This is the third of a series of articles on covid-19 promised on May 25 in “Ongoing disaster from Shambolic Clots”:

0. https://c21stleft.com/2021/05/25/covid-19-ongoing-disaster-from-shambolic-clots/

I will link back to an update of this complete list each time a new article is published.

1. https://c21stleft.com/2021/08/09/covid-19-none-shall-let-another-fall/
2. https://c21stleft.com/2021/08/11/covid-19-draft-emergency-legislative-instrument/
3. https://c21stleft.com/2021/08/15/covid-19-pandemic-of-the-unvaccinated/

The danger from Shambolic Clots in NSW is greater today than ever before.

After seeding the virus throughout Greater Sydney and regional NSW the government has announced just enough steps for an intensified lockdown of the whole State to delay action against it. Contact tracing has already broken down completely with the source of 345 mystery cases “under investigation” out of 466 total. That means most of the infected people who infected today’s cases are still not in isolation and still spreading infection. Recovery from that requires a far more rigorous lockdown with full curfews and rostered hours for collecting supplies and exercise. Each day’s delay is likely to add another week to the necessary lockdown

But the strategy remains unchanged. Instead of aggressively suppressing the virus to eliminate community transmission like every other State in Australia, the NSW Government still intends to just keep vaccinating while the virus keeps infecting. Then they can announce that they have reached 70% “fully vaccinated” in a couple of months and then go to “phase B” and then “phase C” where we no longer bother about infections and only look at the number of deaths.

This is intended to force the rest of Australia into the same policy of opening up like the UK instead of stamping out each outbreak until it is safe to open up because the whole world has been vaccinated, like New Zealand.

If they are very lucky they may “succeed” by avoiding the hospitals being overwhelmed. Vaccination DOES dramatically reduce the death rate at present and so far the UK has been able to avoid mass deaths despite complete collapse of contact tracing and mass infection as is starting now in NSW.

Can they be stopped? Yes. New Zealand has reaffirmed its policy of elimination despite the fact that “allies have thrown in the towell”. Most of the public support the New Zealand policy rather than the media death cult’s campaign.

Public pressure could win in the long run. But we don’t have a long run.

Infections are already growing exponentially and will not be slowed much by today’s steps. If the numbers infected double every week it only takes 10 weeks to multiply by one thousand. Delta can double much faster than that.

There is no way for public pressure to force an unwilling State Government to change policy quickly. It takes many months to organize. A large majority in the UK against the Government policy were unable to prevent it going ahead.

The only people who can stop the NSW Government quickly are the Chief Health Officers (CHOs) of the other jurisdictions. They form the Australian Health Protection Principals Committee (AHPPC) responsible for fighting the pandemic.

They are busy trying to suppress outbreaks in their own States and Territories spread from NSW. But they have not yet done anything to actually support NSW. Instead State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers have merely criticized at two successive weekly meetings of “National Cabinet” and the national “Chief Medical Officer” (who does not actually run any public health system) still describes vaccines as a “circuit breaker” when there is simply no way vaccinations can stop infections faster than Delta can spread them.

It is not clear whether the CHOs on the AHPPC know that it is actually possible for them to intervene in NSW. Most people simply assume it is politically impossible because the Federal Government has no authority over State public health systems and no desire to intervene against a coalition government. If they have time to think about it at all, it is likely that many CHOs have the same assumption. All they can do is close the borders as tightly as they can.

But it is possible for them to intervene. The Federal Health Minister can simply issue a decree under the Biosecurity Act. Formal advice to do so from the AHPPC would be hard to ignore. If the government did ignore them it would have even less chance of surviving the next elections than it does now. That Act provides the same dictatorial powers that CHOs have exercised in their own jurisdictions (including detentions of tens of thousands of people) to overide all other Australian law during a Biosecurity emergency. See my “draft 0” in the second article of this series:

covid-19 Draft Emergency Legislative Instrument

We need lawyers to draft the necessary “legislative instrument” (and perhaps some memos about the penalties for wilful neglect of duties by public officers) and medical doctors and scientists to ensure the CHOs promptly take action to insist on its prompt implementation (and second the necessary officers to lead the NSW public health response).

Everybody knows a doctor and pretty well any doctor is only 2 degrees of separation from a CHO. We can talk to doctors and persuade them to study the relevant documents carefully enough to pick up a phone and persuade a colleague closer to the CHO to do the same. Then it is just one more phone call to reach the local CHO and get them to take the time.

Something similar should be possible to find lawyers who know lawyers that could do the drafting.

A good starting point for reading by doctors and lawyers is the New Zealand Government’s position. Here it is:

https://covid19.govt.nz/reconnecting-new-zealand-to-the-world/

Click on “Expand all” and read the speech by the main author of the NZ Government report recommending that they continue to “stamp out” each outbreak as it occurs. Then also download pdfs of the report.

Here’s an excerpt:

Many people argued that elimination was impossible. Well, they were wrong. New Zealand did eliminate COVID-19, and so did several other countries — including China.

There’s no doubt that our elimination strategy has served us well. I often compare us with Scotland, which also has just over 5 million people. New Zealand has had a total of 26 deaths during the pandemic. Scotland has had over 10,000 deaths, and more Scots have suffered chronic illness — the so-called ‘long Covid’. We dodged a bullet — and our social and community life has flourished, in comparison with countries where repeated lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings have made the past 16 months a time of frustration and grief.

But what about the future? Can we maintain elimination, as we re-open our borders (as we must do)? High levels of vaccination should make it easier to stamp out clusters of COVID-19, but new variants like Delta will make it more difficult. If we have to give up on elimination, and allow the virus to become endemic, many New Zealanders will end up in hospital and a sizeable number will die — though a lot fewer than if we had let the virus spread last year.

Our group wrestled with the question. We concluded that, at this stage of the pandemic, the elimination strategy is not only viable, but also the best option. It allows us to enjoy a lifestyle that is relatively unaffected by the ravages of COVID-19, and to protect our health service and our economy.

The UK, after a disastrous year, has had a great vaccination roll-out: 94% of English adults now have antibodies arising from vaccination or past infection, or both. Yet last week they still had 627 deaths from COVID — the equivalent of about 48 deaths a week in our population. And most British people are avoiding contacts with others: social contacts are still down on last summer, and are barely a quarter of pre-pandemic levels. Many people work at home, and about 90% are still wearing a mask when outside the house.

Look at this crowded room. None us of us is wearing a mask, and we are not fearful of contagion. This would be unthinkable in most countries. I hope not to spend the rest of my life shielding from others, especially in winter, and looking at faces covered by masks.

https://covid19.govt.nz/reconnecting-new-zealand-to-the-world/

Next, to understand the full horror of the term “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” it is necessary to understand that most of the world is unvaccinated and that a report to the 94th meeting of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies of the UK Government (SAGE) described:

Scenario One: A variant that causes severe disease in a greater proportion of the population than has occurred to date. For example, with similar morbidity/mortality to other zoonotic coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV (~10% case fatality) or MERS-CoV (~35% case fatality).

SAGE considered this report and officially confirmed that it has “high confidence” and is “almost certain” of “higher rates of transmission creating more opportunities for new variants to emerge” and that more severe disease is a “realistic possibility”. (See paragraph 37 and 39 of Minutes below).

The Minutes omit the reference to up to 35% case fatality but that is what was described as a “realistic possibility”.

These documents can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/sage-meetings-july-2021

This includes the SAGE 94 minutes: Coronavirus (COVID-19) response, 22 July 2021
Published 6 August 2021:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sage-94-minutes-coronavirus-covid-19-response-22-july-2020

and an updated version of the report on long term evolution discussed in those minutes:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021

That report includes a succinct summary of latest virology, immunology and phylodynamics from p6 to end at p15.

