Month: August 2020

Modest Expectations – The Falangist Tear

There is an interesting reaction to Premier Andrews. Victoria has been a gigantic COVID-19 stuff up – in Australian terms. There is a group of well-heeled Victorians that has been discomforted by him. Andrews generally has been popular but has not acted in the conventional manner in which politicians are expected to behave.

John Brumby, his ALP predecessor, was an Old Melburnian, a product of Melbourne Grammar School and he showed it! Brumby was abrasive as his predecessor Steve Bracks was genial. Although also ALP, Bracks found that Melbourne conservatism fitted him well; he a well worn sports jacket and moleskins metaphor after those tumultuous years of Jeff Kennett’s brattishness.

After all, the first things the Melburnian, rather than those who live in Melbourne, will ask you is where did you go to school. School is such an important stigma in the life of a Melburnian. After all, I am a three generation Melburnian – but without the ultimate stigma, namely to be a member of the eponymously named Club. But of the Cricket Club, I plead guilty, although I did ask forgiveness by conforming to the Biblical utterance: “Greater love hath no man but to lay down his Lady’s Ticket for his wife.” Yes, a full member had one Lady’s ticket; and I even remember there was a time when there were members of the Cricket Club who had two Lady’s tickets – one for the mistress presumably.

However, Daniel Andrews is refreshingly different – a country boy with an outer Melbourne constituency, accused of being beholden to the Unions and hence to those who live in Melbourne and Victoria – but not beholden to the Melburnians.

Perhaps it is true and that allegiance with its factional arithmetic has left him with a mess of incompetents holding ministerial portfolios.

I met Daniel Andrews when he was a young politician first appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Health. He was so deferential for a politician to someone who, after all, was a substantial nothing; he even gave me his mobile phone number. I never followed it up. Later, when he was Health Minister, he appointed me to a Committee as his Ministerial representative, but at a distance and with a friendly acknowledgement – and with no emolument, as Gough was used to say: “What is the emolument, comrade?”

However, I have only focused on Andrews’ performance since the COVID-19 catastrophe. It is not until it is in your own yard that you realise the consequences; long gone are the happy scenes of politicians washing their hands on ABC TV.

Here you have a group of people who have spread the Virus throughout Melbourne and, to an extent regionally, along a trail of incompetence. Years of promoting sycophants, yes people, drongos, paying them peanuts with an occasional cashew in all walks of life, are coming home to roost.

So day-by-day Andrews is doing penance – taking on the sins of his Ministry and his Bureaucracy. He has gone beyond the 40 days and 40 nights. After all, he has been accused of being a control freak. Ergo, it is all his fault. Perhaps he has created the intellectual and social Sahara beneath him, but fortunately with a few notable oases that I have mentioned before.

Andrews may see vindication in his actions. The number of those with the Virus will reduce; the Canberra Pharisees may see what he is doing and stop the blame game and start to mimic him.

We should be thinking about what is an acceptable level of sufferers – elimination does not work: see New Zealand and Queensland. The States that are running the elimination line if they want to send their people spare should look at the Melbourne lesson. Australia has to derive a strategy along the lines of NSW, which has a very efficient contact tracing system to quench the outbreaks while they remain small.

In the long term social distancing will not work unless it is enforced by the spectre of those exposed being put into “bespoke” quarantine facilities. You cannot close down the country for political gain – health yes; political whim no – and ultimately no amount of dressing the political in the cloak of health will disguise the fact that approaching elections appear to be influencing states’ lockdown strategies.

Hand hygiene – the sight of sanitisers everywhere will have an effect, but just like those running the traffic lights there will always be those who won’t use them.

Group punishment does not work forever in a democratic society. A masked society – even if temporary and focused, I do not think so. Yet how long should Victoria live in a world of anonymity? Facial expression and unmuffled voice is the essence of humanity. It will eventually wear down even in the most civilised democratic society.

The Ruby Princess, Newmarch and this Victorian disaster should provide a lesson, and whether the remedy is that the Premier has to scapegoat himself each day as Daniel Andrews is doing, so be it.

After the Ruby Princess fiasco, the sackings could have been done, clinically and quickly, because it was an obvious failure of the public health area, because they were well informed. Incompetence. Only recently has the NSW Premier said she was sorry. Her minions have survived, and some seem to have learnt, as judged by their improved performance.

Politicians and the media were dazzled by the Carnival cruise ships’ management over a decade – the media was sucked in despite the clear evidence of its litany of disasters here and elsewhere. Now, anybody for a Ruby Princess experience? Where are those marvelling media who took that glass of sherry, those cocktails, on the shimmering deck of hidden squalor?

Victoria has been different. Public health expertise on offer was ignored. The Ruby Princess had already demonstrated what failure of public health brings. It seemed to have had no effect on Victoria.

In Victoria there was just basic public health ignorance.

Retribution is coming in Victoria, but may Andrews have the strength to stay the course and ensure that Victoria’s disgracefully inadequate public health system is brought to the level that paradoxically NSW has always had due to the previous work of Dr Sue Morey.

Andrews is all that stands between a Victorian society on the brink – a society that will increasingly be impatient for a scapegoat or two. However, nailing Andrews to the Cross is not the solution. He needs ongoing support. The length of this lockdown occurring is a severe imposition, especially when there is loss of income on top of “cabin fever”.

Andrew’s ongoing resilience is the key. He is showing that canniness by appearing to be defeated when absorbing the shock horror of his request for a twelve months emergency extension. He will settle for six months – what he really wanted and give his opponents an apparent win. That will mean he is not the only one who owns the six months extension. It is an old ruse when you are confident in your own skin and you do “ deference in defeat” so well.

What is happening in Victoria is important as a lesson for any government when the Virus escapes into the community and spreads to nursing homes in particular. The Coates Inquiry, if she joins the dots, will be able to accurately chart the remedies. Hopefully Andrews will have stared down the Virus by that time.

Nevertheless, the outbreak of COVID-19 in correctional centres in Queensland is worrying, and its containment will test the Queensland public health arrangements. Again, prisons have been shown to be a hotspot in the USA. Quoting the NYT:

“The number of deaths in state and federal prisons, local jails and immigration detention centers — which stood at 1,002 on Tuesday morning — has increased by about 40 per cent during the past six weeks, according to the database. There have been nearly 160,000 infections among prisoners and guards.

The actual number of deaths is almost certainly higher because jails and prisons perform limited testing on inmates, including many facilities that decline to test prisoners who die after exhibiting symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.

… Prisoners are infected at a rate more than five times the nation’s overall rate. The death rate of inmates is also higher than the national rate — 39 deaths per 100,000 compared to 29 deaths per 100,000.”

Let’s hope that Queensland is spared the disastrous effects of the Virus, in this case being let loose in the correctional system, despite the fact that there may some people in the Southern States with a repressed sense of schadenfreude should the Virus spread in Queensland.

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is always associated with Benjamin Franklin, even though he was well and truly dead by the time it was first published in 1821. The two shared Philadelphia. Moreover, Philadelphia was the capital of the fledging United States between 1790 and 1800. The Saturday Evening Post used the portrait of Benjamin Franklin often, which gave the magazine presence – America without The Saturday Evening Post was unthinkable at the time I grew up.

Not that I grew up in the United States. I did not even go to America until 1971, when the magazine was then in severe decline. Yet I remember The Saturday Evening Post well. My father used to subscribe to it; my mother to the Ladies’ Home Journal, even though there were severe currency restrictions on Australians buying US dollars. The journals were always about two months late, because they came by sea. However, it mattered little because it was, apart from American films and the occasional entertainer and the war brides coming back to see their families, to my parents contact with American lifestyle.

My mother had just one of these “war-bride” friends with whom she regularly corresponded. Nan, her friend, had met and married a US air force officer named Bob Daggett during the War and followed him to America. Our family album was full of pictures of the wedding, where my mother was her matron of honour, a quaint term for a married bridesmaid.

A Norman Rockwell cover

Both of these journals were the mainstay of Middle America. The portraits by Norman Rockwell were the mainstay of the Post covers. Rockwell’s ability to depict life in America as a contemporary tapestry, alternating whimsy with pathos, was extraordinary.

When I use to pore over the magazine as a small boy, before they were thrown out, it was seeing another culture, a far wealthier culture with stuff just not available to Australians at the time. I wished I could paint like Rockwell.

Then the Post went into decline. However before it did, after my mother died in 1956, our subscriptions to these magazines died with her. After all, the arrival of the Ladies Home Journal each month just reinforced my father’s loss and my father had eventually gone to America in 1957, and fulfilled the ambition anyway.

But The Saturday Evening Post still exists – a two monthly publication. The publication is not for the millennials, even though the ubiquitous “Coles spruiker”, Curtis Stone bobs up with recipes for barbecued turkey burgers with homemade pickles and grilled corn on the cob with parsley and garlic brown butter.

