' relationship to the actual spaces where they live. /6
Now vast numbers of people expend their daily energy 'working' somewhere away from their actual home and community. Suburbs are not much more than places to park while you eat and sleep, ready for another commute. Shopping and other social activities need to be driven to. /7
Look at the fuss about working from home in the pandemic. This is much more than logistics, it's about peoples' desire to re-attach their work, to their community. 'Work-life' balance is not just balancing the hours at work and at home. It's about resistance to decoupling of.../8
...work, from community. Resistance to just being a 'worker', a drone, crammed into trains and buses and traffic jams, to go somewhere to enrich somebody else, while struggling to afford your own place out in a suburb devoid of community. /9
I've Tweeted before about how the obsession with roads and transport more generally is a marker of modern conservative politics. The 'Economy' is a political construction, designed to replace ideas of society and community. The easiest way to disempower people.../10 https://t.co/QwD3xuHbuz
...and make them biddable is to decouple their daily work, from their community. To funnel their labour into enriching others, away from that community. Roads and transport more generally are central to that task. /end
Is it really that difficult for somebody to ask the Premier, or NSW Health, what the infection numbers have been in schools after week 1? #auspol
A great outcome. From a public health point of view, the focus on immunity is very much a last line of defence framework. It allows infection to reach people, and hopes their immunity will protect them. Maybe a good approach with sterilising vaccines. Problematic without them. https://t.co/HNzIIxpQN9
The UK debating the removal of free tests. Imagine having free tests. $40 billion in unnecessary JobKeeper payments, but we can't have free testing, in a pandemic. The corruption of pandemic data, on which most journalists are silent. Gossip columnists for the Canberra bubble. https://t.co/eTxBygw9Sv
For populist governments, a 'problem' is defined as anything that they're responsible for inside a 3-year electoral cycle. Pretty clear what that means for problems like climate change, and pandemics.
Victoria has had about 10,000 Covid cases in schools, in the past week (according to the ABC). NSW? Who knows. Actually, the NSW government knows. #auspol
Not seeing anything in the NSW public health orders (which haven't been updated in weeks) about the new ATAGI 3-dose requirement. Nothing about early childhood staff and 3 doses either. The entire infrastructure of NSW Covid ground to a halt under this Premier. #nswpol
If we were sequencing, or heck, even testing much, in NSW, we could trace this coming. As it is we’ll just potentially see an uptick in hospitalisations and deaths before the boss of the battery hen farm in Macquarie Street adds more antibiotics to the feed. https://t.co/Tv2HJ8Z8PT
In discussion with friends yesterday about ‘living with the virus’. All operating under the premise that this means ‘allowing ourselves to become infected’. I asked if they allow themselves to contract HIV. Or TB. Or Lyme Disease. All diseases we ‘live with’. Um, no.
Very interesting use of the second derivative of incidence, or rate of change of cases, to try to spot wave behaviour in advance. There’s a logic to it. https://t.co/zAmIheD2wB
One cutting edge of inter-generational tension is surely pathology waiting rooms. Pathologists open early, presumably to allow working people and school kids to get tests before the day. It doesn't work, at 7.30am waiting rooms queued out the door with elderly and retired people.
Yesterday we got details about school infections in NSW. Over 20,000 children infected in the first 2 weeks, more than 500 staff infected last week alone. Is it a headline? No. In populist democracy, elections are Prom Night. All focus is on who will be next Prom King or Queen.
The Chinese have adopted a smart strategic line. Stung by constant criticism about human rights, they've started to respond by asking why the West allows millions of its own citizens to die from Covid infection. #COVID19Aus #auspol
"Malabar, Maroubra, Coogee, Clovelly and La Perouse beaches would also be closed for 24 hours while council lifeguards looked for any further sightings of sharks." 1 shark death = lockdown of beaches. >2000 people dead of Covid since Christmas = 'we need to open up'.
Any journo who wants a good Covid story should do a bit of snooping around residential colleges on university campuses right now. Tales of widespread infection. #auspol
Unemployment was always deliberately higher, to suppress wages and conditions in the workforce. It's lower now because business has had to tap homegrown labour, because foreign cheap labour is harder to access. https://t.co/gUOpvnjBZc
I'm predicting by the end of the day this shark will be a Chinese Communist shark bred and released by Anthony Albanese. If Albo had some gumption, he'd be planting the seed 'which PM do we know who is a big fan of sharks?' #auspol
For the time poor, today's NSW press conference. Premier: 'the pandemic is over'. Kerry Chant: 'no it's not'. Health Minister: 'Kerry Chant will be taking some well-deserved leave'.
