What needs to happen for action to be taken on Covid?

Albanese has had two bouts of Covid since being sworn in as Prime Minister. Given his lack of action in mitigating Covid…

In six months under Labor, Covid deaths exceeded those under Morrison’s government in the first two years of the pandemic.

…can’t say I’m very sympathetic.

I got a bit fired up in Parliament today because Scott Morrison refused to condemn a member of his own government for saying "masks don't work" and "lockdowns don't work". Truly a disgrace. pic.twitter.com/zSiR8FQbKP

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 10, 2021

Pre-election “Albo” made all the right noises about Covid. As Ms Wallace states, it probably helped Labor win a tight election.

“Only 30% of voters thought the coalition managed the pandemic well, while state governments — nearly all of them Labor-led — were judged to have done a good job. Labor’s narrow win in last year’s federal election was undoubtedly helped by the glow from its state governments’ strong public health policy credentials and Albanese’s support for their actions.

All the more astonishing, then, has been Labor’s about-face on pandemic management since taking office in Canberra. The previous champion of muscular public health policy slickly switched to a laissez-faire stance, with COVID infection now declared a matter of “personal responsibility.” – Albanese has let Australian voters down on COVID-19 – Chris Wallace – Nikkei Asia

Karmic retribution?

My response to a tweet about how “Albo’s” aged in eight months after two bouts of Covid.

Sound callous? Well, imagine “Albo’s” third bout of Covid finished him off. Wouldn’t that spur some serious discussion on Covid mitigation? Perhaps leading to the adherence to the Precautionary Principle seemingly being forgotten by governments?

Minister for Health – Statement of Reasons – Pandemic Orders made on 20 June 2022

Any precautions arising from “Albo’s” demise could save tens of thousands of lives over the next few years and prevent far more cases of Long Covid. Surely a greater good? Perhaps masks would be worn at his State funeral? What is callous, is the normalisation of Covid deaths, promulgated by an uncaring and predatory mainstream media in the name of profiteering companies.

Business Council of Australia – protecting profits not people

“We have seen the effectiveness of lockdowns in suppressing the virus last year, and in slowing its spread today while we vaccinate the population as quickly as possible. We are encouraged by the building momentum in the vaccine program, with Australia now administering more doses per capita each week than the UK or the US ever achieved in their programs.

At the same time, we can also see the impact of lockdowns on our people, on our customers, on our small business suppliers, and on communities and families right across the country. Australia is juggling a mental health emergency at the same time as a global pandemic. Some of the impacts of current lockdowns are hidden, and the effects will be long lasting. As vaccination rates increase, it will become necessary to open up society and live with the virus, in the same way that other countries have done.

The National Cabinet has agreed to a roadmap which provides a path out of lockdowns, with an easing of restrictions from 70% and 80% vaccination rates. We need to stay the course. Informed by modelling from the Doherty Institute, it balances the risks from COVID in a more vaccinated population, with the risks of indefinitely keeping our country divided and cut off from the world, our children out of schools, our friends apart from loved ones, and our small businesses closed.

Businesses will continue to do whatever we can to support our people to get vaccinated and to provide a safe environment for our customers and the community, including the prioritisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities as originally intended. We ask governments to work together to implement the National Plan and chart a path out of the current lockdowns. Providing a light at the end of the tunnel will encourage more Australians to get vaccinated. We need to give people something to hope for, something to look forward to, something to plan around, and to be confident about their futures.”

“Albo” apes BCA disinformation

The BCA pad this statement with emotive caring words and phrases but the message is essentially, We are powerful, don’t you dare interrupt our profit flow.

BCA: “Australia is juggling a mental health emergency at the same time as a global pandemic. Some of the impacts of current lockdowns are hidden, and the effects will be long lasting.”

This was a theme seized upon by “Albo” – (for doing nothing about a deadly pandemic) – who stated, “One is mental health considerations … the imposition of controls on people’s behaviours has an impact on people’s health.” “And particularly young people, we’re seeing a really problematic increase in incidents of severe consequences when it comes to young people’s health, but others as well.”

