Thanks Frank - another great piece - here is the Kenny article for those who could get behind the paywall
Coronavirus: We’re being held hostage by fear and lies
CHRIS KENNY
Police inspect cars at a Border Check Point on Indian Ocean Drive, north of Perth. Picture: Getty
12:00AM JULY 3, 2021514
The nation has Stockholm syndrome. And we have it bad. Pandemic emergency powers, unnecessary lockdowns and restrictions are empowering politicians, bureaucrats and police, who have been stymieing businesses, creating trauma for families and stifling communities. Yet they are cheered on by many of their victims.
Premiers are applauded for confining millions of people to their homes, deliberately fomenting fear and loathing in response to handfuls of infections – or even one – and chief health officers are lionised for telling us not to sing, dance, or drink while standing up. And the people whose lifestyles and livelihoods are being sacrificed cheer loudly – next, they will bob up robbing banks with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Fear is the driver, and it is exploited mercilessly. The premiers and health officers talk about a “beast” of a virus, they say we risk “catastrophic” consequences, the virus could “run wild” and they insist our country is a “tinderbox” waiting to be ignited by Covid-19.
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Media lap it up. They lead bulletins with daily infection counts, without stressing the lack of symptoms in most cases, the low numbers of hospitalised patients, the absence of fatalities, or the fact that virtually all the vulnerable have either had at least their first vaccine jab or opted not to, and that the virus poses only a mild threat to everyone else, even as they, too, are steadily vaccinated.
Polling underscores how this scaremongering has created public perceptions that are dramatically at odds with reality.
Research company True North tested perceptions of the virus this week and found that two-thirds of respondents (67 per cent) believed the Indian, or Delta, virus was both more contagious and more deadly than earlier strains – the reality is that it is more contagious but less deadly (only 26 per cent got that right).
READ MORE:High price PM had to pay to secure his four-phase plan|Some lockdowns are just embarrassing|Australia’s Covid exit plan explained|Make a plan to stay resilient in lockdown
The survey also asked respondents to rate their chances of dying if they were infected with the Delta variant. Older respondents rated the risk slightly higher, and the young a little lower, but the average response was an astonishing 38 per cent.
That is an extreme case fatality rate – approaching that of ebola – which is ironic because my throwaway line on television for more than a year has been to remind people we are not dealing with ebola. Yet this is the intensity of threat that much of the population thinks we face.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Covid-19 case fatality rates are about 3 per cent in Australia, where the virus has been contained, and in developed European and North American countries that have been hit hard. But the chances of a vaccinated elderly person or unvaccinated young adult dying from a Covid-19 infection now is about 1 per cent, or less – but political and media posturing has convinced us that the threat is at least 38 times worse than reality.
No wonder the politicians are being cheered for lockdowns and border closures. No wonder their claims to be keeping us safe are not mocked more widely.
This ill-informed paranoia leads to lockdowns of millions of people on the back of a case or two, as we have seen three times in Perth, as well as in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. At the time of writing more than 12 million Australians were locked down with small clusters of infections around the country amounting to fewer than 350 active cases (including about 100 in hotel quarantine), mainly asymptomatic, or with mild symptoms, and only two patients in critical care beds.
Yet politicians continue to heighten fears to justify their responses and strengthen their standing. Never mind that previous lockdowns were demonstrably superfluous, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said people in his state should be relieved when he resisted the temptation to impose a lockdown this week based on five infections from a known source, in one family, in isolation.
Over the following two days there were zero infections. Health workers were relegated to handling a family dog as a possible positive case.
This is not absurdist theatre, it is real life, and given I write from Adelaide this week I can tell you that people are not gathering in the streets to overthrow such embarrassing, panicky and heartless governance; rather, they acclaim it, and exalt a chief health officer who describes the vaccination threshold at which lockdowns are put behind us as a “minor point” and denies that Covid-19 is only a mild threat to healthy adults outside vulnerable categories.