The advertisements are for rechargeable hearing aids, plush recliners, the Zoomer wheel chair, betterWoman bladder control tablets. There is a concentration on health and lifestyle in the content but with a very strong nostalgic sense for an America that probably never was.

Yet among the detritus of the most recent issue was one article detailing the decisions of one lady who decided that her ongoing renal dialysis was really too much. The dialysis for this 60 year old lady was accompanied by an increasing number of savage complications. So she broached the subject of stopping the dialysis with her doctor. The author of the article was then a medical student and her report of the exchange between doctor and patient is written in simple direct prose.

“When you stop dialysis, one of the most common things that happens … you can have difficulty breathing… so I will give medicines to help prevent any gasping or difficulty breathing you might have.”

“Good, I don’t … want … to suffocate. I don’t … want pain.”

The doctor quickly re-assured her that kidney failure generally doesn’t cause pain, and pain, and death would arrive only after loss of consciousness.

“Kidney failure,” he told her gently, “could be a merciful way to die.”

I had never seen this type of doctoring before. 

These medical reassurances struck a responsive chord with myself. I don’t want to suffocate; I don’t want to die in pain. Nobody does, but many do.

Later on in the article, the author notes the woman did become unconscious three days later, her family encircled the bed, singing and tying balloons on her bed posts, she dying apparently at peace, but those last few minutes – who would know what is happening, but she was not gasping for breath nor grimacing in pain.

This article carries a message that in a world which prides Self above all else, there is this other World of genuine care – a world that you wish to see in every nursing home, every place where the aged are cared for, and not the shemozzle that it is today.

Norman Rockwell ‘Saying Grace’

As of today in the USA, 40 per cent of deaths from the Virus have been elderly people in nursing homes and other residential facilities. 420,000 have been infected; 70,000 have died – but how many without suffocating or in pain? And dying all alone, apart from that life-giving technology which for them had come up short.

Strange how this recent copy of The Saturday Evening Post evokes so much reflection.

July 5, 1969, thus he wrote

A young assistant professor in zoology at the University of California at Berkeley named Richard Dawkins wrote a detailed letter to The Times. It was published on June 5, 1969. I have reproduced it in part because it provides a troubling picture of an America that basically does not seem to have changed. He wrote it at a time when the Vietnam War was at its height, and across the world the previous year there had been an outpouring against the War from young people, particularly those at universities, which had met with fierce resistance from the Authorities.

In 1969 Nixon had recently been elected to the White House, replacing the hapless Johnson. Ronald Reagan was in his Californian Governor’s office in Sacramento. Despite the carnage in Vietnam, the Americans were not winning the War. That was plain, yet Nixon was watching, contemplating, calculating like Kissinger – men whose blood was colder than Lake Baikal – to carpet bomb Vietnam.

Winter ice, Lake Baikal, Russia

Documentaries of the time, which have recently been revived on Australian television, show how much wanton damage had been done and yet how vulnerable the Americans were. There were Vietcong in the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon. Unthinkable.

I remember the time well. I still remember my own involvement, my own reactions, my numbness that had followed the 1966 landslide victory that Holt achieved. Yet I went about my postgraduate study unscathed.

Yet it is somewhat ironic to see a former very conservative Thatcherite Conservative, Michael Portillo, languidly travelling by train through Vietnam 40 years after the War, enjoying its hospitality, enjoying the sights of what is a beautiful country, no signs of war, and “Don’t mention the War”.

The renewal and the resilience of these Vietnamese people after such physical destruction of their country contrasts with the mental destruction of America, where the aftermath stills lingers like a toxic cloud, fanned by Trump and his followers.

Vietnam War Memorial, Washington

One thing, which struck me as I read Dawkins’ letter to The Times, is how the seeds of class hostility were ignited. Young working class men drafted to fight and returning from Vietnam were vilified, spat upon by those with Ivy League credentials, who had evaded the draft, one way or the other. Resentment can be transferred from one generation to another. It is a macabre sight to see Trump, a draft dodger, a child of privilege, as the leader of these alienated, xenophobic predominantly white “midnight’s children of the Vietnam War”.

Thus on reading Dawkins I am struck with an uneasy feeling of déjà vu:

“On May 20 Berkeley became the first city in the continental United States to come under military attack from the air. An army helicopter swooped low over the campus spraying the irritant and nauseating CS gas developed for use against the Vietcong. At the same time masked soldiers blocked all but one exit from the plaza, which was the centre of the attack, making dispersal of the terrified crowd slow, and seeming to show that the gas was being used as a punishment rather than as an instrument for rapidly clearing a crowd. In any case the gas drifted all over the campus and the surrounding area, causing the hospital to put at least one respiratory patient into an iron lung, and necessitating the evacuation of children from some schools…

National Guard helicopter spraying tear gas on students and antiwar protesters in Cal’s Sproul Plaza on May 20, 1969

“What is even more ominous than that these things can occur, is that the majority of Americans seem heartily to approve. This was true over the Chicago affair, and Governor Reagan’s soaring popularity in the polls is universally attributed to his “hard line” on campus dissent. It may not be too surprising or even too worrying that the police and military should tend to favour Gestapo tactics for dealing with student rebels. What is really disturbing is that the Governor of the State can markedly improve his chances of re-election by allowing and encouraging such methods.” 

Maybe someone out there with a playbook in hand in the run up to the Presidential election has made the same observation as Dawkins did, but 50 years on – that every riot, especially if property is torched, is a vote for Trump in 2020 as it was for Reagan in 1969 and beyond, so crucial in “swing States”.

Would I lie to you?

There is always something that puzzles me about contact tracing.

Contact tracing demands a degree of honesty, and if the contact tracer comes across a group of people who habitually lie for one reason or another, especially when that group believe the police are looking over the shoulders of the contact tracers, are they going to tell you, the contact tracer, where they’ve been – to disclose their networks? Probably not.

But then part of police work is contact tracing. It is not generally linked to public health. There are rules for contact tracing when it is part of a policeman’s business, but when contact tracing is stated as being for public health purposes, it seems that the police are excluded from using that information.

However, if a “person of interest” tells a contact tracer all their links over the recent period, can the person of interest be interrogated by the police concerning the information that he/she has told the contact tracer of his/her whereabouts?

“No, says our “person of interest being interrogated”, “I have given my details to a public health person, and therefore you can ask him or her.”

However, whatever information that person has given to the contact tracer is protected and cannot be accessed. Right?

Can somebody give me some advice?

Mouse Whisper

I came across certain documents relating to my mausmeister when he was mauskind. 

Apparently this happened when he was a young, boisterous and adventurous child. His Aunt Grace lived in a large home in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. She looked after her Uncle Frank and Aunt Mildred until each died.

My mauskind wondered why the rooms down the right side of the long corridor were always locked. One day one of the doors was unlocked and the boy looked in and saw an extensive collection of architectural drawings and plans all over the room.

Before he could venture in, his Aunt said that he had to be careful because the room was inhabited by a carpet snake. Kept it there for mice … distastefully. However, carpet snakes were huge, long – pythons that could crush the unwary, Johnny.

So he never tried to go in those rooms again. He was scared of snakes.

Many years later, he mentioned it to his cousin who was much older than him.

She laughed. Aunt Grace had once taken my cousin into her confidence.

There never was any carpet snake.

Modest Expectations – Vince Gair

What I wrote about Biden in May holds in my view, but but for one thing…

The most disturbing vision of Biden is his rear view – essentially that of an old doddering man. Then turn him around and there is that ever-engaging smile – as if he has a giant axon inside his skull that is connected to all the facial muscles, which make him smile on cue when somebody rings the metaphorical bell. 

Biden is a plagiarist, discovery of which aborted his 1988 Presidential campaign. Plagiarism is a mixture of deceit and intellectual laziness – or underlying dumbness. This flaw resurfaced in certain dealings last year.

… Nevertheless, one positive sign that he is a good man is how he has handled grief and he has much to grieve about in his life.

America is in a mess; no matter when the change is made there is a White House reduced to the political nursery of the Baby Trump, and there will need to be someone very focused to clear out the rattles, the dolls, the bucket and spade, and other geegaws fondled and thrown around in the past four years.

I fear Biden just doesn’t have the ability – no fire, only embers. My earlier comments about him have not changed, and my support for Bloomberg would still hold had it not been for this entry of Obama into the frame.

Kamala Harris

He is still a fake, but fortunately Kamala Harris is authentic. I had not been paying enough attention to this very smart lawyer from California because I thought Biden would choose from the talented pool of Democratic women from the Midwestern States, even given that he was colour conscious. The residual influence of the Clintons would have been tested; the accident-prone Susan Rice in the forefront of Hilary’s list.

However, the Obama imago prevailed.

Biden is not adventurous and at 78 he has the habits of a lifetime printed in his electrical circuits. Prejudices such as showed in relation to Anita Hill bubble below the surface, despite all the meae culpae he has given. I never trust a plagiarist – it shows a level  of dishonesty, subterranean it may be.

