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Category: Health

16/11/2022

BUGA UP Nostalgia

16 November 2022

BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) was most active fro m 1979-1985, and had a big effect on tobacco and smoking. It was also a high point in the demand for advertising to be responsible for the consequences of its use of its products.

In the end, the advertisers accepted a ban on tobacco to keep the threat of stronger regulation at bay. They cut back on sexism a bit and the movement to regulate them died down. So alcohol, gambling annd junk food ads have survived.

Here is a link to some of the TV programs from that time and a little after.

www.youtube.com/user/BUGAUPTube

15/11/2022

Submission to Inquiry into Online Gambling

11 November 2022

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans

The Internet Problem

The issue of online Gambling is similar to many problems in that online gambling involves an area of activity that is largely beyond the direct control of the Australian Parliaments, or indeed any single Parliament. The internet was designed to be anarchic, and so it is.

Programs to deal with gambling regulation are thus ineffective, but the limited terms of reference of this inquiry suggests that governments are not thinking in terms of what they can do at a systemic and global level and are turning instead to a focus on the individual.

Need for an Industry focus rather than an Individual Focus

It must be noted that where creating public health problems benefits an Industry, the response must be against that Industry. Concentrating on individuals while the Industry markets to the world is a very inefficient strategy. To use a historical example, the Tobacco Industry marketed with ubiquitous ads, sponsorships, product placements and many other techniques, yet wanted medical professionals and school education to be the only techniques used against them, framing the issue as personal choice (and responsibility) and ‘smokers v. non-smokers’ requiring courtesy (and no criticism and restrictions).

This is the situation that the Gambling Industry is in now. They demand to be able to market to the world, but want all harm minimisation programs directed at individuals. They know that this is a winning strategy for them.

What the Federal Government Can Do

While it is true that the Australian Federal government has no effective jurisdiction over the internet, and does not licence or control the Hotels, Clubs and Casinos with their poker machines, it has control over Australian media advertising laws and also allocates grants to States. The Federal government could ban all Gambling advertising on electronic media in Australia, and lessen grants to States in proportion to their revenue from Gambling. This would stop the States getting any benefit from gambling revenue, which they rely on quite highly. Western Australia, which is missing out on Gambling revenue would certainly support this.

The ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship has set a precedent for action on public health issues, and there was censorship of certain opinions that were antithetical to a national COVID strategy, so the idea of a ban on Gambling advertising is not new or radical. VicHealth also replaced tobacco advertising with ads for healthy lifestyles and anti-Gambling advertising could replace ads for Gambling. The protest group, BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) in the 1980s used satire of tobacco advertising to sharpen the focus on the Tobacco Industry’s absurd imagery and callous disregard for the lives of their customers. They won hearts for their Robin Hood approach to the entrenched power of the Tobacco Industry and set the world standard for action against tobacco, because compared to their actions, everything else became ‘moderate’. But less recognised than their billboard campaign was the re-framing of the debate from ‘smokers v non-smokers’ and ‘personal choice’, to a ‘Tobacco Industry campaign to make a profit even though it kills people’. This reframing in the public mind allowed governments to stand up to the Tobacco Industry and forced political parties to eschew their donations (at least publicly)..

Gambling Industry Strategy

The Gambling Industry’s ads are very clever, appearing to take the loser’s side to identify with (usually) him and dangle the prospect of a win, though of course this is statistically impossible in the medium term. They are perverting the idea of ‘mateship’ to a group Gambling session with a cheery comparison of who they are backing as they watch sport. This would be very vulnerable to a satiric response, based on a commiseration as to which mug lost the most and a final comment that ‘gamblers are losers’.

Laissez-faire v. Health

The Federal government is responsible for the health of Australians and with an increasing percentage of health problems being related to lifestyle choices, the government cannot simply ‘leave health to the market’. ‘The market’ will sell anything that makes money irrespective of whether it has good health outcomes or not, so leaving the national wellbeing to ‘the market’ is a highly flawed strategy as the government in the end picks up the tab for all problems. The Federal government should unashamedly promote sales and practices that are good for health and discourage things that are not.