Hands up who holidayed in France in this pandemic? Anybody? Anybody? https://t.co/JXX8TXzNhp
Decades of privileged European imperial lifestyles (including the colonies, US and Australia), of treating life as a big travel junket, a collective Grand Tour, decides to go down fighting. Russia, China, the rest of Asia, look on with amusement. https://t.co/mhOnBmmuSx
Most (rich) governments around the world are basically giving up, with Covid. Think about what great collective projects societies put on hold to fight Covid, that they want to get back to. Their moonshots. There aren’t any. /1 https://t.co/KSQBWfKLcO
Overwhelmingly the drive to end trying with Covid, in rich countries, is to get ‘normal’ life back. Normal INDIVIDUAL life. Socialising, mostly. Travelling. Dining out. It’s like rich societies are eternal cruise ships. /2
Barely one leader of these countries has mobilised their publics in a collective way, framed Covid as a fight that we need to win. More often they’ve apologised for the public health tools used in that fight, and promised they’ll stop using them as soon as possible. /3
So, again, what is this ‘normal’ life that couldn’t be sacrificed any longer? What great collective project was it, that we want to have back? Nothing. It was rich countries who have become so divorced from some of the basics of existence, that life in them serves no…/4
…purpose beyond the gratification of individual desires. Life literally as a cruise or holiday. No multi-generation cathedral building, no passion for collective solutions to problems of disease or environmental damage, or climate change, energy production. No moonshots. /5
For all of us, the return to ‘normal’ is actually the return to, as the late Dave Graeber said, meaningless ‘bullshit jobs’. To pay off enormous personal debts. We’re all so relieved to be getting our lives back! Really? Is that why lotteries and gambling were so popular…/6
…pre-Covid? Why job satisfaction surveys consistently showed that people were sick of their jobs? For me, the great urge to go back is a profound disappointment. Societies desperately needed rebooting, away from decades of the philosophy of libertarian self-everything. /7
Imagine living in another time, where great collective projects gave life and work a larger purpose, beyond our individual enjoyment. Maybe the great Elizabethan engineering works of the 19th century were the last time in peace time there was a passion to do collective things. /8
Stonemasons once began great buildings they knew wouldn’t be finished in their lifetimes, or even the lifetimes of their sons. Now this great mass of libertarian individual self-enjoyment is chained to a 3-4 year electoral popularity cycle, which is akin to everybody…/9
…on the cruise deciding on the cruise director for the next trip out and back. ‘We can’t live like this forever’, say the Covid minimisers. Let’s get back to - what? The meaningless orgy of self-enjoyment? Tedium. /end
(That should say Victorian.)
Here’s a tip, journos. Ignore the Scott and Peter commie click bait show as irresponsible bullshit - starve it of air. And report on this instead, the deliberate mass infection of an entire generation. #auspol https://t.co/UE7vlFixSk
I think 3. is the issue in many countries. Australia's public health journalism is letting us down. Obvious questions not being asked, for 2 years. Like wtf 'live with the virus' even means. https://t.co/8DZoOTqzQ5
This is libertarian Australia. These beliefs will transform Oz into the US and UK, in pretty quick time. Aren't these beliefs working out well, for them. https://t.co/h8hm5nphA4
Why are we pretending the pandemic is over? Because the wealthy are now comfortable they're protected. No sarcasm here, this is the literal underlying political reality. Working people can get sick and die, there are always fresh workers. https://t.co/g7abSLboWK
h/t @TimLovesCake
So we are seeing Omicron reinfecting Omicron? https://t.co/80RJzeBrNg
The ‘wall of immunity’ some advocate here may need a lot of sandbagging. https://t.co/DfU41LnCxE
Australia needs a national surveillance survey. Politicians are deliberately trashing data to hide public health damage. “For any real-time health surveillance system to be reliable and cost-effective, it cannot rely solely on self-reported tests.” https://t.co/WUNUBrmnhL
Like others, I’m pushing daily in life and work against a tidal wave of politically-engineered Covid fatalism. ‘We’re all going to get this, let’s just get it over with’. Populist politics needs to go. The problems facing the world can’t be fixed inside electoral cycles. #auspol
