A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.
To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such.
John Quiggin 
We all need to update our priors.
“… members of both parties overestimated rivals’ support for political violence by up to 442%, which is “orders of magnitude wrong,” says Robb Willer,
How polarized do you think Australia is?
*
Polarization – how to ameliorate parts of it, and overlap.
Lots of relevant links.
*
“Inside a ‘mega-study’ on election denial, polarization, and violence—and how to stop it
“Stanford’s Strengthening Democracy Study, the largest of its kind, tested 25 strategies among 32,000 Americans to learn which could reduce partisan animosity and curb antidemocratic attitudes.
…
“Researchers found that the most effective interventions were those that corrected misperceptions about the opposition. In general, members of both parties wrongly assumed that members of the other party took more extreme policy positions and that they disagreed on more than they actually did. That tracked with an older study by the lab that found members of both parties overestimated rivals’ support for political violence by up to 442%, which is “orders of magnitude wrong,” says Robb Willer, professor of sociology at Stanford, who led the study.
…
“But the two other areas—antidemocratic attitudes and political violence—proved much harder to crack.
…
https://www.fastcompany.com/90781248/inside-a-mega-study-on-election-denial-polarization-and-violence-and-how-to-stop-it
*
“Putting Within-Country Political Differences in (Global) Perspective”
…“We argue that dissimilarities between Democrats and Republicans may mask some underlying level of agreement, such that disagreements between Republicans and Democrats may be less extreme than they are often perceived. We suggest that placing the views of both parties in global perspective–comparing them not only to each other but to citizens ofnearly 40 countries–demonstrates that political partisans in the United States exhibit markedly more similar views to each other than to citizens of other countries.”
“large international surveys and more fine-grained surveys of United States citizens” …”When viewed in the full distribution, polarization between Democrats and Republicans appears relatively small, even on divisive issues such as abortion, sexual preference, and freedom of religious speech.”
“…relatively small differences remain differences nonetheless, and it is clear that American politics is polarized.”
“Democrat-Republican overlap for moral issues.”
…
– Alcohol use 0.93%
– Contraception 0.93%
– Homosexuality 0.75
…
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231794
COVID-19 is to be left to run wild with insufficient, inadequate vaccinations, ineffective treatments and no other controls. Expect a 2023 world awash with endless COVID019 infections and increasing rates of deaths and disabling illness. That’s my interpretation of the news below.
Australia will almost certainly slavishly copy the USA. One vaccination a year of a vaccine that gives about 3 to 4 months protection! It will be manifestly inadequate. Everything else so far is failing too. Monoclonal antibody treatments have mostly already failed.Antivirals for COVID-19 are failing with rebound infections a major issue. The searches for the next gen, vaccines are also failing to produce any serious candidates SFAIK. The search for effective sterilizing mucosal vaccines is also a failure to date.
Now something could yet work, something could yet turn up but the chances look very, very bleak. It is clear the USA is giving up on funding adequate vaccination and it is also all but giving up on the search for new generation vaccines. Big Pharma scarcely seems interested either. Nothing of credible application appears in the pipeline for anytime soon. The bivalent vaccine will likely be obsolete before it gets into Australian arms.
So, I think the news is very, very bleak. We are not quite finished yet but it looks like the West is headed for total defeat on the COVID-19 front. Our leaders and the majority of the people have given up. The price we will pay for this will be extraordinarily high.
I understand that I’m prohibited from talking about COVID-19, but can we please extend that ban to @Ikonoclast as well? Almost everything he says is factually false, he’s pushing doomerism, and it’s very annoying to not be allowed to correct it. Happy to go into detail wrt this post if that would assist.
You need to be more polite if you want to comment
Ikon “The search for effective sterilizing mucosal vaccines is also a failure to date.”
China trialing nasal vax now. But…
“How nasal-spray vaccines could change the pandemic
“Vaccines inhaled through the mouth or nose might stop the coronavirus in its tracks, although there’s little evidence from human trials so far.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02824-3
Still no word from Doherty re AZ and Pfizer nasal vax comparison?
KT2,
Nothing definite yet. China’s mucosal vaccine, like its needle vax, Coronavax, is inactivated virus AFAIK. CoronaVax is not very effective, about 50% effective. Anyone’s guess how effective their mucosal vax will be. My cynical guess is “not very”.
Mucosal vaxes in the West are all “may” and “might”. I don’t know if anyone has even started one yet. My cynical guess is we won’t get a mucosal vax in Australia, any time soon.
I just don’t believe any more progress is being made. I haven’t seen anything to give me any hope yet. I may be wrong but there is no positive information around that I can find.
Yes, as I thought, the USA is doing nothing other than rushing in an untested bi-valent vaccine hoping it provides better immunity. US or Western mucosal vaccines are years away. US funding to fight COVID-19 has dwindled to a trickle. They (and we) are no longer taking it seriously at all. I expect the northern winter and 2023 to bring more disasters. There’s really no other way to see this.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/07/ovyg-s07.html
Ikon, Nature newsletter this morning. It seems Betteridge”s Law applies to headline – game changer – not as of now. 4 mucosal vax released and 96 others in development.
