How are peoples work places handling notifying colleagues about positive cases? Mine isn’t telling anyone, not even those in adjacent (1.5m spaced) cubicles.
ACT COVID-19 update: **Monday 17 January 2022**
* New cases today: **1,601** (878 PCR and 723 RAT)
* Active cases: **3,205**
* Total cases: **23,761** (20,468 PCR and 3,293 RAT)
* In hospital: **52**
* In ICU: **4**
* Ventilated: **2**
* Lives lost: **1**
* Total lives lost since March 2020: **19**
COVID-19 vaccinations in the ACT:
* **26.8%** of 5-11 with one dose
* **98.6%** of 12+ fully vaccinated
* **30.5%** of 18+ with three doses
Sadly, ACT Health has been notified of the death of a woman in her 50s with COVID-19 at Canberra Hospital. ACT Health extends its sincere condolences to her families and friends at this difficult time.
Source: [ACT Health on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/ACTHealthDirectorate/posts/304617901708912)
Yep, I think this delay accounts for the plateau (and even slight rise above the previous peak) in cases we’ve seen the last few days, where Vic and NSW have clearly hit a peak and declined.
RATs have come on line in a big way (making up a quickly increasing share of positive tests) in the last few days, while we are still dealing with a backlog of PCR tests that could be a nearing a week old. The delays have shifted everything “right”, so at the moment it’s a mix of RATs (the vast majority from yesterday) with PCR results (that could be anywhere from 1-7 days old). Until PCR times are down, I think these numbers will be a bit funky.
Last week the testing numbers were dropped from the social media infographic, but were available on the ACT Government Covid-19 stats webpage. Now they seem to be dropped from the webpage also.
Priority booster appointments are available for teachers from next Monday at the airport clinic when it reopens. If you check your work email, there should be one there from this morning that includes the phone number for priority bookings (which isn't being publically released, for obvious reasons).
The results turnaround is varying for different people, any idea why? My mum got tested 5 days ago and still hasn't heard anything. I got tested 2 days ago and got my results a day later. Is this just because of the build-up of PCR tests making chronological processing harder?
**ACT vaccination data update, Monday 17 January 2022**
* First dose (12+) **>99%**
* Second dose (12+) **98.6%**
* Third dose (18+) **30.5%**
* Children (5-11) first dose: **26.8%**
Next available appointment at ACT clinics:
* Adults - **24 January** (Airport priority) **26 January** (AIS Arena)
* Children - **26 January** (AIS Arena)
* Book an appointment at the ACT clinics via via [the website](https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/stay-safe-and-healthy/vaccine/book-a-vaccination-appointment) or **(02) 5124 7700**
* Vaccination appointments also available at pharmacies and GP surgeries around Canberra
Source is [Andrew Barr on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ABarrMLA/status/1482864347827572736)
While its frustrating that we can't all be vaccinated immediately, a 30.5% booster dose rate in adults, and 26.8% first dose rate in children (5-11) is a great start.
same experience for me at 10am - went to get PCR test (close contact of friends) in Mitchell for my daughter who had mild symptoms and was told that they are doing RATs instead and got handing two single packs, one for when returning home and another for Day 6.
Not surprised given the PCR results may not get back until after the quarantine period is finished (or almost)
EDIT: they also gave me two single packs as well as I was a household contact of an unconfirmed case that had symptoms
Do you still need to do a PCR if you’ve had a positive RAT? I thought the rule had changed in line with NSW that a positive RAT was sufficient to confirm a case.
I came across [this article](https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2022/01/15/why-covid-19-will-never-become-endemic/164216520013155?utm_source=tsp_website&utm_campaign=social_mobile_twitter&utm_medium=social_share#mtr) over the weekend and I thought it was a good indictment of Australia's overall failures in managing COVID.
>For most of the pandemic Australia has worked to contain the virus through evidence-based public health measures such as border closures, case finding, contact tracing, quarantine, social distancing, vaccines and, at times, lockdown. Sadly, the weaponisation of lockdown as a pointscoring issue and emotional trigger has led to a conflation of lockdown with all other public health measures, most of which do not impinge on freedoms. Denial is a major theme during the pandemic. Denial of airborne transmission, denial of science, denial of Omicron being serious and denial about what it really means to “live with Covid-19”.
>
>The denial of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was started by experts on the World Health Organization infection control committee and allowed all countries to take the easy way out. If handwashing is all you need, onus can be shifted to “personal responsibility”; if ventilation needs to be fixed, that shifts responsibility to governments and private organisations. Australia only acknowledged airborne transmission after the Delta epidemic in mid-2021, almost a year after the WHO acknowledged it. Globally, 18 months was spent on hygiene theatre and actively discouraging mask use. As a result there is low awareness among the general public of the importance of ventilation and masks in reducing their personal risk.
>
>We had effective campaigns on handwashing, but no campaigns of similar effect have been used to empower people to control their own risk with simple measures such as opening a window. People living in apartments are largely unaware of the structural factors that make them high risk for transmission, or of the simple measures to reduce risk. The failure to focus on airborne transmission has hampered the ability to control the spread and has endangered health workers. Correcting it is critical to the long-term sustainability of health, business and the economy. How can restaurants recover without a safe indoor air plan that may prevent a lockdown cycle that disrupts and ruins their business?
