The COVID-19 pandemic has shone the most intense of spotlights on the weaknesses in our societies including: the lack of cohesion and increase in racism, inequality in opportunity leading to lower living standards which results in far greater impacts especially on exploited minorities and temporary workers, and inadequate care for the elderly in part due to greater dependence on institutional care as double fulltime income families struggle to meet their aspirations.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began to rewrite economic histories for countries, Australia was basking in the glow of a world record run of economic growth. Treasurer after treasurer for the last decade and half returned from overseas gatherings of international finance ministers continually telling us that we were the envy of the world.

At home, however, there was an increasing feeling, especially amongst young Australians, that the prosperity was not being shared equally. That the previous generations, of landlords and share investors, had had the better of things. Worse still, for a chance of attaining their level of prosperity the younger generations had to commit to a life of vulnerable debt servitude, or give up on the ideas of attaining the trappings of the Aussie middle class, such as home ownership, if their parents were not in the position to assist them. Of course the persistence of this aspiration allowed the previous generations to continue to experience their good fortune by keeping aloft asset prices. However, even that chance of parental assistance at reaching the middle class was under attack with some parents indulging in the tongue-in-cheek Baby Boomer SKI passion – spending the kids inheritance.

Such was the passion resulting from these intergenerational tensions that a plate of smashed avocado become emblematic for all that was wrong with an insufficiently aspirational and\or hardworking young generation, according to many senior Australians.

Middle-aged Australian families that had not purchased property before the new millennium were increasingly being squeezed by rampaging rents.

Of course the property bubble was kicked off in large part by huge incentives for Australians to speculate on house prices, not invest because housing supply was always tightly managed to keep the bubble from bursting. Finally after years of increasing distortions (e.g. First Home Owners Boost during the GFC to keep house prices high) in the most recent Federal election Australians had a real choice to take away these housing and share market distortions (i.e. franking credit reimbursement). Australians declined that opportunity, and in many ways I believe that is a reflection of many young Australians’ compassion for their parents and grandparents leading them to take “their side” while not fully understanding the intergeneration inequity that such measures would have addressed. 

While the young generations are castigated by many senior Australians for being selfish in seeking instant gratification, as exemplified by the smashed avo “debate”, research shows that younger generations are generous with their time through volunteering and definitely are community-minded.

It has been my view for some time that the situation is actually the inverse – it is Baby Boomer Australians who definitely have had the best of conditions – far more favourable than their parents who endured wartime and post-war frugality to provide for their growing families and who never achieved near the comparative wealth of their children – and still with such powerful electoral presence to repel attempts to lessen perks which they have enjoyed for most of their adult lives and which prevent a fair go for those younger Australians who at the same time subsidise all or some medical costs for seniors as well as fund other Government functions and pensions even for the modestly wealthy, while wealthy Australian retirees live from massively tax advantaged savings.

Now COVID-19 is exposing those inter-generational issues in an extreme manner that few have yet considered.

Young people have progressively been forced to accept that they will not have the same opportunities to acquire the same level of wealth as previous generations have done, through no fault of their own but due to the reality of politics where the greater number of votes (and of political donations) exist amongst the owning class, and this is exemplified by homeownership.

Those experiencing the greatest negative economic impacts in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic are the young working in the low-paid customer facing roles providing non-essential services. This will turn around somewhat because the longer the pandemic goes the greater the need for businesses to cut more deeply, and those older Australians made redundant will find it increasingly difficult to find another job. Up to this point in time, however, it is well understood that it is young Australians that have suffered the greatest economic hardship.

The Federal Government, especially, has wanted to pretend that it is possible to keep the national economy ticking away in some fashion by following a suppression strategy. Much of that is aimed at ensuring asset prices do not fall sharply, especially our housing markets which have long been Australia’s true economic vulnerability.

If house prices fell the older owning class would be worst affected economically, while young Australians have the most to gain by a fall in the price of assets because over their life time the opportunity to buy a home for perhaps half of the peak price would place them ahead of where they would be otherwise. That financial advantage would be so significant as to easily outweigh the negative financial impact of spending perhaps a year or two unemployed during a very serious recession or even depression.

For a long time I considered a buyer’s strike a reasonable choice for young Australians to address the intergenerational inequity that our political system has been unable to address.

Now it seems possible if not likely the pandemic will force it.

My main advice to young Australians would be that the best investment that you can make is your own health. From very early in the pandemic, well before such stories become common, I was warning through my posts that nobody should consider for a moment that all of the ways that the novel coronavirus can impact our health were understood. We are learning more about these impacts as time goes on, including an understanding that young people can fall seriously ill and die from COVID-19, and that even mild infections can cause changes within the brain. Long term impacts from infection can not be understood until that time has passed.

While many young people have come to think of themselves as invincible in this pandemic, there could be serious long term consequences to them developing even mild infection.

So I see our Governments’ response to the current crisis to be similar to previous crises: work expeditiously to get things back to “normal” as soon as possible, thus protecting asset prices which various Governments have worked hard at building and protecting over decades.

The people who are meant to save the economy from collapse are essentially the same: the young. In the GFC young Australians, those with the least life and investing experience, were bribed to enter the housing market and keep prices aloft by an increased cash grant which quickly was added to the price of the home in any case so that they got no net benefit but were left with a lifetime of vulnerable debt servitude.

In the COVID-19 pandemic young people, already economically vulnerable, are being convinced that they have the most to gain by the opening up of the economy and especially of the low-paid customer-facing service jobs. These are the jobs that can not be done remotely, and thus entail a significantly greater risk of contracting COVID-19. Note also that early discussions around herd immunity inferred that it was the young and healthy, the school children through to the pre-forties, who would have had the bulk “responsibility” for developing the infection to protect the vulnerable within the herd. (And it is here that you understand why our Federal Government fought so hard to ensure that schools remained open.)

As we have learned in Melbourne like elsewhere, older Australians are clearly more at risk of death from COVID-19, so senior Australians have the most to lose out of economic activity being prioritised over minimising loss of life. If economic impacts result in a fall in asset prices they will also lose, but common sense says that the majority would prefer the former option because wealth is of no use after death.

Yet it is the young who have the majority of their life to live with any long term consequences from COVID-19 infection. And it is young people who are most disadvantaged by our historically very high housing prices which are more likely to fall the longer and more deeply the economy is impacted.

So young people are being called on to got out and work to minimise impacts on the Australian economy, and risk their lives and their long term health, and the consequence of their bravery will be that the more successful they are in doing that the more out of reach will remain home ownership and long term financial security, especially if those long term health affects turn out to be debilitating and thus impact their lifetime earning potential.

I realise that this discussion leaves out an important group – the recent buyers, of which I would include myself. In a bubble, the most impacted are always the last buyers before the collapse. Anybody buying homes in Australia in the last 10 years in the financial expectation that the experience of the previous decades will be repeated was speculating as the fundamentals long ago ceased to stack up. At best an analysis of renting versus buying based on the current lower bound interest rates may suggest fair value in some areas of Australia, but that is not a basis for price increases going forward, and on a long term basis Australian house prices remain significantly overpriced. While I do not expect interest rates to increase appreciably for a long time in Australia, and have long held that view, whenever an asset class is over-owned by speculators there is the potential for price declines as those speculators realise their error. To those who bought understanding this dynamic, but rather made a discretionary spend to live in and\or raise a family in their own home, then these factors are of little significance. For such people the issue remains the same – maintaining a roof over one’s head – whether that be a rented roof or one to which a bank holds the mortgage.

That is the crux of intergenerational inequity in the COVID-19 era and the stakeholders in that situation are largely passive and being led by the political class. In the second part I will concentrate more on the closely related tension between business and workers, and here stakeholders are for more active and engaged in politics lobbying for the Government action that supports their aims.

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To discuss the tension between business and workers we really need to strip back this issue to economic impacts versus human impacts (i.e. loss of lives) in the COVID-19 pandemic, a topic that is a constant background of my writing at MacroEdgo.

At the outset, it is very important to spell out that by human impacts I mean loss of life and all that entails: a life cut shorter than it otherwise would have been and the loss to that individual and those who knew and loved them.

It is equally important to accept that this discussion must be held in the context of our values – the term du jour – and especially our contemporary societies’ relationships with wealth and money.

Here it is important to draw a distinction as money is one form of numerical representation of wealth. In reality wealth is just a measure of the resources at your disposal to do things while you are on Earth and after (by your benefactors).

Why is it important to make these distinctions?

Society’s relationship with wealth will be a major deciding factor in where the balance is struck: in a society where wealth is more highly valued in relation to human life, then greater loss of life will be tolerated by citizens to lessen economic impacts, and vice versa.

Of course the general wealth of the country is important. Obviously a poor country can endure far less disruption to its economy because it has far less means to assist the vulnerable who will likely need to work to prevent starvation.

So the COVID-19 pandemic, as experienced in developed countries that have the resources which provide the opportunity to decide to respond more aggressively to minimise loss of life than developing countries, really is one of those rare moments in time where citizens are needing to decide where they fit on that continuum, i.e. what are our values.

The degree to which politicians are prepared to meet those society-wide values, even if it affects their own political standing amongst historical supporter bases including powerful financial donors, will decide their political fate.

I am not going to distil this issue down to numerical representations of national wealth in terms of dollars and cents, and GDP, etc. While I enjoy reading and analysing financial and economic data, and I do agree that it must necessarily feature in decision-making, it sometimes leads to the point being missed by many and it alienates (or repulses) many others.

What we are talking about is lives: ours and of everybody we care about.

I agree that greater human impacts will affect economy (e.g. loss of valuable human capital and productivity, reduced subsets of consumers, and impacts on confidence due to fear of infection and death) and vice versa (e.g. increased suicide due to economic impacts). However, I must admit that, even though I am a professionally-trained research scientist and highly analytical in nature, I agree with those who consider the reduction of human impacts down to numbers, whether that be death tolls or dollars and cents, to be distasteful.

As such I would not link to any report that does so, unless, of course, it favoured the argument I am making – such as here (yes, tongue in cheek).

The real purpose of this post is to put as plainly as possible the qualitative assessment of the overall risks that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing on all Australians, and I want to highlight what are the factors, as I see them, that different segments of society are choosing to elevate in importance in their own decision-making.

In the first part I discussed the intergenerational issues which should be more widely discussed in these terms, but are not because to do so would require an admission that all politicians and senior financial bureaucrats were complicit in creating and perpetuating an enormous intergenerational inequity on young Australians.