I thought Doherty is / has done a comparison trial of AZ & Pfizer mucosal covid vaccines but cannot find details.
“China and India approve nasal COVID vaccines — are they a game changer?
“The regulatory nods from China and India bring the number of approved COVID-19 mucosal vaccines in the world to four, including one already approved in Iran and another in Russia. More than 100 mucosal vaccines against the disease are in development globally, and about 20 have reached clinical trials in humans, according to Airfinity, a health-analytics company in London. Delivery methods include sprays, drops, aerosols and pills.”
…
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02851-0
KT2,
From the article itself,
“Exactly how successful these vaccines will be is unclear. Expecting a (mucosal or any) vaccine to stop transmission of a virus or prevent even mild illness — achieving what is called sterilizing immunity — is a high bar. Bharat and CanSino won’t know whether their vaccines can achieve this until they have conducted further efficacy studies.”
I suspect the only way this will work or would work for COVID-19 would be two intramuscular vaccines (needles) per year and 4 nasal sprays a year, indefinitely for the rest of one’s life. That would be reasonable given the alternative (death or long covid sooner or later from COVID-19) and given that we refuse to do any other control of COVID-19.
So something lie this
Month 1 – Needle vaccination
Month 2 – Mucosal Spray
Month 4 – Mucosal Spray
Month 6 – Needle vaccination
Month 8 – Mucosal Spray
Month 10 – Mucosal Spray
Rinse and repeat.
This might stand a chance of providing year round resistance (not total immunity) of a good order. Re-infections could go down markedly one would hope. In my lay opinion, this will be as good as they can get it. In my lay opinion, our governments won’t even provide this unless maybe we pay through the nose (no pun intended) privately for a higher level of protection.
Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Madison (not a medical doctor) hits the nail on the head.
Walking the plank! An effect of tribalism and polarization.
The pharma Bros accountant will probably push for a mucosal vaccine in every pocket and purse forever. Nice income stream.
And now: The worst word in the English language – Lockdowns.
Go hard, go fast. Context specific. Great links. And Peru. And ethics in schools please. Funny how a fix to a pandemic is not medical nor science or political. Just ethics.
All this makes for a hard ask to write “The Consequences of the Pandemic”. As Dyani Lewis says “That is what makes lockdowns so hard to study — and can lead to bitter disagreement.”.
I hope JQ’s proposed book doesn’t lead to bitter disagreement, yet it would seem inevitable.
And here is the kicker;
“But, says Aldred, the upshot is that “you’re hiding the fact that there are ethical judgements that have been made”. Policymakers should instead have a transparent discussion about the ethics of weighing costs and benefits, says Aldred, rather than suggest there is a ‘scientific’ answer. Without this kind of reckoning, we could be “back to square one” in a future pandemic, he says, with the same contentious debates about whether to close schools and at what harm to other sections of society.” From…
*
“What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns
“Restrictions on social contact stemmed disease spread, but weighing up the ultimate costs and benefits of lockdown measures is a challenge.
Dyani Lewis
…
“Nine months later, the journal published two letters2,3 that laid out the paper’s errors. A week after that, it retracted the work, although neither Savaris nor his co-authors agreed with the retraction. (Scientific Reports is published by Springer Nature; Nature’s reporting is editorially independent of its publisher.)
…
“The retracted paper is not the only one to contend that lockdowns failed to save lives. But these analyses are out of step with the majority of studies. Most scientists agree that lockdowns did curb COVID-19 deaths and that governments had little option but to restrict people’s social contacts in early 2020, to stem SARS-CoV-2’s spread and avert the collapse of health-care systems. “We needed to buy ourselves some time,” says Lauren Meyers, a biological data scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.
…
“Analysing competing harms and benefits often comes down not to scientific calculations, but to value judgements, such as how to weigh costs that fall on some sections of society more than others. That is what makes lockdowns so hard to study — and can lead to bitter disagreement.
Tricky calculation
There’s a fundamental difficulty with analysing the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns: it is hard to know what would have happened in their absence.
“Peru is still held up as evidence that lockdowns don’t work — but in fact it struggled to enforce them. The country has a large informal workforce, combined with expensive and inadequate health infrastructure. Despite lockdowns, many Peruvians continued to venture out to shop and to work, and so transmission remained stubbornly high, says Camila Gianella Malca, a public-policy researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima.”
…
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02823-4
KT2 and All,
The bottom line is that there is a lot of deliberate pseudo-scholarship re lock-downs and it is based on motivated reasoning.They (the COVID-19 deniers and minimisers) want to blame lock-downs for everything, even for times/places where lock-downs never happened or scarcely happened at all. It’s a massive, deliberate deception industry. The lock-downs and other controls saved lives and saved the economy from worse outcomes. There often weren’t lock-downs at all where other measures worked if they were implemented properly, meaning TTIMQ. Queensland scarcely had any lock-downs worth the name except for a few weeks in a few localities.
COVID-19 deniers and minimisers nominate China as lock-down hell. Actually, on a per capita basis it isn’t. Its lock-downs are modest on this basis. Their other control measures are doing the heavy lifting. China has vastly out-performed the West on health and economic indicators because controlling the pandemic in an effort to achieve elimination is the correct strategy as measured on all meaningful metrics.