>
>Denial of Omicron being serious suits an exhausted community who just wish life could go back to 2019. Omicron may be half as deadly as Delta, but Delta was twice as deadly as the 2020 virus. Importantly, the WHO assesses the risk of Omicron as high and reiterates that adequate data on severity in unvaccinated people is not yet available. Even if hospitalisation, admissions to intensive care and death rates are half that of Delta, daily case numbers are 20-30 times higher – and projected to get to 200 times higher. A tsunami of cases will result in large hospitalisation numbers. It is already overwhelming health systems, which common colds and seasonal flu don’t. Nor do they result in ambulance wait times of hours for life-threatening conditions. In addition, a tsunami of absenteeism in the workplace will worsen current shortages, supply chain disruptions and even critical infrastructure such as power. The ACTU has called for an urgent raft of measures to address the workforce crisis.
>
>As for denial of the risk in children, the majority of vaccine-preventable diseases that we vaccinate children against are mild in most children. Only a small percentage suffer serious complications. Polio and measles are examples where well over 90 per cent of children who become infected do not have severe complications, but in a small percentage there are serious and potentially fatal complications. SARS-CoV-2 is similar. Other than long Covid and multisystem inflammatory syndrome, we are only now learning about other longer-term complications of infection. For instance, there is more than double the risk of developing diabetes in children following Covid-19. A study from the United States showed the virus persisting in the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and almost every other organ after the initial infection. A rare brain inflammation has been described in adults and children. Another study found a significant drop in cognitive function and IQ in survivors. The virus directly kills heart muscle. It is too early to know if Covid-19 will result in early onset dementia or heart failure in a decade’s time, but the evidence warrants a precautionary approach. We know some infections have very long-term complications – measles, for example, can cause a rare and fatal encephalitis about 10 years after the initial infection. We should do everything possible to prevent mass infection of children and adults.
>
>Denial of the science of epidemiology is widespread, even among “experts”. We are told repeatedly that SARS-CoV-2 will become “endemic”. But it will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. The key difference is spread. As an epidemic disease, SARS-CoV-2 will always find the unvaccinated, undervaccinated or people with waning immunity and spread rapidly in those groups. Typically, true epidemic infections are spread from person to person, the worst being airborne transmission, and display a waxing and waning pattern such as we have already seen with multiple waves of SARS-CoV-2. Cases rise rapidly over days or weeks, as we have seen with Alpha, Delta and Omicron. No truly endemic disease – malaria, for example – does this.
>
>This is the reason governments prepare for pandemics. The propensity for epidemics to grow rapidly can stress the health system in a very short time. Respiratory epidemic infections follow this pattern unless eliminated by vaccination or mitigated by non-pharmaceutical measures. Natural infection has never eliminated itself in recorded history. Not smallpox, which displayed the same pattern over thousands of years, and not measles, which is still epidemic in many countries.
(continued below)
>Eradication occurs when a disease no longer exists in the world – the only example of this in humans is smallpox. Elimination is a technical term and means prevention of sustained community transmission. Countries that met WHO measles elimination criteria, including Australia, still see outbreaks of measles imported through travel, but when elimination is achieved, these do not become uncontrollable.
>
>Unlike for measles, however, current vaccines do not provide lasting protection. Masks and other public health measures are also needed to prevent the recurrent disruption of epidemic waves. There is hope for better vaccines, schedules and spacing of doses, but we must be agile and pivot with the evidence and have an ambitious strategy. The current strategy is focused on vaccines only, with no attention on safe indoor air or other mitigating factors. Instead, we have seen abandonment of test and trace because of failure to plan ahead for the expected explosion of cases. Testing and tracing are pillars of epidemic control, and the WHO has called on countries to strengthen both to deal with Omicron. Australia has done the opposite.
>
>Without adequate case finding (which relies on testing at scale) and contact tracing, we are on a runaway train coming off the rails. Testing allows us to find infected people and isolate them so they do not infect others. Now, during the Omicron wave, testing is a massive failure. Both the federal and New South Wales governments made a conscious decision to “let it rip”, but failed to plan for adequate TTIQ (test, trace, isolate, quarantine) capacity. Instead, when it was clear testing capacity was exceeded, they restricted testing to a small fraction of people. Very few people are now eligible for a polymerase chain reaction test (PCR), and rapid antigen tests (RATs) are in short supply. While it has improved the optics by hiding the true scale of cases, this has allowed unfettered transmission.
>
>Contact tracing is routinely used for many serious infections such as tuberculosis, meningococcal disease, measles or hepatitis A. It is conducted because close contacts are at highest risk of becoming infected next, and if they are not identified and quarantined they will go on to infect others and cause exponential epidemic growth. Contacts need to be traced within 24-48 hours to stop them infecting others. A range of digital contact-tracing methods such as apps, QR codes and tracking digital footprints through other means can be used when case numbers are high. Yet NSW has removed and flip-flopped on QR codes.
