James Doogue

If I catch a cold or flu I won't need a test to tell me I'm not well and should stay home. If this pandemic has taught me anything it is that personal decisions and personal hygiene has the greatest impact on the spread of disease.

Even with Omicron being rife most people who think they need to be tested and have a RAT produce a negative result. But the continued unnecessary scare campaign about Covid-19 has people getting tested at the slightest sniffle.

We don't know exactly how many RATs are being done, because only positive tests are reported. But it's estimated that only about 1 in 100,000 RATs test positive.

Lots of occupations are required to do RATs daily, some weekly. In one article the ABC claimed various pharmacy groups, warehouses and retailers, were selling 4.75 million RATs a week to private companies and individuals. Federal and state governments have already supplied 210 million RATs to public hospitals, testing clinics and the federal and state public service authorities and schools in January and February.

Assuming Government authorities are providing supplies to cover peak needs say 3 months in advance, and wholesalers are sticking 2 month's supply in advance, then a very conservative guestimate is that between 5 and 10 million RATs are being done in Australia each week.

In most states it is compulsory to report all positive RAT results. If you have symptoms, most states provide RAT kits for up to 5 tests spaced out to check when you are clear.

In some circumstances you are required to have a PCR test. States are averaging about 560,000 PCR tests per week with just 4.3% returning a positive result currently.

From the 5.5m - 10.5m Covid-19 tests currently carried out weekly, (multiple times on many people), only about 140,000 tests are positive. Which is 1.3% - 2.5%.

Who knows how many asymptomatic people aren't tested. Or people who feel a little off, who don't bother getting tested but would be Covid-19 positive?

I know quite a few people who only knew they had Covid-19 from a routine close contact or obligatory occupational Covid-19 test.

Some have gone on to develop typical cold and flu symptoms, some have had no systems, and some complain of lethargy or fatigue. The latter group may just be spending too much time watching TV as they are forced to isolate.

We've now had 3.17 million cinfirmed cases of covid-19 in Australia. That's about 12.4% of the population. Or 12.4 per 100 people, have had confirmed Covid-19.

We have had just over 5,000 deaths 'with' Covid-19, with a median age of over 83yrs and an average of 2.7 serious co-morbidities.

Most of those cases have occurred in vaccinated people. Clearly the vaccine isn't great at stopping infection.

A very high percentage of the population who are vaccinated, and many unvaccinated people who wind up in hospital or die, have multiple co-morbidities.

It's possible vaccines might help people with serious co-morbidities from becoming hospitalised and dying. But it's very difficult to make the claim that vaccines stop healthy people from becoming hospitalised and dying from Covid-19, because vaccinated or not, healthy people with no comorbidities are not winding up in hospital and dying. That except for rare outliers who may have had an undiagnosed co-morbidity.

The only way the health authorities or media have been able to claim healthy young people can get seriously sick from Covid-19, is if they overlook obesity as a co-morbidity.

We don't have dead bodies stacked in the streets. Currently there are just over 200,000 active cases in Australia. Of those just 2,005 (1%) are hospitalised, with just 150 (0.07%) in ICU.

Australia's health system isn't collapsing, at least any more than it was before Covid-19, given the extra billions of dollars spent in the sector.

In Australia we have had a 99.84% survival rate, with the 0.16% death rate primarily made up of elderly people with serious co-morbidities.

There's absolutely no question that the State Governments over-reacted with harsh Covid restrictions and mandates and/or maintaining them for much longer than justified.

Untold damage has been done to our economy, massive debts incurred, and people's lives and livelihoods destroyed.

The single most important step taken in slowing the spread of the disease and allowing our health system to cope with Covid-19, was taken by the Federal Government when our international borders were closed.

We had leakage of the borders through States mismanaging hotel quarantine.

Vaccines, which were also provided by the federal government, not state government, has probably provided some protection to the part of the population who were always succeptible to covid-19, that is the elderly and medically vulnerable.

It was never necessary to lock down healthy people. All we ever had to do was help the elderly and medically vulnerable to isolate or wear effective PPE. Not the almost totally useless surgical or cloth masks which are still required in many venues.

Thanks to health bureaucrats and State Premiers drunk with power we will be entering the endemic phase of Covid-19 with hundreds of billions in debt, a weaker economy, a more divided society, and lives and livelihoods severely damaged or ruined.

This was done under the guise of 'keeping us safe'. That propaganda message is still being used by some State Premiers. Yet the data shows most people have little to fear from Covid-19. Despite this the scare campaign is sadly still believed by a large part of the public because they've only ever heard the one-sided message from the government and media in lockstep.

Even so, surely even a cocky state premier like Mark McGowan in Western Australia, who claims other states have managed Covid-19 poorly, wouldn't claim the government response to Covid-19 at a state and federal level was perfect?

Surely nearly every section of the community would like to see some things handled differently when another pandemic hits?

This is why we must demand a Royal Commission be held by the federal government into all aspects of the pandemic response.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:08 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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