Three of Australia's leading COVID-19 experts share their personal safety strategies and reflect on what must happen if we're to blunt the growing health crisis the pandemic is causing — and prepare for the next one.
www.abc.net.au
Australia recorded more than 28,000 excess deaths between January 2022 and July 2023, he says. "These are unheard of numbers, people who wouldn't have otherwise died, let alone the hundreds of thousands in hospital — we don't know exactly because no one publishes the numbers." Then there are the hundreds of millions globally with long COVID, the risk of which increases with each infection. "I find what we know about COVID concerning enough to call it an elevated public health crisis," Professor Crabb says. "And we need sustainable solutions to that now and in the longer term."
""The lack of action against COVID, Professor Crabb says, is fundamentally a problem of a lack of leadership. "The most common thing said to me is, 'Brendan, I really do trust what you and others are saying. But if there was a real problem the prime minister, the government, would be telling us that'," he says. "I don't think people are all of a sudden profoundly individualistic and don't care about COVID anymore — that they're suddenly willing to take massive risks and hate the idea of vaccines and masks. I just don't think they're being well led on this issue."
Hospitals have become a strange new battleground in the fight against COVID, with doctors and public health experts concerned that too many patients are catching the virus — and an alarming number are dying — as a result of inadequate infection control.
www.abc.net.au
N95 masks:
They do, however, prevent a lot of transmission. Studies from before and during the pandemic suggest masking among healthcare workers can reduce hospital-acquired respiratory viral infections by about 60 per cent — though the type of mask matters. As one study found, well-fitted N95 respirators are 75 times more effective than surgical masks when both an infectious person and a susceptible person wear them. Yet many hospitals have scaled back masking requirements, even during COVID surges over summer, with staff allowed to wear surgical masks in clinical areas or no respiratory protection at all.
Nice to see that the thread on COVID here at Linux.org remained a relatively polite affair. It embarrasses me to say so, but at that time - 4 years ago - we had a small core of individuals in the Puppy community who appeared to see this as the perfect opportunity to start "having a go" at anyone who had ever disagreed with something they might have posted in the past.
We shut down at least 2 discussion threads within a relatively short time-frame, but like daisies up would pop another one to replace it. And the OPs were getting "nasty' about it, and really slagging the staff off for daring to close the previous threads...
Needless to say, Erik - rockedge, our Admin - ended up banning several who thought they were untouchable. Nobody's 'above' the rules.....and Erik proved that.
Astonishing how so many folk got so nasty over the 'official' response to a worldwide illness.......hmm?
There were some bumps along the road, but we managed. There was some drama at times but we nipped it in the bud. I dimly recall a ban or two along the way, or maybe just vacations. Don't quote me on that, however. I do a good job at forgetting. This is for my own sanity as well as to keep me impartial.
COVID-19 continues to evolve at a fast pace, with the latest highly transmissible variant, nicknamed FLuQE emerging as the dominant strain in Australia and across parts of the world.