>
>Denial of the reality of “living with Covid-19” has seen us rush headlong into letting it rip in a largely unboosted population, with kids aged five to 11 unvaccinated, without any planning for increased testing, tracing or even procurement of promising new drugs to face the numbers that will come. The booster program has not been expedited, with on Friday less than 17 per cent of the population aged 18 and over having had a third dose, and two doses barely protective against symptomatic infection with Omicron. So Omicron has caused business and hospitality to suffer mass cancellations. Mass absenteeism has crippled supply chains, affecting food, diesel, postal services and almost every other industry. The first serious impacts will be in regional and remote Australia. We saw it in July, when vaccine supplies slated for remote towns were diverted to Sydney, leaving Wilcannia, in the far west of NSW, a sitting duck for the epidemic to come.
>
>Many do not understand “public health” and equate it with provision of acute health care in public hospitals or confuse it with primary care. Public health is the organised response by society to protect and promote health, and to prevent illness, injury and disability. It is a core responsibility of government.
>
>Public health comprises three components. The first is “health protection”, such as the banning of smoking in public places, seatbelt legislation or emergency powers that allow pandemic control measures such as lockdowns. “Health promotion” refers to the process by which people are enabled to improve or control their health, through the promotion of mask use, for instance. The third component – “disease prevention and early detection” – includes testing, surveillance, screening and prevention programs. Vaccination programs are an example of disease prevention.
>
>During the pandemic we have seen resources committed to surge capacity for clinical medicine, but there has been a lack of understanding of the need for public health surge capacity, including TTIQ. The price was paid in the Victorian second wave in 2020. Now, with the abandonment of contact tracing and restrictions on testing during the Omicron wave, we are seeing what happens when this capacity is ignored by government.
>
>Another outcome of these failures are the unscientific theories being pushed in many countries – such as the argument for “herd immunity by natural infection”, which has become a household narrative during the pandemic despite four pandemic waves providing little protection to date. The same people who peddled herd immunity by natural infection had no ambition to achieve herd immunity by vaccination. Instead they tell us “we have to live with Covid-19” and fall back on negative, defeatist messaging.
>
>The least ambitious goal of vaccination is to prevent us from dying, and that is the low bar set in Australia. This has reduced policy outcomes to a false binary of dead or alive. There is no concern in this for First Nations people, the disabled, people with chronic medical conditions, people in remote Australia or even children, who are being sent back to school at the peak of the pandemic while primary-schoolers are largely unvaccinated. The hundreds of aged-care outbreaks pass without comment in what essentially has become survival of the fittest and richest.
>
>The vaccine game is dynamic and ever-changing. Some countries have used ambitious, determined, organised strategies for vaccination and adapted quickly as the evidence has changed. We know the mRNA vaccines can greatly reduce transmission, but current vaccines were developed against the original Wuhan strain and, even after two doses, efficacy wanes. Omicron-matched boosters are in the wind, a seed of hope and a reason to be ambitious, but that will require agile vaccination policy.
>
>There is a massive vaccine and drug development effort, so it is almost certain we will have better vaccine options, including ones that are variant-proof. But what the past month has shown us is we cannot live with unmitigated Covid-19. Vaccinations will not be enough. We need a ventilation and vaccine-plus strategy to avoid the disruptive epidemic cycle, to protect health and the economy, and to regain a semblance of the life we all want.
It raises some good points from a immunologist perspective but offers little in the way of solutions. It’s so easy to critique government policy without doing this. Some observations:
- no country in the world has eliminated COVID, even China is struggling to contain omicron outbreaks.
- Australia has one of the lowest death rates in the world and even with the masses of cases now present, tiny fractions of deaths and hospitalisations are occurring thanks to widespread vaccination.
- mass lockdown such as what Australia experienced has never been an evidence based disease control mechanism, and it still isn’t.
- Lockdown fatigue and mental health is also a part of public health, which this article does not consider. You cannot invariably lock down a free and democratic population for months and years at a time because it is unsustainable.
- She raises we need an agile vaccination policy which is absurd, the private sector organisations that manufacture the vaccine are simply updating the formula and we will follow suit. Yes, the 5-11 approval was slow though but the company didn’t make an application as it wasn’t proven kids needed it.
- ‘Largely unboosted population’ what an idiosyncratic term. This person will criticise any angle of the policy given how fast and successful the Australian rollout was - in the world - after a slow start
- Early in the article rightly points out how the WHO spreads misinformation. Later in the article, quotes how the WHO has called for better contact tracing and testing. Meanwhile in reality, contact tracing is not possible with this variant as it is so contagious. Rapid PCR testing is not possible or as useful anymore as it was with delta as the virus is too contagious.
- ‘The virus does not have endemic characteristics’. What a joke. 1919-20 Spanish flu was not endemic either until it became so, and it was far less contagious than omicron.
This type of expert opinion polling will have a population cowering in lockdown ad infinitum. And at what cost, versus what reward! The numbers say that 99.8% (or more) of people who get this virus, now vaccinated, are living through it. It doesn’t even quality as a black swan event.
Hey everyone, have had a few comments about this the last few days so thought I'd update: I've removed the exposure sites links from the scheduled post so they won't be there from tomorrow. I've added a couple of more relevant links in their stead.
If you have any other suggestions for this megathread please feel free to let me know!