A summary of the report was published in the business executives magazine, “Forbes” on August 4:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/08/04/a-warning-about-the-future-of-covid-19-from-the-scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-of-the-united-kingdom/

The UK Government opened up the UK to unlimited infection on July 19 (“Freedom Day”) in the full knowledge that this is likely to unleash a “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” both in the UK and worldwide.

They expect that pretty well everybody will get infected since Herd Immunity is unfeasible and that there is a “realistic possibility” that up to 35% will die. That’s more than 2 billion people!

The UK Government’s crime has been denounced by more than a thousand medical doctors and scientists in a politely worded statement:

The UK Government must reconsider its current strategy and take urgent steps to protect the public, including children. We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.

https://www.johnsnowmemo.com/

Although politely worded the accusation of “unethical experiment” on humans happens to be considered a “crime against humanity” over which courts in many countries exercise “universal jurisdiction” regardless of where and by whom such crimes are committed.

We can leave aside consideration of what motivated the UK Government and what motivates the NSW Government until they are put on trial either by their own courts for “reckless endangerment” and “misconduct in public office” or by the courts of other countries affected by their crimes against humanity.

The point right now is to stop them by doing whatever we can to prevent mass infections while vaccinating the world (and developing a future “sterlizing vaccine” that actually eradicates the virus).

Below is the authoritative minutes from SAGE.

But there is more that doctors and lawers should be studying closely and that science journalists should be explaining to a wider public. Here is a starting point:

Assessing the risk of vaccine-driven virulence evolution in SARS-CoV-2
Ian F. Miller, Jessica E. Metcalf
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.01.20241836

It explains clearly the precise mechanism by which “vaccine-driven” virulence evolution has a realistic possibility of killing 2 billion unvaccinated people while being “unlikely” to threaten immunized populations.

Abstract

How might COVID-19 vaccines alter selection for increased SARS-CoV-2 virulence, or lethality? Framing current evidence surrounding SARS-CoV-2 biology and COVID-19 vaccines in the context of evolutionary theory indicates that prospects for virulence evolution remain uncertain. However, differential effects of vaccinal immunity on transmission and disease severity between respiratory compartments could select for increased virulence. To bound expectations for this outcome, we analyze an evo-epidemiological model. Synthesizing model predictions with vaccine efficacy data, we conclude that while vaccine driven virulence evolution remains a theoretical risk, it is unlikely to threaten prospects for herd immunity in immunized populations. Given that this event would nevertheless impact unvaccinated populations, virulence should be monitored to facilitate swift mitigation efforts.

Significance statement

Vaccines can provide personal and population level protection against infectious disease, but these benefits can exert strong selective pressures on pathogens. Virulence, or lethality, is one pathogen trait that can evolve in response to vaccination. We investigated whether COVID-19 vaccines could select for increased SARS-CoV-2 virulence by reviewing current evidence about vaccine efficacy and SARS-CoV-2 biology in the context of evolutionary theory, and subsequently analyzing a mathematical model. Our findings indicate that while vaccine-driven virulence evolution in SARS-CoV-2 is a theoretical risk, the consequences of this event would be limited for vaccinated populations. However, virulence evolution should be monitored, as the ramifications of a more virulent strain spreading into an under-vaccinated population would be more severe.

Rather more than “monitoring” is required, we have to vaccinate the world.

Doctors and scientists should be able to find the relevant technical literature from seeing what recent papers have referenced the earlier papers listed in that preprint.

Lawyers should be able to prepare the necessary criminal indictments – but first we need the legislative instrument that helps NSW rejoin the rest of Australia in following the New Zealand path of maintaining elimination instead of the UK path of spreading infection.

Below is the relevant part of SAGE 94 minutes: Coronavirus (COVID-19) response, 22 July 2021
Published 6 August 2021

…

Long-term viral evolution

37. It is almost certain that the emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 is related to the amount of circulating virus, with higher rates of circulation and transmission creating more opportunities for new variants to emerge (high confidence).
38. There are a number of possible scenarios which could lead to the emergence of a variant which is more transmissible, causes more severe disease, or has a degree of immune escape.
39. A variant which causes more severe disease could emerge through recombination, where it is produced in an individual infected with two separate variants or acquire other genetic material from other viruses or the host (realistic possibility). Current vaccines are highly likely to continue to provide protection against serious disease for such new variants. However, since no vaccine is completely effective, there would likely still be an increase in morbidity and mortality from such a variant.
40. An immune escape variant could emerge in several ways. This includes through antigenic shift, where natural recombination events change the spike glycoprotein of the virus (realistic possibility). It could also emerge through animals becoming infected, the virus mutating within that population and then later this new variant infecting humans (realistic possibility). A new variant could also emerge through antigenic drift, where antigenic variation eventually leads to current vaccine failure (almost certain). These could occur over different timeframes. It is unknown how levels of immunity change the risk of the establishment of such a variant.
41. Reducing transmission, increasing vaccination levels, monitoring new variants and preparing to update vaccinations would mitigate the risks of such new variants.
42. A new variant could emerge that evades current antiviral strategies. Reducing the likelihood of such a variant emerging requires careful use of antivirals. This includes taking particular care in the treatment of immunocompromised people, or others infected for a long period, in whom viral evolution is more likely to happen. In particular, those working with infected immunocompromised individuals should take extra precautions to prevent onwards transmission.
43. Although unlikely in the short term, in the long term it is a realistic possibility that variants will arise that are more transmissible but with reduced virulence. This reduced virulence, along with high population immunity, could eventually lead to the virus causing a much less severe disease.
44. As antiviral drugs become available it will be very important to use them in a way that does not induce viral escape from their effects, for example using them in combinations.

Impact of international vaccination

45. The biggest threat to the UK’s health security and response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is the emergence (and establishment within the UK) of variants that either have increased transmissibility, increased severity, escape prior immunity or a combination of these characteristics (high confidence). At this point in the epidemic, with a high degree of population immunity, an immune escape variant would be of particular concern (high confidence).
46. Substantial global circulation of SARS-CoV-2 will lead to the evolution of new variants and continued risk of importation to the UK (medium confidence). Reducing prevalence globally will therefore reduce the risk to the UK. Multilateral coordination will be important in achieving this.
47. Increased international vaccination (for example by sharing of doses or supporting increased manufacture) has the potential to reduce the appearance and establishment of variants internationally, as well as the risk of their importation to the UK (medium confidence). There are also strong ethical reasons for supporting international vaccination efforts. Targeting international vaccination efforts (for example to countries where there are higher numbers of immunocompromised people, for example due to HIV infection) may be particularly beneficial.
48. The choice of vaccine is likely to be important and may change over time. Although using single doses would allow more people to be reached with limited supply, it may also result in more people having partial immunity which may increase the risk of an immune escape variant developing or spreading.
49. Border measures may also reduce the risk to the UK, though these will delay rather than prevent the importation of variants. Reducing global prevalence may lessen the need for border measures. Strengthening global surveillance of variants (as well as continued surveillance in the UK) will be important in understanding the risk. SAGE strongly supports the need for effective surveillance systems in the UK (UKHSA) and the presence of a global surveillance system as envisioned in the G7 communique. In addition to sequencing, studies on biology including transmission fitness and antigenicity will be required to understand which variants may become dominant.

I am sure lawyers could produce a much better draft, along with any appropriate backup drafts for a referendum to amend the Australian Constitution and the composition of the High Court.

But the following ought to establish that any failure to prevent NSW falling is not due to lack of legal powers to intervene.

Consequently at any future trials for misconduct in public office or incitement of such misconduct it should not be assumed that only officers of NSW would be defendants.