Again, is it too much to ask a politician, those who have the opportunity to do so, what the plan is when the current vaccinations have waned, somewhere around winter? What’s the ‘living with the virus’ plan then? #auspol https://t.co/ncbGzl6xO2
I’d like a new ‘proportionate’ response to the pandemic. Those who argue for widespread infection of the population - 50% is a number bandied about - must demonstrate their commitment to this suggestion by exhibiting the proportionately equivalent level of infection. /1 #auspol
So for example, 50% of the experts who argue for this approach should themselves be infected, to show their commitment to the idea. 50% of all MPs should be infected. 50% of those in the media who advocate for this model too. Walk the talk. /2
Or did you all just mean average working folk should make up the bulk of that 50%? While you write and Tweet from your Covid-sheltered work environments, or home? /end
@YouAreLobbyLud
The obvious question, again. Why you’d open schools in the middle of the largest wave of the pandemic. https://t.co/Cm51MROi68
The only reason anybody is talking about the ALP and China is because journalists report it. They could quite easily say ‘no that’s nonsense, we’re not even talking about it’. #auspol
Wonderful thread on the sort of risk assessment we can all do when deciding how to act as the pandemic continues. Vastly more nuanced than anything most governments are doing (which is mostly, nothing). https://t.co/5BuqJAN0LZ
NSW have done it again, with schools. Testing to cease for schools, with the Premier saying research shows transmission is extremely low. The NCIRS research used ended on 17 December 2021. At the red arrow. Last time, NCIRS data was used for closed schools. #covid19aus #auspol https://t.co/29xWS91e4r
The thing about treatments like Paxlovid is, it will be presumably allocated according to severity of infection. But that’s not evident often until well into the course of the infection. How do you square that circle? https://t.co/Tf5XuQB5H8
It’s dark when I get up for work, and it’s still summer. The result of daylight saving robbing one end of the day for the other (and thus nothing is ‘saved’). Have always hated it, for the circadian chaos it causes, but even more because of the hubris of shaping reality…/1
…to meet our social whims. And it was always a hint of how we would respond to Covid, any problem that wasn’t easily fixed. We’d end up redefining reality to fit our social lives. A pandemic is hard and annoying, so let’s just define it as over and shut down the data. /end
Still staggers me every single day that Australia is now operating a system where millions of people have to pay for their own testing, in a pandemic. Not even the libertarian loons in the US and UK went that far. We have no visibility of where anything is heading. #auspol
For most countries the Covid strategy hasn't been a health strategy. It's been a demand management strategy for the health care system. People getting sick was just assumed. https://t.co/pCIcIdb7lX
Let's hope the Queen makes a full recovery. If she doesn't I wonder if the Tories will say she was at 'end of life anyway'. It's what they say for other elderly people who die of Covid. https://t.co/t2aIW9aLEu
Was listening to the CEO of Flight Centre on RN this morning, talking about borders re-opening. A few thoughts. /1 #auspol
A common line was repeated, that 'business needs certainty'. Actually business doesn't need any more or less certainty than anybody else. We would all like life to be certain, and it never is. So it's just code for 'we want to be looked after'. /2
The discussion about how Asia is still too cautious with Covid really got me, and how all that 'elimination' stuff won't last and their borders will be open soon too. Not just a business thing, it's a travel thing, that disrespect for local custom and tradition. /3
To the world's travellers, everything is a 'sight' to be seen, and/or a 'market' to be tapped. Our old normal was so much about hypermobility, everybody busily moving around domestically and internationally. Our planes are the mosquitoes that spread Covid. /4
And what's the purpose of this movement? What are we trying to achieve, as societies? Nobody seems to know. Having a good time, maybe. The driving force of all great civilisations. Or not. All that jet fuel is climate poison, maybe we'll 'live with' planet incineration. /end
This advice works well for rich people who can watch the pandemic from home on the TV. https://t.co/yZSUaFHLb2
On the flip side, it means if they can't even stop the Queen becoming infected, we're all doomed.
