The next fortnight should show whether the nation with the world’s fourth-largest population will tumble into the plague pit where the second place holder currently writhes. (more…)
Category: Health
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The Budget falsely claims to make health insurance cheaper through lower premium rebates
The Ministry of Truth has apparently taken over the preparation of Department of Health Budget “fact” sheets. A decision which will increase the cost of private health insurance for thousands of Australians is presented as “making private health insurance simpler and more affordable”. -
As Covid ravages poor nations, Pharma vaccine profiteering has created 9 new billionaires
A new analysis shows that pharmaceutical companies’ immensely profitable monopoly control over coronavirus vaccines has produced nine new billionaires since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to ravage developing nations left largely without access to the life-saving shots. (more…)
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The Commonwealth Government is continually avoiding responsibility for quarantine
Even when States and private providers proposed to manage appropriate, fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities, the Morrison Government denied approval and refused to provide the funds. Absurdly, the Commonwealth accepts responsibility for biosecurity when it applies to plants and organisms, but not for humans. (more…)
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The Aged Care Royal Commission: the government responds with more money but the structural problems remain.
The Royal Commission’s first report elegantly articulated the problems that needed to be fixed. The Royal Commission’s final report was full of inconsistencies but had something for everybody. The ‘winners and losers’ have now been revealed in the government response and 2021 budget – and surprisingly, they are not who the government would like you to think they are.
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The second year of the pandemic is even more deadly. Australians in India are being abandoned.
If we clever humans can put a rover on Mars we can deliver AZ vaccine to the Australian High Commission in Delhi! (more…)
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What do we get for the millions spent on COVID consultancies?
Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout is not just a shambles, it’s an expensive shambles. The program is so bad that government has given up on setting meaningful targets and has now redefined target setting to when an activity starts, rather than when it finishes.
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Covid in India and racism in Australia
In Australia, since the infamous 2001 Tampa ‘crisis’ the decline of the rule of law, often in the context of playing the race card, has been a disturbing feature of the political landscape. And the decision by the Morrison government to announce that it would use a draconian measure to fine and jail Australians who wish to return from Covid ridden India, marks a new low in that trend. (more…)
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Biden supports waiver on Covid -19 vaccines. Will Australia follow? New Zealand is ahead of us again.
Australia must fall in behind the US and New Zealand in promoting wider production of Covid-19 vaccines. (more…)
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Share the intellectual property on COVID-19 vaccines
Intellectual Property must serve the global good, rather than humanity serving the interests of a few private companies. And in the case of COVID-19, the global good is not in doubt: rapid worldwide immunization, in order to save lives, prevent the emergence of new variants, and end the pandemic. (more…)
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India’s Coronavirus emergency tells a story poorly understood
The blanket and punitive travel ban for Australians returning from India is neither justified, nor does it make much sense in the efforts to curb the spreading of the virus. The Indian Coronavirus emergency is also raising many questions of the policies imposed around the world during the pandemic.
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A moral responsibility to get Australian’s home
Almost 40,000 Australians are trapped abroad because of the Covid-19 epidemic. Many have been trying to return for more than a year. Many in countries with raging epidemics, such as India and Brazil are in real danger of personal infection. Many new viral ‘variants’ are more infectious and can cause serious disease in younger populations than was the case with the first generation of SARS-2-Cov. (more…)
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Biden urged to stand ‘on the side of humanity’ and back waiver for Covid vaccine patents
The U.S. is facing sustained calls to end its opposition of a proposal to temporarily lift intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines and related technology as soaring coronavirus cases ravage India and new reporting spotlights a debate within the Biden administration over whether to support the patent suspension effort to help tackle the global pandemic or prioritize Big Pharma’s interests. (more…)
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Covid-19 Vaccines: Australia on the side of wealthy countries and Big Pharma
The Covid-19 vaccination program is becoming an ethical discussion of the difference between national vs global, private vs public, and whether to co-operate or to compete. It is also about who pays and who benefits.
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Capitalism, COVID, and Climate
The pandemic alliance between Big Pharma and governments foreshadows how the market-based capitalist system will fail to address global warming. Just finding low emissions technology is not an answer.