However, that pales before Trump, a person whose inability to tell the truth is well documented.

When Trump immediately attacked Kamala Harris and called her “nasty” (how pathetic can you be), he starts on the eligibility nonsense that he tried to perpetuate with Barack Obama. He is now repeating the same with Kamala Harris. In so doing, he emphasises the essential similarity between the two. One is the son of a Kenyan and white American union; the other the daughter of a Jamaican and Indian union. Coincidentally both unions broke up soon after the children were born and both had an absent father.

Trump would have preferred the traditional Tobacco Road Afro-American upon which it is easier to spew racial division and hatred.

He has a pathological antipathy to Barack. He cannot stand being mocked, his inferior intellect put to the test, his demonstrable cowardice – all in all, a vicious, corrupt guttersnipe. To put it in simple terms, he cannot bully either Harris or Obama – unlike Biden whom he has shown that he can.

There are two reasons that could be conjectured as to why Biden delayed his choice. One is that he is a natural ditherer (not a good sign in a President with so much to rectify) and the second is that he simply did not want Ms Harris. One may suspect that she is the Obama surrogate. That is not to denigrate her, but it will not be too much trouble for her to “clean up” Pence – and then unleashed she will so clearly become the President-in-waiting.

Two Vice-Presidential reactions when the President became “infirm” are relevant contrasts.

Eisenhower was 67 when he had a stroke in 1957; Woodrow Wilson was 63 when he too had a stroke in 1919. Eisenhower had nearly three years to go; Wilson the best part of two years. Richard Nixon, whom Eisenhower had foisted on him and whom really did not like much, became more prominent directly in policy decisions after 1957.

Trump is 74 and has been rushed to Walter Reed Hospital at least once; Biden is 78. Both probably are testimony to the availability of health care now in modern America, for the affluent at least, particularly in the treatment of cardiac disease and high blood pressure.

Thomas Marshall, Wilson’s Vice-President and who somewhat eerily had been the 27th Governor of Indiana (the current Vice-President Pence was the 50th), followed a different path. Again, although as with Nixon he served two terms, Marshall was disliked by Wilson and particularly by Wilson’s wife so that he was blocked from much of the day-to-day management. However, Marshall was very much his own man with seemingly a misplaced sense of noblesse oblige in refusing to take over as acting President because he feared the precedent that this action would have created.

In other words, even at an age when infirmity can strike suddenly, Biden can be tolerated because (a) Trump is so bad, probably more senile and (b) Biden has a strong deputy. However even the sight of the indecisive Biden face to face with Trump still fills me with trepidation, whereas Harris I suspect could eat Trump for breakfast and still ask for more waffles.

Is Australia prepared for the next Pandemic?

The above is the title of a paper published in April 2017 that had, as one of its authors, Brendan Murphy, whose address was given as Office of Health Protection, Australian Department of Health, Canberra.

It was published in the MJA under Perspectives and begins with the statement “infectious diseases continue to threaten global health security, despite decades of advances in hygiene, vaccination and antimicrobial therapies”. How very true!

It was a paper, which has a table of four Committees with very long names, and because they are labelled current NHMRC Centres of Excellence the assumption is that they are just that. The problem is that much of health research is encased in the gossamer of self-congratulation.

Angels dancing on a pinhead?

Much of medical research is somewhat like exquisite Chinese ceramics in the seventeenth century, refining the tools of the past to render more and complicated dexterity, but not advancing the human condition – defining how many angels you can fit on a pinhead – wonderful feats but of what utilitarian value?

The Murphy paper does not explicitly mention three people who have provided Australia with a buffer in the battle against infectious diseases.

The first was the emphasis by Michael Wooldridge, when he was Minister of Health, on raising the vaccination rates of Australia in the face of criminal behaviour by the anti-vaxxer brigade. Wooldridge had a strong base being close to Prime Minister Howard and being a member of the Expenditure Review Committee. Wooldridge retired and since then Federal Ministers for Health excluding Hunt have been an indifferent bunch in relation to their influence and interest (although at times Abbott showed he was across the portfolio).

The second was Dr Brian McNamee who, on assuming the role of CEO of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) in 1990, turned it from being a “basket case” into a world leader in the development of vaccines and blood product. As a bonus CSL is now very profitable. In so doing, McNamee cultivated Australia’s research capacity. He had a keen eye for the very best.

The third is Lindsay Grayson, whose crusade for people to wash their hands has provided a springboard for the community campaign to wash their hands. Men in particular are grubs and Grayson, first in hospitals then elsewhere, demonstrated how important hand washing is in minimising cross infection. His work has resulted in modification of health professional contact with patients.

On the flip side, governments had believed infectious disease hospitals were a thing of the past, and while HIV inpatients gave some of them a prolonged life, these hospitals dedicated to what was believed to be a relic of a past age were progressively closed down.

Fairfield Hospital

As I have written elsewhere I remember in the 1950s being admitted to Fairfield Hospital in Melbourne for a week for an unspecified infection, and as was the wont of the senior doctor at the time I was prescribed chloramphenicol, which was shown to have disastrous side effects. I was in isolation – quarantined – in a dedicated infectious diseases hospital, and did not escape being dosed with chloramphenicol. Nevertheless, I was well treated by a trained staff and still alive.

The New Zealand Chief Medical Officer has used the word “bespoke” in relation to quarantine facilities, especially tailored for the individual circumstance. Fairfield Hospital was just that, until it was closed by the then Premier Kennett in 1996 as a cost cutting measure, a familiar tune when it comes to public health expenditure.

The dilemma for Government now – as part of the grand exit strategy – is whether to invest in the construction of quarantine facilities. Those opposed, generally identified as central agencies, may argue there are quarantine facilities available, which were convenient when the early evacuations from China were occurring, but Christmas Island and Darwin are not the most convenient. Far more troubling for these bureaucrats is the prospect of a vaccine at a time when there is substantial hype about its prospect of success.

There are two points to keep in mind: the vaccine is far from a done deal, and there are plenty of other viruses at a time when the Climate is changing and when technology has conditioned the mood of the population to care only about Self, surrounded by Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Tik Tok or Facetime or IsolationXbox.

However, investment in facilities now may be the price that needs to be paid to reassure Australians that our status of being a country with a low COVID-19 infection rate is preserved. It may be that the price to be paid from coming from a place of high infectivity to Australia means automatic isolation.

The paper by Murphy and his co-authors sets outs a number of Committees. Despite all the apparent impressive panoply of intellectual input set out in the paper, Australia was woefully underprepared when the Virus struck and was fortunate that our distance from the source of the original infection provided a buffer. Perhaps in hindsight, what was done there is the template for quarantine facilities to be established.

For Murphy the pamphlet of 2017 becomes the reality of 2020.

Australia just cannot be placed in permanent lockdown on the whim of some set of politicians. There is a need for a finer sieve than group punishment. If there is a lesson from this Victorian debacle it is that nobody should be allowed to visit a nursing home (or a prison) for 40 days or least a significant period after returning from abroad and not developing signs of infectious disease, then so be it. That is an obvious restriction to be put on the table, but there will be others.

The development of quarantine facilities to house the infected or those potentially infected should be near airports, and the further the airport is away from a high concentration of the people the better. There are those who wish for a vaccine, but given that viruses are coming in waves – and until this Virus struck, Australia has dodged the metaphorical bullet.

To get this whole response right is not just a case of consulting laboratory scientists whose ruminations have been effectively ignored by the community until the Virus struck. I have always taken issue with the Fabian approach of pamphleteering for change. As has been clearly demonstrated by Murphy et al in their paper, until the pandemic struck, there was no impact of these matters on the politicians. Now of course the airwaves are full of these same scientists unleashed, some able to communicate well, others not. They remain background noise while those in charge of containing the pandemic continue to work on in a social Darwinian bubble shedding the useless people whilst retaining the useful.

Wartime does not have the luxury of maintaining the idiots, just because they look good in suits. In other words, even though the cacophony of those who love show-boating remains, it is refreshing to see the “survivors”, who an observer thought from the start were competent and see some that you thought were initially incompetent improving. Hence Australia is still one of the best places to live in this Time of the Virus, even with the mistakes.

The danger is that some of the Premiers who have closed borders are caught in a competition to see who can close the longest. Closing borders becomes a mindless and sadly cruel obsession.

Now setting up, in the words of the New Zealander, a bespoke set of quarantine facilities may require less money being tossed to the other politicians-needs-a-legacy projects. I am sure the War Memorial renovations could be put on hold; and the sports stadia.

An evening looking down from the loggia

Just imagine in the Second World War John Curtin advocating for Parliament House to be transformed into the Palace of Versailles. To suggest that is so ridiculous, but Australia is in a similar crisis. The above point is to make everybody think of what is more important than the long-term health of the country – a football stadium for the inheritors of Versailles looking down from their exclusive loggia quaffing champagne and eating truffled lobster – or quarantine facilities where all the components of public health and infectious disease can be concentrated. I say again, this Virus will not be the last the infectious assault. 

