Now, just on two years in, it seems we’ve found out how a pandemic ends: not with a bang, but a whimper. Overnight, we just move on. But for people who want our attention — equally media and political parties — there are still a couple of unresolved questions: where are we moving on from, and where to?
Not from COVID, itself, of course. There were over half a million new cases reported in Australia in the past fortnight, and more than 300,000 the fortnight before that, and the fortnight before that. COVID deaths hit their peak this quarter.
And yet, media and politicians alike have comfortably positioned the past weekend’s South Australian election as the marker for a post-COVID country, coming as it did almost two years to the day after Australia’s big first step — closed borders.
It’s not been the steady path through — from lock-out to lockdown, through elimination, to the release of vaccination — that a sense of Australian exceptionalism encouraged us to expect as recently as last spring. We’ve got to the vaccination phase, but the disease hasn’t gone away.
And yet, as Daniel Defoe foretold in what’s still the best journalistic reporting of a pandemic, A Journal of the Plague Year, as soon as things start to look better “the People had cast off all Apprehension, and that too fast”.
The idea, complete with technical terms, is that the “pandemic” has yielded and become “endemic”, just as influenza did 100 years ago, and as tuberculosis did 100 years before that in the early days of industrialisation.
The media are plugging on, with COVID becoming, journalistically at least, something like the weather: daily details, dropping further and further down the must-read list, lit up with the occasional quirk — a new variant, the China breakout, yet another rebuttal of the lab-leak conspiracy. A story sparks briefly to life, then sputters out of public attention.
The ABC is doing its best, maintaining its regular long reporting on the pandemic (like the podcast Coronacast, although now cut back to weekly). The Nine mastheads still deliver the daily figures up top on their home pages. But who’s paying attention?
Thanks to the all but instantaneous feedback from the internet, they all know what their audience wants — or apparently doesn’t want, in the case of COVID. Around the world, politicians are finding it a lot trickier.
Remember just last November as we were emerging, blinking into the light, out of the Delta lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT? When Morrison greeted us with his “can-do capitalism” v “don’t-do government” that he seemed to have picked up from his brief stint at the Glasgow climate summit?
It was a stab at picking the exact moment when the highly vaccinated Australian community was stepping over the line from the COVID to the post-COVID world. Instead it marked the transition from Delta to Omicron.
Morrison’s trademark enthusiasm encouraged his Liberal premier colleagues in NSW and South Australia to stick to their predetermined deadlines for opening up, just as Omicron surged, overwhelming the test-trace-quarantine system. The rapid antigen tests failure seemed to rhyme with the government’s vaccination failures.
South Australian premier Steven Marshall paid the price when that party loyalty compounded all the local challenges, leading to a rare, one-term government.
Morrison’s early call was a spectacular own-goal that seems to have undone all their political management of the pandemic.
By getting the timing wrong, by getting ahead of the community, Morrison fed the sense that he’s all politics all the time. He seemed to be operating on an electoral timetable, eager for a summer transition leading to an autumn election where the Liberal Party would be rewarded for its steady management by a grateful populace.
Instead, Australia has gone post-COVID the same way as the rest of the world: through the experience of widespread infection of a disease rendered less dangerous through widespread vaccination.
The government is still eager to claim credit. Morrison was recently banging on again about the wholly imaginary 40,000 lives saved by the government’s actions. It’s even more eager to change the subject.
Will it matter? Or has South Australia (and South Korea earlier this month) set the trend that moving on from COVID means moving on from the government tied to its unfolding?
It hasn’t finished for people who are vulnerable to covid. When red states in the US decided covid wasn’t a thing, they basically condemned millions of people to confinement in their homes. The same has happened in the UK, and presumably other countries as well. I have read anecdote after anecdote from people who can no longer go out to work or to study because of the danger of covid. Of course we could not keep locked up forever, but the fact that the community won’t accept common sense measures like mask wearing and the business community froths at the mouth if you mention work from home says a lot about how we view people who live with disabilities and their value to our communities.
The “first priority of my government is to keep Australians safe”. So Scott Morrison stated only days ago. Yet where was this ‘priority’ while Morrison was pushing for an opening of state borders as soon as possible late last year.