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Perspectives from the floor of a medically supervised injecting centre
I have worked at New South Wales’ only Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (Uniting MSIC) for more than seven years and have been giving care to people who inject drugs for over a decade.
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Why won’t Morrison accept his responsibility for quarantine?
WA State Premier McGowan has again called on the Commonwealth to accept its responsibility to develop national dedicated quarantine facilities as Australia has had for much of its past. But there appears to be little to no chance of that happening. (more…)
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There is a conspiracy about the origins of COVID-19. But it has nothing to do with China’s secrecy
The WHO report into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, released on March 30, supported what the scientists have long known: that the SARS-CoV2 virus most likely originated in an animal reservoir and, after a process of mutations, in complex settings of environmental and ecological change, eventually found its way into human populations. It also raised a curious question: why, if it is clear that the origin of COVID-19 is no different to other zoonoses to have emerged in the last century, are the public debates focusing on quite different issues? (more…)
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To hell in a trolley-car with a motley crew: utilitarians, “triage” urgers and Neo-Aztecs
And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. (John, 11:49-50 KJV).
Covid-era debates over the intrinsic value of human life have trundled the Trolley Problem (broadly, one person killed to save five), into the public arena. The general concept is not new. (more…)
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Who is Australia’s worst Health Minister? How does Greg Hunt rate?
In the past 50 years, Australia has had 23 health ministers. But who is the worst? (more…)
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COVID-19 Vaccines: Risks, Benefits, and Indemnity
The Morrison government has provided Indemnity for vaccine manufacturers but not Australians at risk of the exceedingly rare, but sometimes fatal, blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (more…)
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Explaining the AstraZeneca blood clots: what are our risks and how do we proceed?
Australian governments are advising people under the age of 50 not to pursue vaccination with the now locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine. Given Australia’s control over community transmission, any risk posed by the AZ vaccine is unacceptable, particularly, for not at-risk populations.
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Children’s Hospital tragedy casts a shadow over Perth
The death of a seven-year-old girl in the emergency department of Perth Children’s Hospital hangs like a cloud over the city and is bringing forth an outpouring both of grief and of questions about Western Australia’s health services. (more…)
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Are we more depressed or more diagnosed?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), which finds widespread use in Australia and across the world, by physicians, researchers, courts, and schools, lists more than 300 criteria for depression, which makes the meaning of a diagnosis so vague it can potentially cover every one of us. So, are we more depressed or more diagnosed?
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I’ll have what Scott’s having, thanks!
It is important that all Australians be vaccinated against Covid-19, but they deserve to be able to choose the vaccine that best suits them. As the federal government’s rollout plan implodes, the good news is that it now seems likely that all Australians who want it will be able to have the higher efficacy Pfizer vaccine which the PM received last month. (more…)
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Australian Medical Association’s aged care money grab
The Australian Medical Association, a lobby group and peak body for doctors, has offered up a thinly disguised money-grab in the form of expert recommendations in response to the Aged Care Royal Commission.
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Lobby Land. The power of the health lobby. Health ministers may be in office but they are not in power. An update.
The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers- the health lobby. A succession of Australian health ministers Liberal and Labor for three decades have failed in any serious health reform. We have been going around in circles. It is very depressing. The new shadow minister Mark Butler could succeed as Minister if he can find a way to manage and neutralise the provider/lobbyists. But not otherwise. And don’t look the the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing for much help. It was State Premiers, State Health Ministers and State Health officials who drove the fight against the pandemic, not the Commonwealth and its agencies.
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Australia assists Big Pharma to stall vaccine roll out.
As the Australian vaccine rollout languishes the Australian Government appears to value pharma profits over protecting people from Covid. (more…)
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The unfolding Covid disaster in PNG
Helping New Guinea with its disastrous Covid outbreak is not pure altruism on our part. The unbridled, indeed raging pandemic, known to have infected 100,000 already and likely to have infected a million more within a week or so, provides a perfect ‘incubator’ for wild type more infectious variants of the Covid to develop. We need to help our close neighbour in a way that prevents transmission of the New Guinea variant spilling into Australia.
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