Look at this full Twitter thread. Empirical proof that control is the best strategy: control to elimination using ALL control measures called Zero_Covid or Vaccines Plus. All other claims are lies promoted by capitalist corporations and oligarchs. Their lies are killing people, disabling people and damaging the economy. There is no upside except increased wealth for the richest 0.01% of super-capitalists. People have to stop being hoodwinked into believing the lies of the super rich. Otherwise there is a lot more death and pain in store for many of us, and maybe for all of us. China is ahead on all measures by achieving COVID-19 control. These are undeniable facts; facts we ignore at our peril.
I never really took it seriously until now. Iko was right. We’re witnessing the gradual destruction of Capitalism. Brick by Brick. The only thing holding the show up the importation of foreign workers – a ponzi fix that’s self destructing in the end. Advancement in technology is simply catalysing the process.
I mean really, this is getting very silly.
I just want to very directly simply quote Ikonoclast’s view here:
China’s permanent rolling lockie-d is “modest” and “the correct strategy”.
That is, Australia ought to lock our citizens inside during natural disasters.
Australia ought to separate parents from children, without consent.
Australia ought to murder pets who are inevitably abandoned as their owners are essentially kidnapped by the state for being infected by a virus.
Australia ought to weld doors shut to force residents to remain indoors.
Australia ought to prohibit people from leaving their home, even to get food and other essentials.
The apparently appeal to these “modest” steps when needed is “the correct strategy” apparently.
Let’s consider the benefits of this long-term strategy:
China has not moved a single inch further towards COVID-19 elimination. Not a single inch. The country has regular outbreaks, just like we do, as a result of its huge animal reservoir of infected wild animals. It could have another 100 lockdowns and not move an additional inch towards elimination.
It has been two years since the first vaccines were developed. Of the highest risk category of Chinese people, the over 60s, 38% remains completely unvaccinated. The relevant number in Australia is essentially zero. (Chinese vaccines are much worse also).
China’s economy tanked to grow just 0.4% in the latest quarter; ours grew strongly.
These are just facts. I have not made any kind of argument or analysis here, this is simple just plain recount of the bald facts. Do you believe his perspective is sustainable in the face of this simple, plain facts?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-07/china-locked-down-chengdu-residents-not-allowed-leave-earthquake/101413554
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-10/shanghai-separates-covid-positive-children-from-parents/101020470
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055831581/health-workers-in-china-are-killing-pets-while-their-owners-are-in-quarantine
https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3176355/residents-locked-inside-homes-wires-and-bolts-due-covid-19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/china-shanghai-covid-lockdown-food-shortage/
https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/chinas-low-growth-zero-covid-policy-signals-transition-away-from-reform-period/
From an article published at abc.net.au yesterday, headlined UN report says human development was set back 5 years by COVID-19 and other crises:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-08/human-development-set-back-5-years-covid-crises-un-report/101420968
A graph of the Global Human Development Index value was included in a tweet by @crudeoilpeak showing a decline in the last two years, erasing the gains of the preceding five years:
Should this be a surprise to contributors & readers here at this blog?
Geoff Miell,
Yep. My interpretation Capitalists and their enablers and sympathizers opposed effective climate change action and they opposed effective COVID-19 action. Now we face the long collapse which will run for at least 100 years or many hundreds of years. That’s if homo sapiens even lasts that long. Climate Change plus COVID-19 is a watershed of millennial significance.
Expect life to get continuously harder and worse from now on. It will still pay to fight these crises intelligently and hard in an attempt to ameliorate the very worst outcomes. But have no illusions that life ever gets any better from this point. Such illusions will not help you knuckle down to the really hard work and continuous challenges which lie ahead.
The precise watershed moment is as shown on the global Human Development Index. My prediction is that graph will never reach that height again.
Queen Elizabeth II was an important part of Australia’s history and, of course, a monumentally important part of the British people’s history. She was the longest reigning monarch in Britain’s history. She was an elderly lady so that her passing seemed somewhat unsurprising but it has nevertheless caused widespread grief and a feeling that the world has changed significantly because of her passing. She was a constant.
I was holidaying at a small camping settlement on Fraser Island up to today and when we returned from a very early morning photographic excursion the Australian flag at this remote settlement was flying at half mast. Everyone present felt grief and shock.
Messages of sympathy have come from around the world. Even the Chinese Communist press was incredibly respectful of her.
RIP Queen Elizabeth.
RIP indeed. But whose death(s) are we concerned about and whose deaths are we not concerned about?
Harry, will you be voting FOR a republic? I will.
A Consequence of the Pandemic I had not seen nor thought of;
“Superbugs are a “second punch” after pandemic
…
“By the numbers: Per the CDC, hospitalizations from 2019 to 2020 showed a …
● 78% jump in carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter infections.
● 32% rise in multidrug-resistantPseudomonas aeruginosa infections.
● 14% increase in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus infections.
● 13% rise in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA infections.
● Overall increase in antifungal-resistant infections, including Candida auris, which increased 60%.