Albanese said the nation needed a “balance” to also consider the interests of business. “Albo’s” summations on pandemic precautions and mental health are both unsubstantiated and hypocritical.

The young people and adults who have lost parents, grandparents and friends from Covid are certainly distressed and prone to depression. Yet even their existence is nullified by “Albo”.

As to the impacts of imposed controls? Labor is happy to continue the “mutual obligations” that cause so much misery to people on benefits. Below is just one of the many responses to Albo’s sympathetic discourse about suicide prevention, which unfortunately didn’t include doing the obvious and lifting people out of poverty to prevent suicides.

So much for “Albo’s” balance. Business has continued profiting while those on unemployment benefits have not had a raise from Labor since 1994.

Australia Corporate profits

source: tradingeconomics.com

**What should Labor do about Covid?**

Here’s a multi-layered approach that balances people’s safety with maintaining a healthy workforce and a viable supply-chain for Business.
From: Containing Contagion – Stopping the spread of disease, misinformation, and science resistance

Spoiler: Labor is well aware of what needs to be done. Their vaccine-only strategy has more holes in it than… than… well Swiss Cheese. Ms Wilson points out its limitations and the fact that only people in high-risk categories (or political office) can obtain antivirals for free.

“The Government’s vaccination-only strategy is deeply flawed, given the limited time (approximately 20 weeks) that vaccine efficacy is estimated to last. Many of us who had our fourth dose 20 or more weeks ago are now unprotected, as a fifth dose is not yet generally available.

Then there is the matter of antivirals. In Australia, these are available free on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) only to people in specific high-risk categories. However, if you can afford it, you can buy them privately regardless of your health status. Antivirals can inhibit the spread of the virus in the body and lessen symptoms. If it is safe for you to take this medication (and it isn’t for everyone), you ought to be able to access it regardless of your income.

What currently determines accessibility to antivirals in Australia is individual financial circumstances. What would your mother think of that arrangement, Mr Albanese?” – Labor continues Morrison Government’s COVID chaos – Jennifer Wilson – Independent Australia

We don’t need no education

The biggest failure by the government to my mind is the lack of education about Covid and its effect on human physiology. Here are some snippets of information about Covid, which our Health officers are totally aware of but refuse to act on…

“Every COVID infection now leaves a non-linear legacy of troubling human health outcomes in unforeseen ways. A Danish study, for example, found that people infected with COVID “were at an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and ischemic stroke.” The risk wasn’t trivial: the infected were 3.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Letting the virus rip also supports a nightmare scenario where initial infections disarm and sabotage immune systems leaving them more vulnerable to future infections and new pathogens such as monkeypox.

A pandemic that progressively weakens its host population with each successive wave is ultimately more dangerous than one that dispatches 10 per cent of the population and then vanishes.” – Get Ready for the Forever Plague – Andrew Nikiforuk – The Tyee

“…comprehensive picture shows the coronavirus attacks virtually every major system in the human body, directly damaging organs and causing the blood to clot, the heart to lose its healthy rhythm, the kidneys to shed blood and protein and the skin to erupt in rashes. It causes headaches, dizziness, muscle aches, stomach pain and other symptoms along with classic respiratory symptoms like coughing and fever.

“Physicians need to think of COVID-19 as a multisystem disease,” said Dr. Aakriti Gupta, a cardiology fellow at Columbia who worked on the review, in a statement. “There’s a lot of news about clotting but it’s also important to understand that a substantial proportion of these patients suffer kidney, heart, and brain damage, and physicians need to treat those conditions along with the respiratory disease.” – How coronavirus affects the entire body – Maggie Fox – CNN

“Even mild COVID-19 cases can have major and long-lasting effects on people’s health. That is one of the key findings from our recent multicountry study on long COVID-19 – or long COVID – recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

We found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog – or a combination of these – that affected daily functioning.

These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.” – Most people who ended up with long COVID started with a mild case, new study shows by Sarah Wulf Hanson & Theo Vos – CBS

The aged, medically frail and disabled, are currently seen as the main casualties of Covid. A view reinforced by mainstream media.

Covid death statistics certainly support that belief.

