Coronavirus thread

[drogulus]

     Increased contagiousness and lower lethality are often linked. It was also a prediction dating to early Covid days. More lethal strains kill hosts too quickly to effectively spread. Natural selection is a thing.

[krummholz]

     Increased contagiousness and lower lethality are often linked. It was also a prediction dating to early Covid days. More lethal strains kill hosts too quickly to effectively spread. Natural selection is a thing.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, that kind of selection pressure might not work... because the virus is highly transmissible even before symptoms appear. The experts here in the US have been saying for months that we can't expect future variants to always be less virulent than the less contagious ones they out-compete. A truly nasty strain could very well take over eventually.

[Holden]

One of the best opinion pieces I've read regarding how the whole world panicked when Covid appeared. Regardless of your own views which I respect, this represents mine and while you can certainly disagree with it (and many of you will) please respect that fact that this is my view and has been since 2020

Brisbane Times

OPINION
Nothing to fear but the truth: time to question our pandemic response
Chris Uhlmann

Tell me how this ends? This question was posed in 2003 by General David Petraeus during America's invasion of Iraq, and it cut to the dead heart of that catastrophic campaign.

It's a handy mental tool for probing almost any public policy so let's apply it to the latest spike in cases of COVID-19.

As the number of COVID cases spikes, experts are calling for more government intervention.
As the number of COVID cases spikes, experts are calling for more government intervention.

Unsurprisingly, it has prompted another epidemic of "expert" demands for yet more overweening government intervention in the lives of the vast majority who have nothing to fear from this disease. And, given the mob has now worked that out, the only argument for mask mandates is to protect the hospital system.

Cast your mind back to 2020 when the first lockdowns were imposed, expressly for the purpose of preparing the hospital system for the pressure that was bound to come. Then, we were assured, intensive care capacity would be buttressed, so it could be surged to more than 7000 beds.

And yet, 18 months into the pandemic, it emerged that hospitals in states such as Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia could not cope with even routine demand. Maybe that's because the number of acute care beds in Australia has more than halved in the last 28 years.


This wave is coming slowly': Hospitals prepare for projected spike in demand
That is a reason to change negligent governments, not licence for politicians and health bureaucrats to impose restrictions on populations to mask their breathtaking decades-long incompetence.

Exactly a year ago, this column said that, soon enough, the great lie at the heart of Australia's COVID-19 elimination strategy would be revealed because "the disease can't be eliminated". It was the only rational conclusion and yet, at the time, a parade of luminaries were still clinging to the intellectual corpse of COVID-zero and those arguing against it were vilified.

In August 2021, the best minds in New Zealand's health system decided the COVID elimination strategy could be continued indefinitely and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared it "a careful approach that says, there won't be zero cases, but when there is one in the community, we crush it".

Pause for a moment and consider the staggering stupidity of that statement in hindsight. But the point here is, the "expert" advice was self-evidently ridiculous at the time. Just three months later, after Ardern crushed her people and not the disease in a seven-week lockdown, she accepted the bleeding obvious: that not even a plucky island nation at the end of the world could live in isolation forever.

The Chinese Communist Party has soldiered on with COVID-zero and the despotic lockdown regime it exported along with the disease. Predictably, China's economy has tanked and the misery the party has inflicted on its people is beyond measure. Perhaps the best result of that is it has prompted even the CCP cheer squad at the World Health Organisation to question its wisdom.

In May, Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies director, made the startling observation that the effect of a "zero COVID" policy on human rights needed to be taken into consideration alongside its economic effect.

"We need to balance the control measures against the impact on society, the impact they have on the economy, and that's not always an easy calibration," he said.

Some have argued that those considerations had to be at the heart of the response from the outset and that the cure imposed risked doing more damage than the disease. Too often the Australian solution punished the many for the few. It preferred the very old over the young, reversing the risk equation most societies wager is the best way to protect their future.