● Resistant sexually transmitted diseases, like gonorrhea, are a growing threat, per the WHO, which aims to increase reporting of cases to its surveillance program.
…
https://www.axios.com/2022/09/09/superbug-antibiotic-resistance-pandemic
And people wonder why I routinely refer to our era as the Pandemicene, when I am not calling it the Anthropocene or more more colorfully, the Anthropocalypse.
We are now on the long slide to everything getting a lot, lot worse unless we declare a Climate Emergency and a Pandemicene Emergency and gear our entire efforts to meeting these serious existential threats.
Ikonoclast: – “We are now on the long slide to everything getting a lot, lot worse unless we declare a Climate Emergency and a Pandemicene Emergency and gear our entire efforts to meeting these serious existential threats.”
I’d suggest a good start would be to:
* stop encouraging and approving more fossil fuel projects;
* rapidly phase-out subsidies for existing fossil fuel projects.
Kate Chaney MP tweeted on Sep 7 a video segment of her question in parliament to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, about how the Federal Government reconciles approving the release of 10 new fossil fuel exploration sites with a 43% emissions reduction target, and his response at:
IMO, Chris Bowen did not satisfactorily answer Kate Chaney’s question.
I phoned Kate Chaney’s electoral office to express my thanks to her for her question.
IMO, more people need to be asking more of these similarly inconvenient questions, including concerns about perceptions of (federal & state) regulatory capture.
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/09/05/monday-message-board-569/#comment-255745
IMO, governments (both federal and state), through their ongoing approvals of more fossil fuel projects, are continuing to contribute towards facilitating civilisation collapse later this century – governments facilitating our future suffering.
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/09/05/monday-message-board-569/#comment-255753
KT2, I will not vote for a Republic. I prefer retaining our links to Britain and to the monarchy.
King Charles III & Ikonoclast will appreciate this translation.
“Kohei Saito’s book
“Capital in the Anthropocene”
… has become an unlikely hit among young people and is about to be translated into English”
…
“People accuse me of wanting to go back to the [feudal] Edo period [1603-1868] … and I think the same sort of image persists in the UK and the US,” he said. “Against that background, for the book to sell over 500,000 copies is astonishing. I was as surprised as everyone else.”
…
“We face a very difficult situation: the pandemic, poverty, climate change, the war in Ukraine, inflation … it is impossible to imagine a future in which we can grow the economy and at the same time live in a sustainable manner without fundamentally changing anything about our way of life.
“If economic policies have been failing for 30 years, then why don’t we invent a new way of life? The desire for that is suddenly there.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/09/a-new-way-of-life-the-marxist-post-capitalist-green-manifesto-captivating-japan
Yes, I continue to watch the insanity of a world gone mad. Ten million women globally (at least) die via excess and preventable deaths in the COVID-19 era from COVID-19. This is in two and a half years and there is not a second of public mourning declared for them. One pampered, over-rich woman heading an outdated, reactionary institution, fully replete with its colonial spoils, dies in England and the elites of the nations of the Commonwealth declare ten days of mourning.
People are distracting themselves from important and harsh realities with make-believe about what really matters and with what are really just more COVID-19 mass spreader events. Our TV announcers are still wearing black. Are they going to wear mourning black for ten days? Who ordered them into mourning black? The Queen’s passing is being stage-managed to flood people’s perceptions and make them believe nothing else of moment is happening in this world. But only the most sclerotic of the dinosaur generation believe this nonsense any more (outside of Britain anyway).
Young people in multi-cultural Australia watch very little TV. Many of them come from countries bashed up and looted by the British imperial and colonial system. They find all this stuff truly absurd and even deeply insulting, which it is.
Ikonoclast said, and the whole needs reproducing;
“Ten million women globally (at least) die via excess and preventable deaths in the COVID-19 era from COVID-19.
“This is in two and a half years and there is not a second of public mourning declared for them. (see^SW-1.)
“One pampered, over-rich woman heading an outdated, reactionary institution, fully replete with its colonial spoils, dies in England and the elites of the nations of the Commonwealth declare ten days of mourning.”[see ^SW-2]
Well said Ikon.
Simone Wiel said, and this quote will be the sub head of my Submission to the Disability -Royal (!) – Commission;
“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child.
[^SW-1]
“Therefore the afflicted are not listened to.They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
“That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”
p. 71
Human Personality (1943)
Written c. 1933; published in Selected Essays 1934-1943 (1957)
[SW^2]
“We believe we are rising because while keeping the same base inclinations (for instance: the desire to triumph over others) we have given them a noble object.
“We should, on the contrary, rise by attaching noble inclinations to lowly objects.”
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 61
p. 48 (1972 edition)
*
And why the market dominates as though it is the will of humans;
“The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so as to make up the number 4.”
Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82
*
I do not know what the best model for a Republic is, but I am now highly motivated to define and enshire such, and have the monarchy removed from Australia. Save reverence to history. I certainly admired and loathed in equal measure tinkerbell’s unwaivering duty.
Does anyone here believe we cannot have the best of the Westminster system without a monarchy? Or councel without a king? They don’t even believe it yet cloak themselves with Kingness… “Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute.” Simone Weil needs to councel the councel’s.