The solution I propose is unashamedly simple in conception but difficult in the details of implementation. I know that; unlike the following, which is barely intelligible but it is not the only vapid advice which has been published: And we might do well to remember that the wisest and most effective course of action will more often be forged in the contest of ideas than distilled from unilateral decisions untested by scrutiny and tempered by no real debate.

However, one must not get angry, rather listen to that wise local florist who noted: “when my ability to smell the rose and the eucalypt return, so will I then contemplate the frivolous.” 

Once upon a time in Lithuania

In an earlier blog, I have written in some detail about our visit to the Baltic countries. However, a few comments may be relevant now that the hidden country of Belarus has emerged from behind its curtain. What is surprising is that when we drove from Estonia to Latvia and then to Lithuania we noted that there were no mountain ranges or marshes between the three countries – just nondescript borders. Yet, there are three distinct cultures, three distinct countries. All have struggled to maintain their independence, but with the breakdown of the old Soviet Union they all achieved their independence.

In 1989, to celebrate the independence from Russia on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the people of those three countries formed a human chain stretching across all three countries from the Tikk Herman, a mediaeval Estonian fort in Tallinn, to the square in front of the Lithuanian cathedral in Vilnius.

In Vilnius, we were told that we would no longer need a visa to go to Belarus. Vilnius is close to the border and it was only a couple of hours drive to Minsk if it were not for the stringent border controls, which reflected that Belarus had never moved from its Soviet past. That was correct, we did not need a visa, but only if you flew into Minsk. It did not apply to land borders.

Belarus was once a client state of the Soviet Union and a founder member in 1945 of the United Nations as Byelorussia. Nobody talked about it and because it was translated as “White Russia” it was confused with the white Russians of the 1917 Revolution – those who opposed the Communist red Russians. So anybody who encountered the name shrugged their shoulders, “too complicated; little relevance” and turned to other matters. For Australia, there were very few migrants from there fleeing Soviet domination, unlike the Baltic Countries.

Protests in Belorussia

To most people Belarus (once Byelorussia) has meant nothing – a small landlocked nation of peat and farmlands, iron works and overflow Soviet manufacturing. To those who knew little, it was just a part of the Soviet Union, carved off, given a name, just to be another convenient rubber stamp, to provide another vote in the UN – to jump when the Soviets said so.

The Republic was not retained when the Soviet split up, and it was given its independence. However for Belarus, unlike their neighbours, this did not bring democracy.

So there was little surprise when a burly young former collective farm manager named Alexander Lukashenko seized power in 1994 and then, over time, consolidated his power over the population of nine million. While Yeltsin was there and in the early years of Putin, Lukashenko wanted to have his country re-absorbed into the new Russia, with himself as the Vice-President; that dream faded as Putin consolidated his personal power.

However, Byelorussia has its own language and while most people speak Russian, the country has certain differences. It is Slavic, but it has more than a pinch of Balt. It was an area, once Lithuanian as part of its empire with fortified towns. The Swedish army has tramped across it, as had the Poles. The people suffered greatly under the Soviet Union and in an article in the February 2000 Harper’s Magazine the author, who had decided to visit the Kurapaty Forest just North of Minsk, said:

“Shadows throughout the grove resolve themselves into crosses; the farther in you look the more crosses you see. Here lie the bodies of tens of thousands of Belarusians (estimates run from 30,000 to 900,000) who were executed by the Soviet authorities.” In the psyche of the Belarus people, this Soviet brutality has not been forgotten.

In 2000 Lukashenko, who had some pretensions to being an ice hockey player, was only 35 and had the support of the elderly and rural communities. His approach to government was well-defined as during that year (2000) four opposition leaders had simply disappeared.

But now in 2020 the population seems to have had enough. There is always a tipping point and Putin, if he invades, would be well aware of the cost of not only fighting but also garrisoning a hostile country, especially one where the President-in-exile is lodged in Lithuania. Furthermore, much of the countryside in the South and East has been contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Radioactive caesium is lodged in the soil.

Then there is the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast for Putin to think long and hard about if he moves on Belarus.

Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad, named after one of Stalin’s cronies, was formerly Konigsberg, the capital of Prussia. The oblast, the size of Northern Ireland, was annexed in the aftermath of World War II as a base at Baltiysk for the Russian navy, being its only ice-free port. The area is also essential for Russia’s ability to intercept and interfere with Allied communication networks – Russia’s spoiler.

Putin could move fast and send troops in to rescue Lukashenko, reckoning that his influence over Trump would stymie any Allied response involving Kaliningrad Oblast which, despite being heavily fortified, could be a risky proposition.

Currently Russia is separated from its exclave by both Belarus and Lithuania. An invasion of Belarus, unimpeded by Trump, could tempt Putin to demand a corridor across Lithuania in much the same way that Hitler demanded a corridor across Poland to the then Baltic free-port of Danzig, one of the precipitants for World War II in 1939. Lithuania is a member of the EU, and yet…there is this Manchurian candidate factor redux.

Fanciful? Better to call it out?

However, drawing breath and not wanting to wander into a nightmare more fitting of a video game, in which I am no expert; equally I am no expert in how to destroy the world to save a despot or two.

Mouse Whisper

Geraldine Ferraro was Walter Mondale’s Vice-Presidential choice in 1984. At the time, there were many ugly rumours about the Democratic New York congresswoman relating to unpaid taxes and family links to organised crime. After all, she was of Italian extraction and from Queens at a time when the Godfather series had stereotyped Italian America – guilt by association is a favourite ploy of the media.

She decided to confront the media and answer each and every question for as long as it took – by 80 minutes she had exhausted the media and when she had finished, according to a report in the Washington Post, many of the cameramen filming applauded her.

As the Washington Post recalled this week:

There was just one critic left to deal with — the conservative columnist George Will. He had sent her roses as a sort of apology, writing in a card that, “Has anyone told you that you are cute when you’re mad?”

Ferraro called Will to thank him for the roses… But there was something she needed to say. 

“Vice-Presidents aren’t cute,” Ferraro told him. And then she hung up.

Modest Expectations – Christmas at Bethany

One of the books I dipped into when I was younger was Oblomov, an 1859 novel by Ivan Goncharov. However, I found the concept of a rich, self-indulgent slob not getting out of bed such an anathema to me that I threw the book aside.

Oblomov

Some years later I again ran across this excerpt from the novel; it is the one which is most often quoted: 

“When you don’t know what you’re living for, you don’t care how you live from one day to the next. You’re happy the day has passed and the night has come, and in your sleep you bury the tedious question of what you lived for that day and what you’re going to live for tomorrow.”

As a doctor, I became aware of the Oblomov syndrome. Oblomov’s syndrome has been formally defined as a mental disorder characterised by low cognitive function, low emotional response, flat affect, or “emotional apathy” and a generally ambivalent approach to life or when reacting to people, events, thoughts, or feelings.

A more personal comment from some character in search of identity labeled himself as a typical “Oblomov” – a weak-willed neurotic who is apathetic, lazy and parasitic, unable to work”, with those characteristics culminating in self-loathing.

The recurring metaphor is a “refusal to get out of bed”. The metaphor may be extended to remaining in pyjamas for the whole day, except for making allowance for personal hygiene. It can become a way of life as Hugh Hefner clearly and very publicly showed, but I believe this outward Oblomovian indulgence covered serious neuro-pathology in the case with Hefner.

During the last months when the country has been in various levels of “lock-down”, I found myself constantly wanting to go back to bed and remain in my pyjamas. That is my reaction, but I wonder how many others, especially those without support – and here my hypothesis says that it is a male condition and not for poor people – have been faced with this situation. However, in nursing homes does it become a less voluntary condition?

The key to combating this condition is to get out of bed, have a shower, get dressed and have breakfast. Gluttony was an obvious refuge for Oblomov so I conjure up and then dismiss the picture of myself sitting in pyjamas consuming a breakfast of thick French toast dripping with butter and maple syrup, with a side dish of bacon and a gallon of orange juice laced with champagne. This context is definitely Oblomov.

Modern technology has provided excuses for staying in bed. Television, iPhones, ubiquitous apps, the introduction of Zoom, somebody to fetch and carry – paradoxically all have made one more Oblomovian. The latter day Oblomov emotes: “Why stir out of my room? Why go outside? Why travel anywhere? Why exercise?” A torrent of questions poured forth until COVID-19 imprisoned us.

As one writer has said: “Throughout many hours Oblomov tries to overcome his passivity but without result. This part of the book is deeply disturbing. After many sad events, over a couple of years, Oblomov dies of cerebral hemorrhage.”

After all, in the book Oblomov stays in bed until page 131; sometimes I have wondered what page I am on.

In the final chapter, Andrei Schtoltz, Oblomov’s friend is talking:

“He came to rack and ruin—though for no apparent reason.” As he spoke Schtoltz sighed heavily. Then he added: “His intellect was equal to that of his fellow’s, his soul was as clear and as bright as glass, his disposition was kindly, and he was a gentleman to the core. Yet he—he fell.”