This second aspect is being discussed, but it is only being discussed tangentially and in faux terms such as a grieving for every “livelihood” without recognition that in all reality that what is being discussed is a job that barely provides a living, and certainly not a living that similar level jobs in previous generations provided especially in comparison to what workers aspire(d) to do with that livelihood (such as buy a family home).

That is because continual weakening of workers’ rights, in the name of workplace flexibility and pseudo-innovation (which essentially leads to the replacement of an already existing industry, powered by workers on more tenuous conditions), have allowed the owning class (i.e. the wealthy) to increase their wealth by keeping an increasingly greater share of profits over the last 3 decades. This is a well understood phenomenon in the English-speaking world.

So we entered the COVID-19 pandemic with Australian workers more precarious than they were decades earlier, where social safety networks have also been eroded and widely considered unable to support a respectable developed country standard of living, and where affordable housing is a real problem for many which has led to many vulnerable people living densely and\or in conditions below what many in the developed world would consider adequate.

On the other hand, our elite have continued to fete the American economic model, falling under the same malaise of mistaking greed for a necessary ingredient rather than the deleterious byproduct it is.

This explanation of the current situation, together with the information in Part I, explains the workers’ risks.

For the business elites – the business owners and executives – the risk analysis is altogether different.

The business elites gain very little benefit out of closing their business to guard against the risks to employees other than at a personal level in knowing that they have behaved morally and conscionably. However, in doing so they risk a severe financial setback to their business which, especially for medium or small businesses, may be devastating. Small or medium businesses owners may lose their business, and consequently their aspirations for wealth accumulation and business success will suffer a serious blow.

Business executives may miss out on attractive incentives awards, such as bonuses and stock\share options, for not reaching operational milestones because businesses were closed to protect employees and reduce transmission of COVID-19.

No doubt the business elites are people, also, no less susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus, even if their wealth has afforded them a greater level of underlying health than the wider populations, and will ensure that their treatment will be gold standard should they fall seriously ill. Moreover, they are also members of families, with children, and parents, and brothers and sisters, and extended families whom they love and who they hope will not be infected or succumb to severe COVID-19 disease.

The business elites, however, unlike the workers, have done very well thank you very much out of the way that the system has developed over the last 3 or 4 decades and in order for maximum preservation of that system and their advantage they want things to get back as close as possible as soon as possible.

The business elites need for people to retain as much as possible of their spending habits and belief systems around consumer and societal status aspirations – that is why there is an emphasis on opening up the entire economy not just the genuinely essential services.

It is already clearly understood that it is the people in lower socio-economic circumstances, especially the minorities, who are doing the jobs that can not be done remotely and who, to remain employed, must accept greater risk of being infected and ultimately of dying with COVID-19.

At the crescendo of emotion over the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, a video by Kimberley Jones gained a great deal of attention for its brutal honesty. Kimberley explained for white people, many of whom may have been shocked by it, why black and other minority Americans were so willing to destroy property.

It boiled down to one thing and one thing only – after 400 years of toil and building wealth for others, they owned nothing themselves.

They did not respect that property because to them it was a symbol of a system that failed them by being biased and prejudiced against them for four centuries! And they knew it would continue to fail them and their descendants if nothing changed.

They had nothing to lose.

Again in the COVID-19 pandemic it is the business elite – the owners – who have the most to lose.

In earlier writing I spelt out that the advantage that those arguing for rapid and complete reopening of economies have is that the families that will ultimately suffer loss because of that decision do not yet know it. If they did know that they would be affected, surely many more would fight harder for measures to minimise loss of life, and be prepared to suffer greater economic hardship for the chance to save their loved-one’s life.

Right now throughout Australia measures to protect human life are popular, and Premiers of states that have experienced periods of zero detected community transmission and\or are experiencing very low levels of community transmission are very supportive of the state border closures.

At the same time, business elites are placing maximum pressure on the Federal conservative Government to remove measures which keep people safe but which hinder the operation and viability of their businesses, and currently they especially want PM Morrison to politically out-maneuver State Governments so that borders are re-opened.

If one is to listen to these business elites justifying why Australia must loosen restrictions, and thus live with greater risk and subsequently greater spread and death with COVID-19, it will almost certainly be said that Australia simply cannot afford these impediments to business functioning as it did prior to the pandemic.

When Australians hear such a comment, they might want to begin to consider why that might be so – why Australia apparently cannot afford to protect it’s citizens in this pandemic, and especially it’s most vulnerable now, after having experienced almost 30 years of continuous economic growth. They might want to consider in what ways they benefitted from all of that growth, and whether it might actually be the case that the majority of spoils were shared between only a small subset of Australians. As it becomes clear that high house prices are not a symbol of permanent wealth but are ephemeral, while the debt is real and lasting, they may wish to consider who really prospered from the bubble. They might wonder what value might have been gained from Governments thinking ahead and stashing away a lot of the windfall from a once in century resources boom into a sovereign wealth fund to be used at a time of need, and then recall what powerful lobby it was that prevented the Rudd Government from doing it.

Australians might then want to consider whether it is that same subset of Australians that are now saying that Australia cannot afford to do everything possible to minimise loss of life in our lucky country!

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

Now that Prime Minister Morrison has clarified that the aim of Australia’s aggressive suppression strategy is zero community transmission, we need to begin to reposition to be more proactive rather than reactive towards COVID-19.

Australia has long been a world leader in biosecurity policy and implementation, and together with our natural advantages from being a relatively remote island, we have managed to remain free from many of the important animal and plant diseases and pests.

Think about it, on your overseas travels, what other countries so jealously guard the good health of primary industries and important native plants and wildlife?

The biosecurity operations that travellers into Australia witness at airports and cruise terminals is only the tip of the iceberg.

But this is an article about the COVID-19 pandemic, the most serious disease challenge to confront humanity in a century. Why are we talking about animal diseases?

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When an infectious disease is first discovered a key aspect of management is to understand the host range of the pathogen, whether it be a virus, bacteria or other organism that causes the disease. 

If we are discussing a virus, the host range refers to all the organisms which may be infected by that virus.

This is important because in order to manage disease outbreaks we need to study the epidemiology – the way the pathogen spreads – in all its potential hosts.

Some pathogens infect only a small number of organisms, and thus have a narrow host range, while others have a broad host range.

The broader the host range the more challenging will be efforts to prevent its introduction or reintroduction, and the management of outbreaks.

The more animal species that may be infected by a particular pathogen, the greater the routes for introduction of the pathogen, and once introduced the greater the potential for populations of animals to act as reservoirs from which disease outbreaks can be re-initiated. 

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Unfortunately, research-based predictions suggested that the novel coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2, has a broad host range, and real-world research and observations through the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic is confirming this to be the case.

Initial studies were done with the aim of determining from where the virus originated, or what was the original host of SARS-CoV-2 and whether the virus went through any other hosts – called intermediate hosts – from which people in Wuhan first became infected.

Bats were suspected as the original host because a former colleague of mine, Dr Shi Zhengli, found that they were the original host for the SARS virus. Based in Wuhan, Shi also led the group which discovered that a novel coronavirus was the cause of COVID-19.

These studies are laborious necessitating surveying and taking samples from farmed and wild animals for signs of infection or prior infections. The original work by Shi and her group necessitated climbing through caves knee-deep in pungent guano to collect samples from bats.

In the COVID-19 pandemic time is of the essence so scientists have utilised what is known of the way that the novel coronavirus enters human cells to predict its potential host range. This is a critical aspect because viruses cannot reproduce outside of cells; they must enter cells to multiply and spread infection within the body and then to be shed to spread infection to other hosts.

Initially these studies were performed to narrow down the search for a potential intermediate host. That initial source and intermediate host(s) for the novel coronavirus (I will use this description hereon for SARS-CoV-2) have not yet been identified with real world investigations. 

Those predictive studies found that, unsurprisingly, the closely related primates are the most likely to also be susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus. Consistently predicted to be susceptible to infection included a broad range of commercially or culturally significant mammals including: cattle, horses, goats, sheep, bison, water buffalo, hamsters, cats (domestic and wild), rabbits, ferrets and some rodent species, while predictions on camels and pigs varied.

Other interesting findings from these studies showed that cetaceans, marine mammals, were found to be highly likely to be susceptible to infection, but that raises the issue of pathways for and likelihood of exposure. 

Of particular interest in Australia, the one monotreme (egg-laying mammal) and four marsupial species studied were predicted to have a very low likelihood of being susceptible to infection.

Perhaps the most curious finding was that bats and pangolins, considered the most likely original and intermediate hosts for the novel coronavirus, were less likely to be infected via this channel. In other words, it seems likely that the novel coronavirus can utilise more than one mechanism to enter host cells, which suggests that the host range may be even broader than these studies predicted.

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While the predictive studies suggesting a broad range were concerning, interactions between potential hosts and viruses are extraordinarily complex so observations with real animals are vital.

These studies take the form of transmission trials to establish infections by unnatural routes (injection) or natural routes (swabbing virus onto membranes or cohabitation with infected animals), along with analysis of samples from sick or surveyed farmed or wild animals.

Actual transmission of important pathogens under experimental conditions requires biosecure facilities which are rare. These trials are important because conditions can be strictly managed and replicated to confirm research findings, and animals are exposed to a known amount of the pathogen (under conditions strictly audited for ethical considerations). 

This approach allows the development of animal models to study infections with pathogens which infect people, but it is obviously time consuming and resource intensive. 

In transmission trials by swabbing the novel coronavirus onto nasal membranes, infection could not be established in pigs, chickens or ducks. However, cats, bats and ferrets were infected, and these species passed on the infection to in-contact animals of the same species making it clear that they are susceptible to the virus and will transmit infection. Transmission studies suggested dogs have low susceptibility to infection, but some did show signs of infection.

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While transmission trials with SARS-CoV-2 are ongoing, real world developments are progressing faster as the virus spreading rapidly and widely amongst people has led to a broader range of animals being exposed. 

We are learning that indeed the novel coronavirus can infect a broad range of other mammals.

Initially there were reports of companion pets such as cats and dogs found to be infected with novel coronavirus. In April lions and tigers at a zoo in New York were found to be infected by the novel coronavirus, and the most likely source was an infected zoo employee.

More recently there have been reports of outbreaks of disease amongst farm animals infected by the novel coronavirus. Mink in at least 25 farms in Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark have been found to be infected with the novel coronavirus, and it is suspected that the virus was transmitted between the mink and the workers in both directions in this environment.

In one outbreak in Spain 87% of mink were found to be infected. Detection of the novel coronavirus in animals necessitates the culling of the entire stock of mink.

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This highlights some profoundly serious considerations.

