Re the Victorian situation with the decision to use private security for COVID hotel quarantine: am I the only person who detects strong hypocrisy whenever a Liberal opposition goes nuts about a Labor government using private contractors who turn out to be of dubious quality? Wasn't the "the public service is coddled and inefficient and we should privatise services for greater efficiency and value for money" political party always keener to use private contractors for the last, um, four decades or so?
It was the exact same thing with the Rudd insulation program. The crap, profiteering private sector was the one that caused some deaths, and the true lesson should have been "if you want a job done properly, don't rush it out into the private sector". (Mind you, I know the insulation job could not have been done by public servants. But still.)
More about Victoria, Adam Creighton continues his hyperventilation:
Ooh, I like the "evil eyes of Dan" photo the AFR is running with. I bet Adam wished it was being used in The Australian. But maybe it is?
Adam presumably is still dismissing entirely the reports of long term effects of the virus. This report from the BBC explains why India should be worried:
Mr Ketkar is not alone in this - tens of thousands of people have been reporting post-Covid health complications from across the world. Thrombosis is common - it has been found in 30% of seriously ill coronavirus patients, according to experts.These problems have been generally described as "long Covid" or "long-haul Covid".Awareness around post-Covid care is crucial, but it is not the focus in India, which is still struggling to control the spread of the virus. It has the world's second-highest caseload and has been averaging 90,000 cases daily in recent weeks.
Lots of experts warning about the long term effects of Covid are quoted.
But no, Adam hates the idea of people being told to wear masks outside, so that's what's important.
Yeah I noticed that too. People who are weak on privatisation getting all upset about a single decision to go on the private side. Is that really where it all went wrong? Maybe it was but its a strange thing to narrow down for a liberal party who has a big record of selling off all our key assets to the communists and calling it free enterprise?
ReplyDeleteThe basic problem was that they somehow managed to turn quarantine into a disease spreader when it was supposed to be a disease container. I don't know why that happened. But if we make it a purely private/public question I still won't know why it happened in five years time. Not that its about me, but its hard to speak for others and its hard to explain what I'm trying to say here with other language. We need to find out why it spread, and we ought not assume it was a purely public private thing. It might have been. But how do we know that?
Do we really want army guys doing security work? I'm not sure about that. Army guys are meant to be trained killers and destroyers of other peoples military equipment. Maybe we want them. Maybe we want the private guys. But its a bit of a distraction from putting this disaster under the microscope.
"Thrombosis is common" Yeah just when you think the lady is getting better there are all these clotting problems. We had to use a local herbal remedy to scoop up the free radicals that were leading to the something something factor that was causing the clotting. (I had to learn all this stuff but how quickly you forget the details.) And once we had the clotting the only blood thinner we had access to was aspirin. This is a nasty nasty little bugger. Much better to prepare in advance so you don't let it get a foothold in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI had to leave the house in a great hurry and go to the other end of the state. I forgot to pack my anti-viral stash. I could feel cold symptoms coming on but not quite taking hold the whole time I was away. So I had a sense of the fear other people have with regards to this evil little engineered critter.
Not this time. Tomorrow when I travel far afield I'm taking an example of everything in the whole stash.
"But no, Adam hates the idea of people being told to wear masks outside, so that's what's important."
ReplyDeleteI think the mask helps. But it doesn't stop there. The virus then gets into the body where it has to be scooped up by macrophages, then it gets to the cell, then gets inside the cell, then it multiplies and bursts out of the cell, then it can make its way out of the body.
At every stage you can set up a barrier to the virus. Not just at the mouth and nose stage. So if not wearing a mask is being irresponsible then failing to set up these other barriers is also irresponsible. Since you cannot spread the virus until it gets into your cell, multiplies, then explodes out of your cell.
I think I'm responsible even when I don't wear a mask. The infection starts from the cell and moves outward. Not from the nose and mouth. These aren't the focal point. The virus multiplies only in the cell. Thats the focal point.
when is there no health purpose?
ReplyDeleteDunno. Seems every other state and territory were happy to go with ADF services, as was the federal government. It’s not as if the Victorian opposition had anything to do with such decisions - they were effectively shut out - and anyway, it’s the prerogative of opposition to change their minds about this stuff in order to make themselves more electable. Though the opposition may be chided for being a tad hypocritical, the entirety of the fault lies with the government.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, they’ve been dragging out a lot of ‘Evil Dan’ photos lately.