And the Queen’s Counsel’s, removed and reinstated by the deluded man and his acolytes Tony Abbott, have already declared themselves King’s Councel.
King’s Councel alone is enough for me to want to get rid us of the monachy. King’s Councels don’t seem to think so. You?
“Queen’s counsel to become King’s counsel
…
“By custom, those persons, upon the passing of her majesty, became ‘King’s counsel’ (or ‘KC’). They did not need to seek new letters patent of appointment or take any further action,” the association explained in a statement.
“Speaking following the death of her majesty, ABA president Dr Matt Collins AM KC said that Queen Elizabeth “served the people of Australia, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth with unfailing dignity, compassion, intelligence and grace over seven remarkable decades”.
“Throughout that period, Australia has been very well served by, and owes much of its stability and prosperity to, the institutions and Westminster traditions of which her majesty has been a vital and wise custodian,” he proclaimed.
…
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/wig-chamber/35475-queens-counsel-to-become-kings-counsel
“Ten million women globally (at least) die via excess and preventable deaths in the COVID-19 era from COVID-19.
“This is in two and a half years and there is not a second of public mourning declared for them.”
I feel like I’m going mad. Don’t you remember this?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/flags-on-national-mall-pay-tribute-to-americas-devastating-covid-19-losses
We literally had daily numbers; occasionally we got specifically named individual victims of the bug. Is it anything like the OTT royal memorial thing? No, nothing could be so OTT. But “not a second”? We had whole daily press conferences!
I was thinking of the 10 million, females specifically, in the third world countries we don’t give a damn about. But yes, at one point in time we seemed to care about / be concerned about the people we were killing in our own countries. No longer. We sweep it under the carpet and pretend it’s not happening.
I grant it is possible to grieve one specific person and impossible to grieve 10, 20 or 30 million persons except in the abstract and ceremonial manner. But I would like to see more actions to stop COVID-19 deaths. We are not doing nearly enough to reduce them by prevention as well as treatment.
Pleased to agree that the Royal thing currently is completely OTT.
Thank you, Ikonoclast.
LT Fred, due to attention, our news media, trying not ro get infected, etc etc etc, ‘we’ missed that particular National geo article. Thanks for reminding us..
Is there a monumental reminder ala 9/11? Is there failure recognition and policies in place to avoid a repeat?
Or stoney silence & personal responsibility?
Ikon, “the 10 million, females specifically, in the third world countries we don’t give a damn about.”
Thanks for reminding us.
Was Queen Elizabeth II another victim of SARS-CoV-2? Would she have lived longer if she had not become infected?
The BBC reported on Apr 10:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60998927
Dated 8 Sep 2022, the UK Office of National Statistics stated:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19/latestinsights
A research paper from the British Medical Journal, dated 9 Feb 2022, concludes:
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-068414
Food for your thoughts.
Geoff, I’d say the shock of having Boris & Liz turn up outweighed any comorbidities, age or pathogen past. A triggering event.
A string of pityy observations from Olga Basso, perinatal and reprosductive epidemiologist.
“Reality (R) vs. government propaganda (GP)
Reality: This virus is airborne;
Govt propaganda: Nah, that’s too hard. Let it be droplets….
R: Children transmit & some get very sick.
GP: We really can’t have that. We’d better say the opposite, very assertively.
R: We can’t get herd immunity with this virus.
GP: Fine. Let’s invent hybrid immunity.
R: We can’t achieve that, either. The virus keeps mutating, & vaccine protection wanes,
GP: What? We can’t hear anything. There’s too much noise here….
R: The virus causes post-infection problems in a substantial proportion of people.
GP:Let’s not talk about that, as it screws up the narrative.
R: It’s getting too big to hide
GP: Ok. We’ll mention it -very occasionally, & with a grave expression.
R: people are infectious for at least 10 days
GP: WAY too long…. Let’s do 5, so we can move to 0 soon.
R: Then the number of cases will get even higher.
GP: That’s an easy one. We’ll stop counting, & then we’ll say that all the past cases give us a fantastic immunity wall….
R: On top of heart disease & many others, the virus may increase risk of cancer.
GP: No problem, we’ll ignore all that & distract people with other things. God knows we’ve got plenty….
R: the healthcare system is collapsing.
GP: Fantastic. Then we can privatize it!
R: We’ll never get back to normal. There are too many infections, re-infections, & new mutations, & we have no plan.
GP: We’ll call everything Omicron from here on & remove all measures.
R: But…
GP: Sorry. Since we declared the pandemic over, we definitely can’t hear anything.”
– by Olga Basso.
Basso nails it. the lack of concern and empathy seems predictable, of course.
Paul Walter,
Sir Humphrey Appleby’s four-stage strategy. (I look at COVID-19 denialists and minimizers and I see exactly this strategy.)
Stage 1: We say nothing is going to happen.
Stage 2: We say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage 3: We say maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
Stage 4: We say maybe there was something, but it’s too late now.
Yes, we are now down to minimal deaths – but!…
“Imagining COVID is ‘like the flu’ is cutting thousands of lives short. It’s time to wake up”
Michael Toole, Brendan Crabb, Burnet Institute
“No other war or disease has done that in more than 65 years, not even the HIV pandemic.