It raises the issue of epidemiological surveillance for the virus in farmed populations of susceptible or potentially susceptible animals. Also, the risks of some infected material entering the processing, or pet or human food, chain must be addressed.

Meat processing facilities have been the site of serious outbreaks of COVID-19 amongst workers globally. Attention has focused on the environmental conditions within these facilities and the general living conditions for workers which favour contagion.

These host range studies suggest the potential for the novel coronavirus to be introduced into the meat processing plants is not just with the workers but with the animals that are being processed.

The novel coronavirus has been shown to maintain viability, without any loss of infectivity, for 3 weeks on the surface (i.e. simulating contamination) of fish, chicken and pork stored at normal refrigeration temperature of +4ºC and normal commercial freezer temperature of -20ºC. Moreover, a similar coronavirus has been shown to remain viable in meat frozen for 2 years.

This highlights the potential for the spread of the virus geographically and over time within meat. Virus actually within tissues, due to infection of the animal prior to slaughter, is likely to be present at much higher titres (quantities) and is likely to be more persistent (survive for longer) than virus lying on the surface of meat due to contamination. Thus meat from an infected animal would represent a higher risk than meat that was contaminated with the novel coronavirus.

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As for the risks associated with transmission of COVID-19 with contaminated meat, the risks of transmission to people from animals infected by the novel coronavirus are being downplayed by authorities in the US and even in Australia.

In the US the argument is similar to that discussed in the companion post to this, On The Risk of Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 With Contaminated Meat, that with their limited resources they need to concentrate their efforts to slow spread of their very severe pandemic with other more direct strategies such as testing of people.

As discussed previously, Australia together with New Zealand and other countries that have mounted aggressive responses that have succeeded in eliminating or very strongly suppressing the pandemic, the situation is very different. In these countries much greater attention must be turned to proactive biosecurity measures to limit the probability of re-introduction of the novel coronavirus.

These countries have much to gain from that proactivity in terms of protection of human life and also their important domesticated and native animals.

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There are clear implications here for Australian primary industries which trade on an image of animals being raised in pristine and natural environments free from major infectious disease. If that is maintained through the COVID-19 pandemic that will provide significant economic benefits to rural Australia.

On the other hand, if the novel coronavirus is found in populations of commercially significant animals then culling will be required to curtail its spread.

In the companion article to this one I mentioned that the new anti-food wastage campaign initiated very recently in China may be in part due to concerns about food security (obtaining sufficient food) if food safety was called into question during the COVID-19 pandemic. It may be that this aspect, the potential for important food animals to carry infection, may be what is driving that apparent anxiety. It would also be acutely concerning for the World Health Organisation with the remit to “promote health, keep the world safe, and guard the vulnerable”.

The more the virus spreads within people in Australia the greater the probability companion, domesticated and wild animals will be exposed to the virus, and thus for it to escape into the wild and become endemic. This will create reservoirs of the virus to cause future outbreaks in people and other animals.

At this stage only a few native Australian species of mammals have been the subject of predictive studies on whether they may be susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus, and no transmission trials have been reported. From these limited studies it appears that the unique native Australian mammalian fauna may be less susceptible to infection.

This evolutionary distinction may work in their favour, by being refractory (not susceptible to infection), or their naivety may increase their susceptibility to infection and severe disease. That is difficult to predict when it is suspected that the novel coronavirus utilises multiple mechanisms to establish infection.

There are three key takeaways for Australia from this emerging knowledge around the broad host range for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19:

1) if Australia’s aim is zero community transmission, we need to be extremely aggressive in minimising outbreaks because the longer or more intense the outbreak the greater the opportunity for other susceptible animals to be exposed and become a reservoir for the virus to re-establish infections in people;

2) Australia needs to be proactive and utilise its biosecurity expertise to determine what pathways exist for the virus to enter Australia other than being carried by people, for example in animal products or with live animal “passengers” on cargo ships; and

3) To protect primary industries, and as custodians of special and precarious native fauna, Australia needs to be acutely aware of the need to assess and manage the risks posed by the introduction of the novel coronavirus into native, domesticated and feral animal populations, and should commence surveillance for the novel coronavirus in domesticated and wild animals starting in areas that have been identified as hotspots for infection in people.

Drafted entirely by Brett Edgerton on 28 July, with minor revisions and additions on 26 August immediately prior to publishing.

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

Executive Summary

Citizens of countries that have fought off earlier waves of the COVID-19 pandemic rightly guard their (relative) freedom from COVID-19 fiercely. Remote and/or isolated communities, from small villages through to island nations such as those in the Pacific, many with limited resources to fight an outbreak, fear its introduction and need to focus intently on prevention. In these situations the effectiveness of handwashing and face masks at slowing infection spread are secondary to understanding the ways in which SARS-CoV-2 may be introduced to their communities. Even though many scientists and/or Government officials have attempted to downplay its significance, one area of increasing concern is the potential for the establishment of new clusters of infection via contaminated perishable food and especially fresh or frozen meat. This is especially pertinent as SARS-CoV-2 may remain infective on fresh meat at 4 degrees Celsius for over three weeks and for several years in frozen meat. It is agreed that in regions experiencing severe COVID-19 outbreaks this route of transmission is less likely a major contributor to its spread. Concentrating on just that misses the point, however. While the likelihood of being infected by SARS-CoV-2 from processed meat might be lower than other routes, and may be very low, the consequence of such infection for many communities around the world is so great that the scientific community must begin to acknowledge the veracity of this risk and begin to conduct the necessary research to develop risk mitigation. Until credible and replicable research is forthcoming, application of the precautionary principle is entirely appropriate.

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I have been alerting readers to the risks around the geographic and temporal (over time) spread of SARS-CoV-2 from fresh and frozen meat contaminated by infected meat processor workers since it became known that these workplaces are centres of major outbreaks.

I have also ruminated for Governments to address these risks (note that I still have received no response to this letter).

All the while experts and Government officials have dismissed the risks with a blanket statement that “there is no evidence” that this represents a risk.

Recent research by a group headed by an Australian, Prof Dale Fisher, a senior consultant in the division of infectious diseases at the National University Hospital in Singapore, has shown that SARS-CoV-2 remains viable for at least three weeks at 4 degrees Celsius on the surface of processed prawns, salmon and pork, thus confirming the potential for this route of transmission.

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Throughout this pandemic I have been prescient discussing risks with the COVID-19 pandemic, and about failings of Governments and their officials. That is not because I am especially brilliant or better informed. Obviously I am a complete outsider and only equipped with the knowledge that is public, and general knowledge and intuition from prior experience as a research scientist and biosecurity policy analyst.

Being an outsider is my greatest advantage for several reasons. I am not subject to intense group think by spending all of my time with other individuals necessarily focused on this one major challenge. More importantly, however, is the fact that I am entirely free of conflicts of interest: I have no colleagues who I want or need to stay “good” with (vital for future career progression due to peer review and input into publications and grant applications, or collaborations), I do not have to be concerned about relationships with industry (another important source of funding and considerable political power), I do not need to consider how an employer considers my comments will affect their business model (note universities are major stakeholders in international flows of people, especially students), I don’t need to be concerned at whether politicians will be annoyed with my comments (as those who have the final say over much grant funding and general funding for the sector and specific institutes), and perhaps most critically, I don’t need to be concerned for protecting my professional reputation within a field, generally within the academic community, and for my own security both financial and how I view my own contribution to the world.

I have none of these conflicts. I have no reputation to protect because I knew when I retired that those who remained would have the opportunity to write the history of my career in the way that they chose, and given that I had to deal with a number of sociopaths in Australia (which is what my old boss at Biosecurity Australia, Dr David Banks, was getting at in his farewell speech for me), they were always going to write that history in a manner that flattered them and detracted from me. (This began happening even before I retired, e.g. some reviewers of my Australian grant and fellowship applications inferred that they credited my early career success to my PhD supervisor – and likely some reviews were by he, himself – when in reality we were barely on speaking terms for the final crucial, and my most productive, 2.5 years of my PhD program.)

There are very many conflicts faced by the “experts” and these are very real and serious considerations. Of course how much they allow those conflicts to affect their opinions and/or how they choose to express those opinions will differ between individuals, but it must be said that science very definitely does select for political aptitude.

I often say that to succeed in science one has more to learn from the reality television show “Survivor” than in science journals, and with the perspective gained from 17 years of retirement from science I have found no better explanation for my own challenges to maintain a career – while I was an emerging leader in my field due to my ability to perform scientific research – is my lack of political aptitude. As will be abundantly clear from my writing at MacroEdgo, politics in all of its forms annoys me and I have little patience for it, and I have no problem with saying that it should have no place in science or how science is applied for the benefit of humanity.

I am a purist in this way and always have been. Human beings are political animals, however, and I have had to accept that it will never be possible to eradicate politics from any area of human endeavour. Nonetheless, I believe wholeheartedly that mankind benefits enormously when strong, persistent and effective measures are taken to minimise, in all of its forms, dysfunctional politics in science.

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Now that I have set that background context to this discussion, I want to be extremely clear about the risks that I will discuss in this post.

In this discussion I am referring to the presence of SARS-CoV-2 inside of meat packaging, i.e. was on the surface of the meat as it entered food packaging, not on the external surfaces of the packaging. Of course the risks there are also relevant, but I agree with others that they are likely less because the outside surfaces of packaging are subject to harsher and more variable conditions which would act to inactivate the virus more rapidly. Moreover, to the extent that these surfaces can act as a means of transmission, they may be re-inoculated at any stage through the product cycle including immediately before an end consumer brings it into their home

I am also not referring to the issue of whether the meat has virus within its cells – in other words, in the event that the animal was carrying infection by SARS-CoV-2. This in itself is a very serious topic for discussion as the risks would be greater in this case. I have a paper in preparation on this particular issue.

Even though experts have stated that the risk of spread of SARS-CoV-2 within processed meats, including seafood, other white meats and red meats, is not substantiated by scientific observation and is considered very low risk, real world developments continue to progress so fast as to cast considerable doubt on these entirely unscientific statements.

First cutting boards in a food market in Beijing, used to butcher salmon imported from Europe, were associated with the emergence of a COVID-19 cluster. The significance of the finding is difficult to know with certainty. This led to China initiating a number of biosecurity initiatives including requiring attestations from exporters that their products are free from SARS-CoV-2 and surveillance of fresh and frozen food imports for the virus by PCR to detect the viral genome. The details of this surveillance program are not well understood and it is not clear whether some packaged products are opened and tested or whether just external surfaces of packaging are swabbed. Recently this surveillance led to the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in shipments of chicken from Brazil, a country experiencing severe pandemic, and 7 facilities have been banned from exporting product. Other countries have followed China’s lead in banning chicken imports from Brazil until a protocol is developed which provides the surety that China seeks.

