The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Get a grip: Swine Flu is not a biblical plague
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The human instinct to arbitrarily select threats about which to panic, with a little help from the media, is proving very costly in the case of Swine Flu. It apparently matters little that Australia’s Chief Medical Officer yesterday made a point of saying how mild Swine Flu was and how there was no need for alarm. We’re spending tens of millions of dollars because politicians — understandably — don’t want to be caught out responding to Swine Flu the way it should be addressed — with the same urgent response with which the nation met the great toe-stubbing epidemic of 1997 — when there’s the faintest chance an Australian could die from it. Australians of course will die from flu this year, as they do every year, but for whatever reasons lurking deep in human psychology — porcine imagery, xenophobia, GFC-induced uncertainty — the far milder Swine Flu is what is sending Australia’s health system into overdrive. And that costs money. Last time I made this point, a number of readers suggested I had no understanding of preventative health. But in the absence of a magic pudding, every dollar spent by a government is a choice with an opportunity cost and we’re spending a lot on swine flu that could be spent on more serious health issues. Yesterday Nicola Roxon announced $43m would be spent buying additional courses of vaccine. That’s the vaccine for normal flu, by the way, not Swine Flu. That doesn’t exist yet and may not exist until after the pandemic is over, but the Government has pre-ordered that too, from CSL. They’re not saying how much that will cost, or what will be done with it if Swine Flu has disappeared by July or August. It’s not Nicola Roxon’s fault. The politician hasn’t been born yet who’d be willing to stand up and say that the public, particularly the media, should stop treating swine flu as a biblical plague when there are lots more serious health matters to be dealt with. The worried well are also rushing GPs with every sniffle, throat tickle and case of “not feeling 100%”. Monthly figures for GP visits are quite volatile, but centre around the 6-7m mark according to Medicare statistics. If there’s a million extra GP visits over April and May because of panic about Swine Flu, that will cost taxpayers $33.5m, based on GPs charging for Level B consultations, which have an MBS fee of $33.55. Then there’s the cost of dislocation caused by school closures and what might become widespread business closures. Right across the country large businesses will be breaking out their risk management plans and wondering who can work from home. This week a rumour has swept Parliament House that a public servant attending Estimates hearings had been sent home sick and tested positive for Swine Flu. Problematically, the relevant department isn’t scheduled to appear at Estimates til next week, but that didn’t stop questions being asked on multiple occasions of Nicola Roxon, who declined to “engage in speculation”. Should Swine Flu spread in Parliament House, of course, there’ll be a push for MPs not to return next week, given the massive influx of people sitting weeks entail and capacity for returning staff and politicians to spread it into every electorate in the country. After this week’s playground antics, that may not be such a bad thing, but there is the business of government to transact quite apart from what happens in Question Time. Our politicians and health chiefs might simply be playing it safe, but that approach comes with its costs and they’re not small and they won’t stop growing for some time. |
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12 Comments
Bernard Keane makes some good points, but the subs missed an opportunity here, to warn readers to ‘Get a grippe’ …
For once Bernard I agree. Today is No Tobacco Day and smoking related illnesses kill about 15,000 to 20,000 Australians every year.
Arriving aged 60 in 2002 the last seven years in this country has been a revelation. I put it down to the lousy education standards as well as a population who seem to think that the government is there to do everything for them.. I haven’t heard anyone yet, politician or medical boss, say the obvious. If Australians lost weight, kept fit and ate a HEALTHY diet their bodies would be in a much better situation to resist the flu . How things will develop when something really dangerous comes over the horizon I cannot conceive. Instead of waiting for the Government to do something … get off your fat A****S and eat and live healthily.
Scientist or not, BK is spot on. But he missed saying how this panic started—with almost certainly false mortality rates in Mexico. The headlines screamed 1000 dead and it took at least a week before a WHO person finally said that the number of confirmed deaths attributable to H1N1 was about 50. Now I am not even sure that 1000 dead in a place the size of Mexico city is exceptional (hmmmm, where is that back of envelope: 30,000 deaths per flu season in the USA, Mexico city is approx. one tenth that size so …about 3,000 dead per season/year, except mortality will assuredly be a lot higher in a developing country). Then there were two other critical bits of data missing: how many of those deaths were people with other serious conditions (in the US, 100% of the three deaths), and out of how many people infected (absolutely impossible to properly measure in that country, only guestimates which I have not seen). This swine flu appears to have higher infectious rates (human to human) so a higher percent of the population is likely to get it this season, but lower, much lower mortality rate. Which makes it less of a risk than any of the usual seasonal flu. Without the Mexican panic this flu would have gone totally unremarked. Unless of course it mutates into a killer variant, however, again this is highly unlikely esp. in Australia but might happen in Asia where it can swap genetic material with bird flu — -the presumed source of all the real killer influenzas in history. (In that case it might even be an advantage for those exposed to this mild version because they might have some resistance to an evolved version of the virus—but much of the population would remain susceptible.)