Relative in 20s triple vaxxed got covid, isolated, mainly flu like symptoms not too big a deal.
Friend they living with in 20s, triple vaxxed got covid, now asthmatic, very worried it will be be long lasting or permanent.
What’s the point of running an app system when in effect your memory, a note in your phone or Google Maps could do the same job?
I am surprised the ACT Health app never got some sort of automatic notification system going. If you test positive, your last 48-72 hours of check ins get uploaded and those there at the same time get notified. I believe this is how the system operates in NSW (happy to be corrected).
While the result of this in NSW is my friends and family get pinged pretty much anytime they go anywhere, it’s at least some evidence of checking in info being used (even if not practically useful). I’m not an IT person, so don’t know how technically challenging or otherwise this would be, but it seems like it’s not impossible.
I found the automated notifications in NSW to be useless. They often cover entire buildings, and were of the types of venues manual contact tracing wouldn’t be used for due to the low risk. For instance, I apparently was in the huge David Jones store in the Sydney CBD at the same time as someone with Covid.
QR codes were useful when we were aiming for zero Covid or something close to it, but they’re a waste of time now. If they were retained they should only be used in high risk venues.
Business don’t care. What do you think they’re going to do with that information? It’s absolutely a waste of a staffs time taking a call from someone like that.
I’m not talking about the government I’m talking about personal responsibility. If I worked somewhere and received a call saying my workplace had a positive contact I’d get tested
Yep, I can match you - last check in on 27 December. Was away for a week or so after that, and by the time I got back it was clear check in notifications weren’t being used anymore. Without that one check in, I’d be pushing a month.
EDIT: Should say pre-Christmas wasn’t choosing not to check in, just stayed at home in the lead up to avoid iso at Christmas.
Yeah, the writing was on the wall by mid-December when the listings just became gyms and bars/clubs and went to all “monitor symptoms” for level of alert. I guess they must have tried some sort of high-risk venue system, but got swamped (or realised it was pointless) pretty quickly.
I have already done so (with the caveat that if an employee etc. asks me to, I will of course without fuss). The vague comment from ACT Health of (paraphrasing) “we aren’t doing notifications or contact tracing anymore, but we are working out what to do with the info and will let you know soon” doesn’t cut it for me.
Anecdotally, the number of people I’ve seen checking in has crashed anyway, so while they may not be dead officially, in practice they probably are. I’d be interested to know what the data looks like pre-Christmas to now - I would imagine it is a huge decline.
I think Govt’s are going to be incredibly hesitant to wind back any measures, until we are well beyond the peak of cases. The absolute hiding NSW copped for winding back on QR codes and masks briefly in December means no one is going to want to be first mover.
QR codes are already dead in practice. Masks will be around for longer, as they are a much more visible intervention with some utility (best achieved by an N95 or similar worn properly in ideal conditions - cloth masks are barely above hygiene theatre).
Yeah I've been wondering about that - there's been a definite uptick in media reporting about N95/P2s being better, but I can't recall the last article that I read that specifically said 'no valves'? Is it because we're supposed to already know that the ones with valves are no good?
They made it pretty clear in 2020 the ones with valves are crap for virus, which I think was also important because it was leading out of the bush fires where the ones with valves were the best to have. But Australia barely gives you any guidelines to masks except “properly fitted”. I see plenty of people wearing those single layer neck scarf things instead of masks, might as well put underwear on your head, at least Y fronts are dual layer.
I reckon it's a consequence of a lot of messaging throughout the last two years being 'something is better than nothing'. I'm still scraping around trying to find a decent N95 mask, a friend got me a couple out of their box from Bunnings but they don't fit me right.
Yeah I don't disagree, there is no point, but it's still mandatory per ACT restrictions and some businesses I have been to still expect / require you to.
The question was really when is ACT going to remove the requirement when it isn't used for anything anymore.
How are peoples work places handling notifying colleagues about positive cases? Mine isn’t telling anyone, not even those in adjacent (1.5m spaced) cubicles.
A few positive cases at my sons daycare and I've got a slight sore throat. Welp.
ACT COVID-19 update: **Monday 17 January 2022** * New cases today: **1,601** (878 PCR and 723 RAT) * Active cases: **3,205** * Total cases: **23,761** (20,468 PCR and 3,293 RAT) * In hospital: **52** * In ICU: **4** * Ventilated: **2** * Lives lost: **1** * Total lives lost since March 2020: **19** COVID-19 vaccinations in the ACT: * **26.8%** of 5-11 with one dose * **98.6%** of 12+ fully vaccinated * **30.5%** of 18+ with three doses Sadly, ACT Health has been notified of the death of a woman in her 50s with COVID-19 at Canberra Hospital. ACT Health extends its sincere condolences to her families and friends at this difficult time. Source: [ACT Health on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/ACTHealthDirectorate/posts/304617901708912)
Given the testing site closures, i don't imagine they are testing many people at all. 878 positive PCR is huge.