Encouraging good personal decisions

Any reasonable management textbook will say that the best way to manage things is to have good decisions made at the lowest possible level within the organisation. Yet gambling advertising uses distractions and dreams of riches that are statistically extremely unlikely to encourage people to gamble, and thus not use their money wisely. If the ads said ‘Do not contribute to superannuation’, ‘Do not save’, Do not worry if you do not have enough money to feed your kids’, there would be a huge outcry. Yet this is the outcome with a large percentage of gambling money received being from people who cannot really afford it. The social problems created take an immense amount of effort from government and NGO charitable organisations to try to rectify them. Often they cannot. This problem is entirely created because of bad decisions on gambling made by people who the Gambling Industry has conned. It is exactly like people taking up smoking. It was portrayed as a bit of harmless pleasure, but when people were hooked, it did them immense harm. Gambling is the same.

Need for Gambling Research

One the other problems of Gambling is that the research is funded by the industry, so its scope and nature are controlled. The amount of harm that it does is poorly quantified, so that there is little evidence for those opposing Gambling to use in political debate. The lack of evidence and the lack of debate suits the Gambling Industry fine- they are more than happy to continue and extend the status quo. Given that the Federal government is a major player in cleaning up the social problems created by the Gambling, it should insist that there be well funded research on the social consequences of Gambling, and the nature of this research should not be determined by the Gambling Industry. The Gambling Industry in Australia is extremely large by world standards, perhaps the largest in the world apart from little enclaves like Monaco or Macau where the money is retained by the State and the social problems are either ignored or assumed to be manifest elsewhere. The social indices of distress are very high in Las Vegas. It might be said that the Gambling Industry in Australia is like the gun lobby in the US; it is almost unchallengeable. This must change, and the Federal government must initiate the change.

Off-line Gambling

It is interesting that the Clubs lobby is under challenge at a state level. The origin of this is uncertain. There has always been a lobby against Gambling, and this may have been helped by the rapid rise in the inflation rate which is straining the family budget, particularly of disadvantaged people, who are the ones most affected by Gambling losses. It is also no doubt helped by the revelations that the Casinos have happily laundered money for organised crime, by-passing their regulatory systems, and being perceived by organised crime as an easier target than foreign jurisdictions. The public also notice that the Casino boards were well stacked with ex-politicians, who were presumed to be there to smooth the political pathway of the Casinos in their dealing with regulation or (even) enforcement. It might be noted that despite the huge amounts of money being laundered and the findings that the Casinos were not fit to have licences, their share prices have only suffered modestly, showing that everyone knows that eventually their licence will be restored and it will be ‘business as usual’. The public is also well aware that the charade, ‘’I had no idea what was happening’ from the politically connected people at the top, merely leads to a resignation or two, but there is no penalty on the individuals. An aboriginal youth can go to gaol for petty theft, but laundering billions for organised crime merely leads a Casino director to a sojourn in the yacht club. While the major political parties have been very reluctant to upset the Hotel and Club industry, as evidenced by the 20 year delay in introducing smoke-free indoor air legislation, the rise of the Teal candidates threatening once safe seats, has pressured the major political parties to take a more ethical stance, and also blunted the financial advantage that support from the pubs and clubs lobby gives to their campaigns.

Online v. Off-line Gambling

But the final possibility for the pressure on the Clubs and Hotels may have come from the Online Gambling lobby. If it is assumed that people who want to gamble will use what is available, there is a real possibility that the lack of poker machines availability in pubs and clubs may lead to an increase in online Gambling. Supporters of the pubs and clubs are quick to point out that the clubs are non-profit and spend their monies enlarging their premises and providing facilities in Australia, as well as paying at least some tax to State governments. If there were a change towards online Gambling this money would go overseas. This overlooks the social context of gambling. Playing a poker machine is quite different from going online, so there is unlikely to be a direct transfer, even if the online experience is made more similar.

Need for Federal Government Action on all Gambling

The lesson for the Federal government, however, is that Gambling must be discouraged at both the pub and club level, and online at the same time. Both have similarly detrimental financial consequences for the players and punters, though the industries are distinct. From the public’s point of view, it is worrying that the terms of reference of this inquiry neglect that issue of Gambling in pubs, clubs and the TAB, as it suggests that these influences have restricted the terms of reference. The regulation of the internet is also a wider problem, which usually comes into focus with the issues of inflammatory hate speech, medical disinformation, defamation or an aspect of pornography. Gambling for money should be in a similar category to these and discussed in a similar context.

