Friday 27 August 2021

 Introduction

I haven't written on this blog for a while due to other competing interests, but there is so much occurring that I had to at least try and capture some of it.

Covid

The COVID crisis continues unabated in Australia. The Federal and State Governments are desperately relying on the ability of the vaccine to prevent transmission, hospitalisation and deaths. The Federal Government stubbornly clings to the Doherty Report, which the Federal Government claims will allow Australia to live relatively free from 80% vaccination. The State Governments are not so sure. At least one dose of vaccination is now required to enter a number of states in Australia and NSW has just announced additional 'freedoms' for full vaccinated people. Australia, at this stage, seems hell-bent on pursuing the vaccine passport approach to creating the haves and have-nots where it comes to freedoms.

The entire state of NSW is currently in lockdown until at least 10 September 2021 with 1000s of cases a day being reported.

Interestingly, the false positive rate has not been discussed. The false-positive rate is the number of tests that indicate COVID when the person does, in fact, not have covid. It seems that the false positive rate is likely to be around 0.3 - 0.7%. Unfortunately, NSW positive test rate is currently at about 0.6% which is in the range of false positives. Depending on what other testing is being conducted to confirm positive PCR test results, there may be 1000's of cases a day in NSW or there may be almost none! Typically, it is very difficult to get any official information on this aspect of the testing.

High School students are now being vaccinated and it is likely that in the near future that ATAGI will recommend vaccination for children as young as 12. 

Two Channel 7 media journalists have been reported as having pericarditis. Again, there is nothing said in the official daily press conferences about adverse side effects nor how frequently or severely they are occurring.

Protests have been occurring in Australia with swift responses from Police including arrests, charges and fines. There appear to be protests around the world, however, it is hardly reported in Australia. The media in Australia, particularly the mainstream (ABC, 7, 9 and 10) seem to be largely censoring anything that does not support their push for ever increasingly strict restrictions.

Afghanistan

The United States and its allies executed a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they failed to evacuate persons at risk and dual citizens prior to withdrawing, nor did they, reportedly, even take their equipment with them, leaving military equipment available for the Taliban who have now taken over Afghanistan.

Overnight, in Australian time, there were terrorist attacks at the main airport. There was credible intelligence leading up to the attacks and Australia had both withdrawn its troops from the country as well as advising people to stay away from the airport prior to the attack. 

US President Biden is claiming that he will hunt down the terrorists. Haven't we been here before, approximately 20 years ago. It will be interesting to see what this looks like. It still seems like Biden is being managed by some other group or entity, the question is who? and how long will it take before they remove Biden and replace him with Harris.

The Rest of the World

Meanwhile, all the rest of the usual events are occurring around the world, but it is very difficult to find much information about them in Australia as our media seems to be very selectively reporting only minimal reports on anything not related to the domestic covid crisis. So other articles will have to wait for another blog post.