So yes, this is a kind of outrageously ridiculous over-the-top panic. The possible benefits might be: (1) public education—maybe I am too optimistic but is it possible that the public might learn that influenza is almost impossible to stop, certainly with the current actions; no one knows if even drastic full-catastrophe mode would work (shutting down international travel, everyone gulping Relenza, quarantine anyone with a temperature) (2) institutional learning—it is just possible that this false alarm might have told us/them how to better prepare etc. (3) this is the real-world experiment that should tell us if Relenza/Tamiflu actually slows down a flu epidemic (my guess, without the drastic action, only a little bit).
I have heard real virologists say that it is not clear if the whole killer pandemic influenza like in 1918 is ever likely in today’s world. The reality is that by the time a human-human transmissible flu is up and running, by itself it doesn’t kill many people at all. Most deaths are caused by those secondary infections or pre-existing chronic conditions. In 1918 the world was so different—general health and general nutrition towards the end of a world war was poor and the ability to treat secondary infections, especially pneumonia and TB, was non-existent.
Finally if this absurd panic causes the governments to invest more seriously in influenza research that might be a good outcome.
Agree 100%. The old scare and control paradigm at work here!
If the client follower media headlined “2000 with flu”, we’d barely blink.
If they headlined 100,000 to be infected with flu this winter; again we’d not even notice.
So what is this all about…last time the swine flu hit - 1976, in America one person died of the flu and 26 died from the effects of the vaccination.
Hopefully Australians are starting to wake up to this ruse.
It’s time to get onto the first strike hit on North Korea.
Why don’t the media do something constructive and investigate the health departments of our country and expose the bureaucratic waste. Half the problem is idle minds in the bureaucracy looking for something to pretend to be doing. Like create some hysteria and appear to be “managing” it.
For the media, swine flu is “the gift that keeps on giving”.
It has all the right ingredients:
— a scary mutation of something familiar
— derived from “unclean” critters
— coming from overseas and striking at random
— symptoms easily confused with normal illnesses
— lots of photo opportunities (airports, cruise ships, families in quarantine)
— at least one snippet of “news” every day
Never in the history of journalism can so much b-llshit have been blathered-on about in order to magnify what appears to be a particularly bland form of flu.
It is painfully obvious that thanks so the media-hype/spin/bullsh-t we now have these same people to thank for yet another excuse they gave the Government to embrace yet another futile episode on which to waste our money. How many millions of dollars will have been wasted on this cock and bull exercise?
What all health departments, QANGOS, NGOS, State, and Federal health bodies had to do was to keep their effing mouths closed. They should have allowed people to get contaminated which would then-with a bit of luck-gives us a bit more immunity in the face of conventional flu.
It is more than about time the people who form the ‘information/scare the sh-t out of the poor fuck — s’ media were fined heavily for their pulsating prose. As it is the printed media appears to be on its last legs. Indulging in scare tactics will not win them new friends. I refuse to comment on the visual media beyond saying it is sickening.
This isn’t a beat up, and respectfully disagree with the thrust and comment string.
Like mountaineering you folks are not sufficiently expert at assessing risk. You think the obvious is high risk and the hidden is low risk. Mountaineers at the highest level get killed alot like that walking into avalanche country or similar, and as per scientific studies actually of those folks.
What we have is a low chance of dangerous flu strain. But if those low odds are realised as a result of bad luck then the mass mortality consequence will be very great and unconstrained due to exponential rate of change. Especially if this flu follows a W profile, that is comes in, goes out, comes in worse.
Your complacency is all about the common misconception that we are not actually animals, not intrinsically connected to the bacterial and viral/microscopic eco-system, that THE major evolution pressure on most living things is … their parasite load (another microscopic reality). And then there is stock standard study of population dynamics and with 6.5 billion OVERPOPULATION of which say 4 billion are in poverty the spread of deadly illnesses is a virtual gurantee.
The slow cooker is untreatable TB via HIV incubators into the whole global population. Maybe in our lifetime. If that happens we will want to die before it gets here.