[how does anyone argue with covid being the worst – except WWII?]
“One often forgotten impact of these deaths is that an estimated 2,000 Australian children have lost at least one parent as a result of the COVID pandemic.
“Changes in life expectancy only happen when very large numbers of people die “before their time”. In Australia there were 17% more deaths reported this year to the end of May by the Australian Bureau of Statistics than the five-year average. This does not count our most recent and lethal BA.5 wave.”
…
https://theconversation.com/imagining-covid-is-like-the-flu-is-cutting-thousands-of-lives-short-its-time-to-wake-up-190545
Excellent report “The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic”. If you read nothing else read the Executive Summary, Key Findings and Key Recommendations.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)01585-9/fulltext
KT2 and Ikonoclast, Of course identifiably-sourced deaths attract more attention than overall statistical deaths. Over the 2 years of the pandemic 120m people died globally from all causes. The “staggering” Covid-19 toll (in the essential reading Ikonoclast cites) was 17 million so about 14% of the total but this exaggerates the role of Covid in total deaths since many deaths among the elderly would have occurred anyway because of co-morbidities. Globally, 75% of deaths occurred among people aged 65+ and nearly 50% over 75. Heart disease, stroke and COPD are much more important causes of death.
It is a sad fact of life that we all die. I hate this fact but that doesn’t seem to shift it! That doesn’t mean that we should ignore the mortality impacts of Covid-19 – to the contrary we should be careful to be vaccinated and to avoid easy to avoid risks. But the way you are both overreacting to Covid-19 is uncalled for. Mortality levels are now 1/6th the level of the peak of the pandemic and continuing to fall. In Australia at present almost all deaths are now among the elderly when death, though regrettable, can hardly be treated as an unexpected tragedy. Moreover, Covid-19 will be an ongoing disease in the community and there is bugger all that we can do about that. Nor can we avoid “long-Covid” etc. The cat is out of the bag.
Yes I know that the Covid-19 problem is largely due to neoLiberal econocrats and reactionary capitalists but even for you both, isn’t it about time to wind down the volume of complaints? For most of us Covid-19 is a yawn that most of us have come to accept as an occupational hazard of living and most, without an axe to grind, are taking it in their stride.
On the other hand, Covid has demonstrated weaknesses in public health, education, communication and cooperation at all levels; local, national and global.
Individualism and privatisation have presented barriers to achieving good health.
Harry, nice of you to conflate Ikon and I. Which says more about your attention than my conflation with Ikon. This would be similar to me conflating you with Terje P.
I agree w JQ, we have zero chance of doing anything in the foreseeable future without capitalism. Sorry Ikon, but I don’t want to die in a revolution or catastrophic failure of money and supply. I’m ok w anarchy, not anarcism.
I now view you as a soft Libertarian, in the sense you accept “It is a sad fact of life that we all die” (+2C ok )… and … “For most of us Covid-19 is a yawn …
As rog says: above: invoking ‘soft Libertarian Harry’ in Sandpit
September 19, 2022 at 8:09 am …
“…Individualism and privatisation have presented barriers to achieving good health.”]
… that most of us have come to accept as an occupational hazard of living and most, without an axe to grind, are taking it in their stride.”.
Harry, as I almost never receive an answer from you to data not according to your “Econ 101-bad luck your old so we won’t protect you your going to die anyway-it is all the unions fault’ world view. Free free to answer not me, but JQ, Richard Dennis, the ABS & Reserve Bank Governor;
Harry Q1: https://johnquiggin.com/2022/09/12/monday-message-board-570/comment-page-1/#comment-255964
Harry Q2: Are you in agreement with RBA Governor Lowe here?
(●! = my highlight & emphasis.)
RBA Governor Lowe said 3 days ago Harry:
●!”There’s some pickup in wages, but that’s not driving inflation ●!, and I think in some industries there has been an increase in margins. In a way it’s not surprising,”
From:
“Standing Committee on Economics
16/09/2022
…
” Mr HAMILTON: …
… Coupling that thought with your comment around businesses needing to make some difficult decisions…and not seeking to increase their profit margins during this period.
Mr Lowe : Yes.
Mr HAMILTON: Is that a realistic expectation on business, given those increased costs that they’re already feeling—although, be that not through wages but through payroll?
Mr Lowe : In very broad terms, inflation can from three sources. It can come from higher input costs, and we’ve seen that with higher electricity prices and raw material costs. So it can come from higher input costs. It can come from higher wages and it can also come from higher margins. To date, it’s largely from higher input costs.
●! when the demand for goods has been so strong over recent years, that firms don’t discount as much. When the supermarkets were having to close because people couldn’t get things; there was so much demand, they weren’t going to discount. I think that discounting in retailing has diminished, and that discounting in a number of industries has diminished.”..
…
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=COMMITTEES;id=committees%2Fcommrep%2F26038%2F0001;query=Id%3A%22committees%2Fcommrep%2F26038%2F0000%22
So please direct your world view towards rebutting Professor John Quiggin, Richard Denniss, RBA, ABS.