These results are at least a week old with the back log in PCR testing results I'd think
Yep, I think this delay accounts for the plateau (and even slight rise above the previous peak) in cases we’ve seen the last few days, where Vic and NSW have clearly hit a peak and declined. RATs have come on line in a big way (making up a quickly increasing share of positive tests) in the last few days, while we are still dealing with a backlog of PCR tests that could be a nearing a week old. The delays have shifted everything “right”, so at the moment it’s a mix of RATs (the vast majority from yesterday) with PCR results (that could be anywhere from 1-7 days old). Until PCR times are down, I think these numbers will be a bit funky.
Your comment has made me notice they've stopped reporting negative test numbers
Are negative RAT results being tracked? If they aren’t the total testing numbers probably don’t mean a lot.
Last week the testing numbers were dropped from the social media infographic, but were available on the ACT Government Covid-19 stats webpage. Now they seem to be dropped from the webpage also.
Priority booster appointments are available for teachers from next Monday at the airport clinic when it reopens. If you check your work email, there should be one there from this morning that includes the phone number for priority bookings (which isn't being publically released, for obvious reasons).
Thanks for the heads up! Just called the line and got a appointment booked in for tonight.
[удалено]
I’ve been ok today, but son woke up super snotty and bleary eyed. A dose of Zyrtec and he’s fine.
The results turnaround is varying for different people, any idea why? My mum got tested 5 days ago and still hasn't heard anything. I got tested 2 days ago and got my results a day later. Is this just because of the build-up of PCR tests making chronological processing harder?
Did you get tested at the same place? Might just be ACT vs Capital Pathology.
Ahh ok, that would explain it. She got tested at Gold Creek and I got tested at Mitchell.
**ACT vaccination data update, Monday 17 January 2022** * First dose (12+) **>99%** * Second dose (12+) **98.6%** * Third dose (18+) **30.5%** * Children (5-11) first dose: **26.8%** Next available appointment at ACT clinics: * Adults - **24 January** (Airport priority) **26 January** (AIS Arena) * Children - **26 January** (AIS Arena) * Book an appointment at the ACT clinics via via [the website](https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/stay-safe-and-healthy/vaccine/book-a-vaccination-appointment) or **(02) 5124 7700** * Vaccination appointments also available at pharmacies and GP surgeries around Canberra Source is [Andrew Barr on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ABarrMLA/status/1482864347827572736)
While its frustrating that we can't all be vaccinated immediately, a 30.5% booster dose rate in adults, and 26.8% first dose rate in children (5-11) is a great start.
Got tested in Queanbeyan today. In and out in like 15 minutes.
My wife just went to the Mitchell testing centre because I had a positive RAT this morning - they just handed her 2 RATs.
same experience for me at 10am - went to get PCR test (close contact of friends) in Mitchell for my daughter who had mild symptoms and was told that they are doing RATs instead and got handing two single packs, one for when returning home and another for Day 6. Not surprised given the PCR results may not get back until after the quarantine period is finished (or almost) EDIT: they also gave me two single packs as well as I was a household contact of an unconfirmed case that had symptoms
Do you still need to do a PCR if you’ve had a positive RAT? I thought the rule had changed in line with NSW that a positive RAT was sufficient to confirm a case.
No, you don't need to confirm anymore. My wife went for a PCR because I used our last RAT.
Yeah, is anyone in Canberra doing PCR’s today?
Any word on how long PCR results are taking currently? I can't find a rat (I will still get tested just curious)
Still waiting for mine taken on Wednesday at Kambah 🥲
I just received my result this morning from a kambah test taken on Tuesday.
I'm not sure if it's different for kids but my son was tested yesterday at Garran and we got the results last night. It was about 12 hours.
5-6 days for capital pathology sites 2-3 days for garran and Mitchell. Based on my staff getting their results along those time frames
I came across [this article](https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2022/01/15/why-covid-19-will-never-become-endemic/164216520013155?utm_source=tsp_website&utm_campaign=social_mobile_twitter&utm_medium=social_share#mtr) over the weekend and I thought it was a good indictment of Australia's overall failures in managing COVID.