At the same time, a new cluster in New Zealand – after the virus was not detected in the country for over 100 days – centred around a cold facility which handles imported frozen foods. Genomic testing has revealed that the strain of COVID-19 had not been detected in the country previously strongly suggesting that it is newly introduced. There have been no findings suggesting an alternate route of introduction for the virus.

Many experts who have discussed these risks previously, and even many who are studying these latest developments, have stated that they consider the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 with processed food to be very low. Even the Chinese scientist advising on China’s response to COVID-19 has said “let’s not exaggerate it”. New Zealand scientists also are mostly quick to suggest that they do not think that the latest cluster did come from imported food, even though their extensive studies have failed to reveal another likely cause. Post-event studies are difficult as testing for the virus in this environment is not conclusive as what I am discussing is the presence of the virus within packaging (and perhaps the workers consumed some product at home).

Now I realise that some will assume from my writing and my videos that I consider the risk of spread of COVID-19 with processed meats to be much higher than these experts.

Let me be clear – I do not disagree with the experts on the level of risk posed by this manner. I would prefer to refer to it as low rather than very low, but that semantic difference relates to how the receiver interprets the statement. After all, we are not talking about a strict scale linking the level of risk directly to a quantified level of probability. So the words chosen to describe the level of risk are as much about the desired affect on those receiving the message as it is about the actual level of risk.

The reality is that such statements lead the listener or reader to infer that because the risk is low (or very low) then it is not significant.

Even though I agree that the risk is likely to be low, it is not insignificant, not by a long way. That is because the “risk” that is being inferred in that statement is the likelihood of the event occurring, i.e. the probability that somebody consuming processed meat will be infected by SARS-CoV-2. But true risk in this context has a broader definition as it also encompasses the consequences that flow from that event happening.

To explain that in dramatic fashion, as I showed in my detailed video, one of the more credible views on how SARS-CoV-2 first infected humans was during the butchering and/or consumption of an infected original or intermediate host animal.

Obviously the consequences of SARS-CoV-2 jumping into humans was enormous (some times there are no words that seem to capture the full scale of what is being described).

Clearly the consequences of that event mean that the risk was high even though the probability of the event occurring was low. That is why so many are now talking about what needs to be done to ameliorate the risks of a similar event occurring again, such as stopping wet markets and/or the trade in wild animals, and I bet that many others, at a moment of despair, have indulged in the futile pass-time of wishing that these measures had been in place earlier to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from ever occurring.

So the key is that even if the risk of something occurring is low, that does not mean that it should be considered insignificant. This is one such time.

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Right now there are many qualitative risk analyses on COVID-19 being done, not just in Government offices, but in homes, around the world. As I have highlighted from my earliest writing, sadly for some that assessment goes along the lines of “I need to earn an income to be able to feed my family, and even though I may become infected and die, my family will surely die if they do not eat”.

Governments in poor countries must consider that in their wider risk management programs for COVID-19.

Governments in wealthy countries have the resources to ensure that choices for their own citizens are not so stark, but financial aspects certainly do come into considerations.

While these Governments of wealthy countries speak of concerns about the financial security of their citizens, in reality I believe that they are more concerned about their business elites who are lobbying to keep economies open (I have another post in late stages on this topic). 

A complication in all risk assessments around COVID-19 is that it is a pathogen known to mankind for only 8 months, so the gaps in information necessary to draw strong conclusions are considerable.

Where there are measures that could be taken to reduce the risk of spread of SARS-CoV-2 on the basis of the precautionary principle, but where there would be significant impacts to (some or all) business elites, it is easy for Governments and their officials to reject those measures with the blanket statement “there is no evidence”.

Here is the critical point. My experience in biosecurity policy development, implementation and research has shown me that when Governments do not want to deal with the consequences of research findings, then they simply will not encourage – and at times will actively discourage or work to impede – it to be performed or will seek to suppress its publication or actively seek to discredit the work or the researcher.

It is vital that research be done on whether processed meat from facilities that have been the site of COVID-19 clusters has the potential to spread the virus geographically and temporally.

I say temporally – over time – as well as geographically because similar coronaviruses are known to remain infective for over two years when frozen, raising the potential that a country which has (theoretically) eliminated the virus for over two years could experience another outbreak even if their subsequent international biosecurity was perfect and there were no more importations of the virus.

These risks are not insignificant, and they most definitely do have relevance.

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In countries with major COVID-19 outbreaks and weak measures to impede the spread of the virus, it is obvious that this is not a major area for consideration because it is likely that people have a far greater risk of contracting infection outside of their homes. Thus in those countries there is much “lower hanging fruit” to be taken to stop the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2.

In countries that have worked hard to stamp out outbreaks, like in New Zealand and Australia, and even in China where at great initial financial and personal cost they succeeded in stamping out major outbreaks, the situation is very different.

Such countries have done the hard work, and have experienced the rewards of less loss of life while other nations have suffered catastrophes, and so their citizens rightly want to jealously protect their COVID-19-free status.

Moreover, there are remote communities that largely due to luck, with a low movement of people meant SARS-CoV-2 was not introduced before the devastation it caused was so apparent, have managed to remain free of COVID-19, e.g. many Pacific islands. Many of these have the added risk factor of having limited capability to respond if COVID-19 were introduced.

Small communities, and even down to household units, all over the world, including in countries which have experienced major outbreaks, have also worked hard at keeping the virus out and are justifiably afraid.

At these levels, the consequence of the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 would be devastating.

Who is going to stand up for these people and say that there is a certain level of risk here, and if those in a position to encourage and fund such studies are afraid of the political and economic consequences from the potential outcomes of research into those risks, who will?

It is not at all accurate to say that we cannot, or it is impractical to, test for virus presence in and on food. For nearly 20 years Australia has tested all imported shipments of uncooked prawns for the presence of white spot virus. I know this well because these import conditions were imposed around one month after I left Biosecurity Australia where I had been the desk officer responsible for prawn importation policy, and I strongly disagreed with this policy change because it was beyond what was reasonable for the risk posed and it was done to appease the prawn farming industry mostly as a technical barrier to trade (i.e. to reduce competition and increase compliance cost of imports). 

I have long pointed to Australia’s world-class, and I might add very costly, biosecurity as a very significant advantage in our fight to minimise the human impacts of COVID-19. It is a real pity when it becomes clear that that capability appears to be considered by the political class to be strictly for protecting financial interests not human life. 

National politicians and officials are not the only actors in this space. There are multi-national organisations which are playing key roles in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and chief amongst them is the World Health Organisation (WHO). I have a high level of respect and appreciation for the WHO and their officials, and I have commonly expressed as much in my posts.

The WHO’s position in downplaying the risks associated with COVID-19 spread in food is interesting and at first blush disappointing. However, several things must be acknowledged. The WHO is not free from political interference and that is clear by what the current US administration said about their closeness with China, and then the US pressure on the WHO by moving to leave it.

At a pragmatic level it must be recognised that the World Health Organisation has a much wider mandate than assisting the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, important as that is. Likely the WHO is very concerned about the broader health implications of disruptions to global food supplies if there is a major scare that COVID-19 may be spread with food.

Perhaps this issue is at the heart of a new national campaign in China against food waste which, due to the apparent immediacy and conviction with which it is being implemented, confused expert observers who have suggested that the Chinese leadership has suddenly become very concerned about food security.

For scientists the science should at all times dictate their actions, including using language that conveys the scientific facts and realities, being mindful of contemporary media’s obsession with 3 second sound bites which will not convey the full picture.

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Good science requires humility, and from humility comes a supple mind that is open to all possibilities. 

When scientists lack that humility, and their ego grows from being in a position to influence decisions that will profoundly affect the lives of millions of people, the consequences can be disastrous. Perhaps that is why Sweden’s chief epidemiologist deleted so many emails that were requested by journalists looking into what was the decision process that led to that scientist recommending a very light-touch response to the COVID-19 pandemic, presumably centred around pursuing herd immunity via natural infection, only a few months into the pandemic when there was a paucity of information on critical aspects such as: how the virus caused disease in humans, what was the full consequence (short, medium and long term) of infections in humans, whether infected people develop immunity following natural infection and would that immunity persist long enough to provide substantial protection, and whether the behaviour of citizens would result in the minimal economic impacts that were presumably sort by introducing only minimal measures (obviously a non-scientific issue).

Presently only China is prepared to openly consider and research the risk of spread of the COVID-19 pandemic geographically and temporally in contaminated processed meat. I agree that it is possible that there might be some element of this issue being used as a technical barrier to trade, especially when the current US administration, along with some allies, is intent on being provocative. However, the aggressive and effective Chinese response to stamp out COVID-19 shows that they have fought hard to keep their citizens safe and so it is hardly surprising that they would want to understand all of the risks that may lead to the reintroduction of COVID-19.

I, for one, am grateful that they have made this an issue when many others would continue to dismiss it behind a blanket statement of “there is no evidence”.

What is more, I look forward to their further findings being made available so that the pressure will be maintained on other Governments to implement policies which will keep their own citizens safer in this COVID-19 pandemic.

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Finally, I will share my thoughts on managing the risks of being infected by SARS-CoV-2 when preparing and consuming processed meat.

This issue highlights the importance of understanding from where our food comes. As the COVID-19 pandemic in Victoria grew, I contacted the supermarket from where I buy most of my meat. They refused to give any further indication on the source of their meats other than to say that they are only legally obliged to confirm that it is of Australia origin.

With major clusters in many Victorian meat processing plants, I think it is clear that customers have a clear right to greater information about their food and should be able to access more granular information on the origin of their food, especially the region where it was produced and processed.

In the absence of mandated testing for presence of SARS-CoV-2, I consider it preferable to procure meat from regions unaffected by COVID-19. This obviously highlights the benefits of good relations with local producers which is less common in countries that have had the link between producers and consumers be upended by supermarkets and national/international food supply chains. It does also highlight the level of confidence of surveillance for COVID-19 in workers at facilities which produce and process food products, and that encompasses an assessment of Government oversight of them as well as of individual businesses (which is standard in biosecurity assessment at the international level where audits and other assessments are conducted on the competency of local biosecurity/quarantine authorities and individual processors).

