#auspol #covid19aus @YouAreLobbyLud @RealOzSAGE the weaponisation of hospitalisation. Economic interests and…

#auspol #covid19aus @YouAreLobbyLud @RealOzSAGE the weaponisation of hospitalisation. Economic interests and their representatives in government have weaponised multiple public health concepts in this pandemic, and hospitalisation is another. A thread. /1

In speaking with many people I know who don't follow the pandemic much beyond what they see in the news, the slogan that 'it's not cases that matter, it's hospitalisations and death that matter' has done its job. It's uttered as the pinnacle in common sense. /2

Like all public health ideas transformed into slogans, the devil is in the details. Here are the main causes of death in Australia, across all age groups (thanks to AIHW). There are two important things here I think: /3 https://t.co/dAmj1tkCfJ

1) the vast majority of people with these conditions are not in hospital, most of the time. They will have hospital stays at various points of their illness, but they're mostly living in the community, and 2) the overall load on the health system from these conditions.../4

...goes well beyond the hospital stays. These conditions kill more Australians than any others, but their seriousness isn't assessed according to how much time people spend in hospital, or whether they go to hospital. /5

When politicians say hospitalisations are the key metric, they're not talking about health. They're talking about logistics, about the capacity of hospitals to meet demand for beds. That's part of their job, all fine. But the spin has transformed that logistical imperative.../6

...into a health one, in peoples' thinking. They now believe that the seriousness of Covid from a health point of view is defined by how many people end up in hospital. So long as we have the beds, Covid has been tamed. But Covid patients in hospital beds is only the tiniest.../7

...tip of the public health implications of Covid infection. Imagine taking all of the conditions on the AIHW table, shown again here, and saying their seriousness is defined only by how many hospital beds people occupy, with these conditions. /8 https://t.co/KsGw3xhr8S

For all of the conditions listed, we move Heaven and Earth to try to *reduce* their incidence, to minimise the harm they cause, to stop people ever developing these diseases, and reduce suffering when they do. Many of these people die in the community, not in hospital. /9

And their pathway to that death is travelled overwhelmingly outside hospital. Imagine saying that heart disease is not an issue in Australia, everybody can get a coronary care bed if they need one. And yet this is the narrative even some experts are now peddling, for Covid. /end