What looks like epidemic waves of infection, with the virus coming at us in repeated waves, is really not…

What looks like epidemic waves of infection, with the virus coming at us in repeated waves, is really not that. We are the waves, we’re not onlookers. Australia shows this, because the waves didn’t really start in earnest until end-2021. It’s a CYCLE, not waves. Short 🧵/1 https://t.co/9ke7nKZJOT

Infection is a social and political process, because it’s caused by how people interact. If we all could stay home, there’d be no pandemic. The epidemic ‘waves’ we saw in Australia from late-2021 matched those from many countries overseas the entire pandemic. What changed? /2

We can draw on work on abuse in relationships. The waves we see are actually a cycle of abuse, of the public. The public is in relationship with its governments, just as it is with each other. Cycles of abuse cause the rise and fall of ongoing waves of violence and calm. /3 https://t.co/Aiy1H4tb3d

This isn’t just an analogy. A cyclical process will tend to produce a wavelike outcome, when mapped over time. You’re cycling between maxima and minima. Except in a pandemic, it isn’t the virus causing the cycling. It’s what we do socially and politically that does that. /4 https://t.co/oSXij8qjP5

Look at the stages of abuse in individual relationships, and see how they map to collective relationships (publics and their governments) too. 1. Calm - no obvious problems, the public and the State peacefully coexist. 2. Tension building - infections start to rise, and…/5 https://t.co/2UVsRRqPS8

…the impact of those infections on social processes rise as well, creating tensions. The public becomes fearful, communication begins to diminish from government. 3. Incident - full-blown outbreak, widespread infection, disease and death. Violence, against the body politic. /6 https://t.co/dmRufnWlBh

4. Reconciliation - government apologises, blames the public, rationalises the outbreak, says this will be the last time. All behaviours you’ll hear in abusive personal relationships too. And we’re then back at calm. Or in shorthand: /7 https://t.co/BDq19wlXLd

1. Calm - low point of a wave 2. Tension building - wave going up 3. Incident - wave at peak 4. Reconciliation - wave going down. /8 https://t.co/8zZL1n9Nly

Epidemic waves are waves of abuse because they’re caused and prolonged by one party to the relationship - government - not actually being IN relationship with the public. I’ve Tweeted how this is not even denied - modern neoliberal governments deny the public is even a thing. /9

And as in personal relationships, abusers can be terribly nice people in every other way, just not in relationship with others. When you elect governments who think those relationships, between government and the public, shouldn’t even exist, you will be abused. /10

When that overlaps with the emergence of a pandemic pathogen, you will get the epidemic waves we’re all familiar with. Australia shows this beautifully because for the roughly first two years of the pandemic, the government DID maintain relationship with the public. /11 https://t.co/oXXOBVwT3V

Public health, that’s what it means. Then in late 2021 our local neoliberal libertarians, with one eye to the federal election, stripped that relationship away, and the relationship became abusive. And thus, we got ‘waves’. /end https://t.co/hRiZ50U7cO