Our leaders have perverted science for political gain

A small outreach centre in Liverpool is doing all it can to stay in contact with those who are the most vulnerable. The local council has given the Liverpool Neighbourhood Connection permission to package up small parcels of fruit each Friday but all other activities have been ordered to a halt. For roughly 30 people - mainly elderly folk without family or those battling severe disability – this means volunteers drop off weekly boxes of apples, bananas, mandarins and pumpkins. But for the dozens of senior Australians who looked forward to the charity’s weekly barbeque, that way of life is now over. COVID-19’s rate of R, or the “reproduction number” as academics refer to it, has plummeted below 1, the benchmark of case numbers increasing or decreasing. Australia’s curb has flattened but strict restrictions, supposedly based on science, still remain. New research published in peer-reviewed journal Science Magazine has pondered the role that radical restrictions – and the sacrifice of all Australians - has played in the flattening of the curve. And the findings may surprise you. Princeton University associate professor of psychology Johannes Haushofer has laboured over the issue in his report: Which interventions work best in a pandemic? “The only approaches currently available to reduce transmission of the novel coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are behavioural: handwashing, cough and sneeze etiquette, and above all, social distancing,” he wrote. “Policy-makers have a variety of tools to enable these ‘nonpharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs), ranging from simple encouragement and recommendations to full-on regulation and sanctions.” You probably knew this already. But wait for his conclusion of the efficacy of such measures. “However, these interventions are often used without rigorous empirical evidence: They make sense in theory, and mathematical models can be used to predict their likely impact (1, 2), but with different policies being tried in different places — often in complicated combinations and without systematic, built-in evaluation — we cannot confidently attribute any given reduction in transmission to a specific policy.” This is most curious an assertion in the midst of heated border debates where leaders such as Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insists families will be at risk if she opens borders. Ms Palaszczuk has decided to keep her state locked off from the rest of the country without providing a scientific rationale for such an extreme measure. And when she was questioned by the media yesterday she committed several logical fallacies, including an appeal to probability, by attempting to explain her case. Ms Palaszczuk was asked how her tourism industry would be impacted by a failure to open borders. Her response? “Well you obviously have a family,” she snapped back at the female reporter. “Do you want your family to have community transmission from NSW? “Do you? Do you want to put that at risk? I think we all care about our families. We all care about Queensland.” Indeed we all care about Queensland. In that case it is curious that such a legitimate question was met with such hostility and the inference that the reporter did not care about her family or her community. An argument devoid of science or intellect. A predictable performance by Ms Palaszczuk. Professor Haushofer discussed the potential fallacy of statements like Ms Palaszczuk. In reality – we have no idea whether border closures will have any influence on the figure R, and any suggestion to the contrary uttered with certainty is one made without evidence. The data simply does not exist. Policymakers must also take into consideration the economic and phycological harm associated with lockdowns which have achieved little or naught, he argues. “With different policies being tried in different places—often in complicated combinations and without systematic, built-in evaluation—we cannot confidently attribute any given reduction in transmission to a specific policy,” he wrote. “Because many of these interventions differ from each other in terms of their economic and psychological cost—ranging from very inexpensive, in the case of interventions based on behavioral economics and psychology, to extremely costly, in the case of school and business closures—it is crucial to identify the interventions that most reduce transmission at the lowest economic and psychological cost.” No specific policy can claim credit for any success in Australia, despite what our leaders will have you believe. The equation is such a complicated multi-varied one that scientists have simply not been able to crack it. It involves genetic make-up, socio-economic status, cultural tendencies, population density, viral load density of the most prevalent COVID strain, weather and, perhaps most importantly, trust. A commodity sorely missing in Australia today. Via news.com.au — Australia’s #1 news site https://www.news.com.au