Infection follows a network dynamic. It doesn't infect everywhere all at once, particularly Covid. It forms…
Infection follows a network dynamic. It doesn't infect everywhere all at once, particularly Covid. It forms hubs, which then create networks, and then more hubs in these networks etc. Within countries schools are the main hubs. Internationally rich nations are the main hubs. /1 https://t.co/5oPxYiYJcw
The US and UK were the dominant early hubs for Covid. Here in Oz and also now NZ, we were latecomers to this game of do nothing against a pandemic, but we caught up fast. A great Anglo 'fuck you' to the rest of the world. /2 https://t.co/DwfSYI0XKL
We had form. We've used the word 'endemic' to mean disease that won't go away, almost universally applied to poorer countries, where we happily left diseases to fester while eliminating their spread at home. Now in economy politics, we use it at home too. /3 https://t.co/bAOJmHtNWE
The same argument for reducing spread in schools - to target the hubs to collapse the networks of infection - should have applied internationally too. And often did, pre-Covid. But today's political libertarians in the UK and US weren't having it. /4 https://t.co/ovMvJIX1t1
And therefore we ended up with a pandemic, because the Anglo hubs kept pumping fresh infections around the globe, with their hypermobility. Planes were the new mosquitoes. As Oz and NZ showed early, none of that was inevitable. We hit Covid for six, in quick time. /5
Specious arguments were made about not being able to 'lock down forever'. We never needed to lock down forever. We did it as an emergency measure, until we knew more about Covid. One of the early things we learned about it was that it was weak. /6
That very few people transmitted it, and if you could identify the 'superspreading' locations, you could shut it down. Fast. Those turned out to be schools. Ludicrously, the very places we did the LEAST Covid work on. /7
The whole Covid narrative is infected by the hysterical claims of the political libertarians. That we need some total, all-of-society disruption to bring it under control. Even the best-intentioned fall for it, hoping to get the whole country masking, ventilating, vaccinating. /8
The job needed is quite small, precisely targeted, fast and relatively inexpensive. Shut down the hubs. Ventilate schools. Exponential maths will do the rest. /end