Harry Q3. Please rebut JQ:
“Trade offs and free lunches in pandemic policy
…
“Lots of climate deniers want to claim that there is a trade off between reducing carbon emissions, through investment in renewables, and improving the living standards of poor people, by building coal-fired power stations. In reality, renewables are cheaper and more reliable than coal, and millions of poor people living near coal-fired power stations die every year from particulate pollution. Even without considering global heating, coal fired power is a dominated option.
“Exactly the same is true in relation to pandemic policy. Any policy which leaves R > 1 (the pandemic keeps spreading) is dominated by stricter policies that ensure R 1 policy in Australia are prepared to spell out the trade-offs they envisage. That’s because any attempt to do so would expose the bankruptcy of their reasoning.
“fn1. I also point out how Pareto’s economic analysis foreshadows his embrace of Fascism.”
https://johnquiggin.com/2020/04/30/trade-offs-and-free-lunches-in-pandemic-policy/
“Pedestrians and pandemics…
“A couple of days ago, Adam Creighton had a piece in the Oz, downplaying the risks of the coronavirus pandemic, under the headline “Under 60, in good health? Crossing the road is more risky”
…
” So, as of now, the virus risk to Swedes under 60 is approximately 35 times as great as the risk to Australian pedestrians under 60.”
…
https://johnquiggin.com/2020/04/23/pedestrians-and-pandemics/
*
Harry, the people in YOUR tribe perceive “most of us have come to accept as an occupational hazard of living” which is like saying:
THAT OLD PERSON IS GOING TO GET KILKED BY THAT VEHICLE AND I ACCEPT THAT. I AM NOT GOING TO LIFT A FINGER TO ALTER THAT. I CANNOT IMAGINE OR WILL NOT ACCEPT I HAVE OR WILL DO ANYTHING, NOR HAVE THE POWER OR IMAGINATION TO STRIVE FOR A BETTER OUTOME.
Bully for you Harry. The +80yr olds, the 20,000 kids without parents and the poor bastards with comorbidities are not in your bounds anymore. They still are in mine, with or without capitalism, communism, Fascism or as hunter gatherer.
Harry, PLEASE attempt and answer and rebut to the above persons and questions provided to you with references so you don’t play Ikon or me.
Off the the 19th hole. My shout. I’d certainly have a drink with you as I was raised in your tribe too. We are sruck with out past. Not our future though, of which I would always remind you.
19th Hole – playing on the juke box is: “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag”:
“Huh!
Well, come on Big Pharma, don’t move slow, Why man, this is Pandemic au-go-go. There’s plenty good money to be made By supplying the Rich with the vaccines we made,
Just hope and pray that if they get the pox, They get it old and live in a box.”
Country Joe McDonald – I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag bastardisation by me.
Emergent benefit of JQ’s blog?
Lowering of risk of demenria.
Thanks all.
Social, economic & politics of Pandemic consequences NEED all below if we are truely scientific, not political and economic.
If anyone is able to point me to a model incorporating all variables in:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0/figures/10
See graphics for variabkes list.
Combined with:
07 September 2022
“What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns
“Restrictions on social contact stemmed disease spread, but weighing up the ultimate costs and benefits of lockdown measures is a challenge.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02823-4?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=64c837f1b3-briefing-dy-20220915&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-64c837f1b3-45625930
And medical / vaccine developments…
Plus:
“One of Long COVID’s Worst Symptoms Is Also Its Most Misunderstood
“Brain fog isn’t like a hangover or depression. It’s a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard.
By Ed Yong
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/long-covid-brain-fog-symptom-executive-function/671393/
*
We will have a map instead of politics.
Add this to above model.
Covid, the gift that keeps on giving and just keeps coming.
Too old. Die. Too young…
“Regardless of a person’s sex, early puberty is linked to short stature in adulthood, as well as serious health conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. Early puberty has also beenassociated with certain mental health problems, such as anxiety in boys and depression in girls.
“Covid-19 pandemic linked to early onset of puberty in some girls
“Several studies suggest that the number of girls starting puberty early has more than doubled amid the coronavirus outbreak – and experts are unsure exactly why
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2338377-covid-19-pandemic-linked-to-early-onset-of-puberty-in-some-girls/
Too many questions KT2 but I do apologise for linking your views with “Ikon” – even though I only did so on the pandemic issue. He has been rattling on about it for weeks with dire warnings etc and I thought you expressed agreement with him above.
I certainly didn’t think you share Ikon’s politics (who does?) although it seems you endorsed Rog’s grizzles about “individualism and privatisation”. Individual freedoms do need to be rejected in a very narrow range of circumstances and privatisation has delivered efficiency gains but also some problems. I am not a supporter of government running businesses that can be exposed to competition. Generally I favour a minimal role for government in the economy. The arrival of vaccines within 2 years of the advent of Covid-19 is a testimony to the value of the profit motive in private firms. Problems in the aged care sector are a consequence of poor regulation in a high labour cost industry.
Yes Covid can have severe health consequences. So what? What do you propose we do about that? Do you want endless lockdowns with a mimicking of the Chinese approach? It just will not work despite Ikon’s endorsements – there would be a justifiable mass revolt.