The following are general good health standards to adopt, especially when dealing with meat of uncertain origin and COVID-19 status:

• attempt to maintain food preparation areas clutter-free and wipe down with mild disinfectant before and after preparing food;
• minimise the number of people in the food preparation area while handling uncooked meat;
• wash hands before and regularly while handling uncooked meat, being extremely careful not to contaminate other surfaces, and do not touch your face with contaminated hands;
• minimise dropping of meat or packaging containing fluids which can lead to aerosolisation of viruses;
• with their longer “use by” dates, I am keeping my red meats longer before consuming until much closer to the the “use by” date, and then freezing if the butcher has confirmed it is safe to do so, and even if I buy fresh chicken I am freezing it so that it goes through a freeze/thaw cycle – all of this will reduce (but may not eliminate) the viability/infectivity of any virus present;
• take particular care to minimise splashing while cleaning up utensils that have come into contact with uncooked meat (particularly important with pressurised tap fittings);
• ensure meat surfaces are well cooked as coronaviruses are rapidly inactivated at high heat; and
• if really concerned, food grade gloves may be used and a face mask or face shield will significantly reduce risk.

The thing is that while this might seem extreme to some, after brief reflection most should realise that these are nearly all standard food safety requirements in developed countries. The difference is that most people just have not adopted them in their own homes, but if Governments refuse to give consumers greater surety over the safety of food through the COVID-19 pandemic, then this is exactly where we are at.

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As a parting point, the level of risk posed, specifically around the likelihood of being infected by SARS-CoV-2 with food handling and consumption, increases significantly if food animals may be infected by the virus, and that is the subject of a soon to be released post. 

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

I took part in a focus group for Global Citizen a few weeks back. I was thrilled to be asked to participate as it is an organisation with which I share so many values. My own mantra that I developed through MacroEdgo is “United Humanity” and my email signature is as follows:

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s 4th Inauguration speech, as WWII drew to an end (he died before the atomic bombs were dropped.)

I used the same email signature in my final years of working as a research scientist, leading up to and during the second Iraq war.

All participants in the focus group were obviously people who had interacted with Global Citizen in one way or another, so they presumably felt that they shared many of their values.

Our discussion early on revolved around Australia’s foreign aid and one question posed to us was whether it should be needs-based or whether it would be appropriate in this time of pandemic to cut back to be able to provide more support here in Australia.

Obviously the question is a little leading because by mentioning “needs-based” it is almost intimating that to redirect funds towards Australia would be against a needs-based assessment because Australians on average were in less need.

Nonetheless, that would be true to my own assessment, and my answer reflected as such when I said that Australia’s foreign aid program should always be needs-based and thus we should be doing more to assist the developing world and not cutting back. Nobody familiar with my blog site would be surprised with this, nor my passion for this topic leading me to express these views plainly with justification in that setting.

I was the oldest person in the group, by some margin, and the only male, and most others answered with some degree of sympathy towards a perception of Australians doing it tough financially in the pandemic, though the people who appeared to have non-Caucasian ancestry were less strong on that view. 

The other more outspoken person in the group was quite strong in insisting that we needed to “help our own first” as she had friends who were struggling to keep their homes. 

While I have a great deal of compassion for people in financial hardship, this comment goes to one of my great bug-bears about societies. I wanted to challenge this viewpoint assertively but it was not the forum to do so and moderators were keen to move the discussion on in any case.

All that is wrong with this statement, in my view, is contained within the title of the organisation with which we were talking – “Global Citizen”.

Many years ago I realised the danger and the folly in nationalism, or tribalism, or any form of division amongst humanity for that matter. 

In essence all of these viewpoints include one overriding premise – I should care more about people within this arbitrary man-made grouping, regardless of whether I know them or anything of them, than I do about other people outside of that grouping.

To me this makes zero sense.

When it comes to “looking after our own” on a national basis, to what does that really refer – people who reside in the country, or people who were born in the country and still reside there, or all people who were born in the country irrespective of where they have resided through their lives. I could go on, and the truth is that the definition would vary from person to person.

Obviously, on a darker level many people will consciously or subconsciously also overlay a further descriptor of what constitutes “our own”, whether that be related to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.

So it is clear that “our own” is a very opaque phrase and extremely subjective.

It essentially infers that in some way we are more closely related to someone within this grouping than to people in all other groupings. But countries really are man-made constructs and are thus arbitrary – after all for half of white occupation of the Australian continent the non-indigenous inhabitants were citizens of England (and my understanding is that indigenous people were not even considered “people”, though I stand corrected on that) – so are we really more closely related to people who belong to the same nation?

Moreover, if we should care about people who are more closely related to us, geographically or otherwise, than to all other people, then it should be true across all man-made groupings to which we all belong. So we should care more about people who belong to the same state grouping (for me Queensland), and we should care even more about people who belong to the same city, town or local government area grouping (for me Brisbane), and we should care even more about people who belong to the same suburb grouping, and we should care even more again about people who live in our street.

I suspect that all people would find this preposterous, though that would vary from region to region, and I recall in Germany how the Bavarians were so “patriotic” that temporary residents from other regions of Germany, such as students who I knew, would attempt to alter their accents to avoid being “detected” and made to feel unwelcome as an “auslander”. Even in these regions, however, there is a point at which the man-made division is seen as preposterous.

While I do believe strongly in community, my level of compassion towards somebody has no relevance to any of these man-made constructs or any other nonsensical ways that some people consciously or subconsciously seek to divide us (usually for their own petty agendas).

“Our own” is really human beings, all human beings, and the best way to look after human beings is to genuinely care equally for everyone. That is exactly what FDR was telling us was the greatest lesson from the horror of WW2, and the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing in the most awful way how those lessons were not acted upon through the intervening three-quarters of century.

That does not say that I have no compassion for Australians struggling to pay a mortgage on a home purchased for a half million dollars or more. 

That will be the subject of my next post.

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

WHO Situation Report 196 for 3 August (released 4 August Brisbane, Australia, time)

Globally: 17,918,582 confirmed cases (257,677 new), 686,703 deaths (5,810 new)

I was prompted to write an update today because my friend Dr Shi Zhengli has, for the first time in this pandemic, written in some detail about her work for an article published in “Science” magazine.

I would suggest that the article is well worth the read, but the magazine published her answers in full in a supplementary document, and I suggest that it is compulsory reading not just for those interested in more “meaty”, technical information, but to gain an insight into the personal cost paid by a group of scientists to make such a significant contribution to all of mankind irrespective of nationality or ancestry.

I truly hope that Zhengli and her group one day receive that apology, and it should be equal in sincerity to any given in the history of mankind.

Moreover, I believe that nobody would be more deserving of being named a Nobel Laureate than Zhengli.

I will also take this opportunity to discuss the current situation in Australia (not really to highlight the contrast between “Toxic Masculinity and Political Footballs“, but because there is another very important message in it).

Whether all of the current phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne can be put down to security breaches at quarantine hotels – and I doubt that is the case – or not is more a political question than anything else because it allows the Federal Government to sheet home the blame to Dan Andrews.

The truth is that by deciding in March/April on a suppression strategy – instead of an elimination strategy which Mr. Morrison has since adopted with a semantic maneuver placing the adjective “aggressive” before “suppression strategy” and clarifying further that the aim now is for zero community transmission – always meant that his initial decision was for Australia to have to deal with more community transmission.

As I wrote extensively on this site through the first half of this year, Mr. Morrison was little different from his ideologues in the US and UK by dithering on strong measures to minimise loss of lives out of concern for impacts on businesses. However, he had a seasonal advantage being based in the southern hemisphere with warmer weather and Australians spending more time outdoors serendipitously lessening the likelihood of transmission.

When our heroic front line health workers dealt with the first phase of the pandemic – I won’t call it a first wave because this suggests a closed population with mostly community transmission, but in this period it was almost entirely travellers returning from overseas – and the number of new cases went down to zero in most states on most days, instead of using that breathing space to prepare for the subsequent phases of the pandemic, the Federal Government concentrated almost exclusively on economics and politically herding all of the cats towards the bright lights of a fully open economy.

At the same time the expectation of greater freedoms of movement imparted on the public, especially the younger members of society, was always going to make subsequent measures challenging to implement including from a mental health perspective. Again, these were issues that I have discussed on these pages.

The southern hemisphere winter period was always going to challenge Australia. In those weeks with low case numbers, which offered some respite to the front line responders, there should have been an enormous amount of biosecurity human capital swung into action to protect Australians from the ravages of this devastating pandemic.

While our near neighbours New Zealand have basked in a bright winter glow safe without community transmission, the COVID-19 pandemic reignited in our coolest, populous state with a vengeance unseen during the earlier period.

The current phase of COVID-19 in Australia threatens to move northward.

The concerning thing is that if there is a lot of community transmission heading into summer, evidence from the sunbelt in the US and in Spain suggest that warmer climates in developed countries may have difficulty in containing the spread, possibly due to the wide use of air conditioning systems.

I personally am relieved that Mr. Morrison has adopted an elimination strategy even if for political reasons he can not bring himself to say those words. And I know that in the role that I am attempting to play for my fellow countrymen I cannot strongly prosecute an argument highlighting that he was wrong because ultimately I have gotten what I wanted and have pushed for from my first reports in February – a Prime Minister who wants to do everything necessary to minimise loss of life – and I cannot lament too loudly the time lost.

Going forward we need to implement our enormous biosecurity human capital and infrastructure to start to be more proactive rather than reactive in our battle against COVID-19.

I am currently co-writing a paper on what I consider to be a particularly important aspect of that proactivity, and as a hint, it follows on from a theme that I have discussed in a previous post as well as my previous update on 23 July below and was touched on in Zhengli’s document.

Keep out an eye for it in the press (hopefully) and I will link to it from these pages.

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

WHO Situation Report 184 for 22 July (released 23 July Brisbane, Australia, time)

Globally: 14,765,256 confirmed cases (202,726 new), 612,054 deaths (4,286 new)

Watching the progress at vaccine development is like riding a real roller coaster. One day the media is concentrating on the positive news from early stage trials with a particular vaccine candidate, the next day the news is full of disappointing news that antibodies to the novel coronavirus drop quickly in people who have been infected.

I watched two conversations on Bloomberg this week that presented the best available opinion on where we presently stand. The first was with Richard Horton, the Editor of “The Lancet”, the pre-eminent medical journal, where he said that the Oxford vaccine trial went about as well as could be expected. He cautioned, however, that it is at a very early stage, and there may be other challenges faced, so best to keep expectations well in check. The second was with Dr Vasant Narasimhan, the CEO of Novartis, whose background is in vaccinology, who said that they are not going to risk rushing the vaccine because the dangers are too serious to contemplate, and data checking would take around 6 months from the completion of trials.