Recommendations:

The Federal Government should recognise that the Gambling Industry and its power is the reason that Australia has a worse Gambling problem than almost any other developed country and the the Gambling Industry has a hold on Australian politics as strong as the Gun lobby in the USA, and with a detrimental effect that could be of similar magnitude.
The Federal government should take an unequivocal stand that Gambling is harmful in that it encourages poor financial decision-making which puts a strain on the whole welfare system, Federal, State and NGO.
The Federal government should recognise that all forms of Gambling need to be discouraged, pubs, clubs, TAB, on-course and online and this needs to be an unequivocal campaign, similar to Quit or for the necessity for vaccination.
The campaign against Gambling needs to be in schools and have both a mathematical component as part of statistics, and a more practical part looking at online Gambling, and the social institutions which encourage Gambling.
The campaign against Gambling must involve electronic media advertising bans on TV and all advertising and sponsorship. It must involve active ads against Gambling as well as merely bans on pro-Gambling ads. It should use satire and be prolonged.
The control of online Gambling should be seen in the context of minimising the harm of the ubiquitous internet, and research on how to lessen Gambling should be pursued with endeavours to lessen other social harms such as child sexual exploitation, bullying, vaccine disinformation, tobacco and vaping advertising and disinformation, hate speech, video games that promote violence and defamation.
The Federal government should fund Gambling research so that the social consequences can be quantified and rational decisions made about the cost-benefit to society. Gambling research should not be neglected, limited, financed and controlled by the Gambling Industry as is currently the case.
There must be support for people who have a gambling problem. Such services need to be publicised, and destigmatised, as happened for those with mental illness. However, individual services must not be a substitute for a more systemic industry-focussed approach.
There needs to be a national register of addicted gamblers to allow better exclusion from gambling facilities. If this were comprehensive, it could be used to prevent addicts losing money online with a caveat emptor for those who took the bets from registered addicts. The credit card companies could be recruited not to allow Gambling to such addicts and not to honour Gambling debts incurred by registered addicts.
The Federal government should consider family support for addicted gamblers in the same way that child support is available for at risk families.

About the Author

Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans is medical doctor, who trained in surgery and became a tobacco-control advocate, then an Australian Democrat MLC in the NSW Upper House. He is currently working as a GP.

10/11/2022

Vaping- A WHO Guide

10 November 2022
The World Health Organisation is trying to lessen vaping, which is now reaching epidemic proportions in young people. The attached article clarifies the tobacco Industry’s gobbledygook, though it is fairly soft on their rapacious marketing.

Social media has allowed the tobacco industry to target children and young people without adults noticing, which is different from the tobacco marketing days, when everyone saw the same ads.

The Industry claims that since vaping is less harmful than smoking, it should be legal, and most importantly that they should not have to prove it is safe. They have achieved this latter, and now because this has allowed them to achieve high sales they have made it hard to ban. They also use a lot of kids marketing to kids, as happens with illicit drugs, to make it harder again.
Of course not very many people use vaping to quit, and it now seems that vaping is a gateway to smoking, and a way of not quitting. But do not expect the Industry to do anything except maximise their profits.
The health interests are ponderously getting their resources together, for a battle that will take a generation or two, if tobacco, asbestos, lead etc are any guide.
www.facebook.com/groups/GlobalTobacco/?multi_permalinks=5906974112658360&notif_id=1668001224984823&notif_t=group_activity&ref

16/10/2022

A Robodebt Re-Run? Labor bound by Pre-election contracts?

22 July 2022

It seems that the Liberals are ruling beyond the election, by letting long-term private Centrelink contracts that Labor must honour. With the public service effectively dismantled, all work is done by private contractors, and doing tasks defined in a highly ideological framework. Even if the contracts were rescinded, with whatever penalty clauses the Libs and their contractors had agreed on, the Labor party has insufficient public administration staff capable to do the job of paying people in the short term. So they default to the Liberal contract.

This is about managing Centrelink’s Jobseeker program and ‘debt recovery program’. We have seen how the Liberals used Tax Office records in the Robodebt scandal, with totally unsubstantiated financial demands, then enforced by garnisheeing payments leading to suicides. Behind this sort of activity is a philosophy that those on welfare have only themselves to blame and need to be forced back to work, even when it is obvious that there are fewer jobs than job seekers, so that all that will change is who gets what jobs there are. Labor has to change the philosophy to a more realistic one, then have a serious plan to help those who cannot get jobs. Everyone knows that technology is replacing people in many areas, and jobs are moved offshore in manufacturing or services such as call centres because it is cheaper.

