COVID-19

For four days now my old body is fighting the COVID19. In this I had joined some 360 million fellow human beings. I was reluctant to write on this for many reasons including that the experiences of many others is far more poignant. Two faculty members at the university and two close relatives andseveral friends lost their lives already tp this virus.

Australians, and others, may be interested to compare costs and conditions in Norweigan hotel quarantine, as related and experienced by travel-blogger, Anton - who does some excellent film work with drones, in this and in his other videos, and has an original point of view. This video is highly informative about how Norway manages its oil profits and energy supply.

A Provocate press release dated Thursday 20 January 2022 claims that Australia has just passed two million official Covid cases today (Thursday), with one-in-10 New South Wales and Victorian residents now living with a diagnosis leading into the upcoming Federal Election, according to "the latest VaxEnomicTM Forecaster from C-suite strategy group."

Senior representatives of the five peak general practice organisations, including Presidents and CEOs, met yesterday with Minister for Health Greg Hunt and Minister for Regional Health David Gillespie to discuss the challenges facing general practice and the support needed to ensure GPs can stay open and deliver the essential high quality care Australians need at this time. 

Recently the Serbian President Aleksander Vucic accused Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of a "political witch hunt" and of harassing the world's best tennis player. 

Novak Djokovic's parents also slammed this decision to refuse their son's entry into Victoria for the Australian Tennis Open.

The New South Wales Australia Premier, Dominic Perrottet, a practising Catholic with six children and a seventh on the way, took over from Gladys Berajicklan, a childless, unmarried woman.

Australia will reach one million people officially living with a Covid diagnosis within days – more than lung disease and cancer – with one in every 20 New South Wales and Victorian residents already contracting the virus, the latest VaxEnomicTM Forecaster from C-suite strategy group Provocate reveals. 

There is not much comparison between the situation of the multi-millionaire tennis player Novak Djokovic and his fellow detainees in the Park Hotel, Carlton (in Victoria, Australia.)  Petitioners for the release of the long term detainees and those for Djokovic have coincided over the last da

This is an allegorical poem about some creatures on a farm during a covid-like lockdown.

THE BARNYARD’S ARK by Sandra Garnier

Once upon a time in a land of endless sunrises and sunsets …

There lived a barnyard of animals

Of all descriptions, some large and some small

Some short and some tall.

"I am highly concerned that residents’ rights are being eroded progressively and quietly by the State government through these Planning Reforms under the veil and distraction of a COVID emergency." (Kate Hely, Mayor of Stonningto

During Victoria's lockdown(s), I re-read The Plague, by Albert Camus, which was a prescribed text for me and other Higher School Certificate students (Year 12) way back in 1972. The plot concerns the Algerian town of Oran, which is struck down by bubonic plague in the 1940s. The townsfolk are sealed off and isolated from the outside world, as the plague exacts an increasingly terrible and deadly toll.

Dr Mike Hansen is a lung specialist who works in emergency medicine in the United States. He has been giving reports and updates on Covid 19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Here, he is very clear on Ivermectin dosage and risks, as well as analysing trials to date on its effectiveness. He also gives his opinion about the effectiveness of vaccines from his own experience treating thousands of hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

Candobetter Editor: We have been reluctant to get into any COVID-19 treatment controversies, because we figure it is hard enough dealing with a pandemic, without the additional stress of wondering about unproven treatments. Recent framing of Ivermectin as dangerous horse-medicine, however, is unfair and misleading. Ivermectin has been long been used to treat humans as well as other animals.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) has welcomed the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that show population growth has fallen to near zero (0.1 per cent) despite an apparent baby boom. Yesterday, the ABS released figures for the year ending March 31. Australia’s population grew by 35,700 or 0.14 per cent.

An international taskforce created by a UNSW Science psychology researcher has recommended a set of neurocognitive and mental health questionnaires to harmonise the assessment of patients with long COVID.

I was talking to someone on the phone about something I had to do. She suggested that I go up and stay in The Lodge with Scott Morrison and work on it with him. She checked with "Scott" and got back to me immediately, that it was OK.

It's been a long time since I have seen my friends and family, who live interstate in Australia. There have been unprecedented border closures and, even when we could travel, it's been too risky, because we could pay dearly for our trip with two weeks isolation on our return. No doubt, due to the current COVID-19 situation, there will be those we will not see again.

The mainstream media has given a great deal of coverage to the COVID-19 pandemic - as it should - but interwoven among the stories on poor vaccination rates, conspiracy theories, and the people ignoring quarantine, there is a consistent run of horror stories on the impact of lockdowns, often with a message that we must get back to the pre pandemic "normal" life.

It's interesting how so many sentences and ideas now trail off into the inevitable denouement "… but that didn't happen because of Covid"…"We had to change plans because of Covid." It's as though Sir Humphrey Covid is some VIP, for whom doors must be opened and the seas must part. Or, as though Covid is an unexpected first born baby to a couple in their 40s whose lives are now utterly transformed.

You may have been wondering when and who would point out the silver lining in the current situation, where the interruption of decades of mass immigration has seen employment prospects and living standards for many ordinary people looking good in Australia for the first time in decades.

India is in a terrible state due to the pandemic, a situation largely the result of gross mismanagement by the government. The spread of the virus was difficult to control because of high-density cities that made lock-downs extremely difficult for residents, and safe separation impossible.

Some people assert that only populations vulnerable to severe impact from COVID-19 should be quarantined, but this article shows how difficult this is.

RACGP Acting President Associate Professor Ayman Shenouda said that GPs would be managing the long-term impacts of the virus on some patients for years to come.

Long Term Effects of COVID (“Long-Haulers”)

[English translation of video-dialogue below the video.] In this very interesting video, Frederic Taddei of Interdit d'interdire (Forbidden to censure) states, at the beginning, that he has no intention of evaluating the value of hydroxycloroquine and azithromycine, because he lacks the medical knowledge to do so.

With COVID-19, we should not just be looking at deaths. Deaths may actually be a poor indicator of the damage this virus may do. We should be looking at a continuum, as in: If the proportion of people who contract COVID-19, and who are over 80, die, what happens to those (of any age) who live?

Ivor Cummins is a health writer and biochemical engineer, who calls himself The Fat Emperor. He has drafted a letter for people to send to politicians and the press, querying the seriousness of COVID-19.

Innes Willox, the Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group or AIGroup, aims to bolster the economy by resurrecting the discredited mass-immigration agenda.

The extension of State of Emergency in the other five states does not need legislation, unlike Victoria. Here's information on the relevant laws for comparison, plus actions taken under similar legislation for COVID-19 in states outside Victoria.