“Wherefore? What was the cause?”

“The cause?” re-echoed Schtoltz. “The cause was—the disease of Oblomovka.”

“The disease of Oblomovka?” queried the literary gentleman in some perplexity. “What is that?”

“Some day I will tell you. For the moment leave me to my thoughts and memories. Hereafter you shall write them down, for they might prove of value to some one.”

Is the blog after all only a symptom of modern Oblomovism – or is it therapy?

Hijacking the Narrative

John Kitzhaber

Governor John Kitzhaber is a longstanding friend of mine and a former three-term Democratic Governor of Oregon. An emergency physician by training, he was responsible for the Oregon Health Plan. He has kindly allowed me to reproduce his recent blog – which I do in part.

Portland, Oregon

… The arrival in Portland of Federal agents on the pretext of protecting Federal property – in this case the federal building which has, in fact, been defaced and damaged in recent weeks. The damage to federal property, while perpetrated by only a small subset of the protesters, provided the Trump Administration with the opening it needed to direct Acting Secretary Wolf to deploy Federal agents to Oregon, citing the Homeland Security Act as the legal justification for this action. 

A provision in this Act gives the secretary the power to deputize other Federal agents to assist the Federal Protective Service in protecting federal property, such as the courthouse in Portland. Those agents can carry firearms, and arrest, without a warrant, those they perceive as committing a crime. This action, not surprisingly, has heightened tension and increased violent confrontations in the streets. In the process, the protest movement’s emphasis on racism and injustice has been effectively replaced by a manufactured narrative of “law and order”—playing directly into the hands of the President’s re-election strategy. 

To further complicate matters, millions of Americans and tens of thousands of Oregonians will most likely lose Federal support payments next week because of inaction by Senate Republicans to extend unemployment benefits before the current support lapses. Adding to the current environment of protest and frustration, the potentially dark social consequences of panic, blame and desperation that haunt those who cannot meet their most basic needs of food and shelter and see no hope for tomorrow creates an unstable and increasingly dangerous situation. This has been made even more dangerous by increasing inflammatory rhetoric from all quarters. 

What kind of plan could help de-escalate the situation before it spirals out of control? If the protests in our state since the murder of Mr Floyd are about social justice—about putting an end to police brutality and increasing accountability and transparency in law enforcement; about ending institutional racism and addressing the inequities that exist in our state and our nation—then what we are doing right now is not working. The peaceful protest movement in Portland has been drawn into a reactive position, a defensive position, and is at risk of losing the true narrative and putting in jeopardy the very goals for which it has been so courageously fighting.

What kind of strategy can reclaim the justice narrative that holds the moral high ground, and connect the energy of the protest to tangible and measurable actions that can redress the legitimate and long-standing grievances from which that energy flows?

Possible steps in that direction could be:

1. Leaders of the peaceful protest movement—Black leaders in Portland, religious leaders, and those who love courageous but peaceful advocacy for change—call for a short moratorium on the protests for five to seven days and urge their followers and those who seek only to exercise their right to peacefully protest, not to congregate in downtown Portland during this time. This is not a call to end the protests, which must continue. It is an intentional tactical decision to separate, for a time, peaceful protesters from those who seek violence and anarchy and from increasingly provocative and confrontational actions by federal agents. This moratorium would pause the momentum of escalating violence, and stop playing into the hands of those who want to mask the racism and inequality in America with an authoritarian narrative about law and order.

2. During this moratorium, call for a summit that would include Black leaders, protest leaders committed to peaceful change, business and labor leaders, Oregon’s governor, Portland’s mayor, members of the city council, legislative leaders of both parties, the attorney general, and the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon. Given that the summit will necessarily be virtual, former President Obama might be invited to moderate. Considering the importance of this issue, and the amount of national coverage Portland has received over the past few weeks, the president would be likely to accept. This summit would seek two goals. 

First, develop an action plan for short and long-term steps and commitments to address, in intangible and measurable ways, the issues of transparency and accountability in law enforcement, and the conditions of injustice that have marred our state and our nation for far too long. Second, develop a strategy for how to resume the protests at the end of the moratorium in a way that will (a) keep the narrative focused on the conditions of injustice we are seeking to address and the actions, outcomes, and commitments developed in the summit; and (b) minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the likelihood that peaceful protests will be hijacked again by those who seek violence and anarchy.

  1. Also during the moratorium, secure a wide perimeter around the Federal buildings, perhaps deploying the Oregon National Guard for this purpose, to make it very clear that the state of Oregon is capable of and intends to protect federal property—just as it intends to protect state property and private property—thus eliminating the only legal justification the Department of Homeland Security has for sending these agents to our state in the first place. Not only would this perimeter protect Federal property, but it would also create a buffer, once the moratorium has ended, to protect peaceful protesters from violent and provocative actions taken by federal authorities—a task that should not be left solely to the courage of the “Wall of Moms”. 

The course we are now following puts control of the narrative into the hands of those who seek to further divide our state and our nation. We should not facilitate that, we should not allow it, we must take steps to prevent it. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the focus of the protest is not on the legitimacy of laws that protect public buildings and private property from vandalism and damage. The protest is and should remain, focused on racism, injustice, and inequality. We cannot allow that focus and that narrative to be co-opted by either a handful of violent protesters in Oregon or by a national strategy that seeks to fuel and exploit violence and confrontation for political gain. 

The protests of the past two months are set against the backdrop of perhaps the most challenging set of problems in our state’s history: high unemployment, a daunting budget deficit, and a public health crisis. We are only six weeks away from when Oregon public schools have traditionally opened and the uncertainly about how that will be managed has put huge additional stress on parents, children, teachers, and other school employees. The ongoing, but necessary steps to bring COVID 19 under control, including the closure of many businesses and childcare centers, has added another layer of stress and uncertainty.

At this point in time, the combined leadership of Oregon’s public, private and civic sectors—and the energy, talent, and creativity of each and every Oregonian—must be engaged, with single-minded determination, to hold our state and our communities together. Now is the time to develop and implement a five-year strategy to create the kind of change rooted in social justice that we have been unwilling or unable to make in the past; a strategy to put Oregon back on its feet and lead us—all of us—through to a brighter time. By taking back the narrative, as well as the tone and focus of the important protests going on in Portland, protest leaders can help ensure that social justice, equity, and opportunity are built into the foundation of that strategy.

Somewhere in America, during this difficult time, a state needs to demonstrate that we can weather this storm without losing our sense of community, without losing our commitment to one another, and to emerge stronger and more unified than when we began. Let’s make that state Oregon.

Since this posting, Kitzhaber has followed up. “Shortly after I posted it the State negotiated a removal of the Federal agents and the Oregon State Police took over.  There was a significant easing of tensions until a few days ago but there has been violence the last two nights, not at the Federal courthouse but at the headquarters of the Portland Police Association”…

The outbreak we had to have

Some may argue, to put it in the words of the Maestro, the Victorian outbreak of the Virus is the Outbreak Australia needed to have.

NSW had been the State where incompetence and carelessness were well on display but from June, Victoria has assumed the mantle and usurped that crown well and truly.

How the Premier handles the crisis could be the template for handling any pandemic – or not. He has a dreadful set of Ministers, the product of union factionalism. His public service, which has been stripped of most of its talent, is not much help. There are exceptions such the Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton and his deputy Allen Cheng.

Otherwise, the amount of intellectual integrity underpinning the Victorian approach has been woeful, and Andrews has moved, essentially groping in a policy blackness, on how best to move against a nasty hidden foe. The stress he is absorbing, particular given how weak his Health Minister is, has been extraordinary.

The lesson from the breakdown in the hotel quarantine should be clear – unvarnished or even if “coated”. This “stuff up” is just an example of giving work to your mates rather than assuring experience, trustworthiness, competence and responsibility in the contractors.

Australia is in danger of becoming a country of sunburnt baksheesh and wide brown paper bags. The sense of entitlement in some quarters of this country has grown under the guise of neoliberal narcissism – and its mantra is “only mugs work.”

The disaster is concentrated in the private nursing homes. Brendan Murphy has generally done a good job, but still remains somebody with a “tin ear”, talking about “reputational damage” that the proprietors of nursing homes have suffered, which frankly is irrelevant. There he was, presenting to a Senate Committee while the pages of the newspapers showed the owners of one or more of the affected nursing homes flaunting their yellow lamborghinis and bronzed buffness.

The problem is that the Commonwealth Government has shirked its responsibility. It has yielded to the shibboleth of “business knows best, Government should get out of people’s lives” and hence allowing self-regulation to be overseen by a group of bureaucrats waving warm lettuce leaves.

The training of the lowest level of health carers in the nursing homes is the benchmark level for adequacy and knowledge of health care. The simplest element of this knowledge and care is hygiene and hence infection control – theirs and those for whom they are caring, whether they be labelled patients, clients, customers, residents – or just people. Let us not descend to calling them “mum and pops” or “kiddies”.