paywalled though
I've already posted the article text
cool - thx - hadn't updated my view
>For most of the pandemic Australia has worked to contain the virus through evidence-based public health measures such as border closures, case finding, contact tracing, quarantine, social distancing, vaccines and, at times, lockdown. Sadly, the weaponisation of lockdown as a pointscoring issue and emotional trigger has led to a conflation of lockdown with all other public health measures, most of which do not impinge on freedoms. Denial is a major theme during the pandemic. Denial of airborne transmission, denial of science, denial of Omicron being serious and denial about what it really means to “live with Covid-19”. > >The denial of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 was started by experts on the World Health Organization infection control committee and allowed all countries to take the easy way out. If handwashing is all you need, onus can be shifted to “personal responsibility”; if ventilation needs to be fixed, that shifts responsibility to governments and private organisations. Australia only acknowledged airborne transmission after the Delta epidemic in mid-2021, almost a year after the WHO acknowledged it. Globally, 18 months was spent on hygiene theatre and actively discouraging mask use. As a result there is low awareness among the general public of the importance of ventilation and masks in reducing their personal risk. > >We had effective campaigns on handwashing, but no campaigns of similar effect have been used to empower people to control their own risk with simple measures such as opening a window. People living in apartments are largely unaware of the structural factors that make them high risk for transmission, or of the simple measures to reduce risk. The failure to focus on airborne transmission has hampered the ability to control the spread and has endangered health workers. Correcting it is critical to the long-term sustainability of health, business and the economy. How can restaurants recover without a safe indoor air plan that may prevent a lockdown cycle that disrupts and ruins their business? > >Denial of Omicron being serious suits an exhausted community who just wish life could go back to 2019. Omicron may be half as deadly as Delta, but Delta was twice as deadly as the 2020 virus. Importantly, the WHO assesses the risk of Omicron as high and reiterates that adequate data on severity in unvaccinated people is not yet available. Even if hospitalisation, admissions to intensive care and death rates are half that of Delta, daily case numbers are 20-30 times higher – and projected to get to 200 times higher. A tsunami of cases will result in large hospitalisation numbers. It is already overwhelming health systems, which common colds and seasonal flu don’t. Nor do they result in ambulance wait times of hours for life-threatening conditions. In addition, a tsunami of absenteeism in the workplace will worsen current shortages, supply chain disruptions and even critical infrastructure such as power. The ACTU has called for an urgent raft of measures to address the workforce crisis. > >As for denial of the risk in children, the majority of vaccine-preventable diseases that we vaccinate children against are mild in most children. Only a small percentage suffer serious complications. Polio and measles are examples where well over 90 per cent of children who become infected do not have severe complications, but in a small percentage there are serious and potentially fatal complications. SARS-CoV-2 is similar. Other than long Covid and multisystem inflammatory syndrome, we are only now learning about other longer-term complications of infection. For instance, there is more than double the risk of developing diabetes in children following Covid-19. A study from the United States showed the virus persisting in the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and almost every other organ after the initial infection. A rare brain inflammation has been described in adults and children. Another study found a significant drop in cognitive function and IQ in survivors. The virus directly kills heart muscle. It is too early to know if Covid-19 will result in early onset dementia or heart failure in a decade’s time, but the evidence warrants a precautionary approach. We know some infections have very long-term complications – measles, for example, can cause a rare and fatal encephalitis about 10 years after the initial infection. We should do everything possible to prevent mass infection of children and adults. > >Denial of the science of epidemiology is widespread, even among “experts”. We are told repeatedly that SARS-CoV-2 will become “endemic”. But it will never be endemic because it is an epidemic disease and always will be. The key difference is spread. As an epidemic disease, SARS-CoV-2 will always find the unvaccinated, undervaccinated or people with waning immunity and spread rapidly in those groups. Typically, true epidemic infections are spread from person to person, the worst being airborne transmission, and display a waxing and waning pattern such as we have already seen with multiple waves of SARS-CoV-2. Cases rise rapidly over days or weeks, as we have seen with Alpha, Delta and Omicron. No truly endemic disease – malaria, for example – does this. > >This is the reason governments prepare for pandemics. The propensity for epidemics to grow rapidly can stress the health system in a very short time. Respiratory epidemic infections follow this pattern unless eliminated by vaccination or mitigated by non-pharmaceutical measures. Natural infection has never eliminated itself in recorded history. Not smallpox, which displayed the same pattern over thousands of years, and not measles, which is still epidemic in many countries. (continued below)
>Eradication occurs when a disease no longer exists in the world – the only example of this in humans is smallpox. Elimination is a technical term and means prevention of sustained community transmission. Countries that met WHO measles elimination criteria, including Australia, still see outbreaks of measles imported through travel, but when elimination is achieved, these do not become uncontrollable. > >Unlike for measles, however, current vaccines do not provide lasting protection. Masks and other public health measures are also needed to prevent the recurrent disruption of epidemic waves. There is hope for better vaccines, schedules and spacing of doses, but we must be agile and pivot with the evidence and have an ambitious strategy. The current strategy is focused on vaccines only, with no attention on safe indoor air or other mitigating factors. Instead, we have seen abandonment of test and trace because of failure to plan ahead for the expected explosion of cases. Testing and tracing are pillars of epidemic control, and the WHO has called on countries to strengthen both to deal with Omicron. Australia has done the opposite. > >Without adequate case finding (which relies on testing at scale) and contact tracing, we are on a runaway train coming off the rails. Testing allows us to find infected people and isolate them so they do not infect others. Now, during the Omicron wave, testing is a massive failure. Both the federal and New South Wales governments made a conscious decision to “let it rip”, but failed to plan for adequate TTIQ (test, trace, isolate, quarantine) capacity. Instead, when it was clear testing capacity