Posts Tagged ‘pandemic’

Pandemic to endemic covid-19

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 13th, 2021 - 84 comments

Back in May, I wrote a post “Covid-19: may be endemic“. That is looking like it is more and more likely. The depth of infection in world populations means that recombinant variants are likely. Vaccines and previous immunity will reduce the death rates and infection rates. But won’t stop reinfection. Human behaviour will keep covid-19 as an endemic disease.

UK COVID-19 death toll hits 100,000 and The PM offers an insincere apology.

Written By: - Date published: 6:11 am, January 29th, 2021 - 21 comments

Originally posted on Nick Kelly’s Blog In late March 2020, the medical director of the NHS Stephen Powis said that keeping the UK COVID-19 death toll to under 20,000 would be a good result. Ten months later, almost to the day, the UK’s official death toll from COVID-19 hit 100,000, a few days after an […]

Beefing up the border – expensive and essential

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, December 21st, 2020 - 30 comments

From a few days ago (it seems like an eternity), RNZ reported “Govt to pump almost $3 billion into its Covid-19 response after report identified failings”. There were several points I’d make about the border controls and generally with our border and the long slow years in constraining this pandemic. But the Sydney outbreak and the UK Xmas Grinch appear to be making them for me already.

The human Pangaea

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, December 9th, 2020 - 16 comments

Humans have created the most recent virtual super-continent. At least as far as species movement has been concerned world wide. We’ve picked up species from around the world and transplanted them almost everywhere else – including microbiological. Pandemics will be the inevitable result. Could be amphibians dying off. It could be us. Perhaps it is time to have an intelligent discussion about the risks.

Pandemic: a flourishing enterprise. Business needs to get real.

Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, July 28th, 2020 - 40 comments

A few weeks ago we were at 14 million cumulative confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide. A million more cases in just 4 days. Now a few weeks later, we are at 16 million confirmed cases worldwide. The lobbyists and business groups affected by our blocked borders need to get real. We won’t be opening our borders until we get a widely used vaccine later next year (at the earliest). It is too expensive to do so.

How Africa has weathered the COVID-19 storm

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, May 27th, 2020 - 14 comments

Ramaphosa has no doubt learnt from his predecessor Thabo Mbeki’s abysmal response to the HIV crisis in South Africa where inaction by the government caused the virus to spread quickly. Sadly it’s through these sort of deadly mistakes that politicians learn the importance of prevention in public health.

 

Draconian Tourism or no Tourism?

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, April 27th, 2020 - 192 comments

If overseas tourists want to visit NZ, they may have to give up a little bit of their privacy to keep all of us safe.

Tourism is the elephant in the living room

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, April 9th, 2020 - 148 comments

Rather than saving an industry that has multiple sustainability and resiliency failures, how about we regenerate local economies and set them to serve our communities?

Pandemics are no a time for inward-looking nationalism

Written By: - Date published: 4:37 am, April 9th, 2020 - 41 comments

Originally posted on Nick Kelly’s Blog

Trump is focused on the November US Presidential Election. His anti-Chinese, nationalist, America First rhetoric is his go-to response to keep his political base onside. He is placing his political ambition ahead of millions of lives both in the US and globally. Trump has placed electoral politics ahead of leadership that could save millions of lives.

No Right Turn: A new Ministry of Works

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, April 2nd, 2020 - 22 comments

Idiot/Savant writes: “While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in”

Please don’t have to bring out your dead.

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, March 29th, 2020 - 45 comments

scene from monty python - bring out your dead - black plague and black humour

Anyone who has read even briefly into written human history is going to be aware that it is as much defined by our epidemics and pandemics as by any of our technical and societal achievements. This post is essentially a quick range over the history of pandemics and epidemics with links and some focus on COVID-19.

On Mike the Moron and handling infectious diseases

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, March 20th, 2020 - 14 comments

Five days ago Mike Hosking was representing his paymasters with his reflection of their basic ignorance of history.  Then demanding caution in dealing with covid-19. Yesterday he panicked for immediate action to close the borders which government did anyway later that day. It is just dangerous to give a public platform to a dithering moron who be at home in 1918. Perhaps he should read the pandemic plan? 

No Right Turn: Parliament and the pandemic

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, March 9th, 2020 - 23 comments

Idiot/Savant writes about what the government can and can’t do with sitting and the election.