Opposites detract

As Peter Malinauskas puts the loyal back in loyal opposition, two contenders emerge for the thankless task of leading the WA Liberals to the March state election.

I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday that riffed off South Australian Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas’s pointedly supportive approach to the state’s brief COVID-19 lockdown, and the explicit distinction he drew between his own approach and that of Michael O’Brien in Victoria. It was noted that Malinauskas clearly believes the general tenor of polling coming out of Victoria, even if the likes of Peta Credlin do not. This also afforded me the opportunity to highlight a clip from September in which Credlin and two Sky-after-dark colleagues brought their formidable perspicacity to bear on the likely impact of Queensland’s hard border policies on the looming state election.

Speaking of the which, both Antony Green and Kevin Bonham offer extremely detailed post-match reports on the Queensland election, in which both try their hand at estimating the statewide two-party preferred: Antony Green coming in at 53.2% for Labor, and Kevin Bonham making it 53.1%. This represents either a 1.8% or 1.9% swing to Labor compared with the 2017 election result of 51.3%, which was barely different from the 2015 result of 51.1%. Annastacia Palaszczuk can now claim the vanishingly rare distinction of having increased her party’s seat share at three successive elections. For further insights into how this came about, JWS Research has published full results of its post-election poll.

Elsewhere, Western Australia’s Liberal Party will today choose a new leader after the resignation on Sunday of Liza Harvey, who came to the job last June but has been politically crippled by COVID-19 — a no-win situation for the Liberals in the best of circumstances, but one made quite a lot worse than it needed to be by a response that was more Michael O’Brien than Peter Malinauskas. The two contenders are Zak Kirkup, 33-year-old member for the all too marginal seat of Dawesville in southern Mandurah, and Bateman MP Dean Nalder, who unsuccessfully challenged Colin Barnett’s leadership six months before the Liberals’ landslide defeat in March 2017. The West Australian reports that Zirkup has it all but stitched up, since he has the support of Harvey as well as key numbers men Peter Collier and Nick Goiran.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,647 comments on “Opposites detract”

Comments Page 33 of 33
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  1. BB

    Intellectual dishonesty is a very common thing. Its the use of often complex means of verbal deception in order to persuade people, without providing a coherent, evidenced argument. Its about the clever construction of language in order to persuade people to a point of view in an emotionally and intellectually manipulative way. You see it all the time in politicians.

    Nick Coatesworth opened his article with

    The current Victorian COVID-19 outbreak has seen renewed calls for Australia to pursue a coronavirus “elimination” strategy. This is surprising. It’s unrealistic ­– and it’s dangerous.

    These are strong words. Leaving aside the fact that the “unrealistic” part was clearly wrong, the bit that grabbed my attention was the “dangerous”. That’s a word you don’t use lightly.

    When I read that months ago, I saw no cogent argument for why elimination is unrealistic. It isn’t and the evidence for that is pretty clear now. And what was even more galling is that his article was itself (ironically) dangerous. If you’re told that that elimination is unrealistic (note how Gladys recycles this word often) then you’ll accept the “risk management” that comes with this particular form of fatalism.

    Now what I’m waiting for is for some enterprising journo to ask Nick “Hey, you said elimination is dangerous.. so the current state in Victoria is in your opinion, dangerous? How?”.

    “Dishonesty” (without the “intellectual” attached to it) is a broader concept and has wider implications. I’m sure Nick is a lovely person. But that didn’t stop him from writing an article intended to persuade a lot of people towards a questionable point of view and doing so in a form of words that is far more about rhetoric than evidence.

  2. poroti:

    Friday, November 27, 2020 at 8:33 pm

    [‘Predigested pap all the way , don’t want to cause any extra brain activity do we ?’]

    Have it your mate, but most on this site have a discipline of sorts. I’m not inclined to look up technical terms of a given discipline, the art of which is to convey one’s point without the “ese”, though I’ve been known to drop a few Latin terms from time to time, only to impart my superiority(?).

  3. Player One @ #1578 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:20 pm

    C@tmomma @ #1578 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 7:19 pm

    mundo @ #1545 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:24 pm

    The Drum just had a discussion about the current state of play re stranded Strayans without using the words Anthony or Albanese once.

    No shit, Sherlock.

    Hmm, could that be because he has nothing to do with getting them home?

