Like all other fields – because humans are involved – Science is not immune from typical day-to-day politics; office politics, …
nepotism, favouritism, double-bitching, triple plays are all part of the game. However, in my three decades in the mix there has been nothing like the politicization we are seeing during this pandemic; it’s different and weird.
Correctly, when there is a global crisis of this magnitude the world mostly looks at the US for answers. Unfortunately, starting with the “masks don’t protect you from getting the disease” BS … we got a bunch confusing crap from the authorities and experts. Early on, irrelevant therapies (sometimes dangerous), were pushed and funded. Even now the politicization of COVID-19 in the US is clear – if it wasn’t literally a life and death situation, the events Florida and some other states would be comical.
Unfortunately, in smaller countries like Australia, we play follow the leader; I’ve always known we are behind the US and Europe but during this pandemic it has become even more evident. In most aspects we play follow the leader – our news is stale (mostly recycled international stories from months ago), our vaccine response is relatively slow, our science is lagging.
Talking about science, COVID-19 has really inspired lots and lots of research like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like everything else science closely follows Sturgeon’s Law, so on top of the complexities of politicization, the science itself is difficult follow closely given the volume that is being generated and published in different forms. {Some might say that even this article follows Sturgeon’s Law – it probably does J).
Anyway, one the most political aspects that will affect people directly in the near future (already started in some places), is the concept of vaccine passports. Having safe and effective vaccines in such a short period of time, as I have said many times, is a miracle. It is critical that people get vaccinated as soon as they possibly can, so we can return to “normality” as quick as possible … BUT … vaccine passports is different thing. There are many reasons why they are 1) not right and 2) irrelevant. Scientifically, we know that immunity wanes with time following vaccination, we know that different people have different responses to vaccines in terms of immunity, we know that there are breakthrough infections, who know that people who have had COVID in the past are well-protected, so who exactly are we giving the green light to? Immunity passports (based on serology) would be much more meaningful … BUT … do who want to discriminate in that way?
In the meantime in Melbourne, we are reporting >500 new COVID-19 cases today despite 6 weeks of super-strict lockdown; delta is hard to control. Lockdown is difficult, and some people were organising to display their frustrations in the form of a demonstration on the weekend. The Government has taken the extreme step of cancelling public transport on Saturday to thwart the protests. Given that we are in the midst of a COVID-19 wave, I agree, it is not the right time for a demonstration right now. Let’s vaccinate our way out of this public health crisis, and then we can all demonstrate together – I’ll be first in line when it’s my turn to help “fix” the lockdown economy.
The Met Gala – what a joke! AOC wins with her “tax the rich” outfit while she’s smooching at a $35,000 event; the NY mayor gets an honourable mention for happy clapping while the city recoded over 1 million cases and >34,000 deaths ( I thought there was some lingering mask rule still in NY); and Kimmy K – the only person that can’t be seen should be John Cena; where’s she going J.
Until next time …