The fact that Labor was dependent on contractors chosen by the Liberals is another feature of privatisation that must be reversed. The Public Service must be rebuilt, and staff given guarantees of long-term employment- like they used to have. They must do their job helping people without the cost constraints of false bonuses that reward them for doing the easy tasks and leaving the hard ones.

www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/robodebt-2-0-labor-moves-to-hit-up-the-unemployed-for-debts-caused-by-mismanagement/?fbclid=IwAR1S4n-kMmQIO70ABi_kStmuTgnqw2zQOE6RgXRz_C31hFJfQ3_0vik_Pio

16/10/2022

Priorities for a Pro-Life US State Senator

3 July 2022
One of my US friends quipped that ‘Republicans are pro-life until it is actually born’. During the birth
process Republicans are against free health care and after the birth they are against welfare, child
support, living wages, equal opportunity in education etc.
The Pro-life senator in Oklahoma, Wendi Sherman, who was the proponent of the abortion ban
there, said, “The purpose [of government] is to protect life, not to provide for citizens.”
The practical corollary of this definition of the role of government is that women are forced to have
children that they did not want and then forced to care for them, when they knew before the birth
that this was too difficult to attempt. One might ask whether this is the same religious view that was
extant when I was young that having a baby was punishment for the sin of having sex. There is no
quote or evidence of a question on this subject, but these sort of fundamentalist views do seem
extant in the US.
I wonder if political hardheads in the Republican party just use abortion to shore up the significant
religious vote. Abortion is painted as a ‘life and death’ issue and so has great weight. Other policies
like foreign wars, tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts to Medicare and welfare programs can sail
through because of this preoccupation/obsession.
www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-03/abortion-rights-oklahoma-roe-v-wade/101167280

20/05/2022

Government protects Bonuses of iCare Executives while workers are dudded.

20 May 2022

Some things make me unspeakably angry.

In the SMH online today the government giving bonuses to executives who presided over iCare cheating injured people out of their payments and treatments.

In my real job, I treat injured workers and motor vehicle accidents. Many wait more than a year for surgery- my longest was 9 years. They are subjected to Independent Medical Examinations that find any other reason than their accident for the cause of their pain. Age, previous injury and arthritis are the commonest ones. It is stated that they are fit for work, when they are obviously not, or that they can get another job when they obviously have no physical or mental capacity to do another job, let alone compete for one.

The ongoing inefficiency of the computer algorithms making decisions without even anyone being responsible was the brainchild of John Nagle, whose other bright idea was to change his KPI (Key Performance Indicator) from getting people back to work, to having them declared fit to be back to work. Nagle resigned after a bad day at a Parliamentary inquiry. All this happened while iCare was under Treasurer Dominic Perrottet.

A friend of mine injured his back lifting on a Friday. He called his GP and visited him on Saturday. He had an MRI scan on Monday which showed a bad disc injury, saw the neurosurgeon on Thursday, had a discectomy on Saturday and went home on Monday. All fixed in 8 days. That is what should happen. It never happens in the WC or CTP system.

The Workers Comp system takes 14 days to accept liability, then has to ‘decide’ if the treatment is appropriate, so weeks go by, and if they dispute it, years. People wait 3 months for the insurer’s medical examination, 6 weeks for the result of it, another couple of months for their specialist examination and a few months for the government medical to settle the dispute. And they blame the injured people for the worse results out of the system, and give bonuses to those who managed to reduce the costs. Given the huge administrative machinery, the clerk, investigators, extra medical examiners, lawyers, dispute resolvers and the rest, all the savings come from not treating people. And those responsible get bonuses, and the government, ever keen not to upset the private sector ring-ins makes sure that they are amply rewarded for this appalling situation. Perrottet, the most recent architect of iCare, had a 2^nd inquiry by McDougall to kick the can down the road, then rose to be premier before his report was out.

Here is the SMH article:

Government votes to protect bonuses for icare executives

By Lucy Cormack

May 20, 2022 — 5.00am

The Perrottet government has protected bonus payments for icare executives, rejecting a bid to ban the practice after revelations millions of dollars in bonuses were handed out while injured workers were underpaid.

The attempt to strip bonuses from executives at the state insurer was contained in Opposition amendments blocked in the lower house this week during a vote to amend the state insurance and care legislation.