I had not thought of it until he said those words, but it is difficult to overstate what is at stake here for the vaccine companies who have been under attack from the global anti-vax campaign. A timely, well tolerated and effective vaccine would go a long way towards dispatching the anti-vaxxers for once and for all. On the other hand, a problem with a vaccine that is administered to large swathes of the population would be enormously damaging to the industry, especially those companies involved, and would be a boon to the anti-vaxxers. Those dangers for the vaccine companies will ensure that time will be required to ensure that all safety boxes are properly ticked and verified before any vaccine is administered en masse.

On an equally pertinent issue – yes, believe it or not there is another issue as important – since uttering “aloud” in my previous update on 30 June my concerns over whether some of our food animals may be susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus, I have been trawling through the literature.

One development in this area was of particular concern – a mink farm in Spain culled 100,000 animals when it was discovered that 87% of animals were infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 along with 7 workers. The virus is believed to have entered the farm with an infected worker, and there is concern that the virus can be transmitted both from humans to mink, and from mink to humans. The same report stated that 25 mink fur farms in the Netherlands were found to have infected animals, along with 3 farms in Denmark.

This clearly is a very serious issue as it highlights the potential for other animals to act as reservoir hosts for SARS-CoV-2 and to reseed new outbreaks in humans. This is possibly the most troubling finding for COVID-19 in recent months, and that is likely why it is not being widely discussed in the mainstream.

While that is serious enough, if food animals are found to be susceptible to infection then the situation would be worse by several orders of magnitude because difficult decisions would need to be made about whether to cull infected populations, potentially causing food shortages, and it opens up the issues of food borne transmission.

Now I know nothing about the mink industry, but it would be interesting to know whether there have been outbreaks of COVID-19 in slaughter houses which processed mink and what happens to the meat which I assume is a by-product of their main purpose of fur production.

Before discussing these implications, I should spell out that early technical research on the way that SARS-CoV-2 enters the cells of its hosts (i.e. our cells) suggested that the virus would have a relatively wide host range – i.e. these studies suggested that it could infect a large range of mammal species. These studies suggested, however, that two important food animals, chickens (obviously not a mammal) and pigs, were unlikely to be susceptible to infection. However, cattle, sheep and horses were considered highly likely to be susceptible.

These studies are predictive in nature, and real world studies are required to test those predictions and they can include observations and analyses on wild and farmed populations of animals, and through experimental infections studies using both unnatural routes (i.e. inoculation by injection) or natural routes (i.e. inoculation onto membranes, or cohabitation with infected animals).

As I stated in previous reports, biosecure facilities for testing large animals for susceptibility to serious pathogens are not common but a study reported in early July failed to produce infections in pigs and chickens, but established strong infections in ferrets and fruit bats. These results are consistent with the earlier predictions.

Now I do not want to go into deeper detail than this, but this gives the reader enough background to really have a clear understanding of the risks that this issue present. However, if the reader wishes to conduct further research then I suggest clicking on that link above and reading especially the box “research in context”. The reference list at the end of the paper is a good start to finding additional technical information. Searching terms such as “SARS-CoV-2 host range”, “transmission studies” and “ACE analysis” (ACE refers to the mode of entry to host cells to initiate infection) will provide links to most available literature.

Obviously, if it is shown that beef and/or sheep or other meat animals are susceptible to infection then that really opens up the risks associated with dispersal of the virus geographically and over time in frozen meat. The intensity of farming is always related to the risk of disease outbreak, so beef feedlots would be especially at risk if cattle are susceptible.

Importantly, real world observations and transmission studies do seem to be confirming those predictive studies.

The lack of open discussion on this topic should not be interpreted that this is a non-issue. In reality, it is such a serious issue that Governments will avoid discussing it until it becomes necessary by events. When I worked at Biosecurity Australia, the extreme public sensitivity over the idea of pathogens being present in food – even when there was no chance that the pathogen could infect humans – was foremost in the crafting of all media releases.

If it becomes clear that some of our most widely consumed food animals are found to be infected by the most serious human pathogen to emerge in a century, then reputational damage to that industry would be enormous. That is what is at stake here (too serious for obvious puns!)

I was already concerned by the potential for contamination of processed meat by infected workers. But this suggests that it is entirely possible that the route of transmission might be the other way around, also – workers being infected by meat from infected animals. (Remember my video when that was one of the most credible pathways for the virus’ initial jump into humans.)

The broad host range of SARS-CoV-2 serves to emphasise just how unwise it is to allow this pathogen to spread in human populations without doing everything within the scope of our modern scientific and biosecurity capabilities to impede it and aim for elimination. If it becomes endemic in reservoir host species, then COVID-19 will only ever be managed in humans by effective vaccines.

Finally, just imagine the value to Australia of eliminating COVID-19 if it were found that cattle and sheep are susceptible to infection. I would not like to be a conservative Government minister explaining to the bush that the opportunity to export meat from a certified COVID-19-free region was squandered. Now that really is a major economic and political benefit from an elimination strategy!

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

“This war will never be forgotten, nor will the heroes who fight in it” – Odysseus to Achilles in the motion picture “Troy”…

Now that through my work at MacroEdgo I have succeeded at playing a role in initiating a national debate on elimination, I will drop off a little on my FB posts. In doing so, I want to explain something, I hope with humility and sincerity.

Very many of us in Australia outside of the frontline responders have had a level of dissonance about COVID-19 – i.e. very few have experienced direct loss and partly through our nature, and partly our modern cynacism, we tend to not take a threat seriously until it is dramatically imminent or obviously catastrophic. Even in the latter, we are prone to fits of complacency after the initial shock subsides when we allow ourselves to doubt whether there is any actual chance that it will ever impact us directly.

But here is the insidious nature of pandemic disease – it is precisely at that moment that we are most vulnerable.

What is more, we will not realise our grave error for a while and often not before our complacency leads to others being infected, some of whom may have been trying to be diligent and had not realised their close contact (their friend or loved-one) had let them down.

For some that complacency will be fatal.

There can be no doubt that some politicians are not helping matters by being far more concerned with their own political aspirations, and they have and are creating dangerous complacency. That has been true in Australia like it is elsewhere, and I hold that it remains true if (thankfully) less than for some other countries.

We are now starting to receive messaging that we are likely to be in this situation for a prolonged period as a silver bullet medical/scientific answer is unlikely. My latest report at MacroEdgo details my thoughts on how that is likely to affect our society.

In Australia, we are fortunate that we still have some choices in how we progress from here. In countries where the pandemic is raging they have far fewer choices.

We really are all in this together. We all are entirely dependent on the actions of each other. And we all remain vulnerable as long as there are vulnerable people in our society.

The situation is likely to remain similar to this for at least another year, possibly longer. And even then things won’t be the same again. That is sad, but it could most definitely be worse for each of us.

We need our leaders to step up and show authentic compassion, not crocodile tears or at best glimpses at potentially deeply repressed emotion long covered by a thick veneer of toxic masculinity in the mistaken perception that any vulnerability will be exposed and torn apart by the 24 hr news cycle.

That is in part why there is tremendous validity to the post of the photographs of the leaders from countries that have responded well to the pandemic versus those more severely impacted showing that the better leaders were women.

Valuing all human life collectively and individually is the only viable way forward, and the benefits of that in our socities will be long felt.

In Australia, that may mean that by attempting to minimise our loss – rather than accepting a certain level of deaths as in a suppression strategy – we may find our way to eliminating the virus. But it all hinges on each and everyone of us doing our damndest to keep the virus away at all times and to guard against complacency. And it requires all of us to be leaders, including expressing our desires to the politicians who seek our votes.

Finally, I realise many friends probably think I have gone bonkers – after saying nothing on here for years it probably feels like I am lecturing all and sundry.

I get that. But here is the thing: whether it has sunk in yet or not, we are in the battle of our lives.

If I live long enough to talk to my grandchildren about these times, I want to know that I can look them in the eyes and say that I stood up to be counted and know it to be true in my heart. That I did everything I could in my power to make a difference. And I am in no doubt that it is those who show compassion for their fellow human being who ends up on the right side of history.

And if I do not live that long, then I know those who I loved will be proud of all that I have done, how I have served humanity to the best of my ability, and how I left nothing in reserve in trying to make a difference for the greater good.

Please stay safe, for yourself and others.

“[Mankind is] haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved” Odysseus in the motion picture “Troy”…

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

I have expressed a reasonably supportive level of optimism towards the likelihood of the development of effective vaccines and/or treatments for COVID-19 since my first updates and report in early February.

In my report in mid-February, however, when frustrated by how slow Governments and financial analysts were to recognise the challenges that we confronted, I was compelled to be more frank about my views:

To understand the ongoing impacts on people and thus on the economy we need to go back to the virus. Without the rapid emergence of an effective therapeutic treatment for COVID-19, amongst already developed treatments or those in the very late stages of development, the pandemic is likely to progress until either it spreads so widely that the majority of people have become infected or an effective vaccine is developed, produced and delivered en masse. This may take several years, so it is possible – probably even likely – that we will be living with this pandemic for a prolonged period.

If we are really unlucky, as some have suggested, it is even possible that the virus may develop the influenza characteristic of mutating sufficiently within a year so that immunity from prior infection does not make the person refractory or immune to infection when exposed the following year.

All in all, this is a very serious problem and we are in a wait and see pattern. However, it is clear that things are going to get far more serious over the short to medium term before things get better.

“Repeat After Me, This is NOT SARS: COVID-19 is much worse” published on MacroEdgo on 24 February 2020

As I expressed in my most recent coronavirus (COVID-19) update, understanding the likely path forward in humanity’s challenge with this pandemic virus does not equate to emotional acceptance. (Still, what is occurring in global asset markets at present is an all together other level – that is not searching for acceptance, and it goes well beyond dissonance – it is out and out delusion!)

Like everyone, for me I have had to take a journey of processing what has happened, even though my level of understanding has permitted me to embark on that journey earlier and with greater depth than most others. Hopefully, my family, friends and readers of my posts have also benefitted.

Today I feel ready and compelled to take the next step and begin to countenance the medium to long-term – what I believe is likely to occur with the COVID-19 pandemic over the next several years and potentially beyond, and what will be the likely impacts of that on societies.

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Observing rational leadership through this pandemic – yes I am intentionally suggesting the obvious bafoons be ignored in this discussion – it is clear that they walk a fine line between reaching a desirable level of concern amongst society, to guard against complacency, without overwhelming people with the enormity of the challenge we confront.

One way in which this has been done is to avoid discussing the long term and the many small challenges that we must confront over the medium term to overcome the entire challenge. This is a psychological trick that many athletes will recognise – shortening the time frame of each sub-goal, eg. an endurance runner might say “I will just keep running to the end of this street” as if that is when the choice to stop or continue will be made, when in reality they may be overwhelmed at any time and collapse in a heap.

