Thread by @YouAreLobbyLud

1/ THE BEST ARTICLE ON COVID FOR A GOODLY WHILE
Perhaps ever. I thought I'd better do a thread on it. Dive in. It's long, but it's worth it.👇
abc.net.au/news/2024-01-2…

2/ People are surprised when I say I feel really strong peer pressure and don't want to stand out. It's very hard to keep ploughing your own furrow when everyone else thinks you're a crank. Nevertheless... BRENDAN!!!! 🤦 🤣 🤣 🤣

3/ This is the really weird thing. This virus continues to mutate wildly, it has not become seasonal, despite a record amount of wishful thinking and cosmic ordering, and we have solid data that it causes significant long-term illness and death. YET WE APPARENTLY DON'T CARE.

4/ 'It's the apathy that's the concern'
Yes, it is. And the apathy is manufactured. Most of us live under the charming illusion that we are free thinkers and that we make up our own minds about all kinds of complex issues. Hahahaha. Dream on, peeps.

5/ We mostly think what we're indoctrinated to think. Governments spend billions 'helping' people believe certain things and behave in certain ways. It used to be called 'propaganda'. It's now called 'behavioural economics' or 'behavioural insights'.
anzsog.edu.au/research-insig…

6/ The evidence is clear, after just four years, that repeated covid infection is bad for us. What it will do to children contracting it once or twice a year for the next fifty years remains, of course, unknown. Right now, though, we're being told to believe it's a nothingburger.

7/ Yes, no-one has yet come up with even a partial explanation as to why it is only safe for scientists working with SARS-COV-2 to do so under stringent precautions in a Level 3 biosecurity lab, but for your Auntie Nelly, already in hospital, it's just an inconsequential 'cold'🤯

8/ As mentioned already, the ridicule towards people safeguarding themselves, and the total lack of a responsible public health strategy, have not come about by chance.

9/ Terms like 'covid anxiety', exhortations to be 'kind to mask wearers', and calling those taking precautions 'bedwetters' and other derisive terms all set the scene for a 'weak vs strong' narrative and minimising of a disease we KNOW is serious. We didn't do it with HIV...

10/ LOOK, PEOPLE, WE SAVED 65,000 LIVES IN AUSTRALIA, COMPARED TO IF WE HAD ACTED LIKE BRITAIN
The way that this is so totally dismissed in all the commentaries today is baffling.

11/ And it could all have been done with far less pain and fewer stupidities if, as some of us (ahem) were shouting from Day One, we had recognised this was predominantly an airborne disease and taken precautions accordingly.
SIXTY. FIVE. THOUSAND.👇

12/ 'Air is out of mind until it's a problem'
Robyn Schofield, aerosol scientist at Melbourne University

Did I say it was... AIRBORNE?! We need to understand that we are treating the air we breathe with the blithe disregard with which we used to treat the water we drink.

13/ It took decades - and millions of needless deaths from cholera and other diseases - for the importance of clean water to be understood. We can't afford to wait decades to do the same for the air we breathe. I'm a founding member of this organisation.
johnsnowproject.org/about/

14/ The John Snow Project is inspired by the legendary physician, Dr John Snow, whose tackling of a cholera epidemic in 1850s London led to the modern science of epidemiology.

15/ The way 'Progress' and 'Science' work is that we build upon the work of those who have gone before. We 'stand on the shoulders of giants', analogise, theorise and apply already accrued knowledge to novel problems.

16/ We don't just ignore novel problems because they are annoying and inconvenient and that is what we are doing with regard to the contaminated air we are almost universally breathing in our indoor spaces.

17/ CONFLICT OF INTEREST ALERT
I also find it thrilling to assess indoor air quality using an Aranet4 CO2 monitor. Why? Because it makes the invisible visible and tells me if I am in a dangerous situation (uh, like an awards ceremony, Brendan 🤣) where I need to be extra careful.

18/ As Prof Schofield says, the indoor CO2 level is an excellent indicator of air quality and shows you how much of each breath you are taking is actually someone else's recently expired 'out' breath. 🤢🤒 @CO2RadicalAus, which sells Aranet4s, has produced a handy decal for this:

@CO2RadicalAus 19/ This recent Aranet4 CO2 trace of mine shows a day of airports and airliner flying. It can actually be a lot worse than this and some of the worst places are buses (can get up to 9,000ppm) and school classrooms (often 3500ppm by lunchtime).

@CO2RadicalAus 20/ Breathing unfiltered air (N95 respirator +/- HEPA air purifier) in an indoor space with such poor air quality is almost certainly going to lead to catching an airborne-transmitted infection in a short time, like COVID, RSV, flu, or indeed many others.

@CO2RadicalAus 21/ Of all the idiocies, the failure to protect hospital patients (by definition 'vulnerable', no?) from airborne infection WHILE IN HOSPITAL is the most unforgivable, to my mind.

@CO2RadicalAus 22/ Data from Victoria shows more than a 10% death rate for hospital acquired COVID in 2022 and from QLD a 7% death rate for 2022 to 2023.

@CO2RadicalAus 23/ The QLD hospital acquired COVID death rate of 7.1%. How is this acceptable? Why isn't anything being done? I have no idea.

@CO2RadicalAus 24/ "This is not about going back to 2019, it's about having the future we deserve in 2030."
My top quote of this article, because the only governmental strategy in place right now is "let's all hold hands, wish very, very hard upon a star and pretend it's 2019 again".

@CO2RadicalAus 25/ 'We're living in a public health 'Barbieland'
Brendan Crabb, chief executive of the Burnet Institute

And this is my second top quote of the article, because that is what our public health strategy looks like right now.

@CO2RadicalAus 26/ Although I gently rib Professor Crabb, it comes from a place of extreme gratitude and admiration towards him for saying things that nearly everyone else at his level in science is too afraid to say.

@CO2RadicalAus 27/ We are indeed suffering from a crippling lack of leadership and the subordination of public health to the political short term needs of the day. As doctors, as medical scientists, we do have a higher calling. Few, apart from Professor Crabb, have remained faithful to it.

@CO2RadicalAus 28/ Yes. 'Vax and relax' is a totally inadequate message, even if we were pushing vaccination adequately, which we aren't. And 'hybrid immunity' - 'get infected to prevent infection' - is the densest idea since the Captain of the Titanic said "Full ahead both!".

@CO2RadicalAus 29/ Governments 'should' be leading their people, but since they aren't we all have to do the best we can. To my mind - call me cynical, some do - the health and mortality cost of repeated COVID infection has been deemed acceptable, so of no account, or "plausibly deniable".

@CO2RadicalAus 30/ The reality, however, is that these are very significant numbers, and yet simply education about the importance of improving ventilation could make a huge difference to them. That this is not happening is a shameful stain on public health professionals and governments.

@CO2RadicalAus 31/ Spending on a safe airborne future is not a 'cost'. It is an investment in our health and well being and, therefore, yes, is good for the economy. It's a no brainer, but it's not happening. Why not? Ask your elected representatives. Then ask them again.

@CO2RadicalAus 32/ And, finally, huge thanks to @Hayley_Gleeson for diving deep into these issues and foregoing the knee jerk 'Both sidesism", which plagues so much of modern journalism today. Reality exists and it is for [good] journalists to tease out that reality. Please give Hayley a follow