So, the answer to the Petraeus question on coronavirus is clear and has been for more than a year. This only ends with Australian governments lifting all restrictions and actually learning to live with COVID-19 as just one more risk in a dangerous world. It is a decision other nations, such as Sweden and Norway, have already taken.

This is not, as eejits would have it, "letting the virus rip". To claim that is to wilfully ignore that we have endured more than two years of their miserable prescriptions racking up a taxpayer-funded bill probably somewhere north of $500 billion to keep the economy on life support and hit a vaccination rate of more than 95 per cent, precisely to prevent the virus from ripping through the community.

So now it is past time to ask another question: Where is the royal commission into the pandemic? This was a once-in-a-century moment that left no one unaffected, so there is no argument against holding the most rigorous test of how this nation fared.

It demands a panel of the best minds we can assemble to look dispassionately at what happened, how we responded, how we succeeded and where we failed. All Australian governments should participate and offer every assistance.

They have nothing to fear but the truth

[Madiel]

Well a lot of it is nonsense, and I'll tell you very quickly why. I mean, I've told you these things before and it's done precisely nothing to stop you spouting the same nonsense, but here goes anyway.

1. The proposition that you have nothing to fear if it doesn't kill you is nonsense. Long Covid is a thing. Long Covid is bad. Long Covid in some form is actually pretty common.

2. It's been shown any number of times that the economic impact of vast numbers of people being ill is worse than the economic impact of preventing people from being ill.

3. The fact that zero Covid cases is no longer achievable is not remotely a reason to stop restrictions designed to flatten the curve. And talking as if Covid zero was never achievable completely ignores the changes in the transmissibility of the virus from the time that Australia and New Zealand were doing Covid zero strategies.

4. Talking about "protecting the hospital system" as if the hospital system is a completely separate entity from the people it serves, including you and Chris Uhlmann, is just profoundly absurd. It's not just about Covid, it's about anything that could affect you. I mean, I had no idea I was going to visit the emergency ward in April until a very short time before I was there. You need a functioning hospital system with the capacity to treat you.

Arguing against health measures when Australia is currently experiencing higher rates of hospitalisation and death now than at any stage in the pandemic is an argument that you cannot be bothered any more trying to stop people dying. And the notion that everyone who doesn't end up dying will be fine is simply wrong. People are not recovering. We don't know yet but there is a real possibility that some people will live with the effects of this infection for a very long time - with all the long term damage that will do to the rest of us, whether you're smart enough to recognise that or not.

[Holden]

Well a lot of it is nonsense, and I'll tell you very quickly why. I mean, I've told you these things before and it's done precisely nothing to stop you spouting the same nonsense, but here goes anyway.

1. The proposition that you have nothing to fear if it doesn't kill you is nonsense. Long Covid is a thing. Long Covid is bad. Long Covid in some form is actually pretty common.

2. It's been shown any number of times that the economic impact of vast numbers of people being ill is worse than the economic impact of preventing people from being ill.

3. The fact that zero Covid cases is no longer achievable is not remotely a reason to stop restrictions designed to flatten the curve. And talking as if Covid zero was never achievable completely ignores the changes in the transmissibility of the virus from the time that Australia and New Zealand were doing Covid zero strategies.

4. Talking about "protecting the hospital system" as if the hospital system is a completely separate entity from the people it serves, including you and Chris Uhlmann, is just profoundly absurd. It's not just about Covid, it's about anything that could affect you. I mean, I had no idea I was going to visit the emergency ward in April until a very short time before I was there. You need a functioning hospital system with the capacity to treat you.

Arguing against health measures when Australia is currently experiencing higher rates of hospitalisation and death now than at any stage in the pandemic is an argument that you cannot be bothered any more trying to stop people dying. And the notion that everyone who doesn't end up dying will be fine is simply wrong. People are not recovering. We don't know yet but there is a real possibility that some people will live with the effects of this infection for a very long time - with all the long term damage that will do to the rest of us, whether you're smart enough to recognise that or not.