These people locked down the whole state last November based on some nonsense about a contaminated pizza box yet still the local media hang on their every word as gospel. My questioning of the Premier and his chief health adviser was described by a local radio host as a “verbal assault” – media peddling panic but eschewing scrutiny.
Apart from the politicians and bureaucrats, clearly the main problem is media. Most media, especially free media, provides mainly Chicken Little versions of the pandemic. Large swathes of the population would not even know that esteemed experts have a much more benign and practical assessment of the medical threat, and pragmatic ideas about how to deal with it.
More people need to hear sober analysis from the experts that provide insights in media such as this newspaper or Sky News. This sounds like self-promotion, and in a way it is, but it is an undeniable reality that most media have taken an alarmist position on the pandemic from the start, denying crucial information to audiences and failing to scrutinise over the top responses.
Expert dissenting opinions are what the public needs to hear, such as Perth’s Dr Clay Gollege, an infectious diseases physician who bells the cat on superfluous lockdowns. “I think we’ve become a country that is so plagued by irrational fear, we are so scared of the virus, we’re scared of the vaccines, or at least one of the vaccines anyway, I think we’ve lost perspective on things,” he told me this week.
Gollege said this week’s lockdown in Western Australia was an “over-reaction” that could have been dealt with by contact tracing. “I just think it is not necessary to take draconian measures that we keep on doing,” he said. “We can do it in a more scientific, controlled way and stop being so frightened of a virus that really isn’t killing people, and we can just get on with things.”
Likewise Australian National University pathologist Peter Collignon has been a beacon of cautious and practical analysis for the past 18 months. “The available evidence is that it is not more deadly,” Collignon said of the Delta variant this week, “if you actually look at the figures from the UK it’s got a lower mortality rate.”
He said the statistics might be flattering because the vulnerable are now vaccinated in the UK, but the variant is certainly no more deadly than the original strain. Collignon has long scoffed at so-called elimination strategies.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” he explains, “because we’re surrounded by the virus and it keeps on getting reintroduced to Australia now, so this belief that ‘hey, we can keep it eliminated and go back to normal’, I don’t think is realistic.”
He expects that with continued high vaccinations we can return to something approaching a Covid normal setting once we get through winter.
The Chairwoman of Epidemiology at Deakin University Catherine Bennet, has slammed some overzealous restrictions, such as Queensland authorities refusing to allow a fully vaccinated couple in hotel quarantine to have contact with their newborn baby. “It is that balancing act between compassion and risk that can be managed,” Bennett said, “and it’s a small risk, particularly if they’re vaccinated, that would actually have been a great news story to show what vaccination actually does, rather than keeping these parents away from the baby.”
She has detailed how at least four of this year’s lockdowns, including Melbourne’s over the Valentine’s Day weekend, were superfluous, and even raised doubts about the city’s latest lockdown last month. Bennett now says a national vaccination rate of 50 per cent would be enough to dispense with lockdowns.
Then there is the statistical picture that tries to look at the impact of lockdowns across more than simply infection numbers. “Lockdowns flatten the curve but introduce other risks,” says Melbourne University academic Kim Sawyer. “Lockdowns bring social isolation, increase the risk of suicide, and delay the treatment of other conditions. Lockdowns are not sustainable,” says Sawyer.
“We are forced to trade-off livelihoods for lives, the hopes of the young for those of the old.
“The rights of some are exchanged for the rights of others, and freedom for the greater good … Implicitly we are sacrificing the wellbeing of some for the wellbeing of others. Implicitly we are managing a portfolio of intergenerational wellbeing. Not everyone will be satisfied.”
These have been fascinating and crucial debates for more than a year, but they have not been ventilated by the ABC, on the nightly news, or in premiers’ press conferences. Finally, yesterday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison showed he had been engaged in these debates and, after allowing the national cabinet process to drag him down the lowest common denominator path of the unelected state health officers, he cajoled the states into backing a plan beyond lockdowns.
Canberra to a pizza box says there will be disagreements and setbacks to come. But at least there is some articulation of a pathway beyond paranoia.
