From the Australian government’s information sites. We need to continue to fight the spin that replaces our…

From the Australian government’s information sites. We need to continue to fight the spin that replaces our focus on infections, with hospitalisations, severe illness and death. There’s wisdom and bitter experience in defining epidemics and pandemics using infection numbers. /1 https://t.co/R4DxsZCoci

I think the wisdom and experience is because we know that allowing ongoing infection enables a range of public health disasters. It enables ongoing pathogen evolution. It enables the development of widespread chronic infection, rather than just acute. /2

And from that it enables the development of chronic disease, from chronic infections. It adds TIME to the equation. Something our adolescent world now won’t tolerate, with its instant gratification. /3

Why don’t more health professionals oppose the outrageous reframing of a pandemic as hospitalisations, severe disease and deaths? ALL of those are traditionally the outcome of disease control FAILURE. They treat a public health event as a medical event. /4

If you’re using medicine for a pandemic, you’ve already lost. We invented public health because we used to understand that. Engineers are far more important in a pandemic than doctors. We’re not using them. Bring the focus back to INFECTION. That’s the crisis. /end