Cannon-Brookes could buy The Australian, Daily Telegraph, Foxtel, the Herald Sun, and Nine Entertainment , and have change compared to what he's prepared to offer for AGL. And shut them down. Would accelerate the transition to renewables even faster. https://t.co/z61pxV8QRQ
Now the libertarian conservatives here and abroad are acting like the old cotton mill industrialists of the 19th century. It really is just unrestrained, naked battery hen farming for the masses. https://t.co/kZHKPgpgje
The reason I plead with people to join unions is not because I’m a union organiser (I’m not), or closely associated with the ALP (not either). But because politics is not just belief, but also power. /1 https://t.co/VhKM13BDIV
Ultimately all power comes from belief, but at a time like now when neoliberal and libertarian beliefs hold sway, argument and logic won’t win the day. To re-balance (the conservative darling word) politics needs brute industrial muscle. /2
When the conservatives send us all out to be repeatedly infected with Covid under the nonsense banner of ‘freedom’ we need to say no. But to say no with industrial-level force. To shut the place down basically, until they relent. No amount of nuanced logical argument will…/3
…shift them. History has showed this time and again. As Kissinger reportedly said, and excuse the older gendered metaphors, if you want to win hearts and minds, you need to have people by the balls. The ‘live with the virus’ folk currently have society by the balls. /4
Right now the magnitude of the public health disaster confronting most developed nations needs something equivalent to a national strike. Where ordinary people say - no, I’m not going to be repeatedly infected by a lethal pathogen, and nor are my friends and family. /end
A love letter to the expert Covid minimisers here in Australia too. https://t.co/Mau9A2x4iw
Hey, any journos out there who want an easy story. How about somebody call out the claim from the NSW Government on low Covid spread in schools? Based on NCIRS data collected before Omicron and Christmas? Kinda seems important. #auspol #nswpol
Some re-branding for National Cabinet. https://t.co/onZ6jnlxs6
Side-by-side articles. Where the UK goes, we follow, just lagged by a few months. https://t.co/gGkTnwcS45
Just a tip to any politicians watching, those brutal by-election and fed election polling results mean 'we Australians don't want to live with this fucking virus'. You won't need a focus group.
NSW's guidelines for chickenpox are about to be significantly more stringent than its guidelines for Covid. And no, this isn't a problem with the guidelines for chickenpox. https://t.co/SBhohgXHIm
Portugal is a great example of what very high (95%) population vaccination can and can't achieve. Not a lot in terms of stopping Omicron infection (they were smashed too), but a lot to suppress deaths. Deaths were still higher though than at the beginning of the pandemic. https://t.co/cwfrjjBrcz
Populism is like sugar for politicians, they love the instant and wide attention. They don't read history though. Past a certain threshold, the crowd discards them entirely. The Republicans in the US have now lost their party. https://t.co/tcBs1aXBDa
In which several benches of private school old boys who probably can’t even make a sandwich, declare an international event over. Nationally. Or something. https://t.co/1WtBhhtgVk
As Boris says, it’s all about personal responsibility. https://t.co/CUkLVfDdte
I loved this show. But I always found the idea of self-sufficiency a bit silly. To live ‘off the grid’, you need a grid. It’s how libertarians live, parasitical on society. But now the libertarians have trashed society. And retreating feels like the only way to stay alive. https://t.co/b6H79lS0bY
If we’d called SARS-Cov-2 ‘Putin’ instead of Covid, it seems our leaders may have actually done something to keep it out.
Today will be the day when journalists ask two basic questions: 1) what do we do when the 3rd dose of vaccine wanes in 3-4 months’ time? 2) why are we using 2021 data to assess Covid spread in schools? I know, I know. A man can dream. #auspol
Why did Australia debate and reject ‘living with the virus’ in 2020 and 2021, and go on to spend 100s of billions suppressing it, and then completely capitulate to the virus after Delta? Both parties. Simple: expertise was deliberately excluded from decisions from Delta onwards.
Nick Coatsworth on RN Breakfast this morning was much more circumspect than he is on Twitter. Talking about how endemic doesn't mean there won't be further epidemic waves; that we need to always be ready to bring new restrictions in etc.
