Superb conversation with @CrabbBrendan and @c_s_wallace on the desperate need for a circuit-breaker at…

Superb conversation with @CrabbBrendan and @c_s_wallace on the desperate need for a circuit-breaker at government level, to return sanity to public health in Australia, with Covid. Every day I think about that circuit breaker. I fear the answer. /1 https://t.co/R0lXSNtI2M

Have Tweeted about the origins of public health practice, and how what made it possible was the invention of ‘the public’ itself. Triggered by catastrophes in the late-19th through to the mid-20th century. Those catastrophes forced a consideration of social inter-relationship. /2 https://t.co/9uWl8tkXQB

It wasn’t a choice, it was about survival. Privilege and hierarchy was thrown aside, in a fight to survive. Look at the destruction of much of the existing aristocracy in the world wars. As some researchers show, only wars, plagues and natural disasters really change politics. /3

Sir Richard Barrons, previous Commander of Joint Forces Command in the UK, put it succinctly. Without disaster and catastrophe, old social hierarchies re-form. That’s where we are right now, at the end of that 70 years. Read what he says. The libertarian fantasies of our time. /4 https://t.co/93iuiCdJrj

“…it’s all about the individual and perfect freedom to lead your life, really without commitment or expectation, or any sense of harm.” Without a sense of existential threat, the idea of a public simply disappears. And with it, public health. /5 https://t.co/zmND2Ixtbu

I would like to believe we don’t need an even greater catastrophe than we’re living right now to change this. But I doubt it. Societies will always act socially, like we’re all still at high school, without huge threats to that society. Covid is a huge threat, but…/6

…for now the acute sense of that threat has been lessened for many, through vaccination. It’s the long-term, chronic destruction of bodies and societies that may be that disaster. /end (h/t to @DavidJoffe64 for the link to the podcast)