Good leaders are continually saying things like “let’s get to this point in time and we will see how we are situated then” while knowing that it is likely that the situation will not be as resolved as many would be hoping.

This is exactly the approach that is being taken with vaccine development. From very early in the pandemic the timeline on vaccine development has been about as ambitious as is (almost) plausible (to an intelligent but not especially well informed observer). I myself did the same thing in my earliest reports discussing vaccine development when I said that the rush would be on to have a vaccine to be mass administered before the next northern hemisphere winter, all the while knowing that it would be a herculean task and only possible if it proved to be an extremely straightforward process with this virus.

I knew it would be the goal, and I dared to hope with my heart that it might be achieved, but I also knew that it was unlikely to be achieved. I must confess, though, that I felt that a vaccine may just be ready for mass deployment in time for the 2021 southern hemisphere winter and I still consider this a reasonable probability if we are fortunate.

On the other hand, one of the most troubling possibilities with the COVID-19 pandemic is that a vaccine is far more elusive than is hoped – that luck is not on our side and current technology is not amenable to straightforward and immediate production of a vaccine with this coronavirus, thus necessitating further research with this particular virus and innovation to achieve an adequately efficacious vaccine. And I have to say that my aggregated view of everything that I have heard and read said by vaccinologists, and not the CEOs of vaccine companies who sound more like politicians and salespeople, on this slips easily into pessimism and to believing that it may be more likely that we are without a reasonably effective vaccine for quite a few years.

Adding to the pessimistic view, and possibly related to the pessimistic view of some vaccinologists, is emerging views from immunologists that immunity within the population of people who have had the virus appears surprisingly weak and/or short-lived. Thus even herd immunity may not be achieved for those countries where it was a stated (Sweden), tacitly stated (the UK) or unstated but clearly their strategy of political convenience (the US) and thus where higher proportions of their populations have been infected. In other words, the enormous human impact that was endured to achieve herd immunity by direct infection brought no long-term benefit as people may be re-infected.

In “The COVID-19 Elephants In The Room” I stated that there was/is an infinite range of possibilities on the ways that this virus might impact humans which we could only guess at from the known ways other viruses impact us, and that there were likely other previously unseen ways that this virus new to mankind might impact us. In my subsequent post I highlighted this reality in underlining the imprudence in embarking on a strategy of developing herd immunity by letting the novel coronavirus spread throughout populations rather than doing everything possible to stamp it out and if possible aim at elimination.

My concerns have been proven several times over with the following (far from complete list of) discoveries for the novel coronavirus: it can cause serious disease in some children; it causes chronic infection and/or symptoms in some with unknown consequences; there is an emerging understanding that the nature of the COVID-19 disease is different to what was initially thought where its entropy involves blood vessels perhaps as much as the respiratory tract; and just yesterday there were press reports of an important journal article detailing novel and serious neuropathology (disease within the brain) with people only displaying mild COVID-19 symptoms.

I have said it many times before but it bears repeating – some political and medical leaders argued for and enacted a strategy of allowing the virus to circulate through their people, without attempting to prevent it spreading to all but the most vulnerable (and failed miserably at that), when they knew that they did not at all understand the full impacts on their people not even a proper understanding of the nature of the disease in its most common form of presentation.

For me, that is human arrogance at its most destructive.

The point that I wish to make here, again, is that we still can expect more surprises from this pathogen known to mankind now for just over 6 months (as the GAVI report linked to above also makes clear). Just one of those possibilities, if we are unlucky, is that instead of prior infection providing those people with immunity to re-infection it worsens the next infection as in dengue haemorrhagic fever thus increasing the mortality rate.

To this point good leaders have sort to keep as many people as safe as possible from the impacts of this pandemic while everybody looks on and hopes or prays or whatever for our scientific community to develop a silver bullet. Besides vague references to the long haul, the best leaders are mostly working on helping us to focus on the immediate and not think too far out into the future lest many of us become despondent and overwhelmed.

If we are very fortunate at least one of the 140 vaccine candidates currently being developed might be effective. Or perhaps a protocol with one or several might be effective. However, as we approach the end of this year, as the northern hemisphere enters autumn (fall), then I expect that we will begin to hear more honest assessments of the chances of success.

If success seems to be more elusive than humanity has dared to hope, then we will move into a new phase for society and individuals to deal with the challenge.

Already the conservative types that want our focus to be at least as much concerned with livelihoods – a synonym for economy and in their parlance, “aspiration” – are talking about “living with the disease” and we know from social media and even marches in the US that the (typically vulnerable) usual footsoldiers have been marshalled into action.

In the event that at the end of the year assessments of the likelihood of herd immunity being achieved by a mass vaccination program are not optimistic, then everyone will need to begin to consider exactly how we will go about our lives for an uncertain but prolonged period with COVID-19 severely impacting us increasingly as we age.

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Those with a predisposition to brutally forthright discussion around the impacts of humans on our natural environment have always mentioned the real possibility of nature “striking back” to reestablish balance. Referring to nature, there need be no element of conspiracy or karma, just a simple recognition that in natural systems disequilibria are not sustainable and that consequences flow from changes to stable systems.

Events that lead to rebalancing can take the form of unrelated natural phenomena which might impact all living organisms, like an asteroid striking Earth leading to mass extinction, or it might be the consequence of the change to that equilibrium. One example often given is epidemic disease which is well known as a moderator of plant and animal populations.

The ability of disease to hold populations in check is a basic tenet of our understanding of biology – it is but one factor that prevents one or several species from dominating all others in plague proportions and causing widespread extinctions.

Does that sound at all familiar? Of course humanity, while avoiding extinction thus far, has experienced pandemics through our evolutionary history but our advanced cognitive abilities has allowed us to learn over many generations how to manage through these periodic challenges and to pass these tools to those who succeed us.

Our apparent success to those humans fortunate to have lived all of their lives in the developed world has created a level of complacency to the risk that our basic biology poses. Many of our contemporaries seem to believe that we are already part machine, and certainly post-biologic, and are ignorant to the costs that humanity paid in gaining our knowledge at overcoming our past disease challenges.

COVID-19 is certainly playing a part in re-educating those that wish to be informed.

Simple biology is at play and it relates directly to mathematics and probability. The larger our population becomes the more densely we live. The more densely we live the greater the chance that something that infects one person is passed onto another. However, living densely does not provide for primary production and those living densely must have all their resources and requirements supplied to them and that necessitates 1) greater utilisation of natural resources for producing goods required, and 2) wider geographic distribution and storage of those goods. As human success at wealth creation in the system developed by and for humans increases, more and a greater variety of those goods are desired from wider geographies. Thus humanity increasingly interacts with a wider range of organisms by expanding areas of production, and domesticated organisms increasingly interact with other organisms, and products are then stored and transported.

All of that increases the probability of pathogens jumping into human hosts, directly and then spreading amongst humans, and/or being spread within goods and then infecting humans.

The interaction of pathogens and hosts are extremely complex. The pathogens that have infected humans for a long period may appear well understood, especially if the disease is well controlled with a vaccine or other effective treatment, but talk to any researcher and you will always be told that their understanding is fairly basic and there is much, much more to be understood. That is not a justification for research funding. It is just the reality and with a limited level of research funding priority is given to what research is widely perceived to be highest priority.

Noteworthy through this pandemic has been the number of researchers who have been identified for warning potential pandemic disease was not receiving nearly enough research attention, and many even pinpointed coronaviruses as being of special concern.

Those predisposed to brutal forthright discussion on human impacts on nature will have already recognised that the novel coronavirus has significant potential to cull human populations based on what we already know. While the mortality rate from the acute phase (noting we do not yet nearly understand the long term impacts) of the COVID-19 pandemic may not be as high as the 1918 flu pandemic, though that is still open to debate centred around how many more cases and deaths go unreported, it is interesting within this context that in aggregate COVID-19 impacts increase in older cohorts while the inverse was true of the 1918 flu. While biologically it is true that the 1918 flu would thus have had greater impact on moderating human population growth, nowadays life expectancy is that much longer than 100 years earlier such that a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to significantly reduce human resource utilisation especially when we consider that the later stages of life tend to require disproportionately higher resources.

I do not, however, wish to concentrate on (perhaps harsh) biological theory and reality and I realise that I have already run the risk of losing my readers with this rather dry but essential explanation of the underlying biological situation.

What I really want to discuss is the socioeconomics of all of this – how it is going to impact the choices we humans are likely to make going forward if the COVID-19 pandemic proves to be prolonged.

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I was born in 1970 and was a teenager in the 80s living in rural Australia. Even then my father spoke with nostalgia of a period (the 60s) when inflation was very low and jobs were plentiful. However, the economy had experienced a good run through to the mid 80s – not as good as our most recent past, but still good by historical standards – and looking back the standard of living for most even in my rural area clearly improved as judged by decreasing numbers of rust bucket vehicles on the road, etc.

Perhaps the trend that I noticed most amongst adults at the time, besides the obsession with large suburban back yard BBQs with significant beer drinking and then driving home (with still lax drink-driving laws), was the apparent obsession with early retirement. Perhaps that view is somewhat coloured by my rural locale, where people had lower incomes but also had lower living costs (being partly self-sufficient) and lower aspirations, and where most were employed in blue collar work which took a greater toll on their bodies and general physical well being. Nonetheless, when I reflect on this period it does seem to me that it was somewhat of a national obsession, and in part a reflection of financial success (up until recession struck at the end of the 80s).

If I fast forward to our most recent run of financial success in Australia it seems that the opposite has been the case with our national obsession about accumulating as much wealth as possible such that many people approaching retirement are carrying high levels of debt, much of it to support or for tax benefits associated with their property portfolio. While these people could sell down their portfolio to retire, for many it has become a lifestyle and they continue beyond retirement age, while others have gotten entranced by the property ladder theme and thus need to continue to work to pay off their upsized homes and mortgages.

I suspect that this trend of increasing work intensity at later ages interacts with the increasing life expectancy of people at retirement age. While 40 years ago people dreamed of having a period of less demand on their physical and mental resources – a relaxed retirement when still in reasonable physical condition before reaching their declining years – many contemporary Australians fear retirement because it is such a great departure from the manic lives that they have led accumulating wealth and ticking off lots of other boxes (many with the aim of impressing others). And if they think their life will extend 10, 15 or even 20 years longer than their parents, as the media keeps suggesting, including with some predicting that the first people to live to eternity have already been born, then what is the hurry to retire anyway.