However, it is not only the “lowest” levels of health carers that do not wash their hands. There are many surveys that show doctors and medical students do not routinely wash their hands – and to a lesser degree, even nurses. It would be interesting to know if the increased availability of hand sanitisers in the community may have changed habits and if there is any objective evidence that shows this is so.

The Commonwealth Government should at least be obtaining draft recommendations from its Royal Commissioners now, because the Victorian misadventure is a case study in progress and enables the Government to see what works. The Victorian misadventure is just such a fertile ground.  The Commissioners are realising that that one does not often have the opportunity to see what works or does not work “in real time”. Bugger the ivory tower – this is better than any self-serving submission. The Victorian situation is a case study in progress!

Andrews is in survival mode. However, he is all Victoria has. The predictable antics and hectoring for the sake of point scoring by a woeful set of politicians is more than unhelpful. Yet the Coates report is likely to be ugly. Already, the media watering can is nurturing the rumours.

If this next six weeks doesn’t work and with the numbers of infected people in Victoria being driven down, Andrews may be gone, subject to a Pallas coup.

Nursing home owners’ conference?

And what of the other States? What are they doing preventatively to rein in the operators of the private nursing home industry – to put a cap on the purchase of yellow Lamborghinis. Or are they behaving like “normal” governments – alternatively piously self-satisfied, sitting on their hands or putting “it on the long finger” until the community pressure becomes too great, all the while wishing the problem of the aged just disappears. Imminent elections as will be occurring in a number of states colour every policy decision.

One little measure, Commissioners Briggs and Pagono, presumably your Report will contain the amount of money the nursing home owners and shareholders contribute to the various political parties. No, of course not, not in the Terms of Reference.

All my problems come at once 

My son was on the same flight from America as Dr Higgins, in the Precovidassic era when the political dinosaurs stalked the World.

That week on March 8, CNN reported that there were more than 550 cases of the “novel coronavirus” in the USA. According to CNN at that time “around the globe, the novel coronavirus has killed more than 3,800 people and infected more than 108,000, the majority in Mainland China.”

Both men had independently acquired the then novel virus in the USA or on the flight. My son was actually No. 13 in Victoria. He went off to Box Hill Hospital when he felt mildly ill but had to battle the staff to get tested; eventually he prevailed. Despite being a journalist, he resisted publicising his plight, and went home, self isolated, tested positive and then stayed with his family in isolation for two weeks. No fuss.

Dr Higgins received more publicity, possibly because he has a famous daughter. As with my son, he had a minor upper respiratory infection and was tested. He however went back to work pending disclosure the test results for this “novel virus”. He also tested positive. Minister Mikakos weighed in and gave Dr Higgins a totally unreasonable “spray”, especially as he did not transmit the Virus! True to form, did she apologise? No, the lady was not for civilised responding.

However now Mikakos is on limited release, such has been her effect on containing the COVID-19 spread. That she is tweeting in the middle of the night is bit of a worry. I am afraid she gets no sympathy from me.

I suspect she and a number of other Ministers will resign.

She cannot be blamed for destroying the Health Department’s corporate memory and limiting the medical input in favour of advice that condemns “the medical model” (whatever that is) and fuels an environment where nobody with medical expertise would want to work. That’s the history of the Victorian Department of Health over the past decade. However, the attitude started many years before, with John Paterson and his contempt for the medical profession.

However, reviewing the Kennett legacy is not part of the current review. Kennett promoted gambling, including poker machines, as a significant contributor to the Victorian Government’s coffers. I am old enough to remember some of his disparaging comments about old people. There is no review of the spread of organised gambling and the harvest being reaped by overseas betting agencies, often at the expense of the elderly.

Although I used to like to punt and especially loved watching Winx, I question why racing has been given an exemption. City and country racing persists in Victoria and the industry seems to move seamlessly between Stages 3 and 4 Lockdowns. As one Victorian put it, “Would be a great feeling when your business is going down the toilet to turn the TV on and watch the essential horsies go around”.

However, an erudite friend of mine said: “what else is there to watch on afternoon television”. It should be noted that racing in Victoria, whether dog or horse is in the Ministerial portfolio of one Martin Pakula, who also has direct oversight of Disasters and Catastrophes.

However, the whole question of preference for sport pandering to the jocks, the whole reliance of government on gambling revenue at a time when, paradoxically, the same crowd that own the horses are often those who are wanting taxation cuts – presumably to buy more horses.

Overlaying this jock anti-intellectual climate is the cosy relationship between government and big unions (Victoria), big business (Federal) and big accounting/consulting firms (New South Wales). Queensland, with its long history of political corruption being an irritant, will have its day of reckoning as well.

The day of reckoning for the smaller States will be in the lifting of the State of Lockdown. This will be a test of shared responsibility in the face of inflammatory media that uses words like “carnage, deadliest, surge, tsunami” – any word that evokes anxiety in the community. Victoria has “stuffed up” because of a number of people, whose metaphorical heads should soon be gracing Spring Street gutters.

It is unfortunate that it is election time in various States so there is a propensity to blindly apply border restrictions, which flies in the face of Australia being a nation. Has anybody given a thought to Australia being balkanised, with Tasmania the Montenegro and the Northern Territory Kosovo?

Been there, chaps! As we headed towards the Albanian border a couple of years ago, the driver turned to me and said: “Have you got a gun?”

Having heightened the level of anxiety to a feverish level for political reasons, what will be the nationally agreed acceptable Virus levels to allow all borders to re-open, and moreover New Zealand? Elimination – that is, insisting on zero cases before opening borders is political nonsense, even in the face of there being no vaccine. Restlessness in the community increasingly will only require a minor incident before the restlessness and restrictions spills out onto the streets with the targets, the perceived virus spreaders.

Thus, agreement over what level of infection constitutes “suppression” is a priority. Once that is agreed then appropriate resources can be assigned so that Australia (and hopefully New Zealand) has one system of public health to maintain that suppression across Australia and New Zealand.

Once this relationship is tested at a government level then expansion of the initiative can be offered to other South Pacific countries. It is important in opening up trading and tourist links. As a former President of the Australasian (Australian and New Zealand) Faculty of Public Health Medicine, who advocated closer links with Pacific nations over 20 year ago working with the then Minister for Development Cooperation and Pacific Island Affairs Gordon Bilney, I feel reasonably assured of my credentials to offer this suggestion.

As the historian Humphrey McQueen has written: “In 1915 an external menace had driven Australians together; by 1919, an internal danger revealed yet again how easy it was for Australians to stand apart. If national unity involved loyalty to the Commonwealth as an administrative machine, the Pandemic showed how little of it there was.”

McQueen is somewhat harsh on Australia since New Zealand suffered more because of the laxness of its quarantine arrangements compared to those mandated by each of the Australian States. However, the pandemic varied widely. Tasmania did not have one recorded case. Yet one major consequence was the establishment of the Department of Health in 1922 and the assumption by the Commonwealth of the quarantine power, which had lain fallow in the Constitution.

In 1936, the National Health & Medical Research Council was set up so the Chief Medical Officer had a public health forum. Early on they were faced with the 1937 polio epidemic. “The prevalence of the disease in Victoria caused concern in other States, particularly New South Wales and South Australia. Up to twenty crossings into NSW were patrolled by police. Special police were stationed at railway stations, aerodromes, bridges over the Murray River and at the wharves in Sydney to control the possibility of the infection being spread from Victoria to New South Wales. Vehicles were stopped and checked.” 

Sound familiar?

Mouse Whisper

I have always wonderd why they use the word “shrewd” to define the astute mouse, rather than just say moused mouse. I have always thought of these vagabonds sleeping or digging tunnels under hedges as our country cousins. Apparently not, even though they are characterised as “shrewd”. I find that us mice are closer to the Porcupine family than to the Shrews.

Just as well I have made that point. Some shrews have salivary poison which they inject when they bite unsuspecting prey. Thus the derivation of “shrew” can be reflected in the Swedish, Danish and Icelandic words for “cut”.

While it is a shrewdness of apes, it is a caravan of shrews. As they tunnel, shrews navigate like bats: they emit ultrasonic clicks that reflect back to their ears to create an aural picture of the surroundings up to about a metre away. So the nursery rhyme caravan of three blind mice may be in fact “shrews” – talk about giving a mouse a bad name. We mice would never run up a clock in that way.

Modest Expectations – It’s Time

Two weeks ago, it was horror stories coming from Victoria about people being locked up in tower public housing blocks, and I expressed a concern as to whether locking people up in tower blocks should not be accompanied by a warning about the risk of fires and how this would be managed if the buildings were to go into lockdown. In fact a number of residents were evacuated to hotel quarantine.

It seems that threat has abated in the public mind in the face of the rising horror stories of the private nursing homes and the circumstances whereby the residents are caught up in the rising tide of community transmission.