Of course before actually exercising in NSW the dictatorial powers that the Chief Health Officers of the other States are already exercising in their own jurisdictions (including detention orders for tens of thousands of people), the AHPPC should first spell out what it requires NSW to do and what assistance other jurisdictions will provide to do it.

They are the only people in a position to decide what is necessary and how to go about it.

I would assume that an out of control Delta outbreak that has already been allowed to reach half the level of Victoria’s second wave would require a much more drastic “stage 5” lockdown than was needed for several months in Victoria. Essentially a 24 lockdown curfew with rostered hours for exercise and distribution of essential supplies. Supermarkets would be stocked from interstate. That would give hope within a couple of weeks and could be eased back to “stage 4” levels within a month or so.

My assumptions are irrelevant as are those of any other commentator. But the CHO of NSW stated weeks ago that there was a national emergency and the people who will be held responsible for failing to implement the measures that only they are competent to decide on are the CHOs of the other States.

This is the second article in the series I promised on “shambolic clots”. In later articles I will explain the significance of including the W.H.O. recommendations numbered 3 and 9. The failure to enforce in NSW necessary measures specified in recommendation 1 should be self-explanatory. The CHOs of the AHPCC and ATAGI should already know the relevance of recommendation 3 to the disgraceful behaviour of both Commonwealth and NSW governments. I doubt that they have thought about the possible use of powers under recommendation 9 to counter the massive public misinformation campaign that their opponents ae engaged in.

Anywhere here is “draft 0”:

Whereas the Governer General has determined that a Human Biosecurity Emergency with respect to covid-19 exists under section 475 and the Health Minister is satisfied under section 477 of the Human Biosecurity Act 2015 [1] that the emergency requirements specified in the attached schedule 1 are necessary under the following subsections:

(1) (a) to prevent or control: (ii) the spread of the covid-19 listed human disease from parts of New South Wales to all other parts of New South Wales and other Australian territory (b) to prevent or control the spread of covid-19 from Australia to any other country; and (c) to give effect to the recommendations identified as "critical for all countries" that have been given by the World Health Organization under Part III of the International Health Regulations[2] by decision of the eighth meeting of the W.H.O. Emergency Committee regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic which took place on Wednesday, 14 July 2021 [3] as follows:

1. Continue to use evidence-informed PHSM [Public Health and Social Measures] based on real time monitoring of the epidemiologic situation and health system capacities, taking into account the potential cumulative effects of these measures. … The use of established public health measures in response to individual cases or clusters of cases, including contact tracing, quarantine and isolation, must continue to be adapted to the epidemiological and social context and enforced.

3. Achieve the WHO call to action to have at least 10% of all countries’ populations vaccinated by September 2021. Increased global solidarity is needed to protect vulnerable populations from the emergence and spread of SARS CoV-2 variants. Noting that many countries have now vaccinated their priority populations, it is recommended that doses should be shared with countries that have limited access before expanding national vaccination programmes into lower risk groups…

9. Address community engagement and communications gaps at national and local levels to reduce COVID-19 transmission, counter misinformation, and improve COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, where applicable. This will require reinforcing messages that a comprehensive public health response is needed, including the continued use of PHSM alongside increasing vaccination coverage.

(2) The requirements specified in schedule 1 are determined as a legislative instrument that is not subject to disallowance under section 42 of the Legislation Act 2003 [4]

(3) These requirements apply to:

(a) persons, goods or conveyances when entering or leaving any place in New South Wales;
(b) the movement of persons, goods or conveyances in or between any place in New South Wales and any other place in New South Wales or anywhere else in Australia or elsewhere;
(c) the evacuation of any place in New South Wales;
(d) and any measure required for the purposes of giving
effect to the International Health Regulations recommendations specified in 1(c)

(4) The Health Minister is satisfied of all of the following:
(a) that the requirement is likely to be effective in, or to
contribute to, achieving the purpose for which it is to be
determined;
(b) that the requirement is appropriate and adapted to achieve the purpose for which it is to be determined;
(c) that the requirement is no more restrictive or intrusive than is required in the circumstances. The circumstances that require the sudden and immediate exercise of extreme and intrusive restrictive dictatorial powers are that failure to aggressively suppress covid-19 in New South Wales would result in catastrophic collapse of hospital systems throughout Australia with massive deaths;
(d) that the manner in which the requirement is to be applied is no more restrictive or intrusive than is required in the
circumstances;
(e) that the period during which the requirement is to apply is only as long as is necessary.

(5) The requirements determined apply despite any provision of any other Australian law and in particular apply despite the provisions of sections 479(5)[4] and 545(2)[5] of the Human Biosecurity Act 2015 and any provision of any law of New South Wales[4] and any provision of any law that gives jurisdiction to any Court or Tribunal to hear and determine any matter.

Schedule 1.

1. The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) shall take charge of all aspects of the public health response to covid-19 in New South Wales and shall draft directions from the Minister under s478 of the Human Biosecurity Act 2015 to aggressively suppress community transmission of covid-19 in New South Wales and to implement the specified recommendations of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee.
2. The Governor of New South Wales, the Ministers of the NSW Government, both houses of the legislature of NSW, the courts of NSW and all other officers and employees of New South Wales shall actively implement all such directions by all means available to them including legislation, legislative instruments, appointments and dismissal of officers and employees and directions under NSW law.
3. All States and Territories of Australia shall provide maximum assistance to the people of New South Wales by emergency supplies of essential goods and services at the expense of the Commonwealth.
4. No person may enter or leave any place in New South Wales for any purpose except in accordance with the public health directions drafted by the AHPCC and given by the Health Minister under section 478 of the Human Biosecurity Act 2015.[6]

References:

1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C00303
2. International Health Regulations 2005, Third edition
   https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241580496
3. https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2021-statement-on-the-eighth-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)-pandemic
4. s479(5) would otherwise prevent a direction under subsection s479(1) to an officer or employee of a State, Territory or State or Territory body unless the direction is in accordance with an agreement between the Commonwealth and the State, Territory or body.
5. s545(2) would otherwise not permit the Director of Biosecurity to authorise an officer or employee of a State or Territory body to be a biosecurity officer unless an arrangement is in force under section 547 in relation to the officer or employee.
6. The penalty under section 479 for not complying is five years imprisonment or 300 penalty units or both.

We face a global pandemic. Excess mortality was 3 million last year and will be much greater this year. The attack rate is still growing.

Given that Observation we must first Orient, then Decide and Act. This “OODA loop” has to be repeated continuously. Events are moving too rapidly for our decisions and actions to keep up.

But first comes basic Orientation. Are we going to join together to fight this common enemy of all humanity?

One way a community binds together is by singing.

We have a suitable global anthem, from Paul Robeson’s “Hymn to Nations” sung to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, the anthem of the European Union:

Build the road of peace before us
Build it wide & deep & long
Speed the slow & check the eager
Help the weak & curb the strong
None shall push aside another
None shall let another fall
March beside me, o my brothers
All for one & one for all.

Superficially, the final amendment to Australia’s “National Plan” has been made more consistent with that. Instead of promoting a competition between the Australian States as to who can open up fastest, it specifies vaccination thresholds that must be reached by all States before any one of the States that have reached that threshold can move to a lower level of restrictions.

The point is to speed the slow and check the eager – with none letting another fall.

But that same “National Plan” pretends that Australia can be safe while a global pandemic rages through the rest of the world. It rests on seeking to push aside other nations that more desperately need vaccines, in a mad scramble to get to “the head of the queue”. Every available dose of AstraZeneca must be shoved into Australian arms, whether willing or not, lest it be “wasted” by donation to other countries.

The plan to stop worrying about infections after phase A is simply ludicrous and would contribute to more deadly variants emerging more rapidly. It isn’t even a thought bubble without a thought like the “Labor” party plan. It is just a Trumpian expression of utterly childish self-absorbed thoughtlessness.