The resulting leap in cases and deaths from COVID since Morrison and his stooge the NSW premier decided to outshine each other in pushing the ‘must learn to live with COVID’ line was entirely foreseeable given the wildfire spread of the Omicron variant at that time the borders opened. As such both men are responsible for the spike in cases and deaths that have followed since last December.
Morrison’s calls for ‘freedom’ and the end of government interference in people’s lives in particular were driven by political opportunism. Morrison boasted of giving Australians the opportunity of a .normal Christmas family lunch together and the holidays of old. Undoubtedly, he expected their vote as a show of gratitude come the May election in return.
Morrison used the slogan ‘personal responsibility’ as the way forward to living with COVID. Very clever this as if the whole thing back-fired Morrison could blame the common citizen for failing to act in a responsible way. And to drive this point home Morrison’s creative team made the outstandingly clever analogy of choosing not to use sun screen lotion when out in the sun. So if you get burnt than silly you are at fault
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So Morrison and his media stooges are more than happy to ignore COVID and push for still further reduction of restrictions indicating that Morrison and his fellow moral bankrupts are more than happy to put Australian lives and well-being at further risk for crass political gain. But why should this concern Morison when those most at risk are the elderly, the sick and the poor.
There is something pathetic – almost sad tin all of this to see a desperate man flay about wildly to avoid extinction. Morrison projects the gormless persona of one grabbing at straws to survive at all costs. Consumed exclusively with his obsession on his hold on power Morrison cuts a picture akin to the last days of the dinosaurs. One can only hope that like the dinosaur all trace of Morrison as a political force will also fade into non existence.
I really wish Bugger up was still working, think of the fun in turning Clive’s latest anti-labor party’s bill boards into “FreeDumb”.
An outstanding comment in my view
It is a very misleading and disingenuous attempt to portray a disease such as Tuberculosis as somehow a changeling in its very nature. The use of the term “Epidemic” is mean to indicate a disease which spreads rapidly and has quantifiable and mostly exponential rate of contagion, rather than a disease which slowly grows in number because of outside influences.
Australia as a whole and Queensland in particular fought a 30 year battle against tuberculosis in epidemic proportions from the end of WW11 until it was decided that TB was now suppressed enough to stop testing every school child every year and requiring every person over the age of 21 to undergo a compulsory Chest X Ray in 1974.
TB is a very difficult disease to treat and the legislation is still on the books enabling the CHO to detain anyone considered a health risk for periods of up to 2 years.
Tuberculosis is currently in endemic proportions in Australia, solely because of all the hygiene lessons learned by the older generation as a mantra, the compulsory hospitalization of TB patients in “Chest Wards” with controlled uses of everything from combinations of antibiotics and filling a single lung with fluid.
Could you imagine the attention to detail required to maintain the discipline needed to bring that slow growing, not particularly contagious, now antibiotic resistant in some strains and totally antibiotic resistant in other strains, with numbers rising again due to a hare brained idea of closing the chest clinic in the Torres Strait? We may have to.
It is a long and facile idea that the TB “epidemic” could be compared with the Covid pandemic, which is far from over, no matter how much we would like it to be so.
Old RN (Double BCG) worked in the Torres Straits (TI ) mid seventies. Had TB hospital. Isolation! No patient family mingling, months of treatment IMI medication. Must be totally cleared before allowed out. Spread through the straits via PNG(no TB checks or treatment available) Very short dinghy ride to nearest medical clinic Aust. One treatment then back to PNG and give TB to the rest of the very close living family! Voila antibiotic resistant TB! everywhere.
Dear Crikey,
This the time to publish, The Skinny, a few pages of the latest news without commentary and let the readers provide the background and any bias they choose. Megabucks baby. Fast cars, faster women, bling and an invitation to Davos every January (bring your own damn jet).
Love,
The first editor of the Rugby column.
BTW, the solution to COVID reporting is to compare the expected annual death rates with the actual and point out that this dastardly disease has provided no existential threat to humanity whatsoever. Even if it did come with all manner of conspiracy theories involving wild monkeys, US dollars, Chinese labs and a fillip to the NWO crowd. We have been duped with absolutely zero access to common sense responses.