Hmmmmm - some interesting personal attacks on me included in here despite the fact that I didn't write the article. But that seems to be the common response when people read things they disagree with. That's the form that proselytising takes nowadays I suppose.

[SimonNZ]

please respect that fact that this is my view

No.


edit: and you know what else? You don't get to pretend you "respect" the views of others when you endorse an article attacking the "staggering stupidity" of the "eejits"...do you?

[Madiel]

Hmmmmm - some interesting personal attacks on me included in here despite the fact that I didn't write the article. But that seems to be the common response when people read things they disagree with. That's the form that proselytising takes nowadays I suppose.

You explicitly endorsed the article as your view. Make up your mind.

And when you read things that YOU disagree with, you just freaking ignore them. Over and over all you post is variations of your selfish view about how inconvenienced you've been by lawful restrictions on your liberty.

You have no insight about what those restrictions actually achieved. You're like those people who think that the Y2K bug didn't mean much because measures against the Y2K bug worked.

Australia currently has one of the highest Covid rates in the world. We currently lack meaningful restrictions. You think is just coincidence. Or you think this doesn't matter. Vaccination has improved things, but there's basic maths involved. If death rates are cut 100-fold and infection rates are up 1000-fold, more people die. More people ARE dying. And your response is to say "why did we bother"? The whole point is that health experts are saying we need to go back to bothering.

[MusicTurner]

Press reports, via two large studies published in 'Science', that the major WHO research project in China has confirmed, and this to a rather definitive extent, that in Wuhan, the virus did indeed spread from the food market, in November-December 2019, not from a lab there.

[Karl Henning]

Press reports, via two large studies published in 'Science', that the major WHO research project in China has confirmed, and this to a rather definitive extent, that in Wuhan, the virus did indeed spread from the food market, in November-December 2019, not from a lab there.

I am tempted to joke, it'll kill our conspiracy-theorist GMG'ers ... only I know that conspiracy theorists are impervious to facts.

[Florestan]

Press reports, via two large studies published in 'Science', that the major WHO research project in China has confirmed, and this to a rather definitive extent, that in Wuhan, the virus did indeed spread from the food market, in November-December 2019, not from a lab there.

Okay, but then again why is it not kosher to call a disease which originated in a Chinese food market and nowhere else in the world, a Chinese disease? Heck, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain yet a century later the term is being used without the Spanish government or the Spaniards making any fuss about it. Why then should people today be reprimanded for calling Covid-19 a Chinese virus? Just asking.

[prémont]

.. only I know that conspiracy theorists are impervious to facts.

[SimonNZ]

Okay, but then again why is it not kosher to call a disease which originated in a Chinese food market and nowhere else in the world, a Chinese disease? Heck, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain yet a century later the term is being used without the Spanish government or the Spaniards making any fuss about it. Why then should people today be reprimanded for calling Covid-19 a Chinese virus? Just asking.

Because that is suggesting blame for the confluence of random events, the kind which can - and will - occur anywhere.

It also stokes racist attitudes already existing in many and makes targets of racism of any vaguey Asian looking person, all of whom are manifestly without blame of creating a virus. As was seen during Trump's idiocy of trying to insist on it being called The China Virus. He wasn't striving for geographical accuracy, he was throwing red meat to his racist base.

How would you feel if...etc etc

[prémont]

Because that is suggesting blame for the confluence of random events, the kind which can - and will - occur anywhere.

As far as I understand it spread there because the Chinese eat wild animals in an area where some wild animals carry these vira. So this epidemy would not originate wherever.

[SimonNZ]

As far as I understand it spread there because the Chinese eat wild animals in an area where some wild animals carry these vira. So this epidemy would not originate wherever.

This specific one? Possibly, but I'm not even sure that's true.

But what I meant was any type of pandemic source.