Supposedly we can let India and Indonesia fall while Qantas resumes tourist trips to Bali! Even from the most narrow viewpoint Australia is within swimming distance of New Guinea which has a border with Indonesia.

I will leave a detailed analysis of this “plan” to a later article. There is a more urgent problem. The situation in New South Wales means Australia is on the brink of abandoning its existing “phase A” achievements. We must act fast to not let NSW fall.

Because this “National Plan” does promote vaccination and that does save lives, many public health people have remained silent about the global situation so as to focus on getting “more jabs in arms”. They have not sounded the alarm at the absurdity of NSW proposing to rely on vaccinations rather than tighter Public Health and Social Measures (PHSMs) to deal with the slow exponential growth in cases not contained by Test, Trace, Treat, Isolate and Quarantine (TTTIQ). Also they can take comfort from the fact that the plan advocates whatever level of PHSMs are needed to avoid collapse of the hospital system, rather than simply announcing a “Freedom Day” like the UK.

By now public health experts should not just be critical of the fact that the New South Wales government is still promoting delivery in September of “freedoms” that could only result in collapse. If they did their duty they should have already stepped in to fix the “national disaster” already announced from NSW. The NSW Premier told the National Cabinet meeting last Friday that NSW would not take the necessary action. But the other States did nothing at all about this direct threat to the whole country

Australia is currently in the same position as New Zealand and China. Proposing that the aim of vaccination is to ABANDON that hard won achievement so that we can enjoy MORE infections and MORE deaths is so utterly bizarre that the media has to breathlessly report “the conversation” among politicians and pundits advocating it non-stop and simply pretends there is no other view.

But what goes around, comes around. New South Wales was held up as the “gold standard” for opening up faster than other States. It rushed ahead eagerly and nobody checked it. Now it is on the edge of falling and the other States are letting it fall. That will come back around to those who let another fall.

If New South Wales falls then Victoria and Queensland will be subject to almost continuous lockdowns to suppress repeated incursions of infection across the border. Perhaps Tasmania and Western Australia could maintain the same level of covid elmination as New Zealand but it would be very hard for South Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT.

But its worse than that.

The media death cultists are actively campaigning for New South Wales to fail, precisely because they actually WANT to bring down Victoria and Queensland and thus restore “calm and reason” to Australia as a whole . Here’s Chris Kenny, Associate Editor of “The Australian” in the weekend’s edition (p16-17 August 7-8):

Some readers were dismayed when I wrote last month that it might be a good thing if the NSW lockdown failed because it would force the nation to learn to live with the disease. That seems to be what is playing out – incrementally and reluctantly perhaps – but it is happening.

The lockdown fetishists portray this as welcoming sickneses and deaths, as though there is another option. The day the virus arrived on our shores from Wuhan we were going to have to deal with these morbid realities, it is all about picking a sustainable, least worst path. As I have argued in this column for more than a year, there is no option but to find a way to live with Covid.

He is right, that is playing out “incrementally and reluctantly perhaps – but it is happening.” Most processes require incremental responses so decision makers are naturally slow to respond “disproportionately” and “suddenly”. Public health officials with the same outlook are dangerous. Any incremental growth of an epidemic has to be dealt with disproportionately and suddenly. That is the hardest concept to get across even when people claim to understand exponential growth. There simply is no such thing as holding steady. It is either fizzling, exploding or teetering between the two. Two out of three of those possibilities require immediate and disproportionate action to avoid disaster.

Actually of course most of the virus arrived here from the USA and UK where governments followed the policies promoted by the Wall Street Journal and its local affiliates, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian (now joined by Channel 9 Entertainment’s newspapers and the ABC). The US and UK responded incrementally and reluctantly so they are now “living with” with the highest global death rates from covid-19 while the fascist regime in Wuhan, like the New Zealand government, stamped it out and are again stamping it out after Delta arrived from Europe.

We are very lucky not to have been defeated long ago by the incremental and proportionate responses favoured by Commonwealth Chief Medical Officers. Fortunately they do not actually run any of the public health systems in Australia and all State Chief Health Officers that actually do had a better understanding, except for NSW which was repeatedly praised by the Commonwealth for taking risks that eventually resulted in a “national disaster”.

Australian States did stamp out each outbreak until now, despite the Commonwealth’s and NSW’s ineptness. Like New Zealand and China we can keep doing that provided we don’t let NSW fall. There is another option instead of “welcoming sicknesses and deaths”. If it requires stamping on death cultists like Chris Kenny, so be it.

I’m not a lawyer but I do have sufficient knowledge of the law relating to incitement to have been able to “remain at large” despite numerous trials for incitement to riot or to assault police during the Vietnam war.

The people who breached public health orders by protests recently suppressed by NSW police would certainly take comfort from the ideas promoted in The Australian and it’s fleet of tabloids. But I am sure there is no case that these newspapers “incited, urged, aided or encouraged” them.

But what about “misconduct in public office”?

According to wikipedia that is:

“… a criminal offence at common law which dates back to the 13th century.[2][3]

The offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. It is confined to those who are public office holders, and is committed when the office holder acts (or neglects to act) in a way that constitutes a breach of the duties of that office.[4]

The (UK) Crown Prosecution Service guidelines on this offence[2] say that the elements of the offence are when:

A public officer acting as such.
Wilfully neglects to perform one’s duty and/or wilfully misconducts oneself.

To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.[5]

Without reasonable excuse or justification.”

Isn’t that precisely what Chris Kenny and his publisher are urging, aiding and encouraging?

It is the duty of the public health officers in every State to protect the public from infectious disease. It is the duty of the Ministers to see to it that they do so. Wilfully neglecting to perform those duties “because it would force the nation to live with the disease” is clearly criminal.

The victim of that crime is “the nation” against whom deadly force is being advocated. We have the legal means to deal with such attacks – forcefully by imprisonment.

The Earl of Strafford was beheaded for proposing to “reduce this Kingdom”. After signing his death warrant, Charles I himself waged war against the people and was duly tried for treason by the High Court of Parliament. His head was removed from his shoulders with the Crown still on it, but without the Royal assent.

Lawyers are not usually as relevant to policy issues as some might think.

For stamping out the virus world wide, virologists developing a sterilizing vaccine will be central. They need to be publicly funded like basic research since private research by Big Pharma is naturally more attracted to ongoing sales to “live with” an ongoing disease than to actually ending the disease.

After all, what contribution does smallpox make to anybody’s “bottom line”, now that it has been stamped out?

Also very relevant in the meantime are pharmaceutical and other engineers to rapidly accelerate vaccine manufacturing capacity to reduce deaths and infections and prevent emergence of more deadly variants. I will write about that too in a later article.

But right now there is locally an urgent need for lawyers.

New South Wales is on the brink of falling because its government does not intend to actually carry out the agreed phase A of aggressive suppression to eliminate community transmission.

It would be difficult to prove the conduct is “wilful” rather than merely incompetent. As Chris Kenny slyly points out, what they are doing is being done “incrementally and reluctantly perhaps”. The level of incompetence is so extreme that a jury might be convinced by expert evidence that they were not merely reluctant and slow to do their duty. But as Chris Kenny hints with the coy ‘perhaps’ there must be a reasonable doubt. How could any Australian jury unanimously have no reasonable doubt that some Australian politicians were not “perhaps” simply incompetent shambolic clots?

Fortunately it might not be necessary to prove that the responsible Ministers are committing a crime in order to prosecute Chris Kenny and his newspaper for urging and encouraging that crime.

Nor need it be necessary to accuse the Ministers of crime in order to remove them from office. The simple fact that they are failing to aggressively suppress the virus is sufficient. Necessity trumps everything else when people recognize in time that something has to be done. Removal of obstacles to what HAS to be done is only “impossible” afterwards when the necessity was not understood at the time.