This involved families, staff and “persons unknown” unwittingly spreading the virus to a group of our elderly population incarcerated in a system where financial profit is paramount and the operational arrangements seem far from being able to combat a pandemic. However the problem, while systemic, is not only rampant in certain postcodes and not in others but also completely contained within the private sector.

The Premier, Daniel Andrews, tries to be measured, never raising his voice and refusing to apportion blame to any sector of the population when it is probably plain to himself when reviewing the data that certain sections of the population are more susceptible to “amoral familism”, which I have mention previously. That one of the biggest outbreaks is in an aged care facility linked to the Greek Orthodox community has not elicited as yet any finger pointing in the community is testimony to his control of the situation.

The problem with “amoral familism”, which is not limited to a Greek village upbringing, is that it promotes the mindless protection of the family unit above all – the State can go hang. It is the product of an upbringing where the education levels are low and unfortunately the society in which many of the people have grown up is male-dominated and authoritarian, and often where sanctions are not enforced by the gentle remonstrations of the reasonable man, as Andrews is. Ignorance of English does not help.

Therefore, when it seems nobody is watching this group, even when COVID-19 positive, it is unsurprising if these people do not heed warnings. If I were isolated in a foreign village with no knowledge of the language, could or would I heed any warning?

Hence not having the language would be an excuse if the individual were an isolate. However, it would be rare for this to occur. Spokespersons for particular communities bob up all the time. Instead of ensuring that these potential “purveyors of death” are quarantined, these spokespersons seem just to offer a variety of excuses; they did not understand, they did know that what they were doing was criminal and the excuses flow on and on.

Andrews has a difficult job, because if he names the miscreants then he runs the problem of stigmatising whole communities for the sins of the few. Andrews also knows that these “hotspots” are in his electoral bailiwick, but given that many of the Labor parliamentarians in these electorates have migrant backgrounds, you would think that the Premier should not have to bear the full load. Some of the political actions are somewhat like those gossamer Green parliamentarians posturing in front of the locked-down housing towers, full of sound and fury, as is common with Greens, signifying nothing.

So it is easier to implement rules that disadvantage the Victorian community, moving to the second-highest category of restrictions – Stage 4. Unlike America, most Victorians know more about the Virus than they did in March when it first came to notice and are thus better able to run relatively normal lives, while appreciating the need for social distancing, hand washing and now masks. Most people have shown that they are prepared to work within increasing limits – as shown by the imposition of masks, which has been almost universally accepted.

The percentage of self-serving exhibitionists and just plain “wackos” seem to be mercifully small, but having identified themselves they could form a nucleus of inmates of the quarantine facilities that I have advocated should be constructed where those who are invited in serve a true “quarantine” period – that is, 40 days and nights. They would be joined by those deliberately flouting the government directives. After all, each of those COVID-19 positive individuals roaming the streets in a wilful manner is a “potential murderer”. Harsh words, but think about the logic. Who actually killed grandpa and grandma in the nursing home?

The other problem with Victoria is that it has always lagged behind NSW in its investment in public health, particularly in contact tracing. Victoria has been known to have under-resourced public health training for years.

That advance goes back to the work of Dr Sue Morey who, under the Head of the NSW Department of Health the late Bernie Amos, set up a comprehensive program in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Many of the current senior cohort of the NSW public heath physicians, as does the State of NSW, benefited from the program Morey established and owes her a very great debt.

The inability to find out the source of all the cases occurring in Melbourne also relies on people telling the truth and not incriminating themselves for whatever reason. Having said that, the present inquiry presumably is expected to reveal the chain of infection from case zero.

Those three young women flaunting and flouting through three States, refusing to co-operate, destroying their mobile phones and probably denying they are Nigerian are just extreme examples.

However, as with criminal activity the more the rest of the community is law-abiding, the more time there is for policing the extreme cases. As with vaccination, there is a reliance on having a high proportion of the community vaccinated – the vaccinated group provide a buffer for the unvaccinated.

There is also another “wee” problem that may be overlooked when the pandemic is distracting attention. The Ministerial retinue has returned from America. Like those who have flouted the pandemic in Melbourne, the government has not offered any advice on their whereabouts. However, the “cat may be out of the bag” when a so-called “consular officer” returning from overseas turned up in Maroochydore and then Toowoomba yesterday with a dose of COVID-19. Coincidence?

Apparently, “not actually a Consular officer” quibbled DFAT, but he was still carrying a diplomatic passport or the equivalent. The arrogance of holders of red and green passports knows no bounds, but at least the Queensland Premier has called this exemption out; however there is no mention of the whereabouts of the two Ministers. Again, there are exemptions for the few.

Clive Palmer – The Rose of Bulgaria or a Dangerous Furbo? 

I think that this son of Bulgaria, alleged owner of property in Sofia, and expert in its national sport of Split Squat has been wrongly characterised. Here in the damask fields of the Rose Valley of northern Bulgaria they talk of nothing else – but Clive.

He is up to all his Bulgarian tricks again. He has a case before the High Court challenging the Western Australian Government’s right to the close its borders.

His arguments are based around section 102 of the Australian Constitution, which states:

On the imposition of uniform duties of customs, trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States, whether by means of internal carriage or ocean navigation, shall be absolutely free. But notwithstanding anything in this Constitution, goods imported before the imposition of uniform duties of customs into any State, or into any Colony which, whilst the goods remain therein, becomes a State, shall, on thence passing into another State within two years after the imposition of such duties, be liable to any duty chargeable on the importation of such goods into the Commonwealth, less any duty paid in respect of the goods on their importation.

Most of the words in this section relate to the immediate transitional arrangement following the enactment of the Constitution in 1901 but the key clause has centred on what States can or cannot do about imposing barriers between themselves. Legal arguments have waged about what it all means and many lawyers have had their waistcoats filigreed in gold as a result.

The Attorney-General, Christian Porter, probably as a proper lawyer had the normal reflex. Since there is a challenge to the Constitution, therefore the Australian Government must take an interest. This is such a fundamental issue. Does State border closure present a challenge to the Federation if unilateral action is taken by a State to close the borders? Does Clive Palmer provide a challenge to the Australian Constitution?

The Federal Government was emboldened by the initial encouragement of the Prime Minister to keep supporting the Palmer initiative. There, in the background, would be the normal cheer group that thinks supporting Clive’s challenge a “jolly jape”. These are parliamentarians gathered together under the standard of a skunk-like animal with adolescent behavior rituals and bearing aloft an icon of Christopher Pyne. They can’t help irritating the Australian community from their seats of privileged opulence.

The Prime Minister has had second thoughts, hopefully not only because of the backlash in Western Australia to the Palmer challenge. It should be remembered that Palmer was born in Victoria and spent most of his formative years on the Gold Coast, where he made his first fortune in real estate. So he is not a genuine Western Australian – “he just ain’t one of them”.

If Clive wants to stir up the Sandgropers over this issue of secession, of which border closure is a subsection, then they might just take it out on the Liberal party at the next Federal election. Hence, Morrison backing away may have been because he realised that Palmer was trying to “tar baby” him.

One obvious solution is to form a pro-tem barrier away from the accepted geographical boundary. Cross-border regional arrangements are everywhere. To me, working in the Victorian border town of Cobram on the Murray River, meant that I had to cross to the NSW river town of Barooga more than once a day.

One has only to live in a border area to know that indiscriminately shutting borders is group punishment, unnecessarily unfair and at times unwittingly dangerous.

These are communities of interest, which have grown up over a century or more, where the border is just irrelevant to normal social and economic intercourse.

Therefore when this Virus is eventually contained there is work to be done in this area of “communities of interest”, so that if borders have to be closed then there is a fully developed plan that minimises the disruption and can be put into immediate effect. As has been said on more than one occasion, cross-border arrangements have diverse benefits and opportunities for managing a shared resource.

In any event should the adopted son of Bulgaria win his case in the High Court, I am sure that Western Australia could move its lockdown zone един метър inside its actual border with South Australia and Northern Territory. Clive, with your solid knowledge of Bulgarian, you would know what that means.

After all, Clive you are not the only gander in the “Gooserie”.

Hafnium (Hf)

I was browsing through an old New Scientist and came across a world map, which indicated that among a series of metals, Australia had over 50 per cent of the world’s hafnium.

According to the map legend, it was estimated that Australia had the biggest deposit of hafnium in the World. Hafnium does not occur independently in nature.

Even though predicted by Mendeleev it was not discovered until 1923 by two chemists Dirk Coster, a Dane, and George Charles de Hevesy, a Hungarian. The Dane prevailed. Hafn was the mediaeval name for Copenhagen. The Hungarian just shared the glory of having isolated this last natural occurring element.

Apparently, one of the major problems is that hafnium is tightly linked to zirconium in a ratio of 1:50, and exists in a group of three naturally occurring elements with titanium the lightest and hafnium the heaviest with an atomic number of 72. Lying between is zirconium. However, as far as can be obtained, the amount of hafnium produced is small, and until recently it was a considered a waste product, removed in the purification of zirconium. Zircons are renown as jewellery substitutes for diamonds, but zirconium has a multitude of uses, and put simply it is everywhere – its industrial use is in hardening alloys and ceramics. It is also anti-corrosive.

