I do understand wrestling with mask mandates in various settings, & for different mask strategies in times of lower transmission vs times of higher threat. But in the midst of a pandemic as we still are, reducing requirement for their use is nothing to celebrate. 1/
There will be more transmission as a result, and so more illness & death. I have said before that we may have a longer term baseline COVID mortality (ie, not counting peaks with new variants) of 40 or so per day given what is being tolerated in other comparable countries. 2/
That’s 10,000+ deaths in a year (we are close to 3,000 this year in Australia already). Relaxing public health measures makes this more likely. 3/
These are hard decisions that have clear life-and-death, morbidity, & new variant consequences - especially challenging (frightening in fact) for more vulnerable people in our community. The public narrative should always reflect this angst. 4/end
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Record COVID cases & deaths (with figures for long COVID and excess deaths still to come), code brown, elective surgery ban, delays on ambulances, a whole health system - primary & tertiary - under enormous strain, vulnerable people & communities at serious risk. 1/
To understand COVID impact you can cherry pick the stat you like (eg, case fatality rate), or use a complicated, moving target measure (eg, ICU), or explain away deaths (aged, underlying conditions), or normalize (just like flu), 2/
or justify (eg, to build an apocryphal wall of immunity or must think about the economy), or even ignore (eg, long COVID) …or you can just look up and see that omicron has brought us to our knees; devastated our health, health system, economy & society. 3/
There is much more in this piece including why the ‘plus’ in vaccinesPlus is crucial (ie, current vaccines are not enough, although next-Gen vaccines might be), & how inequity is so central to the pandemic. 2/
Answers to new challenges: (1) Face facts - we must pragmatically face facts openly & early; no minimization but also no panic, we know what to do; 3/
History has shown us that head-in-the-sand, rose-colored narratives don't work on covid. From the ‘it’s a bad flu’ beginning they have prolonged and worsened the pandemic. 1/
Underplaying the uncertain curve-ball that omicron presents threatens to stymie the accelerated & equitable vaccines-plus response we need to turn the ongoing pandemic around. 2/
We know enough as individuals (get boosted, tested, wear good-fitting masks & take care with the air you breath), and policy makers (promote the ‘Plus’ as strongly as you do vaccines); to protect ourselves & our health workers & system while living reasonably openly. 3/
Globally and locally, we have a casual attitude to Covid cases; ‘focus on reducing hospitalisation/death’ is the common mantra. The result is ongoing waves as big as ever, huge disease burden in the un-vaccinated and the certainty of new variants. 1/
Today’s news from South Africa is a wake up call to this. It may itself be a false alarm, desperately hope so, but there is no doubt we will see more variants with the current policy settings. 2/
So: (1) cases matter, we must bring the global burden down (2) extreme vaccine-inequity is a major driver of high cases (3) we are totally interconnected, what happen in one continent equally effects the others 3/
A updated thread on Australia’s special chance to keep most people from ever getting COVID 1/
This encouraging news about a new pill from Pfizer is another step toward a vastly more powerful COVID toolbox that is rapidly coming our way. These promise to be game-changers 2/ nytimes.com/2021/11/05/hea…
The news reinforces what Prof Baxter @enenbee I wrote about recently, in the coming year keeping COVID cases low, and eliminating COVID, will become vastly easier than it is now 3/ theconversation.com/covid-doesnt-n…
Exit from lockdown in #COVID19Vic was a relief for everyone & more than earned. But in our joy, I don’t think we thought much about those who died on that very day. 1/
It is important we celebrate, in part bc our collective action saved thousands. But also imp we remember the 82 who died of COVID in this last week. We should honour those people same way we do others who die tragically before their time. 2/
It’s important bc our behaviors - as authorities & individuals - still matter in these coming months. Think hard about how those people became infected, & to how we can further minimize that happening. Unvaccinated people esp, but also the vaccinated, can transmit delta. 3/