    Hmm, by this logic, Albo should just shut up about anything and everything … oh, wait … now I get it! 🙁

    Obviously someone didn’t read the post earlier or tweets about Albo ‘picking up the phone’ to the minister and hey presto stranded Strayans on their way home?
    To which I was going to add, yeah, that’ll be all over the news tonight.
    Which it wasn’t.
    Try and keep up.

  4. Player One @ #1554 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:44 pm

    Spray @ #1538 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:07 pm

    Player One @ #1534 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:04 pm

    I know a lot of people don’t like Shorten. I have mixed feelings about him myself. He got a little too cocky.

    But if Shorten was ALP leader now, people – including Labor people – would not already be conceding the next election to the Tories 🙁

    Seriously? He lost the unlosable election. How on earth could he win the next one?

    Yes, but he almost won the last election, and I think there is a lot of “Buyer’s Remorse” with Morrison, which means he would probably have a good shot at winning the next one – but at least he would fight it!

    Albo seems unable (or unwilling) to do anything at all, so Labor is apparently now expecting to lose the next election as well.

    ‘and I think there is a lot of “Buyer’s Remorse” with Morrison,’
    65% of buyers remorse?

  5. mundo

    One thing we can hope for is that Clive Palmer is removed from the equation before the next Federal election. He may not have been the only factor, but I believe he was the decisive factor. His ad spend, his attacks on Labor and the way he funnelled preferences towards the conservatives made a difference. Mind you I was also disappointed at the way Labor had no effective response to what Palmer was doing. His ads were effectively Liberal Party ads and they were quite predictable. Had Labor had a spending program big enough to get the nations attention, that would have been a difficult thing for a simplistic campaign to counter.

  6. Littlefinger was extremely unpopular. Compare and contrast Clive’s 2019 result with the 2020 QLD result.

    What was the difference ? Littlefinger!

  7. I have had a long-time list of Melbournite folk who should be put onto a ‘Boat To Hell!’

    Leunig was the captain
    Jon Fainne the vice captain
    And many other besides, inc. Paul Kelly ….

    So it got a bit bigger than Melb in the end…. and to that end First Dog is going on the Boat!

    That’s the thing about the Boat, it should hurt a little to put people on it, a comment on yourself a well as middle class Melbourne and Aus. (PS I never regretted making Leunig captain).

    Roy Orbison @ #1596 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 8:36 pm

    First Dog On The Moon is the most boring, irrelevant bit of “satire” on the entire internet. There. I said it.

  8. Hi Firefox,

    Good + Good =//= Evil

    Can you give a translation into words of “Good + Good =//= Evil”

    Any language you care to translate your logical statement into will be fine.

    Are you saying, the proposition:

    “Good + Good =//= Evil”.

    that “=//=” means “is equal to”, “is not equal to”?

    With our me being able to understand your proposition clearly, there can be no effective communication.

  9. Poroti,

    Mavis,

    Heaven forbid anyone have to look up the meaning of a word or, gasp!, encounter new or difficult concepts. Predigested pap all the way , don’t want to cause any extra brain activity do we ?

    That’s not the point.

    Unless you are claiming to have understood exactly what Dr Wombat was trying to say – and you aren’t, are you? Nor is anyone else – then it’s fair to assume that the post was written with the aim of forcing its readers (or those interested enough) to consult a dictionary. That is outright wankery.

    As was Wombat’s response to me that I wanted him to “Please exploin”, (sic) in a clear reference to Pauline Hanson (complete with “red hair” reference). In other words you had to be some kind of demented, uneducated, semi-illiterate, bogan to not understand the post. Ha, ha. Cheap shot.

    The word in question is unlikely to have ever been encountered by anyone here in their lives. And we will probably never see it again, as it is so obscure. So, if you want to understand the post – which probably could have been put far more understandably- then you needed to check a dictionary. It always gets back to wankerism if the poncyest kind.

    A writer should try to avoid forcing his or her readers to have to go back and re-read what they have just read. The writer should never deliberately require their reader to consult a dictionary, in the virtually certain knowledge that a particular key word they have used is an obscure piece of niche jargon. And a writer should never mock a reader for not understanding what the writer is unsuccessfully trying to get across.

  10. Pica,

    +1 to your list of passengers on the Boat To Hell..

    Is there room for

    ● Waleed Aly,
    ● Annabel Crabbe,
    ● Kate McClymont,
    ● Katharine Murphy,
    ● Peter Hartcher,
    ● Wil Anderson,
    ● Todd Sampson,
    ● Kathryn Greiner,
    ● Parnell McGuinness,
    ● Joe Hilderbrand,

    and

    ● Geraldine Doogue?