James Valentine did a great interview this morning with an industrial relations researcher (forgotten the name, sorry). Before 7.30 if you want to re-listen. The points that I think are so vital right now: /1 #auspol
1) For NSW nurses to strike, something is seriously wrong in this State. NSW nurses are the least militant of Australian nurses, apparently. 2) What we're seeing was a long time building. The small government movement (what I call the libertarians/neoliberals). /2
3) The starving of public institutions, or dismantling entirely, and the legislated wage freezes decoupled from inflation and productivity, meant eventually the pressure cooker would burst. 4) Government keep kicking this can down the road, underfunding public services. /3
This to me is the real battleground, underneath everything else going in politics, the pandemic, climate change etc. Society is literally made of beliefs, and this one about government 'restricting' individual freedom has been dominant for decades. Its failure is what.../4
...we're living right now. 'Getting government out of peoples' lives' has been a disaster, and the true believers are clinging to that belief in open and flagrant opposition to the facts. /5
People invented government. People ARE government (who else occupies government positions?) Because they were sick of trying to stare down life's existential challenges alone. Economies of scale. Individualism, the 'market'...all a fantasy. Empirically shown, everywhere. /end
Yes, 'vaccines work'. Like brakes work, on a car. The car also needs wheels, and fuel, and roads, and...
Spread in schools is 'extremely low', said the NSW Government this week, referring to 2021 data (but pretending it was 2022 data). In 2022 Covid is feasting in schools. Apparently it's better for the kiddies. https://t.co/RyBoJRLh13
I imagine the terror Putin feels hearing this. https://t.co/BPKtrmvg4Y
Getting government out of peoples' lives just puts other governments into their lives instead. The rich West descends into libertarian fantasies of free-floating individuals, leaving global politics unoccupied. The Russians and Chinese are very happy to reoccupy that space. https://t.co/RwS87kyPVS
There’s some sort of conservative erotic fantasy in relaxing protections as a situation is getting worse. https://t.co/kcfhB7rPa7
2020-21 *was* ‘living with Covid’. We not ‘moving to’ living with Covid. We’re moving to living with a lot more Covid, and a lot more disease and death. https://t.co/d7cuKmJmrM
The casual indifference to mass infection of children is at least partly explained by demographics (many things are). Rich countries are still ageing badly. They’re retirement homes increasingly staffed by cheap overseas labour. Societies not even reproducing themselves. https://t.co/Ymq6HeQS7Y
Here we are nearly at the end of February, and the ‘weekly’ NSW epidemiological report, about the only useful Covid data the NSW Government now release, is still the 29 January version.
So much is going to depend on where these curves land. Overseas they often don't return to zero, or even to a number that is within cooee of influenza deaths, for example. https://t.co/0yUdweBtGi
The most disastrous thing Putin has done may be to take the world’s attention even further from the pandemic.
Superb from Stan Grant today. My two cents. All politics is identity politics. The West now sees identity only in individuals. Russia and China see it in a nation, a race, in geography. The West needs to ask ‘who are WE’ rather than ‘who are you’. https://t.co/TtKa2olsKY
As rich, privileged nations, this is our time to rejoin the world that the majority of humanity never left. It makes us ‘anxious’. I’d rather it made us determined to stop planning holidays and put our shoulders to the wheel fixing things. https://t.co/g0uxA2zWRp
‘Mental health’ is becoming a bit of a catch-all to describe political issues. The brutalising politics of the ‘Economy’. Neoliberals medicalised a pandemic so they could ignore it. It suits them just fine for us to attribute blame for the shit they do to our own mental health.
Two of my kids are still wearing a mask. Next week the NSW Government removes all school mask requirements. This weekend we'll discuss what to do. One is still weeks away from a 2nd vaccine dose. 21st century Australia feels like 17th century England.
Paul Keating in 1997. Contrast with the slogan-spewing 'leadership' we have today. The decision to expand NATO by inviting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to participate and to hold out the prospect to others—in other words, to move Europe’s.../1 #auspol
military demarcation point to the very borders of the former Soviet Union—is, I believe, an error which may rank in the end with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system at the beginning of this century. /2
The great question for Europe is no longer how to embed Germany in Europe—that has been achieved—but how to involve Russia in a way which secures the continent during the next century. And there was a very obvious absence of statecraft here. The Russians,.../3
...under Mikhail Gorbachev, conceded that East Germany could remain in NATO as part of a united Germany. But now just half a dozen years later NATO has climbed up to the western border of the Ukraine. This message can be read in only one way: that although Russia has become.../4
...a democracy, in the consciousness of western Europe it remains the state to be watched, the potential enemy. NATO’s declaration at the Copenhagen summit of 1991 was admirable. It said ‘We do not wish to isolate any country, nor to see a new division of the Continent. /5
Our objective is to create a Europe whole and free.’ But that sentiment sits impossibly with the expansion of the institution. The fundamental point of principle that NATO enlargement should ‘contribute to stability and security in the entire Euro-Atlantic region and not .../6
...pose a threat to any nation’ is simply incompatible with enlargement. The words used to explain NATO’s expansion have been nuanced, and the dangers have been acknowledged. But however careful the words are, whatever the window dressing of the Permanent NATO– Russia.../7
...Joint Council, everybody knows that Russia is the reason for NATO’s expansion. The decision is dangerous for several reasons. It will fuel insecurity in Russia and strengthen those strains of Russian thought, including the nationalists and former Communists.../8
...in the Parliament, which are opposed to full engagement with the West. It will make more likely the restoration of military links between Russia and some of its former dependencies. It will make arms control, and especially nuclear arms control, more difficult to achieve. /9
President Yeltsin’s offer to ‘take the tips off the warheads’ might have been described as a misstatement, or even the unconscious utterance of official briefing, but what are the chances of that happening now, with NATO creeping towards Russia’s western borders?" /end
In true libertarian market fashion, I may offer to pay my kids to keep their masks on. Just to reward them for swimming against the tide of dumb.