If the first cases and spread of the 1918 Influenza epidemic where in America...

[prémont]

This specific one? Possibly, but I'm not even sure that's true.

But what I meant was any type of pandemic source.

Of course other pandemics may originate everywhere, but consensus seems to say, that this specific type originated in Wuhan. And there is no latent discrimination in recognizing this.

[SimonNZ]

Everybody already recognizes this. That's not in question.

Biut naming the virus after the country suggests blame. And blame for the citizenry.

[Karl Henning]

Of course other pandemics may originate everywhere, but consensus seems to say, that this specific type originated in Wuhan. And there is no latent discrimination in recognizing this.

That much is certainly true. So perhaps referring to it as the "Wuhan virus" is not undue.

Okay, but then again why is it not kosher to call a disease which originated in a Chinese food market and nowhere else in the world, a Chinese disease? Heck, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain yet a century later the term is being used without the Spanish government or the Spaniards making any fuss about it. Why then should people today be reprimanded for calling Covid-19 a Chinese virus? Just asking.

Mi amigo, you can see yourself that the "Spanish flu" is water long under the bridge now, as you well understand. I doubt that its use was clean of bigotry at the time of its coinage. Even short of the vile "Kung Flu" which one still hears prominent Republican bigots use, let's just say I'm skeptical of the suggestion that "Chinese flu" can be granted free currency without tickling bigoted impulses, and I'm thoroughly skeptical of the need to try to "sanitize" its use.

[Karl Henning]

Everybody already recognizes this. That's not in question.

Biut naming the virus after the country suggests blame. And blame for the citizenry.

Worth remembering the uptick of harrassment of Asian-Americans in the wake of the onset of the plague.

[SimonNZ]

The "Othering" of Disease: Xenophobia During Past Pandemics

[...]"What's in a Name?

Historically, people highlight foreignness in the naming of pathogens: it's the "Wuhan" flu or the "Chinese virus"; the "Ebola" virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the "Spanish" influenza, even though that microbe didn't originate in Spain. Tellingly, it is rare that we apply this same naming convention to diseases with an "origin" close to home---after all, HIV was discovered in New York City, and MRSA first exploded in Boston.

Of course, this idea is ostensibly inaccurate and misleading. The "Spanish flu," for example, largely came to be associated with Spain for political reasons, not because the H1N1 virus originated there. As a recent CNN article explains, other countries hid news of the disease outbreak to avoid informing WWI enemies that their soldiers were sick. At the same time, Spain, a neutral participant in the war, didn't suppress news about the virus and subsequently created the false impression that the virus originated there.

While naming a disease after specific people, places or animals can be a strategy for promoting fear, it can also impart a sense of safety to the public. An 1865 book of newspaper cuttings from the Royal College of Physicians archive discussed how diseases were seen as having "belonged to the age of barbaric conquests or medieval dirt," and so, therefore, "the very horrors with which our Oriental friends invested the "Asiatic Cholera" made men incredulous as to its presence in this favored and enlightened region." In other words, something this monstrous and unknown could never happen here, only over there.

In today's case, the dangerous and illogical suggestion is that if the Coronavirus is "Chinese," then Chinese people should be blamed or avoided. Simultaneously, this creates a misplaced sense of security that the "other" will be affected more severely than they will. Not only does this promote racism and systemic inequality, but it can also halt preventative measures and safety guidelines in their tracks." [...]

[Madiel]

Okay, but then again why is it not kosher to call a disease which originated in a Chinese food market and nowhere else in the world, a Chinese disease? Heck, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain yet a century later the term is being used without the Spanish government or the Spaniards making any fuss about it. Why then should people today be reprimanded for calling Covid-19 a Chinese virus? Just asking.

The term Spanish flu is not in common use anymore.

Meanwhile, Turkiye has recently asked for its name in English to be changed because it is sick of the association with a bird from the wrong side of the Atlantic.