Thread by @YouAreLobbyLud

1/ Let us reflect for a moment on the magnitude of what @GladysB @NSWCHO @BradHazzard and @ScottMorrisonMP have achieved. Australia has abandoned being best in the world with #ZeroCovid and normal daily life and has jumped on the express down elevator to join the worst. How?

2/ Well, it took concerted effort. Firstly, it took complete intransigence on increasing hotel quarantine leaks and a total inability to comprehend and act upon the evidence of airborne transmission. Second, was the failure to procure adequate supplies of vaccine and...

3/ ... then a failure to effectively allocate what vaccines we had to the highest risk areas and a more general failure to implement an effective vaccination program at all. Third, an inability to comprehend the fast moving nature of the battlespace and that Delta...

4/ ... was not even Alpha, let alone the ancestral variant. This failure to truly understand the exponential nature of increasing R should be a warning to all children to pay attention to their maths homework. Fourth, a tunnel vision focus on trying to coerce...

5/ ... an unwilling populace into taking an unpopular vaccine was NEVER going to be a substitute for an adequate near term, integrated public health strategy. Where were the NPIs, the attention to VENTILATION, the EDUCATION of the people on airborne and how to protect themselves?

6/ Sixth, the numbingly stupid framing of public health measures as morality tales, ego trips, political and state rivalries could only ever have had one outcome: the hubristic car crash we are observing unfold. The virus "cares" about none of that and it is the virus...

7/ ... we are fighting. The virus lives and thrives by maths and biology and meeting it on any other terms than those can only lead to disaster, and so it proves. So where are we, and why are we now heading rapidly to be the worst, at least amongst high income nations?

8/ Well, it's very simple. Delta is now running free with an Reff of 7 or more, AMONGST AN ESSENTIALLY UNVACCINATED POPULATION (full vax rate only 5.7%). Plus, the country has failed to learn the lessons of Vic 2nd wave for healthcare, let alone lessons from overseas, such as...

9/ ... England, where at least 20% of infections last year (before the more transmissible variants) were acquired in hospital. We can now, therefore, expect a very prolonged lock down, as we attempt to contain Delta and I am doubtful that elimination will even be possible again..

10/ ... until we have high rates of mRNA vaccination, sometime in 2022, if even then. (Where are the plans for mass vax? Where are the required boosters for healthcare staff, which need to be rolling out from September?) Meanwhile, HQ remains as leaky as ever and the country...

11/ ... appears unable to formulate effective, coordinated, cool-headed policy, let alone execute it, which is another story entirely. So, we can now expect that we will be chasing Delta for some time, that infections will be many, deaths and illness considerable,...

12/ ... that state borders will remain closed, the Aus-NZ bubble indefinitely paused, that healthcare facilities will be hard hit with closures and that healthcare workers will bear the brunt of the physical and psychological suffering to come. Further...

13/ ... if this illness gets into Aboriginal communities we can expect to see mass death in a way that is incomprehensible to anyone who does not understand the unique vulnerabilities of Australia's Aboriginal people and the tyranny of distance in this country.

14/ In early March 2020, I wrote this article, which was published in the Guardian. I am re-upping it now, because it paints a horrific picture, but it is as relevant now as it was in those dark early days, when we narrowly avoided disaster.
google.com/amp/s/amp.theg…

15/ I have no crumb of comfort to offer. Maybe this debacle will now bring these idiots to their senses? I doubt it, frankly. This has all been long foreseen by many insightful commentators, but the warnings and advice have all been persistently ignored. And even if it does...

16/ ... the road ahead will be long, bitter and hard; and so needlessly, which is what makes it all so painful to contemplate. All I can offer is some well-worn and familiar, but always handy, advice: brace for impact, folks.