It's like living in a George Orwell novel, sitting here every day watching political libertarians talking about the pandemic being over, while the bodies pile up. Crimes against humanity, glossed over with cheap political slogans. https://t.co/AW3T1zFYxf
Really useful graphic to see some of the realpolitik in play in the current invasion. https://t.co/icbPWrAQB3
Russia banned from Eurovision. That’s gotta hurt.
Westerners are so used to peace and prosperity that they’ve maybe forgotten the idea of a ‘balance of power’. We see our democracies as naturally more peace-loving. In reality those democracies are held in place by force, mostly the $600 billion a year US armed services. /1
The Russians and Chinese feel that absence of balance acutely. Even in my lifetime I remember a time, before the Soviet Union collapsed, when power was more genuinely balanced between worldviews. Unfortunately the Russian and Chinese response right now is…/2
…the old nationalisms, which are lethal. But they at least retain the idea of people having roots. In the West, drunk on enormous wealth and freedom, we see the world as a list of recreational travel destinations. We’ve lost most of the idea of being grounded in any way. /3
In a way it feels like another shift of empires. Ours is tired and has collapsed into ridiculous political philosophies of personal sovereignty, and we struggle to even control a virus killing our own people, let alone mobilise against global threats. Most of the Covid fight…/4
…has been against ourselves, with significant numbers of our own populations not even wanting to fight a pandemic. That’s common late-imperial thinking, where the realities of existence get completely out of whack with everyday life, which is focused on personal enjoyment. /5
Democracy itself is a problematic concept. Populism has led us to believe it’s about popularity, about majority rules. It was never supposed to be that. Rule by the people for the people never excluded the idea of a hierarchy of what is good and bad, for those people. /6
We deferred to hierarchies of expertise, in all areas of life. But now populism is sweeping much of that away, leaving only what is popular as the metric. Democracy in a way is more a holding pattern than a political system, it’s the system you have when there are no widely…/7
…shared beliefs. Pluralism, as we sometimes call it. But nobody actually likes that, despite the claims to the contrary. All of our actions make a lie of it. We recognise value hierarchies in every single thing we do, whether it’s which consumer goods we buy, or which school…/8
…we send our kids to. The West has to look deeply into its own soul right now, to decide what it still stands for, beyond individual freedom and self-enjoyment. The world is not a map to be travelled inside. Areas on a map are other peoples’ homes, not our travel playground. /9
We look on with justified worry at the way China and Russia are reasserting their ways of life. But some of that is our doing too, we emasculated both of them historically. They never forgot, as we wouldn’t if it was us. Our own indigenous peoples feel that every day,…/10
…and we ignore them. They still feel that rootedness to landscape, they don’t see land as a travel destination, or a map. Identity and territory have deep connections, that we in the West no longer grasp. Our worldview is literally a view - we ‘survey’ the world, as a map. /11
That’s the worldview of a conquering empire. Which is what we are, there’s no shame in it. But we tend to strip away the force that created and maintains that empire, and paint it as some superior personal characteristic we have - we’re more peaceful, and liberal etc. Uh huh. /12
Back to the balance of power. Peace is a balance of power, not an individual set of feelings or ideas. Just as justice is ‘weighed’. It’s the respecting of self-determination, and fighting - yes fighting, not just militarily, but in all ways - to maintain your way of being. /13
We can’t make all of the world the same, we shouldn’t want to. But that means there will always be conflict between competing views, and that conflict will be lowest when powers are roughly balanced. We find conflict of all kinds distasteful in the West now, domestically and…/14
…internationally. That’s our old imperial roots showing. We’re used to life just turning out the way we want it to be. The privileged always feel that, ‘let them eat cake’. The Russians and Chinese know this, and they’re testing it. They feel that (and they’re probably…/15
…right) we can talk the talk, but no longer walk the walk. That when push comes to shove, we won’t actually fight for our way of life. What is our way of life any more anyway? It’s fractured into libertarian freedoms of infinite variety. The pandemic, Exhibit A. /16