My understanding is that legally the duty of removing the incompetent NSW Minister’s from office falls on the Governor of NSW whoever that might be (I have no idea and do not believe it matters). In practical political terms the initiative must come from elsewhere (and it should not come from the Commonwealth government).

Perhaps a formal request from the Chief Health Officers of the other States, backed by declaration of various regions of NSW as biosecurity threats and appointment of regional biosecurity commanders by the Commonwealth? The Commonwealth does have constitutional responsibility for “Quarantine” and TTTIQ which includes Quarantine is breaking down in NSW. It would be better if the initiative was led by States with Coalition governments – South Australia and Tasmania.

Already the degree of damage done will require much more intense restrictions on essential work and other movement and for much longer than has been needed elsewhere. Curfews and rostered hours for exercise and collection of essential supplies may be necessary. Neigbourhood committees will be needed to help support people in isolation, organize supplies and tactfully encourage compliance with extremely onerous public health orders in their districts. Other States will need to provide both essential supplies and competent leadership staff for the NSW health service.

Of necessity this process of extending support to prevent failure will have to grow into replacing the functions of the current NSW government. Early involvement of lawyers is merely to make the transition as smooth as feasible.

Anyway, the processes will take some time, so lawyers should get to work on it right now. The virus moves fast. Exponential growth starts gradually and then explodes suddenly.

Unless we can first prevent New South Wales falling we cannot contribute to the world wide fight to prevent other countries falling.

Dr W.H.O.

There is a worldwide fight and it does have a global leadership – the World Health Organization. W.H.O.’s “International Health Regulations” are binding international law agreed to by all 194 member States.

That isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got, and what we have to build from in dealing with a global pandemic. Its strength resides in the respect that people everywhere have for public health officials as opposed to politicians and pundits.

W.H.O. and the various agencies coordinating global vaccination have put out a clear warning and call to action:

“No one is safe until everyone is safe”

Everybody can and should follow what they say unfiltered by the local media by going directly to the W.H.O. web site for guidance on all aspects of fighting the pandemic. Here’s the regular media briefings regularly ignored in Australian media:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/press-briefings

Here is the most recent transcript:

https://www.who.int/multi-media/details/who-press-conference-on-coronavirus-disease-(covid-19)—4-august-2021

It spells out that the developed countries are following an exactly opposite policy to W.H.O. They will use all available manufacturing capacity to give additional “booster” shots to their “fully vaccinated” people as new variants become increasing virulent in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” raging throughout the rest of the world where not even the front line health workers and the 10% most vulnerable have been vaccinated.

Here is the WHO Director-General with the very minimal request to just postpone booster shots for another two months so that some supplies can reach the 10% that need vaccines most desperately. His message is “None shall push aside another”.

Here is the replacement for Donald Trump rejecting that polite request, but with more “inspiring” verbiage than the previous “leader of the Free world”:

https://mobile.twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1OdJrVzWoOYJX

Whereas Trump prohibited all exports of vaccines and raw materials from the USA, Biden will condescendingly “donate” a few hundred million NEXT YEAR to a world that needs billions of doses RIGHT NOW.

In direct opposition to the warning promoted by WHO, Australia’s Government is running a vaccination campaign with the slogan:

“We’re not safe until we’re all safe”

Find out when it’s your turn and where you can be vaccinated at australia.gov.au

COVID-19
VACCINATION

KEEPING AUSTRALIA COVIDSAFE

This explicitly replaces “everyone” with “we” and explicitly defines “we” as “Australia”.

Here’s an “Explainer” from Australia’s national broadcaster:

“If you’re vaccinated against COVID-19, how protected are you from catching the virus?”

After a cheery introduction pretending that the whole world is being vaccinated, “our ABC” explains that “we” will be “safe” because “we” will join the US, Israel and UK by simply no longer worrying about the number of infections (that lead to more deadly variants) and only focus on the number of Australians in hospital (reduced by vaccines):

It enthusiastically “explains” that:

“In the US the CDC has so little concern about these (rapidly increasing) cases that they aren’t even counting them any more…” [at 5’18”]

“Driven by the Delta virus, cases in the UK have actually been increasing, and they’ve been increasing sharply. However authorities there are not that worried. Contact tracing has been done away with and reports of daily case numbers are a thing of the past.” [at 7’0″]

Here’s a warning about what happens if we follow the ABC and other media’s siren song and just allow NSW to fall:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ravish_chawla/status/1391458239879938050

I’m working on an eventual series of posts on above theme but currently focussed on current pretence at preparing for mRNA vaccine production in Australia that requires catching up on technical details.

Meanwhile Dominic Cummings started a twitter storm on 17 May, fully documenting from inside just how Shambolic the UK response was.

The 59 tweets (so far) are well worth reading and thinking about carefully.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1394245014440529921.html

There may well be more coming and the original thread view shows what he is responding to so here’s a link to that:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1395010951452237829

It also includes some responses on his own responsibility for helping promote that government.

More immediately relevant is a warning from Cummings that UK preparations for dealing with variants could be likewise shambolic and that transparency is vital to enable earlier reversals of wrong policies protected by official secrecy.

Naturally the “business case” for mRNA manufacturing in Australia is beiing witheld and an 8 week “process” is being rushed through to ask local manufacturers to confidentially provide detailed costings for know how and supply chains they don’t have. An engineering task needs to be recruited immediately (from anywhere, worldwide) to actually work out what can be done and who needs to be recruited and trained to do it. That will be difficult but is the obvious first step which simply is not being taken. They are instead talking to managers of the non-existant Australian BioPharma industry to fill out forms about matters they know nothing about.

I’ll write about that as soon as I can:

https://www.industry.gov.au/news/enabling-australias-onshore-mrna-manufacturing-capability-approach-to-market

Meanwhile here’s the text of the 59 tweets, although it is better to read them with accompanying graphics at links above:

1/ Covid… Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden:

Yes, lockdowns were good
It’s a moot point now, but let’s set the record straight
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-lockdowns-were-good
Image

One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the ‘tradeoff’ argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering
4/ Best example: Taiwan. Also shows that if you REALLY get your act together not only is econ largely unscathed but life is ~ normal. But SW1 (Remain/Leave, Rt/Left) = totally hostile to learning from East Asia
5/ There’s a general western problem based on nonsense memes like ‘asians all do as they’re told it won’t work here’. This is what many behavioural science ‘experts’/charlatans argued, disastrously, in Feb2020. This nonsense is STILL influencing policy, eg our joke borders policy
6/ Another confusion re Sweden: data shows despite no official ‘lockdown’ behaviour changed enormously. The closer your measures are to ‘welding people inside homes’ (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission. Semantics of ‘lockdown’ obscure this really simple point
7/ If you are going to have to do measures ≈ lockdown to avoid health system collapse then the harder/earlier the better & the sooner they can be released. Pseudo ‘lockdowns’ w/o serious enforcement are hopeless: econ hit & people die anyway, nightmare rumbles on
8/ Waiting room, 1st jab. Remembered Vallance 24/3 amid disaster: will u support taking vaccines out of DH & a new Taskforce, we need different leadership & skills to drive it? CABSEC supported divvying up DH tasks. If not, normal Whitehall process, probably normal result