    Anyone you might think should be on the list but was not on the list above can be more directly disposed of.

  11. When did “Black Friday” become a thing here? That was today, in the USA the Friday sandwiched between Thanksgiving (always a Thursday) and the weekend. A big spending day for department stores.

    Like Halloween and Trumpism, another American import we can do without.

  12. Pica,

    +1 to your list of passengers on the Boat To Hell..

    Is there room for

    ● Waleed Aly,
    ● Annabel Crabbe,
    ● Kate McClymont,
    ● Katharine Murphy,
    ● Peter Hartcher,
    ● Wil Anderson,
    ● Todd Sampson,
    ● Kathryn Greiner,
    ● Parnell McGuinness,
    ● Joe Hilderbrand,

    and

    ● Geraldine Doogue?

    Basically anyone of talent or consequence then. And no room, God knows, for a bitter old loser like Bushfire Bill.

  13. mundo @ #1604 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 9:01 pm

    Player One @ #1557 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:48 pm

    mundo @ #1546 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 6:24 pm

    The Drum just had a discussion about the current state of play re stranded Strayans without using the words Anthony or Albanese once.

    Why would they?

    Because earlier today th…..oh what’s the point…

    If a tree falls in the forest and no-one hears it … does it make a sound?

  14. The deterrent for working class kids is the opportunity cost.

    The solution for that is decent – as opposed to meagre – income support for people while they study. Pretending that education is a consumer good and charging a completely unnecessary fee is not the answer.

    Applying the phrase “middle class welfare” to publicly funded universities is full-blown neoliberal framing. It is not accurate and it is not helpful. If you use that phrase you are just doing conservatives’ work for them. Conservatives want us to be divided and atomised. They don’t want us to see education as a collective good that serves immensely important public purposes.

    If you are happy to help conservatives, have at it, boss. But just don’t claim to be opposing the LNP when you are actually doing their bidding.

  15. 3z says:
    Friday, November 27, 2020 at 8:27 pm

    Fart of the right are the dumb ones, that’s why they get fooled by marketers all the time like Scotty, Boris and Trump.

    They all think buy your education is a quick way to get rich.

  16. Well that was fucking waste of time and money. Victoria couldn’t organise a chook raffle at the moment.

    Whilst it is reasonable to question whether the outbreak could reliability have be prevented, once it happened the Vics did manage to organise a response to that outbreak which has been remarkably effective, and certainly past the level of a chook raffle.

    This medium happily accepts any old crap, and in the case of this comparison to a chook raffle, it has

  17. Pica,

    +1 to your list of passengers on the Boat To Hell..

    Is there room for

    ● Waleed Aly,
    ● Annabel Crabbe,
    ● Kate McClymont,
    ● Katharine Murphy,
    ● Peter Hartcher,
    ● Wil Anderson,
    ● Todd Sampson,
    ● Kathryn Greiner,
    ● Parnell McGuinness,
    ● Joe Hilderbrand,

    and

    ● Geraldine Doogue?

    I would like to add myself to the list.

  18. Well that was fucking waste of time and money. Victoria couldn’t organise a chook raffle at the moment.
    ______________
    Actually I think the Inquiry was a roaring success and achieved its objectives. Not the stated objectives of course, but its real objectives of taking pressure off the Andrews Government at the time of its announcement and then failing to come to any conclusions about who was responsible. Andrews has come out of it all better than I thought he would. I expected him to drop a few points on the back of it all but perhaps Rex is right and we are witnessing a political phenomenon.

  19. Nicholas:

    The deterrent for working class kids is the opportunity cost.

    The solution for that is decent – as opposed to meagre – income support for people while they study. Pretending that education is a consumer good and charging a completely unnecessary fee is not the answer.

    The argument for paying proper income to tertiary students is much stronger than that for zero course fees, principally because “paying people to study” is pro-educational . This is not “income support” but actual income for working at the job of a student, paid at a proper rate for such work. It is also a fact that income is far more significant financially than HECS at 25% of course cost – about 10x more significant, so it’s the main game unless fees are very high.