I don’t support aggressive Chinese or Russian nationalism, I support the West recognising that it’s the by-product of our own loss of a sense of what we’re here for. The loss of collective goals, of a collective vision of what we stand for, and why. We’re too busy living our…/17
…individual lifestyle lives. We ‘live with’ a lethal virus, ffs, rather than do anything collectively to get rid of it. We don’t want our lifestyles disturbed. Time for us to ditch that ridiculous navel-gazing political philosophy and get back to ‘we’ again. What is ‘we’. /end
Early polling suggests people don’t want to live with the virus in South Australia either. Covid may clean out the entire National Cabinet, given time. Also look at how much young men are attracted to the LNP. There’s something in that I think. https://t.co/xKox1pW6p5
Some conservatives say technology will fix climate change. They say the same thing about ending wars. And yet despite the overwhelming technological might of Western powers, when was the last time we won a war? Kuwait? A triviality in military terms. Anything else post WW2? /1
Increasingly richer nations have taken a satellite imagery approach to diplomacy. If we can see it on a screen and target it with cruise missiles, we have it under control. But it doesn’t seem to be working. We feel like a giant gated community, protected by planetary-level…/2
…CCTV. Maybe, just maybe, conflicts would be less likely to happen with genuine engagement with other parts of the world. Many of the tinpot autocrats we fight were either directly installed by us, or filled a vacuum left by us. We learned that even between WW1 and WW2. /end
Covid almost completely absent from the news now. Failed Western leaders like Johnson and Morrison see an opportunity to rescue their own careers, wars are tremendous platforms for populist politicians. We can walk and chew gum, deal with more than one disaster at a time.
Hey #insiders, remember this? Still killing more people every day in Australia that at any other time of the pandemic. https://t.co/AojdS1bWBD
Modern democracy uses short electoral cycles, 3-5 years mostly. You can’t do much that’s lasting for a society in 3-5 years. So politicians take actual problems (when they can’t ignore them entirely), and create manipulable proxies for them. Short 🧵/1 https://t.co/MRjwoW3ghF
The pandemic is a perfect example. Right now, after two hard years, politicians want to wash their hands of pandemic responsibility, because they have elections coming, and because their capacity to extract political mileage from it has been exhausted. /2
They were happy to play pretend-to-be-in-charge when it played well with people, but as the effort required extended into years, it was time to cut it loose. Clean out the in-tray. And so they chose a couple of manipulable metrics - hospitalisations and ICU - and made those…/3
…the ‘end of the pandemic’. The global, hugely complex multi-dimensional monster that a pandemic is, was suddenly reduced to a couple of hospital metrics. Metrics also open to manipulation (a politician’s favourite). We’ve seen this in NSW, how who goes to hospital…/4
…and into ICU can be massaged by use of other care modalities, and sometimes substituting palliative care for ICU etc. So now it looks like the politicians are not only in control, but are ending the pandemic. But they’ve been doing this for years, and on a much bigger scale. /5
Without question the greatest sleight of hand in modern political strategy was to replace society itself, all of it, with the ‘Economy’. The Economy is a concept used by all sides of politics now, as if it’s as real as trees and rocks. I’ve Tweeted a lot about this lie. /6
Either everything that goes on in society is just the Economy, or the Economy is what ‘funds’ everything else. Conservatives invented this idea quite deliberately, to replace centuries of traditional political categories with this mono-dimensional fiction. Journalists and…/7
…other political commentators, as well as the general public, swallowed it wholesale, the Economy is now spoken of unproblematically, as if it’s an actual thing. It isn’t. It’s a set of statistical indicators of social activity. That is literally all it is. /8
You can hear how it’s used politically every day of the week. Calls for government investment in some neglected area will be met with instant counter-calls of ‘how will we pay for it?’. As if government needs to ration out its money, as we do with our bank accounts. /9