Recently, Hafnium has been found to have a number of amazing properties and it can be used in almost any industries where the word “advanced” is the prefix.

The special properties of Hafnium oxide have recently permitted further miniaturisation of microprocessors, enhancing processing speed while eradicating overheating problems.

Resistant to corrosion, the metal its oxide forms extreme temperatures. Consequently, hafnium is used in plasma cutting tips for welding, and is essential to the advancement of the aerospace industry. 

Added to this, hafnium carbide is one of the highest temperature resistant and hardest materials with melting point of 3,900 degrees Centigrade which potentially suitable in a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) for faster spacecraft propulsion.

So writes the hafnium enthusiast linked to the company proposing to mine a deposit south of Dubbo when extolling the element’s virtues.

Despite its global market being about 70 tonnes annually, this enthusiast predicts the demand will double by 2025, and Australia could produce 200 tonnes a year. So far I am following the trail to Hafnium.

This is a small amount given that the Dubbo mine is proposed to be an open cut operation that will extract 19.5Mt of ore a year from a 32m-deep open cut mine.

The extracted ore is crushed and further reduced in size by grinding circuit. Sulphuric acid will be used to convert the material into sulphated ore, will be leached in water and sent for solvent extraction and precipitation, and onwards the final product.

Extraction of these elements and the associated pollution is increasingly being factored into political considerations when the mining spruikers are abroad. However, there are further chemical processes to separate the hafnium from zirconium.

The technological description states it is “a liquid–liquid extractive separation between hafnium and zirconium from thiocyanic acid medium using the mixtures of diisobutyl ketone (DIBK) and di (2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (P204) as the extractant was developed.”

A metallurgist could answer the question of how much this extraction method damages the environment. 

It is almost as an afterthought, that process residues are treated before dumping them into storage facilities. The disposal of residue when there is a potentially such a big hole in the Dubbo landscape is far from a throwaway line.

Water will be taken from the Macquarie River, but the amount proposed is nowhere stated. In the description of the extraction of ore no amount of water is mentioned and the description hurries onto the marvels of the proposed mine.

OPAL’s lightwater pool

There is another problem with zirconium mining – the deposits often exist with radioactive elements – thorium and uranium. Small problem with an open cut mine only a few kilometres from a regional city! I find it interesting that there has been an experimental extraction plant at Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) since 2009. Hafnium is used in control rods in the nuclear reactor core.

Currently, China produces 75% of the world’s zirconium supply and hence hafnium. “China’s stranglehold on the supply chain of this material essential for advanced technology weakens the economic and political security of other nations”.

Metallurgy is one of the professions that, from the outside, smells of alchemy – there is a magical aspect to the extraction of these uncommon elements and their increasing relevance with advancing technology demanding these metallic elements with their special qualities. Then it is promoted to an essential component of our lives. Lithium has been one such metal.

However, the “green lobby” faces the whole “strategic development” lobby, where self sufficiency is increasingly important, and moving rare elements around the political game board are important chips in being able to game, with more strategic element chips than other nations. At present, China seems to have the greatest variety of these chips in the greatest quantity.

Australia has quantity in two particular chips – iron ore and coal. But that is a different game board. Given the amount of these being mined, then the impact on climate change is a constant.

However, too often the question from the local politicians when confronted with the prospect of a mine in their electorate is concern about how many jobs will be created. The Dubbo project bosses does not explicitly answer that question.

As far as one can gauge prices, the price of hafnium is in the region of USD6million a tonne; whereas zirconium is priced at USD10,000 a tonne.

To get a comparison, Australia produces 900 million tons of iron ore at about USD110 a tonne.

What progress has been made on the Dubbo mine project? In February 2020: “Alkane noted that Export Finance Agency’s (EFA’s) financial support would be subject to finalisation of due diligence, acceptable financing structure and eligibility and credit requirements. As Australia’s export credit agency, EFA is mandated to support businesses, which are seeking to develop new export market. 

I have been one of those converted to the climate change lobby and I am particularly worried about the wasteful use of water in what, apart from Antarctica, is the driest continent.

I read about hafnium; the notion of there being the greatest percentage of the world’s supply in Australia has intrigued me. I have searched to find out what is its proper place in the Australian economy. Political leaders are often confronted with such decisions when they have little intrinsic knowledge of the subject.

The giraffes are watching …

However, if I were in a position to make a decision, I would be immediately worried by the massive water requirement and the fact that there would be an open cut mine where radioactive minerals are being mined close to a major regional city, the Western Plains Zoo and the Dubbo Observatory. However the dilemma is, as with all mineral extraction, how can the metal be purified with the least pollution. Unfortunately, when in doubt the large powers with a monopoly of the chips kick the game board over – and everybody loses.

Paraphrasing Einstein, who never said a truer word when he said the fourth world war will be fought with rocks, some of which may contain hafnium.

All Souls

All Souls, Oxford

I suppose being invited to dinner by Max Beloff with the academic Fellows at All Souls was an honour. Great Britain that year was sunny, and when that occurs the summer is always beautiful. Off to Oxford the three of us went one evening to have dinner.

Max Beloff was an eminent modern historian who, at that stage of his life, was tramping from one side of the political spectrum to the other. The young socialist Beloff, now in middle-age having marked time as a Liberal, was moving determinedly to the right at the time, when he invited us to dinner.

Beloff had been a Fellow since 1957, ensconced as he was in this group “at the pinnacle of British academic hierarchy”. He had attained this position much earlier than when he had pursued this neo-liberal journey, in the process setting up a private university and then later absorbing imperial honours that were piled on him by Thatcher.

When we arrived we were ushered into a reception room where pre-dinner drinks were served; I had the obligatory dry sherry as the clever repartee started. The problem with clever repartee is that it is essentially hierarchial; if the young man (it was not until 1979 that women were admitted as Fellows of All Souls) wanted to announce his presence in such exchanges, it seems dressing flamboyantly helps. The “look at me” mien serves as an entrée card.

I was well versed in the social rules of these establishments, having been an undergraduate in a residential College, which replicated much of its social mores from those of Oxford. Therefore, I shut up and only replied when spoken to by some Fellow who had not the slightest interest in whom I was.

However, the call to dinner came and there is nothing like a College refectory – long high table, paneled walls, high-backed mahogany chairs. Beloff welcomed us – the Boss thanked him. It was all so polite, but it was an experience – probably once in a lifetime. Although for them not; just three Australians to be humoured in exchange for a meal.

I was seated next to Michael Howard, the military historian and we chatted about his topic. My contribution when the Franco-Prussian War was mentioned was that I had inherited a full set of skeletal bones from my father. It was widely thought that many of the skeletons used by aspiring doctors pre-war had come from soldiers who had died in that War. They were highly prized for the muscle markings, which were very distinct on these bones. However, apart from that I cannot remember the other Fellows beside and across the table. The talk was just that – inconsequential chatter as the Fellows on either side of the table carefully updated themselves on one another, given that there was a young foreigner in their midst.

Dinner was traditional English fare, which was better than the College roast to which I been subject every night more than a decade earlier.

Once dinner was finished it was off to another room for fruit, nuts, digestive biscuits and the central cheese. The obligatory Stilton round had pride of place, and the port was passed. Then it was off to the terrace for coffee and brandy.

The night was absolutely still and balmy, the sky a curious lavender grey. Across the terrace was the impressive Codrington Library building, built in the early 18th century on the back of slavery and a sugar cane fortune amassed by a Christopher Codrington.

It highlights the problem of applying 21st century values to the funding of a building like that. The Christopher Wren sundial installed over the entrance is a spectacular reminder of the versatility of the man, and Wren himself was a Fellow.

Oh, so different from the environment of the All Souls College of Christopher Wren, outwardly becoming more sensitive to its survival after the radicalism of 1968 which threatened its existence, when it was sneered at as “a weekend home for port-drinking members of the London Establishment, grown fat on the rent of farms it owned since the Middle Ages”.

Had we had dinner in an Anachronism?

Then it was back to London. I still remember the golden glow drenching the car, and my thoughts drifted to the recently-released Joe Losey film “The Go-between” and I, projecting myself as the young man in search of a romantic interlude in the same rural saffron softness of the film.

I have often visited Oxford since, but never again had a brandy with the 42 Fellows outside on the terrace.

But then again I would have preferred to meet Julie Christie. 

Mouse whisper

A scrap of paper plastered against my mousehole. That is the problem about my mausmeister. He is always cutting out what he considers wise sayings and leaving them on sticky pieces of paper. When I scraped the piece off my “hole way”, it read:

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand or more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Very sage advice; but I was thinking of putting in a new entrance to my mousehaus to make a closer access to the pantry. I’ll have to think about it now.