    Income for undergraduates should be at the optimal level for the educational objective. This should also extend to non-Uni tertiary education (technical)

    If the educational objective is for students to study full time, then that means income support at a rate which does not require students to undertake paid employment – in that scenario being an undergraduate is in work terms the same as being a postgraduate – a full time job paid as a full time job (income support should be a tax exempt stipend at perhaps 80% of the PhD student level)

    If it is decided (on “life experience” grounds) that the educational objective includes work part time at Maccas (1 day a week, say) whilst working full time (or 80%) at tertiary education, then pro-rate everything at that fraction. Don’t support external work more than 20% – students should be expected to be substantially full time, and the government should ensure that that expectation is reasonable.

    Special provision is necessary for students with dependents. Integrity measures are necessary to prevent gaming the system (getting paid to study but not actually doing the work, a form of malingering)

    In contrast to stipend at a proper level, interfering in students’ investment decisions as to which degree to undertake by having zero fees (or excessive fees) is contrary to the educational objective.

  20. Basically anyone of talent or consequence then. And no room, God knows, for a bitter old loser like Bushfire Bill.

    Or a nobody like William Bowe.

    (And I bet you didn’t have a clue what Wombat was on about either).

  21. I like the boat to hell concept. I’d go for:

    Scott Cam
    ScoMo
    Mark Butler
    Karl Stefanovic
    Clive Palmer
    Christian Porter
    Red Symons
    Anna Bligh
    Peter Garrett
    Guy Debelle
    Dan Andrews
    Campbell Newman
    Julian Burnside

  22. EGT

    In the absence of student fees and whilst paying students a living wage, you would expect students to make rational decisions about which course based on the market and their capabilities, right? After all your argument seems to be based on market principles.

    You want to send a “price signal” to students to discourage them from “less useful” subjects (a dubious proposition) then you’ve pretty much said it. Pay them a living wage plus an incentive based on course. Provided its genuinely taken full time.

  23. Bushfire:

    When I read:

    semantically pleomorphic term of art to describe non-congruent concepts from separate domains.

    I assumed the author was having a lend, or perhaps preparing for Monty Python audition

    But he also wrote (immediately after that):

    Apples & Oranges.

    which explained the point completely.

  24. University education is not a public good. University education is, and has forever been, about benefit to the individual.

    Only the most crass neoliberal would demand they get it for free.

    We do not need make University free for the children of neoliberal gentrifiers. They can afford it.

  25. Joffrey,
    Cersei,
    Walder Frey,
    Meryn Trant,
    Illyan Paine,
    The Mountain,
    Bin Chicken,
    Bruz,
    Gilderoy Lockhart,
    The Horsewoman of the apocalypse,
    The Tonser,
    Paul Murray.

  26. Cud Chewer says Friday, November 27, 2020 at 8:46 pm

    The current Victorian COVID-19 outbreak has seen renewed calls for Australia to pursue a coronavirus “elimination” strategy. This is surprising. It’s unrealistic ­– and it’s dangerous.

    These are strong words. Leaving aside the fact that the “unrealistic” part was clearly wrong, the bit that grabbed my attention was the “dangerous”. That’s a word you don’t use lightly.

    The extent of my expertise with infectious diseases appears to be in catching them. Having said that, I get the impression that the term “elimination” has a specific meaning to the experts in this area. So, when you or I use the term “elimination” we mean something different to when rhwombat uses it.

    When I read that months ago, I saw no cogent argument for why elimination is unrealistic. It isn’t and the evidence for that is pretty clear now. And what was even more galling is that his article was itself (ironically) dangerous. If you’re told that that elimination is unrealistic (note how Gladys recycles this word often) then you’ll accept the “risk management” that comes with this particular form of fatalism.

    Even if we have elimination, using our definition, we still have risks to manage. Hopefully, we no longer have any community transmission in Australia (not certain given the results of our sewerage sampling). But, we still have people coming into the country, so we are still vulnerable. We have seen from Victoria and South Australia that this disease can escape from hotel quarantine. We can try to mitigate the risks, but we can’t eliminate them.

    The real questions will be what happens once we start distributing the vaccine? Do we open our borders, but only to those who are vaccinated. Do we wait until the majority of people are vaccinated? How long will immunity last? If we don’t eliminate the disease world wide, what is the risk one of the mutations creates a strain of the virus that is effectively immune to our vaccines, so we’re back to square one?

    For those interested: Complexities of Viral Mutation Rates

  27. EGT

    In the absence of student fees and whilst paying students a living wage, you would expect students to make rational decisions about which course based on the market and their capabilities, right? After all your argument seems to be based on market principles.

    Not quite – I do not expect (or desire) students to make (economically?) “rational” decisions based on some perception about the job market.