Of course, because in the eyes of people like you our elders and people who have health issues which make them vulnerable to covid are disposable humans. I’m not sure why you use the term ‘existential threat’, although I suspect it’s because you don’t actually know what it means. Covid is a physical threat still to many people around the world, and a financial threat if it flares up again. Your point about the death rates is absurd. Do you even understand what you wrote there? My god, the stupid.
The point was, and I’m fairly sure even you (or your elders) can recognise the logic, that those taken were taken weeks/months earlier and not years ahead of time. Death is the most grotesquely unfair outcome imaginable but that is the only outcome available which is no less nor more tragic in each instance. BTW I am in the ‘target’ group and I am appalled that those outside that group had their lives altered for what is mostly an annual event – ‘flu season.
Projecting some ridiculous claims onto me merely highlight your own inadequacies. Which I’m equally certain you will continue to do because you simply have no other options.
In criminal law it is settled case law, going back to a case from the 1800s commonly called the Cabin Boy case (R v Dudley and Stephens) that depriving someone of life even if they only had a few minutes left to live is not legal. If someone was going around deliberately killing older people on the basis that they only had a few years left to live anyway, I’m sure you would be appalled. Maybe not. Maybe you would be setting up a gofundme for them. But decent people would be. Blathering on about what does it matter if you die from a preventable disease a few years earlier than you otherwise might have is pretty much the same as supporting our elder killer. You are basically saying that people’s lives have no value if they are older or if they live with a disability. You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you had read the second comment you’d be aware that it was about natural death rates and the nett zero effect of Covid. Death figures related to the virus are being downsized in some nations even as late as yesterday. Presumption: their being initially inflated to scare the pants off a almost desperately gullible public. That could be a court case in and of itself.
As for killing off the elderly, figures from Italy and Spain proved early and beyond doubt who were in the target group but some jurisdictions used OP homes as isolation wards – will those responsible for those decisions be prosecuted? By whom?
As compared to a real pandemic in which vast swathes of populations were taken out by a very real threat. E.g., the second wave of the Spanish ‘Flu was 100% lethal.
Oh right. So it’s not a ‘real’ pandemic because many millions of people aren’t dying, as opposed to just millions. Your ignorance is profound. If we had the same living and working conditions as they had then, maybe millions more would have died. And you would have to find another reason to call it not a ‘real’ pandemic.
You are also, like all of your type, missing the point entirely. It’s not necessarily about the deaths. It’s about who it affects and how it affects them. And that’s the bit that you don’t care about, and don’t seem to be able to understand.
What’s your source for your claims in relation to deaths? And I mean a credible source, not some nonsense from the far right websites I have no doubt you have oozed over from.
You need to take this up with whatever God can prove its existence to you. Choose wisely, lotta shonks out there. That sucker is probably guilty of something.
There are thousands of causes of death and your entire argument seems to be that we can determine which is the absolute worst on the basis of who, and how many, of the survivors is affected the most? Well that’s s..t easy dude, it’s the ones with the most tenuous connection to reality and the least amount of reasons to be alive to start with. They feel most energised when the terrifying prospect that life can possibly end rears its ugly head again. Victims. Virtue signallers. Wrist bandits. Statistics. Co-dependents.
Publicly available statistics which I suggest you go pick your favourite and use theirs.
Medical advancements have saved lives – human stupidity and vaccine aversion has killed many unnecessarily. History teaches us that science (medical) saves many lives.
I’ll pass your condolences on to the family of the previously healthy 2 year old who died from Covid, shall I?
If you think that will help, but do you know them? Would they want at this moment in their lives to be involved in your world and your politics or your emotional response. I’d think not but please keep trying to be effective: because ignorance is the only sin and perpetuating ignorance is the only evil. Others will see the childishness of your response and make up their own minds. You might have done some good, for me.
If you know how to use a spreadsheet see Worldometers, Covid (it has buttons) and download the data (C/P). Add the formula deaths/confirmed cases to reveal that uniformly with all the different global medical regimes Covid has a .002 (1/50,000) chance to kill.
I was merely pointing out that you are not talking from the top end of your alimentary canal and perhaps you might need to use a tissue before you blurt again.