Not getting into MMT debates here, but sovereign governments print the bloody money, it can never run out. A society can lack the expertise and resources to do something, but it can never lack the money. A keystroke at the Central Bank can create more whenever needed. /10
Look again at the pandemic, how ‘economies’ prospered as tightwad economic governments handed out money. And how turning off that tap, again deliberately, was used in 2021 to force a shift to a ‘live with the virus’ strategy. The Economy is a political weapon. That’s…/11
…its original and still dominant rationale for even existing. So that conservative politicians could stop talking about social problems, and just harp on repeatedly about growth and unemployment rates, and interest rates etc. All metrics that (not accidentally) also create…/12
…wealth for those with existing wealth in our societies, when they’re trending upwards. Not hard to favour your constituency of the well-off, if you redefine all of society in a handful of statistical measures that facilitate their existing wealth. /end
Between the 400+ leaving every week, and the others being poached to staff super yachts, let’s hope the wardsmen can read a chart. https://t.co/z3XG1ptuDo
Tomorrow is wear a mask to work day. Every day is. The only people you need to socially distance from are politicians, and other Covid minimisers. https://t.co/Lpk5EQqisi
From 1918, in the US. The minimisers have a long, proud, ‘mild’ tradition. https://t.co/qbbYDZcL4Y
The swiftness (ha) of the attack on Russian plutocrat finances reveals how well plutocrats the world over know the offshore financial system.
Some point to the growth of ‘service’ industries in our economies as a form of social progress. It’s actually quite funny that we even use the same word for slavery as we did 150 years ago - service. One ‘went into service’. Re-badged, with smashed avo and barista. https://t.co/Vj8UXQ7U4J
I'm the only person wearing a mask at my workplace this morning. It highlights the nonsense of libertarianism. People will wear them if they're required, by government. Otherwise not.
For those persisting with masks in defiance of stupid, a bit of Kafka to steel your resolve. https://t.co/nDaRnvwvsq
10 reasons I give people for why I still wear a mask (in case of interest). It's good to have comebacks ready. 1) I'm focused on the vulnerable in our community, not myself. 2) I get my science from scientists, not politicians. /1 #auspol
3) I'm fighting the oppression of government no-mask mandates. 4) I've been allowed to smoke for over 50 years too, and haven't. 5) I'm better-looking with a mask on. 6) Somebody needs to keep the Economy running when everybody else gets infected. /2
7) I've enjoyed people not being able to tell when I pull faces at them. 8) A surplus of masks in warehouses will lead to significant wastage as they expire and are thrown out. 9) Superheroes usually wear masks. 10) I don't want to hog all of the SAR-Cov-2 virions myself. /end
Actually, 11) I'm happy for others to be the last hosts for Omicron.
Surprised not to have seen this one used yet. https://t.co/fRbSLBuh3o via @YouTube
We've known since the 1980s that taking off your mask is a terrible idea. https://t.co/Ghld1TZtdB
It's all very Old Testament now, Australia 2022. We've had plagues (mice), pestilence (Covid), now floods. I'm feeling that direct link back to the text in many of the government's policies. https://t.co/CgXmyLLfix
The pandemic outcomes for the US and UK are even more similar than I’d imagined. https://t.co/oELvnQWeXv
I’ve seen case curves like this in the pandemic. But maybe never death curves this stark. Hong Kong is having a very bad time with Omicron. This needs to be understood. Total population vax rate < 80% seems to be some sort of marker of worse outcomes. https://t.co/TwVL59lPBR
This maybe explains some of HK, contrasting with the UK and US. All have total population vax rates 76-78%. But the UK and US infected a lot more people in the pandemic, they may have more infection-based immunity. Though relativities - US and HK death rate similar even today. https://t.co/WqX3V03ZTF
Mandates are the simplest, fairest and cheapest forms of pandemic action. Conservatives have been successful in portraying law as restriction, oppression. But it’s nonsense, everything else can be gamed using the existing socio-economic hierarchy. Mandates are the true ‘balance’. https://t.co/RahcIT8moh
Early morning workplace chat. One staff member came to work with a runny nose 'because the RAT said negative'. Is now regaling everybody with a story about her visit to a psychic. Outsourcing public health to individuals is an oxymoron.
Why were we 'living with' colds and flu anyway? Most of that was always poor workplace and school air, and insecure work with insufficient sick leave.