    Instead I expect them to take responsibility for their decision to “invest” in a particular degree, and to follow through in acquitting that investment.

    So for example, if students choose a creative writing degree, then I expect them actually to write (a lot) amd to seek to be published in some forum (not necessarily with an attached financial reward). This is not an unreasonable expectation to have of creative writers

    (Where is Jenauthor BTW – I miss her contributions)

    You want to send a “price signal” to students to discourage them from “less useful” subjects (a dubious proposition) then you’ve pretty much said it.

    I would make no assessment of what are “less useful” subjects. One reason for this is that studying a “less useful” subject well (mastery) is in fact (much) “more useful” than studying a “more useful” subject poorly. Another reason is that Unis are incredibly bad at creating degrees that are actually “useful” and they should not be trying to to do this (the “useful” component in Medicine is that delivered in the teaching hospitals; med students are “useless” and even dangerous until they’ve actually treated patients; this should be the model for all professional degrees)

    As an employer I want to employ people who are good at something, not people who are bad at something some Uni has determined is what I need. I can work with the former; for the latter I need to undo the damage t get back to square one.

    I would price all degrees the same (per year?), perhaps with a discount for degrees that relate to work
    for which there is a lack of labour supply.

    Pay them a living wage plus an incentive based on course. Provided its genuinely taken full time.

    Yes to living wage, no to (most) incentives, yes to genuine full time

  28. If you are from a well off family then you are more likely to receive a tertiary education.
    There seems 2 reasons for this – the fees and the support whilst studying.
    If you are not from a well off family then, apart from other obstacles, it is these two items that results in the disparity between well off nd less well off.
    You don’t need to complicate it any more than that.
    So if you remove fees and you provide appropriate financial support while studying, you will see more people going to university and trade schools (we used to call them tech schools – we decided to call them TAFE in an attempt to remove a falsely perceived stigma of tech schools as apposed to Uni).

    So really it comes down to your motivation to educate. Does it come from a desire to improve the individuals development or is it simply to provide fodder for the employers?

    We seem as a society too accepting of the capitalist right wing attitude that the bottom line is all that matters. Do we want a society or a dog eat dog existence as in the US where they cannot even see the benefits of universal health care.

    Free education and free health care should be well within capabilities of a fair and civilized country – in fact it should be the very definition of a successful modern society.

  29. University education is not a public good. University education is, and has forever been, about benefit to the individual.

    Education is one of the principal public goods, and the public good that enables improvement in all others.

    In 1870, the United States bet on universal education, the British Empire (wealthier at that time) bet against it. The result was the United States became the most advanced nation yet seen, whilst the British Empire has faded into into an irrelevant joke.

    Whilst one must ensure that investments are actually educative (and this includes co-investment by adult students), there is never a better public investment than to increase education.

  30. E. G. Theodore @ #1630 Friday, November 27th, 2020 – 11:51 pm

    Bushfire:

    When I read:

    semantically pleomorphic term of art to describe non-congruent concepts from separate domains.

    I assumed the author was having a lend, or perhaps preparing for Monty Python audition

    But he also wrote (immediately after that):

    Apples & Oranges.

    which explained the point completely.

    Thanks EGT. Well picked. Taking the piss in some people is easier with a catheter.

    CC.
    Nick was referring to “Elimination” strategy, practiced locally, as opposed to the alternative – which is effective and sustained suppression policies, including rapid and stringent lockdowns and limitations for which we have no a priori (that means up front for the people who resent challenging words) evidence – as was demonstrated in Victoria and SA (less so after the Ruby Princess). Eliminating viruses for which we do not have effective vaccines usually involves culling – as for mink with COVID-19, or chooks with highly pathogenic avian influenza. We prefer not to try that in human populations.

    COVID-19 is not going to be eliminated (or become endemic or less harmful) within years, however it is going to be suppressed to a point that those of us lucky enough to have sufficient control of our contacts will not need to worry about it all the time. In Australia this will probably be in 2021.

  31. bc

    I’m glad you brought that up. I’ve consistently used the word “elimination” to mean that at this present moment, there are no persons who are infectious, within a stated jurisdiction.

    No more. No less.

    How others use the term is sometimes less clear. Certainly some appear to use the word “elimination” in the “for all time” sense. However (and I did look this up on the WHO web site yonks ago) there is a separate word for that. The word is “eradication” – meaning there are no persons on the planet who are infectious (or who can become infectious). Its not a huge leap of logic to deduce that eradication is permanent.