9/ Success seems to have blinded SW1 to important Qs. a/ We did it much better than Brussels, obviously, but Brussels is not a good comparison. How well did we do relative to ‘how well wd General Groves who ran the Manhattan Project have done it?’
10/ I think we’ll conclude we shd have done Human Challenge trials immediately & cd have got jabs in arms summer. This is not criticism of the VTF which has been constrained in ways they shdnt be. It’s cnctd to b/ where is the public plan for how the VTF will deal with variants?
11/ One of the most fundamental & unarguable lessons of Feb-March is that secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Openness to scrutiny wd have exposed Gvt errors weeks earlier than happened
12/ So why are MPs accepting the lack of a public plan now for VTF viz variants? Especially when rumours reach me that the silent entropy of Whitehall is slowly turning VTF back into a ‘normal’ entity?
13/ The best hedge re a variant escaping current vaccines is PUBLIC SCRUTINY of Gvt plans. This will hopefully show it’s been taken seriously. If not, better learn now that the Gvt has screwed up again than when ‘variant escapes’ news breaks
14/ I can think of no significant element of covid response that wd not have been improved by discarding secrecy and opening up. This was symbolised by e.g how COBR cd not be used: a constrained STRAP environment cd not cope with the scale/speed, another important lesson

15/ Having watched classified elements of covid response, Gvt cd make the vaccine plans 99% public without risks, ‘national security’ almost totally irrelevant to the critical parts of the problem, a few things cd be withheld while publishing all crucial parts of the plan
16/ These issues are relevant to c/ Who is writing the plan for ‘how we deal with something worse than covid?’ If we get this right now, we do not need to have this sort of disaster again. We’ll also be hedging vs future bioterrorism risks: cf:

Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete and ending the new nuclear arms race
Bioweapons are terrifying but scientific advances leave them on the verge of becoming an outdated technology.
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andy-weber-rendering-bioweapons-obsolete/
17/ The covid plan was supposed to be ‘world class’ but turned out to be part disaster, part non-existent. I urged inside Gvt to do a review of other contingency plans for more dangerous things than covid, a largely open process with e.g @wtgowers helping. Happening?
18/ MPs shd force publication of vaccine/variant plan & require mostly open review of other contingency plans before we find out the hard way they’re as ‘world class’ as the covid plan…
19/ Such reviews shd seek out those were right & early on covid. Such people are more likely to spot that other plans have errors, gaps, that institutional planning has blind spots, failure to look at crucial operational details etc. E.g @MWStory
20/ P Vallance & I supported opening up SAGE much earlier than it happened. I argued before 1st lockdown to open up the CODE of SPI-M models for scrutiny. Barrier = SW1 cultural hostility to openness & this barrier means SAGE still too closed & too little of its workings public
21/ Looking at minutes does not give good insight to reality of discussions. E.g looking at minutes of crucial 18/3, which I attended, does not convey true situation, discussion, atmosphere, effects
22/ With something as critical as variants escaping vaccines, there is no justification for secrecy, public interest unarguably is open scrutiny of the plans
23/ This point is critical re Groves/Manhattan/vaccines & wider covid & wider issue of gvt performance: our civilisation is abysmal at seeking Groves/Bob Taylors & getting them into critical roles, bureaucracies exclude & expel them, as they did with Groves/Taylor!
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24/ The public inquiry will at no point ask: how does the deep institutional wiring of the parties/civil service program destructive behaviour by putting the wrong ppl in wrong jobs with destructive incentives? It will all be about relatively surface errors
25/ If SW1 wanted to ‘learn’ there wd already be a serious exercise underway. The point of the inquiry is the opposite of learning, it is to delay scrutiny, preserve the broken system & distract public from real Qs, leaving the parties & senior civil service essentially untouched
26/ J Phillips, a brilliant young neuroscientist I recruited to no10, argued for immediate Human Challenge Trials, as did others. We were far too slow to listen to such advice. The science ‘misfits’ who urged this early were clearly right, the ‘ethicists’ disastrously wrong
27/ So true from @paulg, it’s amazingly rare to find people who deeply care about results at senior levels in politics/gvt, those who do are seen as mad/unreliable & are weeded out. SW1 incentives are ~all about rewarding process + fake signals. V relevant to covid fiascos
Image
28/ Of the 20 ppl who I saw do most to save 1000s of lives, it’s striking how many gone or leaving or planning to leave, & how many who were disastrously wrong/useless been promoted to jobs they can’t do/given honours etc
29/ @pmarca on the west’s covid failures (‘the harsh reality is that it all failed’) & the General Groves mentality needed, influential in no10, 4/20, as we pushed thro the vaccine taskforce