Icare has been the subject of intense scrutiny since an investigation by the Herald and ABC TV’s Four Corners in 2020 revealed the underpayment of workers while senior executives claimed almost $4 million in salaries and bonuses.

The insurer, which provides workers’ compensation insurance to 3.6 million public and private sector employees in NSW, has since been forced to repay $38 million to 53,000 injured workers.

The scandal prompted the government to amend legislation governing icare, following a review by former judge Robert McDougall, QC.

More than 200 icare employees are entitled to bonuses, including chief executive officer Richard Harding, who is entitled to an incentive of $411,000.

Opposition treasury spokesman Daniel Mookhey said there was little justification for bonuses while the insurer continued to record billions of dollars in underwriting losses.

“Employers are staring down the barrel of a decade of rising premiums, yet the government is protecting bonuses for top executives at Australia’s most disaster-prone insurer,” Mookhey said.

“We intend to stand up for employers and injured workers. We will fight against lavish bonuses for icare’s top executives in the Legislative Council next week.”

During debate on Wednesday, Minister for the State Insurance Regulatory Authority Victor Dominello said the McDougall Review had not found executive bonuses at icare were excessive.

He said McDougall noted the benefit of allowing icare to set competitive salaries to “attract appropriate talent”

The Herald last year revealed icare hired 18 new executives with potential annual bonuses collectively worth more than $1.2 million, while employee operating costs have increased from $162 million to more than $200 million since 2020.

However, an icare spokesman previously told the Herald no executive bonuses have been paid in the past two years.

Unions NSW boss Mark Morey wrote to NSW MPs last week calling for reforms to address “repeated governance, financial and operational crises”, including ending executive bonuses.

Other proposed reforms included enforcing the same procurement laws that govern the NSW public sector, from which icare is exempt, and appointing an injured worker to the board.

Morey on Thursday said the government had missed an opportunity to “clean up” the state insurer.

“How can the premier justify continued bonuses for highly paid executives when sick and injured workers have been dudded and small businesses are paying increased premiums?” he said.

Other changes sought by the government included additional powers for the State Insurance Regulatory Authority and expanded access to commutation, which allows injured workers to negotiate lump sum payments and exit the system, rather than remain on weekly payments.

However, the government agreed to withdraw its proposal to allow changes to commutations via regulation and reconsider them in future legislation.

Opposition spokeswoman for industrial relations, work, health and safety Sophie Cotsis said she was pleased the government had agreed to consult further on lump sum payments, arguing that regulation should not be used to expand the system.

The State Insurance and Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 will now move to the upper house, where the opposition will make another attempt to ban bonuses.

12/05/2022

What is Needed in Health

12 May 2022

Dr Stephen Duckett was an architect of Medicare and is one of our leading health policy experts. His opinion of what is needed for the health system has a lot of implied criticism of what has been happening, with excessive resources on late-stage treatments rather than prevention and early diagnosis, which comes in Primary Care.He speaks of the dis-cordination, cost shifting and political nature of decision-making.

He does not even mention the need to fix Medicare- saving it is not enough!

What I would do if I were the Minister for Health and Ageing in the next government

13/04/2022

Belated Federal Govt. Action on Vaping

13 April 2022
The Federal government has made statements to try to lessen vaping especially in children. Health Minister, Greg Hunt has made statements and asked for State help on the issue. This is only days before the Federal government goes into ‘Caretaker’ mode before the election, so can have no real effect. Hunt himself is retiring at the election. Perhaps he is doing his best, but he has been undermined by a determined ‘pro-vaping’ group within the Liberal government, which includes Trent Zimmerman, MP for North Sydney. (One might wonder whether the vaping groups are funding the major parties, as they have significant tobacco company ownership. Presumably this will come out eventually- too late to be relevant)
Vaping has been increasing due to the same sort of marketing that launched tobacco, making it exciting, sexy and rebellious. With the internet, social marketing and ‘social influencers able to be paid and target certain groups, this can happen much more under the radar than in former times. As my son commented recently, ‘People believe what their algorithm feeds them’. Older folk who are not fed the ads do not notice what is happening. But now even student correspondents are complaining that there is so much vaping that the school toilets are polluted.
As one Professor of Medicine commented on Radio National Life matters today, ‘We should not be comparing vaping to smoking, we should be comparing it to breathing fresh air’. Exactly.
There were two articles in the SMH this week, ‘Federal bid to stop children vaping’ by Dana Daniel on 7/4/22 and on 9/4/22 (below).
We can only hope that the vaping members lose their seats and that the new Labor government takes a much more active stance. It is late to act on this, but better late than never.