Thanks Frank - another great piece - here is the Kenny article for those who could get behind the paywall
Coronavirus: We’re being held hostage by fear and lies
CHRIS KENNY
Police inspect cars at a Border Check Point on Indian Ocean Drive, north of Perth. Picture: Getty
12:00AM JULY 3, 2021514
The nation has Stockholm syndrome. And we have it bad. Pandemic emergency powers, unnecessary lockdowns and restrictions are empowering politicians, bureaucrats and police, who have been stymieing businesses, creating trauma for families and stifling communities. Yet they are cheered on by many of their victims.
Premiers are applauded for confining millions of people to their homes, deliberately fomenting fear and loathing in response to handfuls of infections – or even one – and chief health officers are lionised for telling us not to sing, dance, or drink while standing up. And the people whose lifestyles and livelihoods are being sacrificed cheer loudly – next, they will bob up robbing banks with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Fear is the driver, and it is exploited mercilessly. The premiers and health officers talk about a “beast” of a virus, they say we risk “catastrophic” consequences, the virus could “run wild” and they insist our country is a “tinderbox” waiting to be ignited by Covid-19.
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Media lap it up. They lead bulletins with daily infection counts, without stressing the lack of symptoms in most cases, the low numbers of hospitalised patients, the absence of fatalities, or the fact that virtually all the vulnerable have either had at least their first vaccine jab or opted not to, and that the virus poses only a mild threat to everyone else, even as they, too, are steadily vaccinated.
Polling underscores how this scaremongering has created public perceptions that are dramatically at odds with reality.
Research company True North tested perceptions of the virus this week and found that two-thirds of respondents (67 per cent) believed the Indian, or Delta, virus was both more contagious and more deadly than earlier strains – the reality is that it is more contagious but less deadly (only 26 per cent got that right).
READ MORE:High price PM had to pay to secure his four-phase plan|Some lockdowns are just embarrassing|Australia’s Covid exit plan explained|Make a plan to stay resilient in lockdown
The survey also asked respondents to rate their chances of dying if they were infected with the Delta variant. Older respondents rated the risk slightly higher, and the young a little lower, but the average response was an astonishing 38 per cent.
That is an extreme case fatality rate – approaching that of ebola – which is ironic because my throwaway line on television for more than a year has been to remind people we are not dealing with ebola. Yet this is the intensity of threat that much of the population thinks we face.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Covid-19 case fatality rates are about 3 per cent in Australia, where the virus has been contained, and in developed European and North American countries that have been hit hard. But the chances of a vaccinated elderly person or unvaccinated young adult dying from a Covid-19 infection now is about 1 per cent, or less – but political and media posturing has convinced us that the threat is at least 38 times worse than reality.
No wonder the politicians are being cheered for lockdowns and border closures. No wonder their claims to be keeping us safe are not mocked more widely.
This ill-informed paranoia leads to lockdowns of millions of people on the back of a case or two, as we have seen three times in Perth, as well as in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. At the time of writing more than 12 million Australians were locked down with small clusters of infections around the country amounting to fewer than 350 active cases (including about 100 in hotel quarantine), mainly asymptomatic, or with mild symptoms, and only two patients in critical care beds.
Yet politicians continue to heighten fears to justify their responses and strengthen their standing. Never mind that previous lockdowns were demonstrably superfluous, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said people in his state should be relieved when he resisted the temptation to impose a lockdown this week based on five infections from a known source, in one family, in isolation.
Over the following two days there were zero infections. Health workers were relegated to handling a family dog as a possible positive case.
This is not absurdist theatre, it is real life, and given I write from Adelaide this week I can tell you that people are not gathering in the streets to overthrow such embarrassing, panicky and heartless governance; rather, they acclaim it, and exalt a chief health officer who describes the vaccination threshold at which lockdowns are put behind us as a “minor point” and denies that Covid-19 is only a mild threat to healthy adults outside vulnerable categories.
