Doctor and activist
25/04/2020
US Sanctions will worsen virus effects in South America. The US does not like the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela. The fact that it is called after Simon Bolivar, who achieved independence of many South American countries gives away the orientation of the government, and is a Socialist government, which nationalised the Oil company and has […]
25/04/2020
25 March 2020 The trial of Witness K, the whistleblower who told of Australia’s bugging of the East Timorese Cabinet room during the maritime border negotiations has been going on in secret in Canberra. What has Australia come to? This is what we heard Russia did during the Cold War. The government does dirty deals […]
25/04/2020
24 March 2020 I am bombarded by posts warning of the dangers of 5G transmission towers. There were similar dire warnings when microwave ovens came out, so I was inclined to dismiss this, but decided that I should read up. This is the result. We need to put all this into its theoretical framework. Electromagnetic […]
25/04/2020
24 April 2020 It is ANZAC Day again and we are urged as always, ‘Lest We Forget’. It is right and proper to remember the heroism and sacrifice of our troops, and to reflect that we are lucky to have lived our lives without having to risk them in battle. But the distorted perspective of […]
22/04/2020
22 April 2020 Ansett Airlines collapsed in 2002 and nearly took Air NZ, its owner with it. It had 40% of the market at that time. It had had subsidies, but continued to lose money. Virgin Blue, a cheap carrier had just come into the market and may have gone broke had Ansett not collapsed […]
22/04/2020
22 April 2020 The COVID-19 crisis highlights the failure of market mechanisms. The lack of good health care in the USA will highlight how private medicine simply does not deliver the health care people need. The same can be said in Australia, though we still had a bit more public system to build on. But […]
12/04/2020
12 April 2020
Prof John Ashton CBE, Ex-President of UK Faculty of Public Health is extremely critical of the Johnson government’s management of the corona virus epidemic. He says that the idea of herd immunity was an absurd one and amounted to an unlikely theory being preferred to information that had come from overseas, including China, which had initially covered up but once the WHO had come in were forthcoming of their experience in managing the epidemic.
The current problems include lack of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), ventilators and even oxygen are because of the lack of recognising the seriousness of the problem and failure to order equipment and to prepare.
He urges more attention to cleaners and porters who are as important as doctors in nurses in the spread of virus in a hospital environment, but the class system, which lessens their importance, has meant that they have not had enough attention to their PPE and this will lead to spread.
The other aspect is Private Public Partnerships, which have seen the creeping privatisation of health in Britain. He makes the point that there are no longer Community Nurses to trace contacts of the corona virus in the community as private corporations only do what is in their contracts, and are only of peripheral use in a pandemic. He wants a fundamental re-think of the privatisation of health, and a real investigation of who made what decisions when, not merely the outcome of awards to people who were high in the hierarchy, however incompetent their decisions.
Many countries have had health systems inappropriately evolved to deal with an infectious disease pandemic. How well countries have done is measure of the flexibility and responsiveness of their political systems as well as their health systems. His view is the UK has not done well.
We all need to look at our governments in the light of how well they responded to this challenge. The danger is that initial dilatoriness will then be replaced by authoritarianism, imposed on people while they are frightened.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBm7LCeOzHU&feature=emb_rel_end
02/04/2020
2 April 2020 This is now a current question because of a French trial. When a new disease comes there is a rush to test existing substances to see if they work. When AIDS arrived, many drugs were tested. One drug, acyclovir was found to help. Acyclovir had been developed as an anti-leukaemia drug but […]
02/01/2020
The air is better today, with the wind from the north-east, so we spent the day on the roof cleaning out the gutters.
It terrifies me especially climbing up the slope to do the dormer window gutters, which were the most full of tiny pine needles. Zincalum (Colorbond) is much more slippery than the old galvanised iron was as you are reminded with every step. I always resolve that ‘This is the last time I go on a roof’, but it seems resolutions are easier to make than to keep. There is always some circumstance.
I had always suspected that gutter guards were more trouble than they are worth, but today proved it for me. There was a more material under the gutter guard than on top of it, and it made the gutters much harder to clean. Jan was cross, and having had the gutter guard installed at great cost ripped it off to make it easier to clean next time. The object was to have the gutters so clean that no ember can find sustenance there, but obviously a few days of wind before a fire will undermine our efforts. Gutters are dangerous in that they do allow a point for fires to attack houses and my brother says that in Western Australia, gutters are illegal in fire-prone areas. This is logical, but the gutters are needed to collect water, and fortunately we still have enough of that at present- it is very expensive to buy it by the tanker load.
I had not realised how much material is blown up under the corrugations of a roof. Even with a 35 degree slope there are quite a lot of pine needles under both the ridge cap and where the roofing iron meets the valleys. It is hard to get out, so we banged the tin to dislodge them. I am not sure if it is a way that fire gets into the roof space, but it seems logical to try to remove them.
So that is the rant about roofs. Tomorrow I have to teach Jan how to use the chain saw, as the dead tree is still not removed, and persuade her that the pergola needs a more severe pruning. We are going to get a real fire pump, which John says manage a higher flow. Proper fire pumps, give a large volume quickly, so you can turn them off and not waste water. The one we managed to fix yesterday just gives a modest even flow. John was a Fire Education Officer before his accident and was just a little offended that I raced off to be briefed by the fire team that he used to work with, but I assured him that prophets are never recognised in their own homes, so he took it in good part.
Tomorrow will hopefully be a quiet day and I may return to Sydney. My son, Mike and nephew Nick will come down as the relief team as Saturday expects heat and southerly winds, so the danger will be on again. The fire is still 35 km away, so hopefully it will still be OK.
Everything is relative. As we were on the roof a couple drove in with a double horse float. Jan went down and spoke to them. They run a resort with 14 horses. Jan has two of theirs already and they had brought 2 more. He said that he had done a google risk analysis and said that we were the safest farm for horses in the Southern Highlands because of the amount of open space between the trees on the road and the house and stables. He has National Parks on all sides of his resort, which is mainly native eucalypt forest and he has only one access road. He brought food for his horses seeking asylum. The Moss Vale showground will take horses, but is very crowded and the rule is that you have to stay with the animals, which of course mostly means abandoning your property.
Time will tell. It is likely to be a long summer.