IT’S TIME TO BUILD – Andreessen Horowitz
Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, …
https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/
30/ Crucial data generally ignored by those who want to downplay covid danger, many 1000s will have serious health problems for years because of our failure to act faster/harder in Feb/March & Sep. Those who predicted this issue wd be ‘Gulf War syndrome bollocks’ were wrong
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31/ There was a PHE exercise called Exercise NIMBUS in a hypothetical future 14/4/20 with mock COBR slides. Assumed peak week 13/5 and >33M cases over 16 week wave, hospitals full by 14/4, >800K deaths, schools told stay open(!!). A/one know when exercise happened (think 3/20)?
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32/ This, evening of 31/10 re lockdown2, from @wtgowers who was ahead of the game in 3/20, was spot on. If mass testing had been developed properly earlier in year as cd/shd have been, wd probably have avoided lockdowns 2&3 while awaiting vaccine
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33/ True but also UK gvt did v badly, turned out we cd/shd have had these tests at millions p/day scale by Sep latest, instead of seriously starting in Sep, which wd have greatly changed q42020. Those screaming from ~Feb/March were ignored, months/lives/£ needlessly lost
Image
34/ Mass testing same story as elsewhere: some brilliant/dedicated relatively junior officials (e.g Alex Cooper) + great young scientists (e.g @gaurav_ven) + entrepreneurs held back by senior management/DHSC/PHE (particularly awful) & Whitehall legacy procurement & HR horrorshows
35/ Even tho the PM/CABSEC/I all told 9/20 most senior HR & procurement officials to treat mass testing ‘like a wartime project’, ignore their usual bullshit multimonth processes, mass testing hugely hampered by Whitehall’s optimisation for ‘[awful] process over results’
36/ So much ‘lockdown’ confusion. Obv they’re ‘destructive’. But if you have to do it cos alternative is 100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for months for everybody else + econ sunk cos everybody hiding in terror then earlier/harder is better for health AND econ
37/ If we’d had the right preparations + competent people in charge, we wd probably have avoided lockdown1, definitely no need for lockdowns 2&3. Given the plan was AWOL/disaster + awful decisions delayed everything, lockdown1 became necessary
38/ Media generally abysmal on covid but even I’ve been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock’s line that ‘herd immunity wasn’t the plan’ when ‘herd immunity by Sep’ was literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings until it was ditched
39/ Yes the media is often incompetent but something deeper is at work: much of SW1 was happy to believe Hancock’s bullshit that ‘it’s not the plan’ so they didn’t have to face the shocking truth. Most political hacks believe in ‘the system’…
40/ In week of 9/3, No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how ‘herd immunity by Sep’ cd have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster
41/ All those referring to the Sunday Times story 22/3/20 re me dramatically ‘changing my mind’ at SAGE on 12/3: there was no SAGE on 12/3! It’s an invented meeting & invented story repeated for a year by political hacks as ‘fact’
42/ No10 decided to lie: ‘herd immunity has never been… part of our coronavirus strategy’. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised
43/ Lots of hacks have lost their minds. Herd immunity wasn’t ‘a secret strategy’, it was THE OFFICIAL PUBLIC EXPLAINED ON TV/RADIO STRATEGY! Halpern, on SAGE, literally explained it on radio explicitly, 11/3/20, as did others!!
44/ The whole ‘flatten the curve’ plan A was to get herd immunity by summer & avoid 2nd peak during annual NHS winter crisis. That’s why our official graphs had ONE peak over by summer! COBR docs/graphs describe herd immunity as ‘the optimal single peak strategy’ etc
45/ What happened is a/ panic about the phrase, ‘comms disaster’. b/ We ditched the herd immunity plan and shifted to Plan B, suppression, which previously the Gvt said/thought would be worse cos it wd lead to a 2nd peak in winter 2020 during the annual NHS crisis
46/ A COBR doc from week of 9/3/20 explains official thinking behind Plan A: ie. suppression either won’t work or wd lead to 2nd peak during NHS winter crisis, so the advised herd immunity approach was what DHSC/Cabinet Office described as ‘single peak optimal strategy’
Image
47/ In that week it became clear neither Hancock/CABOFF understood herd immunity effects: 100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for anybody for months + dead unburied + econ implosion; so we moved to Plan B: suppression + Manhattan Project for drugs/vaccines + test&trace etc
48/ Critical as I am of the PM in all sorts of ways, it’s vital to understand the disaster was not just his fault: the official plan was disastrously misconceived, DHSC/CABOFF did not understand this or why, & a PlanB had to be bodged amid total & utter chaos
49/ Jenny Harries told us, the same week herd immunity was the official plan, masks are a ‘BAD idea’, ‘we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives’, acting ‘too early we will just pop up with another epidemic peak later’. So Whitehall has promoted her, obviously
50/ ‘Herd immunity’ was officially seen as UNAVOIDABLE week of 9/3. It wd come either a) in a single peak over by Sep, or b) in a 2nd peak in winter. (a) was seen as easier to manage & less of a catastrophe so it was Plan A. Cf SAGE 13/3: ‘a near certainty’ suppression>2nd peak
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51/ It was in week of 9/3 that we started to figure out Plan B to dodge herd immunity until vaccines. Even AFTER we shifted to PlanB, COBR documents had the ‘OPTIMAL single peak strategy’ graphs showing 260k dead cos the system was so confused in the chaos, see below
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52/ Hodges = wrong: there was neither an intention to lockdown nor as of Fri13/3 any official plan for doing so. The SAGE minutes show the opposite of what Dan says they say…
Image
53/ Dan says the SAGE minutes show ‘The strategy was to wait for the optimum moment to lockdown’. No. SAGE said literally the opposite: lockdown = suppression = ‘near certainty’ of 2nd peak & this was thought to be much WORSE than single peak/herd immunity by Sep, hence graph
Image
54/ On 14/3 one of the things being screamed at the PM was ‘there is no plan for lockdown & our current official plan will kill at least 250k & destroy the NHS’. Cf the graph: ‘optimal single peak strategy’ with 3 interventions. That was the official plan, which was abandoned
55/ Another reason we ditched Plan A was it became clear the official system had given ~no thought to all the second order effects of 250k dying, almost all without ICU care. True deaths wd clearly be much >250k cos there would be no NHS for anybody for months
56/ On 12/3, the most surreal day of 18 months in Gvt, it was argued to the PM that a/ individual isolation be delayed (‘we’re not ready’), b/ we might not do household quarantine at all, c/ given Halpern’s interview on 11th, the PM shd publicly explain the ‘herd immunity’ plan
57/ Re D Halpern: a/ on 11/3 he was simply explaining the OFFICIAL plan, not freelancing; b/ unlike many he supported the switch to Plan B in the next week & told the CABSEC & DHSC that…
58/ NB. Even at SAGE on 18/3 it was not all clearly agreed ‘must do national lockdown ASAP’. Halpern supported it with others. Senior DHSC officials were saying even on 18/3: lockdown just means it pops back up again in 2nd wave so why change strategy?
59/ Even at SAGE on 18/3 some argued: even if lockdown needed, delay, finesse timing. Others argued: there’s no alternative so sooner must be better. The latter were right (I think) & that argument prevailed
• • •

As noted in previous post, the UK and USA are both engaged in a race to vaccinate as many people as possible before their hospital systems get overwhelmed by the more infectious strains of covid-19 that are now becoming dominant worldwide.

Both are in dire straits and taking extraordinary and risky measures such as prolonging the interval between the two doses required and hoping to be able to catch up using different vaccines for a second dose if necessary.

In the UK they do at least seem to now be fully aware of the situation and starting to lockdown seriously.

Europe is in a similar mess and all the developed countries are competing for emergency supplies ahead of the poorer countries that need them even more desperately.

My impression is that the US public is still not aware that they could be facing double the current numbers of deaths following Biden’s plan for 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days and that this period could be the very worst part of the pandemic rather than the tail end currently expected.

There are reports sounding the alarm but I have not yet seen signs of the new administration taking even the sort of lockdown measures now belatedly taken in the UK.

Here for example is a current alarm sounded by a member of Biden’s covid-19 transition team, so the US government presumably does know:

27/01/2021 8:47 PM AEDT | Updated 28/01/2021 9:11 AM AEDT

Infectious Disease Expert Warns Next 6 To 14 Weeks May Be ‘Darkest’ Of COVID-19 Pandemic

By Lee Moran

Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm said Tuesday that he fears the United States is about to enter its “darkest weeks” of the coronavirus pandemic yet.

The director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board during the presidential transition, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that there could be another potential explosion in new cases if mutated, more contagious variants of the virus take hold nationwide.

…

“We’re down now to 150,000 cases a day, which seems down,” he continued. “Remember when 70,000 or 32,000 cases a day seemed high? And if this variant takes off here in North America like it has throughout Europe, I think we could be seeing numbers much, much higher than we’ve had to date.”

Osterholm said an eruption in the number of infections could hinder the work of COVID-19 vaccines.

“We just won’t have enough out in time,” he said. “If we vaccinate everybody that the government has said the vaccine will be available for through April, that’s only about 12% of the U.S. population. This variant could do a great deal of harm in that time.”

“We’ll have to wait and see,” he concluded. “I sure hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does it’s going to be a long few weeks ahead of us.”

Osterholm echoed those fears on MSNBC, telling anchor Stephanie Ruhle on Tuesday that “the very worst of the pandemic is yet before us,” citing the “enormous challenge” of the new variants. (Watch the clip below.)

“I’m not at all optimistic,” he said.

The coronavirus has now killed more than 425,000 people nationwide. There have been 100 million confirmed cases around the globe, with more than a quarter of them (upwards of 25.4 million) in the United States.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/michael-osterholm-warning-coronavirus-pandemic_n_60112bc5c5b6b8719d888159

Here’s a very recent New York Times oped:

The New Virus Variants Make the Next 6 Weeks Crucial

By Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist

Jan. 28, 2021

I hope, in the end, that this article reads as alarmism. I hope that a year from now it’s a piece people point to as an overreaction. I hope.

Coronavirus cases are falling. Vaccination numbers are rising. We are already jabbing more than a million people a day, which means President Biden’s initial goal of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days was far too conservative. In California, where I live, Governor Gavin Newsom lifted the statewide stay-at-home order. It feels like dawn is breaking.

And that is what makes this moment dangerous. The B.1.1.7 variant of coronavirus, first seen in Britain, and now spreading throughout Europe, appears to be 30 to 70 percent more contagious, and it may be more lethal, too. It hit Britain like a truck, sending daily confirmed deaths per million people from about six per million in early December to more than 18 per million today. The situation in Portugal is even more dire. Daily confirmed deaths have shot from about seven deaths per million in early December, to more than 24 per million now. Denmark is doing genomic sequencing of every positive coronavirus case, and it says cases involving the new variant are growing by 70 percent each week.

“What we need to do right now is to plan for the worst case scenario,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told me. “And when I say ‘worst case,’ I’m potentially talking about the most likely case. Let’s not wait until we wrap the car around the tree to start pumping the brakes.”