IMO: Get vaccinated, take reasonable precautions and then shut up. No one wanted Covid-19 but it is real, it will persist and we have no choice but to live with it.
A R < 1 policy has been successfully adopted in most countries. Vaccination and natural immunity are key – now 10 million Aussies have had the virus.
I support Phillip Lowe's description of current inflation as not being linked to wage increases. That is because wage growth has been sluggish but inflation is accelerating. A wage price spiral is more likely to emerge if we return to the 1970s and support industry-wide wage bargaining. I remember my leftie mates in the 1970s arguing that 30% wage increases to the metal workers would not be inflationary. I still cringe at this sort of stupidity.
For the present time, the death of QEII has somehow united the world in ways beyond expectation.
Harry Clarke: – “Yes Covid can have severe health consequences. So what?”
SARS-CoV-2 can significantly reduce your life expectancy, and those of your family members.
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/51/1/63/6375510
SARS-CoV-2 can substantially diminish your health for the remainder of your life with increasing disability with each re-infection – heart and neurological issues. Something for you (& your family members) to look forward to? 🙄
‘Long-COVID’ is significantly affecting/disrupting business continuity. By no means is COVID finished. I’d suggest COVID has the very real potential to be an existential threat to society/civilisation by steadily eroding and disrupting critical services.
https://johnquiggin.com/2022/08/29/monday-message-board-568/comment-page-2/#comment-255598
Deaths from SARS-CoV-2 in Australia were:
Period _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Days_ Accumulated Total _ Total for Period _ Average deaths/day
2020, Mar 01 to Dec 31: 306 _ _ _ 909 _ _ _ _ _ _ 909 _ _ _ _ _ _ 2.97
2021, Jan 01 to Dec 31: 365 _ _ 2,239_ _ _ _ _ _1,330 _ _ _ _ _ _ 3.64
2022, Jan 01 to Sep 16: 259 _ _14,744 _ _ _ _ 12,505 _ _ _ _ _ 48.28
Tracking towards 17,600+ deaths in Australia for the full year in 2022.
Thanks to the NSW Gov, there are now only weekly COVID stats.
Australia certainly is NOT “now down to minimal deaths” – it’s much worse than in 2020 & 2021 and the average death rate is close to Australia’s single biggest killer pre-COVID – ischaemic heart diseases (average 53.8 deaths/day in 2019, 49 deaths/day in 2020, per ABS).
Harry Clarke: – “Vaccination and natural immunity are key – now 10 million Aussies have had the virus.”
Evidence indicates that provides minimal (if any) benefit to avoid re-infection:
https://health.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/how-soon-can-i-get-covid-again-experts-now-say-28-days-%E2%80%93-you-can-protect-yourself
It’s of course completely factually wrong to suggest that a vaccinated person who has had the bug before has the same chance of dying from it or of getting very sick as someone who has had neither of those factors. Wrong Wrong Wrong. There are multiple studies of this. It enormously reduces both infection rates and cfr.
For reasons which are being kept secret.
(I don’t know whether anybody is interested in my reasons for supporting a republic, but they’re not secret–anybody who wants to know can ask and will be answered.)
Wearing a mask when using public transport is one example of a reasonable precaution (one which I adopt myself, if anybody’s wondering). There are regular announcements at the railway station that wearing masks is mandatory and fines apply but most people (unreasonably) are not wearing them, and there’s no sign that anybody is actually being fined.
It hasn’t united everybody:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/queen-elizabeth-britain-monarchy-criticism-protester-arrests-free-speech-uk/
Anti monarchist protestors are very much in the minority, an estimated 250K shuffled past the coffin with 4B watching it on the telly and who knows how many discussing the details on chat shows, YouTube and elsewhere.
It’s been a bread and circuses distraction of epic proportions.
I’ve read Harry’s post. I’m not going to reply. It wouldn’t achieve anything.
Lt.Fred: – “It’s of course completely factually wrong to suggest that a vaccinated person who has had the bug before has the same chance of dying from it or of getting very sick as someone who has had neither of those factors.”
IMO, 15% better protection with up-to-date vaccination against ‘long-COVID’ vs unvaccinated/out-of-date vaccination is simply not good enough.
Per Nature article headlined Long COVID risk falls only slightly after vaccination, huge study shows, published 25 May 2022, included:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01453-0
Lt.Fred: – “It enormously reduces both infection rates and cfr.”
In absolute terms, there are more COVID-related infections and deaths this year (2022) in Australia compared with previous years.
Globally, ‘long-COVID’ is emerging as the ticking time bomb that it seems will keep on ‘detonating’, ravaging an increasingly bigger portion of the population and eroding/disrupting society.
It seems COVID infections increase the risk of acquiring Alzheimer’s disease for people aged 65 years and over:
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220717
I know there are far more monarchists than republicans in the UK because that’s what the opinion polls show. However, I expect there are a great many who, no matter what answers they give in opinion polls, don’t much care one way or the other. There are, however, a significant number of people who, despite being heavily outnumbered, are strongly opposed to the monarchy, and it’s fair to say that recent events have not shown a purely unifying effect.
If 250K shuffled past the coffin, that’s a small fraction of the population of the UK (or even of the population of Greater London).