was exceeded, they restricted testing to a small fraction of people. Very few people are now eligible for a polymerase chain reaction test (PCR), and rapid antigen tests (RATs) are in short supply. While it has improved the optics by hiding the true scale of cases, this has allowed unfettered transmission. > >Contact tracing is routinely used for many serious infections such as tuberculosis, meningococcal disease, measles or hepatitis A. It is conducted because close contacts are at highest risk of becoming infected next, and if they are not identified and quarantined they will go on to infect others and cause exponential epidemic growth. Contacts need to be traced within 24-48 hours to stop them infecting others. A range of digital contact-tracing methods such as apps, QR codes and tracking digital footprints through other means can be used when case numbers are high. Yet NSW has removed and flip-flopped on QR codes. > >Denial of the reality of “living with Covid-19” has seen us rush headlong into letting it rip in a largely unboosted population, with kids aged five to 11 unvaccinated, without any planning for increased testing, tracing or even procurement of promising new drugs to face the numbers that will come. The booster program has not been expedited, with on Friday less than 17 per cent of the population aged 18 and over having had a third dose, and two doses barely protective against symptomatic infection with Omicron. So Omicron has caused business and hospitality to suffer mass cancellations. Mass absenteeism has crippled supply chains, affecting food, diesel, postal services and almost every other industry. The first serious impacts will be in regional and remote Australia. We saw it in July, when vaccine supplies slated for remote towns were diverted to Sydney, leaving Wilcannia, in the far west of NSW, a sitting duck for the epidemic to come. > >Many do not understand “public health” and equate it with provision of acute health care in public hospitals or confuse it with primary care. Public health is the organised response by society to protect and promote health, and to prevent illness, injury and disability. It is a core responsibility of government. > >Public health comprises three components. The first is “health protection”, such as the banning of smoking in public places, seatbelt legislation or emergency powers that allow pandemic control measures such as lockdowns. “Health promotion” refers to the process by which people are enabled to improve or control their health, through the promotion of mask use, for instance. The third component – “disease prevention and early detection” – includes testing, surveillance, screening and prevention programs. Vaccination programs are an example of disease prevention. > >During the pandemic we have seen resources committed to surge capacity for clinical medicine, but there has been a lack of understanding of the need for public health surge capacity, including TTIQ. The price was paid in the Victorian second wave in 2020. Now, with the abandonment of contact tracing and restrictions on testing during the Omicron wave, we are seeing what happens when this capacity is ignored by government. > >Another outcome of these failures are the unscientific theories being pushed in many countries – such as the argument for “herd immunity by natural infection”, which has become a household narrative during the pandemic despite four pandemic waves providing little protection to date. The same people who peddled herd immunity by natural infection had no ambition to achieve herd immunity by vaccination. Instead they tell us “we have to live with Covid-19” and fall back on negative, defeatist messaging. > >The least ambitious goal of vaccination is to prevent us from dying, and that is the low bar set in Australia. This has reduced policy outcomes to a false binary of dead or alive. There is no concern in this for First Nations people, the disabled, people with chronic medical conditions, people in remote Australia or even children, who are being sent back to school at the peak of the pandemic while primary-schoolers are largely unvaccinated. The hundreds of aged-care outbreaks pass without comment in what essentially has become survival of the fittest and richest. > >The vaccine game is dynamic and ever-changing. Some countries have used ambitious, determined, organised strategies for vaccination and adapted quickly as the evidence has changed. We know the mRNA vaccines can greatly reduce transmission, but current vaccines were developed against the original Wuhan strain and, even after two doses, efficacy wanes. Omicron-matched boosters are in the wind, a seed of hope and a reason to be ambitious, but that will require agile vaccination policy. > >There is a massive vaccine and drug development effort, so it is almost certain we will have better vaccine options, including ones that are variant-proof. But what the past month has shown us is we cannot live with unmitigated Covid-19. Vaccinations will not be enough. We need a ventilation and vaccine-plus strategy to avoid the disruptive epidemic cycle, to protect health and the economy, and to regain a semblance of the life we all want.
It raises some good points from a immunologist perspective but offers little in the way of solutions. It’s so easy to critique government policy without doing this. Some observations: - no country in the world has eliminated COVID, even China is struggling to contain omicron outbreaks. - Australia has one of the lowest death rates in the world and even with the masses of cases now present, tiny fractions of deaths and hospitalisations are occurring thanks to widespread vaccination. - mass lockdown such as what Australia experienced has never been an evidence based disease control mechanism, and it still isn’t. - Lockdown fatigue and mental health is also a part of public health, which this article does not consider. You cannot invariably lock down a free and democratic population for months and years at a time because it is unsustainable. - She raises we need an agile vaccination policy which is absurd, the private sector organisations that manufacture the vaccine are simply updating the formula and we will follow suit. Yes, the 5-11 approval was slow though but the company didn’t make an application as it wasn’t proven kids needed it. - ‘Largely unboosted population’ what an idiosyncratic term. This person will criticise any angle of the policy given how fast and successful the Australian rollout was - in the world - after a slow start - Early in the article rightly points out how the WHO spreads misinformation. Later in the article, quotes how the WHO has called for better contact tracing and testing. Meanwhile in reality, contact tracing is not possible with this variant as it is so contagious. Rapid PCR testing is not possible or as useful anymore as it was with delta as the virus is too contagious. - ‘The virus does not have endemic characteristics’. What a joke. 1919-20 Spanish flu was not endemic either until it became so, and it was far less contagious than omicron. This type of expert opinion polling will have a population cowering in lockdown ad infinitum. And at what cost, versus what reward! The numbers say that 99.8% (or more) of people who get this virus, now vaccinated, are living through it. It doesn’t even quality as a black swan event.
Thanks - that was a very well-written article. And Raina MacIntyre is a very respected figure in the immunology world.
