There's good stuff here, and just getting this process happening was an achievement, for which we owe people…

There's good stuff here, and just getting this process happening was an achievement, for which we owe people thanks. But we're also cycling back to the earliest days of this pandemic in the underlying assumptions. /1 https://t.co/Cf6RmMoKAj

The government is not saying they're going to do anything any time soon to prevent Covid infecting millions more people, multiple times. So we have the perverse situation of a condition with a known cause, where little will be done to address that cause. /2

To unpack that even further, the clear calculus in play here is that we can sacrifice a certain number of Australians, nobody knows how many. Nobody really knows what Long Covid is, so we don't even know what we're looking for. /3

We'll throw some money at some research that might be of some use, some day. I say this brings us back to the beginning of the pandemic, because I and others made the point then that nearly every infectious disease on our current immunisation schedule had similar stats. /4

Low mortality and morbidity (sometimes in the single digits), but very serious and even fatal for some. That suffering and death was sufficient to trigger national action. This is where elections have again perverted democracy. /5

The public good has been replaced with calculable minorities and majorities. Electoral categories. Something gets action if the voting calculus says it might impact voting intention. Long Covid sufferers may be a minority, so nothing will be done to stop them getting Covid. /6

Take mumps as just one example. Between 167 and 1983, when the vaccine was introduced, 35 people died of mumps. About 2-3 per year. Tragic, but in terms of modern electoral politics where 'the people' = a majority, it wouldn't even register. /7

But at the time, the fact even a few people would suffer terrible morbidity and mortality with mumps was sufficient to prompt national, population-wide action. We were all vaccinated, and have been ever since. Now you could say we've done that for Covid too. /8

But the Covid vaccines don't prevent Covid, nor Long Covid. They're great, but not that great. It's a different public health challenge to having a 'sterilising' vaccine. The intent with mumps and other infectious diseases was to stop the rest of us catching them. /9

To stop us passing them on to those who would suffer the worst effects. To 'protect the vulnerable', as the current lip service goes. There was an idea of a public good, of the inter-relationship of all people. Not calculated minorities and majorities. /end

(That should say between 1967 and 1983.)