A minor tale for you, whilst you are so determined to come up with a reason why the so called “aged” are dispensible in this world.
My father came to visit me after having barely surviving a bout of the real influenza (not the bad cold that most people refer to as the flu). He was vague, and in all of his life I could never remember him being vague.
I phoned my sister in law who lived near him in far North Queensland and asked her to capture him when he arrived home and take him to the doctor. I phoned his GP and asked her to send him for a Carotid ultrasound and a CT of his head.
She spoke to him and he complained of a pain at the base of his skull, she sent him for an X Ray of his neck and told a 74 year old farmer that he had arthritis in his neck. No kidding Sherlock!
I phoned her to find out how he was going, for her to give me this diagnostic revelation.
I informed her that my sister-in -law would now have to do a 4 hour round trip to take him up to Cairns for a carotid ultrasound and a CT of his head, which she disputed was necessary.
I very calmly explained to her that my two older sisters held law degrees and were in practice one as a lawyer and the other as a barrister and IF, our father suffered any damage or a preventable death caused by her failure to observe that he had become vague and accept the advice given, they may leave her with her underwear.
How old is he, again? was her reply.
My answer was that his family tree usually made the 100 under full sail.
I know Australia is ageist and it certainly gets my goat when I observe it in action.
Too long a story!
He needed emergency surgery for a bleed on the outside of his brain, squashing it, which was causing him to be vague and gave him increased neck pain.
Our father made a full recovery and his life went on as it always had, work, exercise, fishing, time with family. traveling, babysitting grand children and reading.
He had another good 15 years of life.
He died at 89 riding his racing cycle on the open highway, doing his daily 20 km, blown off the road and into guide post by a truck.
The accident was witnessed by two army guys in a jeep.
The driver didn’t see him.
My father was entitled to those 15 years, he had earned everyone of them.
The thought that some flippant ageist thought that he or many like him, were not entitled to those years for expediency and statistics is just disgusting.
Once again projections. From the moment we are born we are going to to die. (Have you had that conversation with yourself yet?) When, where, why and how are a mystery to almost everyone; and to our best efforts to overcome nature.
Unless you are willing to talk about maximising the experience of life for as many as possible consider this; I regard the emotional response trite, inward looking and ultimately pointless. For a species as capable as ours, as gifted as ours, the fact that criminality, underachievement, and many mental illnesses are still common is an indictment.
I also know that the vast majority of us should have most of the qualities of the alpha (adequate courage, resilience, seeking achievement and sociability) because that is the blueprint contained in the genome; based on instincts at birth and a subset of the neurotransmitters we employ. The rare existence of genetic misfires tells us just how lucky we are if we don’t have that burden. Alphas have real emotions, those not based on fear, unfairness or being powerless.
Is being an alpha the normal modern human? No, it isn’t and that is the only discussion any citizen of any society needs to have to live up to our potential. Then ask yourself: would a society of alphas allow themselves to be isolated, jabbed, masked, passported by things less-than-Scientific, power-grabbing or political-ego-based. If you answer yes, then vote for a major party, they need more minions.
Ah, Alpha. Now we know where you’ve oozed from. Seriously, I’ve said this to you before and I’ll say it again. If you are from America and you are commenting, go away. We don’t want American filth. If you’re not, can I suggest that the red states in America are your natural home. Go there.
I’ve been, stayed for a while, made a quid, enjoyed it, don’t miss it.
Isn’t the internet is a wonderful thing? I don’t have to shower three times after dealing with you. It actually saves water. Did Tim Berners-Lee realise this? Prescience Plus Ultra. See you again real soon buddy.
1/50,000 is 0.00002. 0.002 is 1/500. You might want to check your spreadsheet again.
What are you talking about? The bare “excess death rate” for most countries is of an extent to demonstrate that something has been killing off the population at a rate far greater than the normal attrition. If it’s not Covid-19, what do you suggest it could be?
What figures/source are you using? The CDC (US) are reducing those who ‘died of COVID’ as late as today, something many in the game were complaining of (over counting) from the very first days. They also were adamant that the diagnostic tool was inadequate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lv9jkzRM9I