These people locked down the whole state last November based on some nonsense about a contaminated pizza box yet still the local media hang on their every word as gospel. My questioning of the Premier and his chief health adviser was described by a local radio host as a “verbal assault” – media peddling panic but eschewing scrutiny.
Apart from the politicians and bureaucrats, clearly the main problem is media. Most media, especially free media, provides mainly Chicken Little versions of the pandemic. Large swathes of the population would not even know that esteemed experts have a much more benign and practical assessment of the medical threat, and pragmatic ideas about how to deal with it.
More people need to hear sober analysis from the experts that provide insights in media such as this newspaper or Sky News. This sounds like self-promotion, and in a way it is, but it is an undeniable reality that most media have taken an alarmist position on the pandemic from the start, denying crucial information to audiences and failing to scrutinise over the top responses.
Expert dissenting opinions are what the public needs to hear, such as Perth’s Dr Clay Gollege, an infectious diseases physician who bells the cat on superfluous lockdowns. “I think we’ve become a country that is so plagued by irrational fear, we are so scared of the virus, we’re scared of the vaccines, or at least one of the vaccines anyway, I think we’ve lost perspective on things,” he told me this week.
Gollege said this week’s lockdown in Western Australia was an “over-reaction” that could have been dealt with by contact tracing. “I just think it is not necessary to take draconian measures that we keep on doing,” he said. “We can do it in a more scientific, controlled way and stop being so frightened of a virus that really isn’t killing people, and we can just get on with things.”
Likewise Australian National University pathologist Peter Collignon has been a beacon of cautious and practical analysis for the past 18 months. “The available evidence is that it is not more deadly,” Collignon said of the Delta variant this week, “if you actually look at the figures from the UK it’s got a lower mortality rate.”
Second part of Kenny article:
He said the statistics might be flattering because the vulnerable are now vaccinated in the UK, but the variant is certainly no more deadly than the original strain. Collignon has long scoffed at so-called elimination strategies.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable,” he explains, “because we’re surrounded by the virus and it keeps on getting reintroduced to Australia now, so this belief that ‘hey, we can keep it eliminated and go back to normal’, I don’t think is realistic.”
He expects that with continued high vaccinations we can return to something approaching a Covid normal setting once we get through winter.
The Chairwoman of Epidemiology at Deakin University Catherine Bennet, has slammed some overzealous restrictions, such as Queensland authorities refusing to allow a fully vaccinated couple in hotel quarantine to have contact with their newborn baby. “It is that balancing act between compassion and risk that can be managed,” Bennett said, “and it’s a small risk, particularly if they’re vaccinated, that would actually have been a great news story to show what vaccination actually does, rather than keeping these parents away from the baby.”
She has detailed how at least four of this year’s lockdowns, including Melbourne’s over the Valentine’s Day weekend, were superfluous, and even raised doubts about the city’s latest lockdown last month. Bennett now says a national vaccination rate of 50 per cent would be enough to dispense with lockdowns.
Then there is the statistical picture that tries to look at the impact of lockdowns across more than simply infection numbers. “Lockdowns flatten the curve but introduce other risks,” says Melbourne University academic Kim Sawyer. “Lockdowns bring social isolation, increase the risk of suicide, and delay the treatment of other conditions. Lockdowns are not sustainable,” says Sawyer.
“We are forced to trade-off livelihoods for lives, the hopes of the young for those of the old.
“The rights of some are exchanged for the rights of others, and freedom for the greater good … Implicitly we are sacrificing the wellbeing of some for the wellbeing of others. Implicitly we are managing a portfolio of intergenerational wellbeing. Not everyone will be satisfied.”
These have been fascinating and crucial debates for more than a year, but they have not been ventilated by the ABC, on the nightly news, or in premiers’ press conferences. Finally, yesterday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison showed he had been engaged in these debates and, after allowing the national cabinet process to drag him down the lowest common denominator path of the unelected state health officers, he cajoled the states into backing a plan beyond lockdowns.
Canberra to a pizza box says there will be disagreements and setbacks to come. But at least there is some articulation of a pathway beyond paranoia.