#auspol #covid19 for all modelling and government reports, people get lost in the details, and ignore the…

#auspol #covid19 for all modelling and government reports, people get lost in the details, and ignore the framing. This report just operationalises National Cabinet’s 4-stage strategy for pandemic exit. It’s not advice on how to best exit the pandemic. /1 https://t.co/82575yinQ0

The clear (and surrendering) assumption of the National Cabinet plan is that Covid will become endemic. It ran up the white flag, with potentially catastrophic future outcomes. The assumption that an endemic Covid will be relatively mild and controllable has no basis. /2

Endemic disease is a multi-generational, enormous cost, in lives and resources, for any society. It’s a decision to embed a new, potentially highly dangerous, ongoing disease in practical perpetuity. A huge scientific and moral decision. Has attracted almost zero scrutiny. /3

For most, flu doesn’t seem too scary. Kills mostly the old and vulnerable. Yes the odd epidemic and pandemic, but not often in our lifetimes. The ‘just like the flu’ assumption for endemic Covid again has no theoretical or historical justification. /4

Endemic Covid could be like malaria, or even worse. Some estimate malaria has killed half of all humans who have ever lived, up to 50 billion deaths. Infectious diseases form complex ecological systems, enormously unpredictable and uncontrollable. /5

Allowing widespread transmission of Covid among the vaccinated is, many virologists say, about the most stupidly dangerous thing societies could be doing. It maximises opportunity for evolution to more lethal and transmissible variants. And yet it’s now our strategy. /6

It’s most of the world’s strategy. It could result in wave after wave of epidemics of lethal variants, for years into the future. None of this is precisely controllable. The only risk management approach is elimination of Covid, so as not to roll the dice of endemicity. /end