However, one or more bouts of Covid could see formerly healthy people joining the ranks of the medically frail and disabled. Their normal aging process will speed up too.

Your government should be telling you this. If you are not wearing a mask because you prefer risking the lives of our aged, medically frail and disabled (to enduring a mild inconvenience) consider this an appeal to your self-interest.

Your government is lying to you

Lying by omission is one of the most glaring techniques being utilised by our government. Supposed concern about our welfare without mentioning the viral elephant in the room is rightfully hammered by commentators. I have an easily altered meme prepared for each eventuality.

“Albo” on beach safety (leads to Tweet)

The lack of interest in taming the dangerous excesses of our highly concentrated mainstream media by our Labor government is due to their shared agendas on defence, climate change and of course Covid with our media oligarchs and the business interests they represent. Mainstream media are abominable in regard to downplaying Covid’s severity, while boosting opinions from people that have been proven wrong about Covid over and over again.

“Twenty twenty-two will be the year the pandemic ends. It could even be sooner than we think.”- Nick Coatsworth

“We can be rightly proud of what we have achieved as Australians in the face of what was the challenge of our lifetime. We will emerge a stronger, healthier and more prosperous nation for our efforts.” – Why 2022 and Omicron variant will mark the end of the Covid-19 pandemic – Natalie Brown – News com

NICK COATSWORTH: Deputy Chief Medical Officer interview on Sky News Live First Edition on 6 May 2020

COVID-19 is definitely not an airborne pathogen. When you have airborne pathogens, like measles for example, the basic reproductive number that we’ve all come to know so well is much higher than what it is for COVID-19 – so, so definitely not an airborne. It’s got – this is a droplet pathogen which means it settles on surfaces. Once it is coughed up or expectorated it tends to – it drops to the ground very quickly.

And that’s why hand hygiene and physical distance are our most important measures and will be our most important measures particularly when we start opening businesses that they enable processes that allow us to keep our distance from each other until we have a vaccine or effective treatment.

LAURA JAYES:

Dr Nick Coatsworth, thanks for busting a few myths this morning and keeping us up to date. I appreciate it. – Deputy Chief Medical Officer interview on Sky News Live First Edition about coronavirus (COVID-19)

As a further refinement to this joke – this interview is currently hosted on a government website.

It makes you wonder how many people have been infected, suffered Long Covid or died because of this arrogant incompetent’s declarations.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) should strike Coatsworth off – or at the very least, tar and feather him.

Dr Nick Coatsworth – Medical Spin Doctor – by Mick Lawless

There are a host of these purported experts doing the rounds on TV, radio and print. So why are these people who have lost all credibility on epidemiological matters still enabled to continue spreading this disinformation?

Again, because it serves the interests of the media moguls, their sponsors and our government.

As Ms Williams explains, widespread infection has become normalised.

“Living with COVID has now become hegemonic, in Gramsci’s terms, not just in Australia but in many countries around the world. Since the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, we have seen the normalisation of widespread infection.

There has been a push by the media, certain experts, and politicians to “return to normal” and live with mounting infection, disability and death.

This is most evident in the myths about the virus adopted by what Gramsci called the “organs of public opinion” – the mainstream media. These include: “COVID is mild”, “schools are safe”, “children don’t transmit the virus”, “COVID is mild in children”, “hybrid immunity”, “it’s endemic”, “it’s just like the flu”, “we’re all going to get COVID” and, more recently, “the pandemic is over”.

These myths, unsupported by scientific evidence downplay the severity of the virus and create a false narrative that health consequences are minor, if not trivial.

As such, we perceive the pandemic as less risky and any protective measure as an overreaction.” – Blair Williams | How COVID infection became normalised despite the mounting costs – The Canberra Times

– Appendix –

The evidence of my own two eyes

Ran the Feature image past an assorted crew on Twitter (not by design – it’s the nature of Twitter).

Most agreed “Albo” looked the worse the wear due to Covid. Some blamed it on stress and overwork, perhaps coupled with Covid.

A few decided the photographs were at fault. Lighting. There were no similar rebuttals to the majority opinion that Covid has negatively affected our PM when this version was presented.