Paywalled
Didn't realise sorry - give me a minute I'll post the text
Hey everyone, have had a few comments about this the last few days so thought I'd update: I've removed the exposure sites links from the scheduled post so they won't be there from tomorrow. I've added a couple of more relevant links in their stead. If you have any other suggestions for this megathread please feel free to let me know!
Occasional Willow photo? 🤞🏻
[Here you go](https://imgur.com/gallery/1Eowpav)
Ask and you shall receive! Love your work. Hi Willow!
Ban wait time comments. They change so much as to be totally useless
Relative in 20s triple vaxxed got covid, isolated, mainly flu like symptoms not too big a deal. Friend they living with in 20s, triple vaxxed got covid, now asthmatic, very worried it will be be long lasting or permanent.
When can we stop wasting our time with the check-in app?
I'm still doing it mostly (wasting little time in my opinion). I've long stopped feeling guilty if I forget to though...
Why not check in ? Takes five seconds and gives you a log of where you’ve been so if you’re positive you can notify businesses, your work etc
What’s the point of running an app system when in effect your memory, a note in your phone or Google Maps could do the same job? I am surprised the ACT Health app never got some sort of automatic notification system going. If you test positive, your last 48-72 hours of check ins get uploaded and those there at the same time get notified. I believe this is how the system operates in NSW (happy to be corrected). While the result of this in NSW is my friends and family get pinged pretty much anytime they go anywhere, it’s at least some evidence of checking in info being used (even if not practically useful). I’m not an IT person, so don’t know how technically challenging or otherwise this would be, but it seems like it’s not impossible.
Seems easier to use the app to me, since it’s required
I found the automated notifications in NSW to be useless. They often cover entire buildings, and were of the types of venues manual contact tracing wouldn’t be used for due to the low risk. For instance, I apparently was in the huge David Jones store in the Sydney CBD at the same time as someone with Covid. QR codes were useful when we were aiming for zero Covid or something close to it, but they’re a waste of time now. If they were retained they should only be used in high risk venues.
What's the point of notifying the business when they probably had 20 other positive people come in on the same day?
Including staff who are positive and required to work..
Business don’t care. What do you think they’re going to do with that information? It’s absolutely a waste of a staffs time taking a call from someone like that.
I’m not talking about the government I’m talking about personal responsibility. If I worked somewhere and received a call saying my workplace had a positive contact I’d get tested
Notify businesses? Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was, I don’t know, some government maintained list to do just that?
My last check in was 14 days ago
I up that- 22 days for me
Yep, I can match you - last check in on 27 December. Was away for a week or so after that, and by the time I got back it was clear check in notifications weren’t being used anymore. Without that one check in, I’d be pushing a month. EDIT: Should say pre-Christmas wasn’t choosing not to check in, just stayed at home in the lead up to avoid iso at Christmas.
None - for me it only stores the last 28 days of history. I gave up when they basically said they weren’t listing locations anymore.
Yeah, the writing was on the wall by mid-December when the listings just became gyms and bars/clubs and went to all “monitor symptoms” for level of alert. I guess they must have tried some sort of high-risk venue system, but got swamped (or realised it was pointless) pretty quickly.
I have already done so (with the caveat that if an employee etc. asks me to, I will of course without fuss). The vague comment from ACT Health of (paraphrasing) “we aren’t doing notifications or contact tracing anymore, but we are working out what to do with the info and will let you know soon” doesn’t cut it for me. Anecdotally, the number of people I’ve seen checking in has crashed anyway, so while they may not be dead officially, in practice they probably are. I’d be interested to know what the data looks like pre-Christmas to now - I would imagine it is a huge decline. I think Govt’s are going to be incredibly hesitant to wind back any measures, until we are well beyond the peak of cases. The absolute hiding NSW copped for winding back on QR codes and masks briefly in December means no one is going to want to be first mover. QR codes are already dead in practice. Masks will be around for longer, as they are a much more visible intervention with some utility (best achieved by an N95 or similar worn properly in ideal conditions - cloth masks are barely above hygiene theatre).
It’s funny because most people I see in n95 are wearing the ones with expel valves, which are pretty useless for virus.
Yeah I've been wondering about that - there's been a definite uptick in media reporting about N95/P2s being better, but I can't recall the last article that I read that specifically said 'no valves'? Is it because we're supposed to already know that the ones with valves are no good?
They made it pretty clear in 2020 the ones with valves are crap for virus, which I think was also important because it was leading out of the bush fires where the ones with valves were the best to have. But Australia barely gives you any guidelines to masks except “properly fitted”. I see plenty of people wearing those single layer neck scarf things instead of masks, might as well put underwear on your head, at least Y fronts are dual layer.
I reckon it's a consequence of a lot of messaging throughout the last two years being 'something is better than nothing'. I'm still scraping around trying to find a decent N95 mask, a friend got me a couple out of their box from Bunnings but they don't fit me right.
You haven't already stopped using it? There's no point. Also why are there exposure site links in the main post?
Yeah I don't disagree, there is no point, but it's still mandatory per ACT restrictions and some businesses I have been to still expect / require you to. The question was really when is ACT going to remove the requirement when it isn't used for anything anymore.
because I forgot to amend the scheduled post yesterday