    I concluded that elimination within Australia was indeed possible back in March. I based that on comments made by Professor Michael Baker, the author of New Zealand’s elimination strategy and on conversations I’d had with people developing early models (which have a direct lineage to those used successfully in Victoria).

    Obviously, if there are still infectious people outside a jurisdiction, then the virus can re-enter. However, I said months ago (and was proven correct) that once you have eliminated the virus within a community, it makes it easier to quickly put a fence around an outbreak that has been introduced. Because you can focus your resources and you know a-priori what the the graph of infections should look like. You’re not being confused by ongoing community infection. This certainly appears to be the case in New Zealand where they stomped on an introduced strain 3 times. Its also quite likely to be the case in South Australia.

    If you want the best possible protection from introduced virus, the best place to start from is elimination. I don’t see how anyone can argue against that.

    I’ll also quibble about the inevitability of re-introducing the virus from outside. An event with a certain probability might well occur. It might not occur. We don’t know. All we know is that its in our interests to implement quarantine of the highest possible standard. And frankly, we haven’t. And part of the reason we haven’t is what I politely called “risk management”. Its another aspect of that disease called managerialism.

    Another question not asked is not “will there be leaks” but rather “will there be leaks within a meaningful time frame?” At some point enough of the Australian community will be vaccinated and vaccination certificates and testing will be par for the course when travelling. At that stage there will be no more quarantine. Virus will almost certainly get in. But when it does, it will escape into pockets and then fizzle. So in this regard I don’t disagree with wombat. But the interesting bit is the time frame. If I were to optimistically declare all of this to happen before next July then we need to see the risk of escape from hotel quarantine as one that occurs within the next 8 months. Its entirely possible there will be a leak. Its also probably that such a leak won’t go very far.

    But its also entirely possible that we’ve gotten better at this and there won’t be a leak. Heck, New Zealand had a good system and thanks to the recent outbreaks, their system got even stronger. Victoria has learned its lessons. South Australia has too. Now its a case of whether the NSW bureaucrats can learn also. It would not surprise me at all if we don’t see a further incursion before the return of international travel.

    I’ve implicitly answered some of your other questions. I believe we will have vaccinated enough of the Australian community by next July to achieve a measure of herd immunity. I could be wrong. Ask me about it next July. I think we shouldn’t be weakening quarantine rules before then. I think that we might, by January, have room for non Australians in our quarantine system. Actually, I think we always have had this capacity if it were not for Scomo and the potato surrendering their responsibility to the states. I wont’ go into other dangers (home quarantine etc) just now.

    As for what happens down the track? I can’t speak about mutations. Always possible. Its also possible another pandemic bug is waiting in the wings. The biggest risk to us (and me and my family) going into 2022 is whether or not the rest of the world gets its act together in terms of vaccination.

    Now, I understand wombat’s concerns about the complex and unpredictable nature of living things and viruses. We just don’t know. What does give me a little hope is that covid has accelerate the science. It might even see us score some wins on other diseases. And its also possible that we’ve gotten so much better that covid will be eradicated. That all depends on whether it finds reservoirs. But it also depends on what kind of place the world is and whether there’s enough good will (and enough money) to do it. Its also possible that we don’t eradicate because, well, because of the fact that the world has a lot of poor people and a lot of broken, dysfunctional countries. What happens then? I’d say that vaccinate or don’t fly is going to be with us for a long time. It may effectively exclude some countries.

    And.. its also possible that that becomes a stable situation. Despite vaccines. Despite testing. Covid pops up now and then. Its going to be one of those annoyances that occasionally pops up and even more occasionally kills someone. But I don’t think its ever going to have a chance to spread en-masse. Not in Australia. Its more likely some other pandemic bug will come along than covid itself will mutate. Covid could even mutate into something less harmful. And our treatments are getting better also.

    Long enough reply? Oops. But I’m glad someone asked. I do get tired of people trying to use “elimination” to also mean “permanent” I don’t use it that way and I don’t think anyone should. Its a statement of the present situation. But having said that, its where we should have been in June. And all the “we must live with the virus” people. Well, history will be their judge. And Gladys is going to have to stop using the word “unrealistic”. Now, that thought gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling 🙂

  32. Nick never explained why he felt that elimination was “dangerous”. That is elimination in the present moment.

    And someone should quite definitely ask him, if this is the case, has the situation in 6 out of 8 states and territories for most of this year been dangerous? Is the situation now dangerous in Melbourne?

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