Greg Hunt urges state governments to stop vapes being sold to children

By Dana Daniel April 9 2022

Health Minister Greg Hunt has written to his state counterparts urging them to halt the illicit sale of e-cigarettes to children, but state health ministers want the federal government to stop them at the border.
Community concern is growing about e-cigarettes in schools as increasing numbers of teenagers take up vaping – despite state laws making it illegal to sell the devices to under-18s, regardless of whether they contain nicotine.
“I ask that you take active steps to enforce these laws by taking action against retailers contravening your laws, for example by selling NVPs to school children,” Mr Hunt wrote in the letter, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Under Commonwealth law, it has been illegal to import liquid nicotine, unless prescribed by a GP as a smoking cessation aid, for the past six months.
But e-cigarettes and vape juices containing nicotine remain widely available through a black market both online and in retail stores and schools are grappling with an escalating problem.
Mr Hunt’s letter dated March 18 linked to a report in The Age about a five-year-old boy who was hospitalised with breathing difficulties after vaping with his brother and a seven-year-old classmate at school.
In that case, the vape was not alleged to have been sold to a child by a retailer, with the child’s father telling the ABC it belonged to another student’s mother.
Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley hit back on Friday, telling the Age and Herald: “We need more action from the Commonwealth to strengthen e-cigarette regulation at a national level – and we encourage the Morrison Government to get on with it.”
A spokeswoman for NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, who is recovering from COVID-19, said a national approach was needed to tackle vaping, which the state had formally requested “on multiple occasions, including during feedback on the new National Tobacco Strategy”.
“The federal government previously tried to get a uniform approach on e-cigarettes, but was met with opposition from supporters of vaping,” the spokeswoman said.
Mr Hazzard had already asked NSW Health to “step up its compliance action” before receiving Mr Hunt’s letter.
“Hopefully, it will be possible for federal compliance to be stepped up to minimise the importation of illegal vaping products.”
The federal health department is finalising the National Tobacco Strategy, a draft of which recommends new restrictions on “the marketing, availability and use of all e-cigarette components in Australia, regardless of their nicotine content”.
Australian Border Force Commissioner Michael Outram told a Senate estimates hearing in February that the ABF had not committed any additional resourcing to the detection and seizure of nicotine vaping products since the ban on importation without a prescription began last October.

08/04/2022

COVID19 Viral Shedding is unrelated to Symptom Severity

8 March 2022

A new, rather bold study involving health infected volunteers has shown that the severity of symptoms experienced is unrelated to how much virus is shed. In other words, even someone with minimal symptoms can shed and spread the virus a lot.

The bottom line of this is that people should wear masks to stop them spreading the virus.

Here is a cut-down version of the Nature Medicine article in Australian Doctor.

COVID-19 symptom severity ‘no indication’ of viral shedding

A world-first study offers insight into a key public health question about transmission, researchers say

4th April 2022 By Reuters Health

The world’s first ‘human challenge’ trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to SARS-CoV-2 has found that symptoms have no effect on how likely an infected person is to pass the infection on to others.

The UK study showed that among the 18 participants who developed COVID-19, the severity of symptoms, or whether they displayed symptoms at all, had nothing to do with the viral load in their airways.

Viral load was measured by a focus-forming assay (FFA) and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in the project led by Imperial College London and contract research company Open Orphan.

“There was no correlation between the amount of viral shedding by qPCR or FFA and symptom score,” the researchers said in Nature Medicine.

“Furthermore, our data clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 viral shedding occurs at high levels irrespective of symptom severity, thus explaining the high transmissibility of this infection and emphasising that symptom severity cannot be considered a surrogate for transmission risk in this disease.”

The trial exposed 36 healthy young adults without a history of infection or vaccination to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus and monitored them in a quarantined setting.

Since two volunteers were found to have had antibodies against the virus after all, they were excluded from the analysis.

Slightly more than half of them contracted the virus.

No serious adverse events occurred and the human challenge study model was shown to be safe and well tolerated in healthy young adults, the research team had said earlier this year.