People say it’s just like Y2K - a non event - but that’s the point. Forewarned is fore armed. To think you can’t avoid something without talking about it and planning for it - is frankly a JOKE. Here the Big Media are actually doing their job of informing people, not least the potential for society wide quarantining having a major economic impact from job seekers in job agencies (travellers returning to go on the dole?) to domestic tourism profile to school closures.
A flu expert, not on the govt drip to hose down any panic says you can’t trust the flu ability to mutate. So to say the 1918 scanario can’t happen again is a joke. Sure life is very different now but not for most of the world’s poor.
The only basis I can see for suggesting unworthy moral panic is perhaps a leveraging of the Will Smith ‘I am Legend” (Charlton Heston/Omega Man) factor. A movie scrip mass message. In that case blame Hollywood, not the public health officials or government are to ‘blame’.
By the way on Y2K - anyone who thought that was a joke don’t know anything about the capricious nature of aging Soviet era instrumentation on their THOUSANDS of nuclear devices. Accidents happen but with nukes only once. Apparently we have already come within minutes of a mistaken launch to end civilisation as we know it.
Tom, I cannot help but feel we are arriving at more or less the same conclusions via opposing ends of the animal.
Basically Man has over-populated the planet, whether through lack of animals preying off us, or even perhaps the lascivious joy with which infantile religions urge their heaving millions to pro-create.
With these heaving billions governments are the inheritors of income tax which would have had the Borgia clan on their knees with envy. Armed with these tax billions governments are at the whim of Lobby Groups who by tradition told our leaders how to spend the money. During the later part of the twentieth century there emerged a lobby group so startlingly successful as to render previous groups almost powerless. They are known by their generic name The Press.
Why continue on such a well worn litany? Suffice it to say we can’t go on cheating nature for ever. Unless some huge pandemic does come along to wipe out three-quarters of the world population, the entire world population will breed itself into the ground. Then the wheel of history will begin another cycle.
Swine flu has been a real bonus for MDs and a killer for taxpayers. All year round coughs, temperatures, sniffles and sneezes affecting Aussies for all sorts of reasons are now under scrutiny if sufferers want to travel. Tonight a cousin phoned to tell me seven members of the family need to be cleared by medical authorities to travel to Fiji later in the week. What for? His 55-year-old wife has had bronchitis for 40 years, their two daughters have similar chest complaints as does a grandson and all occasionally display temperature and physical symptoms akin to flu. The GP has suggested the rest of the family present clean medical histories to support immunity to the symptoms potentially displayed by parents and siblings in case Fijian health authorities have concerns. We should all stay at home in isolation until world health authorities make up their mind on how dire this virus really is.
Tom McLoughlin (31 May 2009 at 10:16 am). I knew when I was writing my earlier comment that I was wilfully ignoring a huge slice of the developing world but the harsh reality is that there is absolutely nothing to be done about that. However, China is halfway between developed and first-world, and in fact has the political ability to react in a meaningful way if it wishes. This is significant because many new flu’s originate in China.
All the talk about mutation must be confusing for many people. While the change from say H1N1 to H2N1 might be a simple “mutation” event, strictly the most dangerous event is not actually mutation but the generation of completely new strains by genetic mixing of different strains, usually one from an animal—hence the reason why this kind of “mutation” simply does not happen in developed countries as it requires close mingling between large number of humans and those animals (pigs, fowl), which happens in a massive way in China/Vietnam etc.
Thus, the scary “mutation” that could feasibly result in a 1918-like lethal pandemic CANNOT happen in the current round of infection in Australia by the H1N1 strain; it must come from a completely new infection most likely via Asia. Also any “mutation” does not simultaneously happen across the human population carrying a particular flu strain; it happens as a single event ( a single human though it may require multiple-events in serial human hosts) then spreads out from that point source. Thus it is absolutely true that it is ridiculous to be in a panic about the current flu sweeping through Australia.
The most interesting outcome from this event in Australia (and something we can give the world) will be if tamiflu/relenza can significantly slow the spread. If it does then the world might be able to mount a reasonable and feasible partial defense (such as mandating this treatment for all international travellers to/from the source country) to buy time, for example to develop a vaccine. But I concur with Hudson Birden in today’s Crikey that flu is almost impossible to stop. Only if these drugs perform as well as advertised (and I remain sceptical) or if a universal vaccine is created (not any time soon) we are King Canute and the tide.