America is doing embarrassingly little genomic testing, but even the paltry surveillance that is being conducted has confirmed epidemiologists’ fears: B.1.1.7 is here, too. And there’s evidence of another super-contagious strain developing in California. It will take some weeks or even months for these new strains to become dominant, but virologists tell me there is every reason to believe they will. The results could be catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands dying before vaccinations neutralize the threat.

This is the part of the horror film where a happy ending seems in sight, but it is obvious, to those paying attention, that the monster is not dead, and that the worst may be yet to come. We cannot let ourselves be taken by surprise.

Paul Romer, the Nobel laureate economist, told me to think about it this way: The coming months are a race between three variables. There is the contagiousness of the virus itself. There are the measures we take to make it harder for the virus to spread, from lockdowns to masking. And there is the proportion of the country with protection against the virus, either because they’ve already caught it or because they’ve been vaccinated. If contagiousness is rising fast (and it is), then the measures we take to stop the spread or the measures we take to immunize the population need to strengthen faster. Romer’s modeling suggests that if we continue on our current path, delivering one million vaccinations a day and growing fatigued of lockdowns and masks, more than 300,000 could die in the coming months.

But calamity at that scale is a choice, not an inevitability. And so I’ve been asking health experts the same question: If you knew, with 100 percent certainty, that the coronavirus would be 50 percent more contagious six weeks from now, what would you recommend we do differently?

The most immediate danger is that optimism and exhaustion will overwhelm our common sense, and we will reopen just as the new strains are quietly building momentum. “Just in the last week or 10 days,” says Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, “a lot of state officials are looking at data of numbers coming down and asking me, ‘When can I reopen my restaurants to 75 percent? Bars have been closed for months, can I reopen bars now?’ It is true things are coming down but we are at a very high level. This is not the time to start letting up. This is the time to hunker down for what is likely to be a very difficult two or three months.”

With that introduction, one might expect the rest of the article to be explaining the need for prompt and drastic lockdowns, using whatever it takes, up to and including martial law.

Instead, it continues by assuming agreement against lockdown and pretending that testing provides some magic solution:

Let’s agree that total lockdown is the most ruinous of all options, and the one we’d like to use least. We have tools we could deploy to avoid it, but we’d need to start quickly. One is rapid, at-home testing. The technology exists to produce tens of millions of cheap, at-home antigen test strips each day. These strips are highly accurate during the period that matters most — when we are infected and contagious. Used widely, they’d let all of us check, daily, if we were potentially infected, so we could then isolate and avoid infecting others. “This is a public health issue and if we don’t empower the public to deal with it we won’t be able to defeat it,” Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard, told me.

The problem here is the Food and Drug Administration. They have been disastrously slow in approving these tests and have held them to a standard more appropriate to doctor’s offices than home testing.

…

I was going to write about the absurdity of pretending that cheaper and less accurate tests could be a substitute for lockdowns rather than a minor supplement when that idea was suggested here in a link to a podcast advocating them. But it did not seem worth the effort. It still doesn’t. Blaming the FDA for not being able to do it fast enough won’t work either.

Quite simply the oped takes it for granted that the only known effective measure is out of the question and proposes nothing but wishful thinking.

Some back of the envelope calculations in support of this from Paul Romer indicate the problem.

https://mobile.twitter.com/paulmromer/status/1355049460225765378

Despite having a Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Romer is by no means stupid. Yet he looks for solutions by tripling the vaccination rate and doing lots of testing and contact tracing (without any optimism). Apparently locking down hard enough just isn’t worth analysing in the USA as they cannot do it any more than India or Indonesia could (but China, Vietnam, New Zealand and Australia did).

The likely extent of the disasters elsewhere are difficult to estimate in many places that lag behind the more developed countries where people came in contact with the virus more quickly. They have much less capacity for their health systems to cope when the levels of infection do catch up.

The lockdown just announced in Western Australia lockdown for the whole city of Perth and nearby is lucky for Australia:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-31/covid-quarantine-hotel-worker-tests-positive-in-perth-wa/13106968

There are certain to be ongoing leaks of the new strains from quarantine facilities.

Most people want to do whatever it takes to suppress them immediately rather than risk community transmission exploding as it is doing elsewhere.

The ruling class wants to take that risk. As far as I can make out this is sheer irrationality on their part. Naturally they put their asset values ahead of other people’s lives. There are bound to be sectional interests, like tourism, airlines and hospitality that could reasonably imagine that they would actually benefit from taking more risk. But all the evidence shows that the risks they loudly campaign for do more damage to the economy as a whole than the costs of not taking those risks – and therefore damage the overall interests of the ruling class as a whole.

The problem is that most “business leaders” here do not make any independent analysis. In most of the world it is simply not possible to avoid community transmission so “opinion leaders” on behalf of the ruling class are attempting to optimize the situation for their asset values without having that option. The “business community” here mostly looks to the same opinion leaders from North America and Europe rather than thinking for themselves about their own interests.

In Australia, like New Zealand, it is quite possible to avoid another wave but becoming more difficult with the new strains that are more infectious and will therefore escape more easily from quarantine and isolation facilities that were able to more successfully contain less infectious variants. Once they have escaped they are more likely to overwhelm contact tracing quickly.

Fortunately WA is in the middle of an election campaign. The government has responded in the same way that South Australia did when it wrongly believed a case of community transmission was from a more infectious strain. That over reaction in SA was an entirely necessary reaction in WA where they are reasonably certain that it is in fact a more infectious strain. They will be accused of doing it to pander to voters in an election. But whether that is the case or not it will make it much harder for the pressures from the Commonwealth Government, the media and “business” to intimidate other State governments from doing what has to be done.

So there is a still a good chance Australia could reach herd immunity through vaccination without going through another wave like Victoria’s, let alone anything as bad is happening in Europe and North America. It just depends on how incompetent they are.

It really is “touch and go” since, as I mentioned on December 2, we were then only half way through the emergency declared in the middle of last March. That was 8.5 months of the way through. Another 8.5 months would take till mid-August this year.

Although there is still talk of completing vaccination in Australia by October it looks increasingly unlikely that there could be herd immunity by then, let alone before September. As predicted, Europe and North America will not be exporting much in the way of vaccine supplies until they have dealt with the collapse of their hospital systems. That is likely to take all year by which time the disasters elsewhere will certainly be higher priority than Australia.

So apart from importing small amounts, Australia will be relying on its own new manufacturing facilities that were started late for AstraZeneca (and possibly others). Significant volumes may start to be available to the general public in April but will take many months to cover everyone who wants to be vaccinated. The small amounts imported earlier will be useful to help maintain isolation of quarantine and health workers in the frontlines. That will further reduce the risks of another wave before herd immunity, but will have negligible impact on reaching herd immunity.

There is currently no reason to expect that complete vaccination with relatively inefficient vaccines will result in herd immunity this year. However it could still result in an end to the State of Emergency before October. With a large proportion vaccinated subsequent clusters and outbreaks would be relatively easy to contain by contact tracing (in more or less the manner that the vicious liars opposing emergency restrictions now pretend is the case already). We would then just have the “normal” risks of just another endemic infectious disease until the whole world achieves herd immunity. That could be done quite quickly with rational international cooperation but there seems little chance of that so it looks more likely to take years with major disasters still unfolding in many places.

The problem the USA faces is that they already have huge numbers that are close to overwhelming hospital systems and the vaccine will not have much impact in the first few months when more than 80% of the population remain susceptible compared with the impact of new more infectious strains. That is not the situation in Australia.

No doubt Australia will keep selfishly demanding priority vaccination ahead of places that desperately need it. No doubt the Australian manufacturing plants will not give priority to saving lives in neighbours like Indonesia but it is safe to assume European and North American plants will eventually join China, Russia and India in supplying developing countries rather than diverting urgently needed supplies to countries like Australia whether the Australian government complains or not.