“With virus present at significantly higher titres in the nose than the throat, these data provide clear evidence that emphasises the critical importance of wearing face coverings over the nose as well as the mouth,” the study team wrote.

A key unresolved question for public health had been whether transmission was less likely to occur during asymptomatic or mild infection compared to more severe disease, the researchers said.

More information: Nat Med 2022; 31 Mar.

08/04/2022

Bullshit Jobs

8 April 2022

The idea of bullshit jobs is not new. It comes from a book in 2018.

However, with employment supposedly doing well, largely because we have excluded guest workers due to Covid, it is worth looking at how many jobs are actually needed.

Everyone needs something to do and a reasonable income to live on. The status of having a job relates generally to its perceived income, though there is some ‘doing good’ status associated with jobs like nursing despite their being chronically underpaid.

But technology replacing people has not brought the expected benefits because there seems no plan to spread the benefits evenly, or look at whether what is being done has any social utility. Many jobs that need doing are not done. Many people who want to work cannot, yet much energy and money is spent doing useless things.

I waste about 80% of my time as I treat Workers Comp and CTP injuries. About 20% of my time is deciding what treatment is needed, and about 80% filling in paperwork or writing reports to try to get the treatments paid for. On the other side there are a phalanx of clerks trying not to pay and to transfer the costs elsewhere. (i.e. to Private Health Insurance, Medicare or the patient themselves). Many doctors and lawyers also strive mightily in this unproductive area. The bottom line is that while the overheads of Medicare are about 4.5%, the overheads of CTP are close to 50%,; i.e half the money goes in processing or disputing claims or in profits for the companies indulging in this nonsense. And since many patients often cannot get the treatment or suffer long delays because of their efforts, it is a really bad use of human energy.

Someone needs to look hard at what we do and where the benefits go. Assuming that ‘the market’ will fix it is about as sensible as saying that ‘God’ will fix it, and is usually espoused with the same uncritical zeal.

Here is Wikipedia summary of the book:

In Bullshit Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to “bullshit jobs”: “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”[1] While these jobs can offer good compensation and ample free time, Graeber holds that the pointlessness of the work grates at their humanity and creates a “profound psychological violence”.[1]

The author contends that more than half of societal work is pointless, both large parts of some jobs and, as he describes, five types of entirely pointless jobs:

flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.[2][1]

Graeber argues that these jobs are largely in the private sector despite the idea that market competition would root out such inefficiencies. In companies, he concludes that the rise of service sector jobs owes less to economic need than to “managerial feudalism”, in which employers need underlings in order to feel important and maintain competitive status and power.[1][2] In society, he credits the Puritan-capitalist work ethic for making the labor of capitalism into religious duty: that workers did not reap advances in productivity as a reduced workday because, as a societal norm, they believe that work determines their self-worth, even as they find that work pointless. Graeber describes this cycle as “profound psychological violence”[2] and “a scar across our collective soul”.[3] Graeber suggests that one of the challenges to confronting our feelings about bullshit jobs is a lack of a behavioral script in much the same way that people are unsure of how to feel if they are the object of unrequited love. In turn, rather than correcting this system, Graeber writes, individuals attack those whose jobs are innately fulfilling.[3]

Graeber holds that work as a source of virtue is a recent idea, that work was disdained by the aristocracy in classical times, but inverted as virtuous through then-radical philosophers like John Locke. The Puritan idea of virtue through suffering justified the toil of the working classes as noble.[2] And so, Graeber continues, bullshit jobs justify contemporary patterns of living: that the pains of dull work are suitable justification for the ability to fulfill consumer desires, and that fulfilling those desires is indeed the reward for suffering through pointless work. Accordingly, over time, the prosperity extracted from technological advances has been reinvested into industry and consumer growth for its own sake rather than the purchase of additional leisure time from work.[1] Bullshit jobs also serve political ends, in which political parties are more concerned about having jobs than whether the jobs are fulfilling. In addition, he contends, populations occupied with busy work have less time to revolt.[3]

As a potential solution, Graeber suggests universal basic income, a livable benefit paid to all, without qualification, which would let people work at their leisure.[2] The author credits a natural human work cycle of cramming and slacking as the most productive way to work, as farmers, fishers, warriors, and novelists vary in the rigor of work based on the need for productivity, not the standard working hours, which can appear arbitrary when compared to cycles of productivity. Graeber contends that time not spent pursuing pointless work could instead be spent pursuing creative activities.[1]