A prolonged COVID-19 pandemic will turn that equation around, especially when it will be accompanied by a prolonged period of economic recession or even a period of depression. While Australia’s economy has allowed many retirement-age Australians to continue to work as long as they wished – even though young Australians’ employment prospects only slowly recovered after the Global Financial Crisis – this will likely change in the current recession. As in the 90s recession, people made redundant in their 50s will likely struggle to gain active employment again and this will obviously necessitate a sharp repositioning on aspirations. It is possible that these unfortunate people, however, ultimately prove to be more fortunate than they realise because circumstances force them to be early movers.

As the pandemic progresses, and especially if prior infection does not create lasting immunologic protection from re-infection which is more lethal as we age, the experience of reducing life expectancy for the first time in centuries will cause every middle-aged Australian to re-think and re-organise their priorities.

This will have serious implications in our society and in our economy. I think it is clear that in such a scenario the long-anticipated sell down of housing assets by Baby Boomers and Gen X is a virtual certainty.

Essentially I would expect that people needing to confront their own mortality at an earlier age, like their grandparents, likely will develop a different set of priorities which revolve more around genuine quality (of life) over quantity.

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In all of my writing on the COVID-19 pandemic from the beginning of February I stated that the world has changed as a consequence of a virus jumping species into humans. Within a few months of me first writing that most of humanity has come to understand this reality. Perhaps, because of the need for self preservation strategies, humanity does not quite understand yet just how much the world is likely to continue to change.

I have tried to play a constructive role in my writing by remaining positive in my outlook while placing maximum pressure on those in decision-making positions to act humanely.

I have always been of the position that Australia, with its rare advantages of being an island with excellent biosecurity know-how and infrastructure, should use these advantages to attempt to eliminate COVID-19 and enact powerful measures to prevent its reintroduction. But I always knew that we may be in the very early stages of a very prolonged battle. My view has always been that we would be in the best position if we did everything in our power – even if it meant sacrificing economic activity in the short-term – to absolutely minimise the number of people within our borders being infected by the virus. The point is that in such a position we have the flexibility to make decisions on how we wish to progress depending on how scientific research is progressing on vaccines and treatments, and based on what we have learned about the human impacts to that point.

It is clear now that other countries that chose early to not do everything possible to stop the spread of the virus have far fewer choices available to them.

While PM Morrison said he was going to the footy on the opening weekend of the NRL I said that large gatherings should have been cancelled weeks earlier along also with shutting of the international borders.

And when PM Morrison began to use his political capital to create considerable momentum towards opening up the economy, when elimination was so near as to suggest it is possible, and which New Zealand has since achieved, I made it clear that it was premature.

On 1 May I said:

Given all of the uncertainties around this new human pathogen, and given we in Australia have experienced a relatively low expression of COVID-19 thus far which suggests that eradication might be a real possibility, loosening of biosecurity measures at this point in mid-Autumn seems to me to be highly imprudent and suggestive of at least a hint of political hubris.

A far more prudent approach would be to continue with very strict biosecurity measures and increased testing, firstly of all those with symptoms of respiratory infections and then as and if capacity allows, all people (prioritising those who have been, through work requirements, more active in the community), to detect any and all cases so that eradication can be achieved.

In “COVID-19 and Food Safety in Processed Meat” published at MacroEdgo

(Since writing this I have adopted the contemporary terminology of elimination from a geography as eradication strictly applies to global eradication, which clearly is impossible with COVID-19.)

Throughout this pandemic the conservative leaders of the major English-speaking countries have exhibited a visceral Pavlovian reaction to the biosecurity measures to lessen human impacts out of fear of the economic impacts. But as the pandemic has progressed it has become clear that the best way to minimise impacts on economies is to minimise human impacts within society. New Zealanders are being rewarded for their patience and achieving effective elimination of COVID-19 by now experiencing essentially normal domestic lives secured by effective biosecurity at their international borders. On the other hand, American businesses are learning that it is difficult to run profitably when workers are afraid of returning to work, and clients and/or customers are behaving entirely different to before the pandemic out of prudent concern for catching the virus.

If my concerns expressed above play out, then we are about to re-learn the lessons of compounding, only the effect will be in reverse since the economic measure of growth has a negative sign. The consequences of all of this will have profound effects on our societies.

In “Toxic Masculinity and Political Footballs” I said:

We were fortunate to have a second chance at eliminating COVID-19 from Australia after PM Morrison dithered on closing the borders to international travellers in February and early March. I strongly doubt that we will be fortunate enough to be able to say “third time lucky”.

And in my second open letter to PM Morrison I said:

to loosen measures for the sake of perhaps an extra month or two of additional limited commercial activity may come at the cost of allowing COVID-19 to become widespread in our population for an entire winter season. If a vaccine does become available before the next northern hemisphere winter, then that would make us in the southern hemisphere the only region other than Wuhan to experience an entire winter season with COVID-19 running rampant.

That would scar the Australian people deeply and would have severe and long-lasting impacts on our society and our economy.

Events in Melbourne over the last fortnight prove these warning to be correct. Politicians know that any chance of COVID-19 elimination within Australia has been squandered, while our near neighbours success proves that it was possible, and thus any COVID-19 deaths from now on were clearly preventable; that is why we are frequently hearing that “elimination was never the Australian strategy”.

Perhaps conservative politicians will fall back on the doubts that I expressed earlier about developing an effective vaccine in the near term to justify “getting on with the inevitable” and learning to deal with the virus. If you come from the perspective that the impacts on the economy are your highest priority, then certain impacts on the economy by stringent biosecurity measures will always outweigh any issues of uncertain benefits for preventing infections amongst people over an undefinable length of time.

Mostly what is given up, however, is the flexibility to make better decisions when we are armed with greater knowledge. Those better decisions clearly can be for the benefit of people and for economies.

To this point decisions have been made mainly by elected officials. Increasingly going forward those decisions will be made by individuals. Collectively those decisions will have significant impacts on society, and the longer and greater the COVID-19 affects are felt, the greater the change in the way society behaves.

That, in a nutshell, is “The Great Reset“. It has already begun and it is irreversible.

High quality, effective leadership will nurture it so that the best outcomes are realised to the benefit of humanity. Scoundrels will try to harness it to bend society to a more warped and less inclusive version. We all must show leadership and engage with the process to achieve the best outcome for ourselves and those we love, and those who succeed us. And we should all prepare to be flexible and supple in thought to make the best decisions that we can with the information that we have as we emerge from the shock of our altered existence and as our future comes into clearer focus.

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020

WHO Situation Report 161 for 29 June (released 30 June Brisbane, Australia, time)

Globally: 10,021,401 confirmed cases (178,328 new), 499,913 deaths (4,153 new)

From my earliest updates I understood that these numbers would escalate exponentially, so that when I was writing single digit numbers I knew very soon it would be double digit numbers, then in the thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then millions. Knowing and understanding does not translate to being emotionally prepared, and I cannot begin to express how sad I feel every time I write these huge numbers, or when I look back at my report of 11 February and see that there was only 1 death outside of China.

When I began writing these updates it was a very deliberate decision to leave the year off of the date. I knew this was never going to be limited to a 2020 event. I simply had no intention of writing updates beyond the first year of the pandemic because I knew it would be too depressing. My next post will detail my concern for how I believe the pandemic will play out beyond 2020, and what will be the implications for our society.

Since my previous update the new outbreak in Beijing which was associated with the finding of the novel coronavirus on cutting boards used for imported salmon in a wholesale food and seafood market has led to China enacting new requirements on imports of processed meats and some other goods. All shipments must be accompanied by certification attesting to freedom from contamination by the novel coronavirus.

I have added to my Youtube videos on COVID-19 food safety in processed meat with several videos on handling specific processed meat in various circumstances, along with a summary video discussing the risks.

Now as I have stated on that video, and elsewhere, I agree that there is ample opportunity for China to use this issue as a technical barrier to trade, firstly because many countries including Australia do that, and because of the fluid nature of geopolitics surrounding China at present. I would suggest that including soy beans (which are primarily used to feed to pigs) in the list of products requiring attestation of freedom from novel coronavirus contamination may hint at this potential. Then again, one possibility that I have not canvassed is the potential for pigs to actually be infected by the virus, and that as a potential reason for why slaughterhouses and processers to be especially impacted, thus the need to be extra careful with the feedstock given to livestock. (I do not know how much research attention has been given to assessing pigs as potential hosts – experimental transmission experiments would need to be carried out in the highest level biosecurity facilities capable of large animal trials, and they are as rare as hens teeth, and this is probably not a high priority for research.) Also, I have inspected seafood processors while working for Biosecurity Australia, though never a salmon processor, and understand these to be highly mechanised and thus likely lower risk due to lesser contact with humans and lower probability of contamination.

Nonetheless, I consider it a favour to the world to highlight the risk of the spread of this pathogen with especially processed meat, and for me the benefits of that outweigh any potential for political interference.

I have been conducting some research on what potential risks all of this pose to Australia in terms of establishing new clusters of infection with imported processed meat. Uncooked meat obviously presents the greatest risk as the novel coronavirus and other similar viruses can survive refrigeration and freezing for prolonged periods, but is quickly inactivated at cooking temperatures.

These are the current biosecurity policies for the importation into Australia of the major forms of uncooked meat for human consumption:

• Salmon is permitted entry from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, UK and US processed in those same countries plus Germany, Philippines, Poland, Sweden and Thailand.
• Pork is permitted entry from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and US if kept under biosecurity/quarantine control until processed at an approved premise.
• Beef is permitted entry only from Japan and Vanuatu.
• Uncooked chicken is not permitted entry from any country other than New Zealand and presently it is not allowed from there either.

So it is really only salmon and pork that is imported into Australia in uncooked form from countries that are experiencing severe COVID-19 outbreaks. As I stated above, based on my (albeit limited) experience in inspecting seafood processing facilities I believe that processed seafood represents a lower risk of contamination and thus transmission of the novel coronavirus than larger animals which generally use less mechanisation. On the other hand, the pathway for exposure is direct as people will take the frozen fish home and prepare it for consumption.

The import conditions for uncooked pork state that it must go straight into a quarantine approved premise for further processing. While this does not involve a pathway into Australian homes, obviously the sheer amount of uncooked meat that workers in these premises may come into contact with will increase the risk of transmission to these Australia workers. The list of premises permitted to process imported pork meat is on the agriculture department website, although the list may not be complete as inclusion on the published list is at the discretion of the business. The majority of businesses on the list are in Victoria. I would personally be interested to know whether there are any additional risk management procedures implemented at these facilities, whether they have imported uncooked meat over recent months from impacted overseas processing facilities (it is a condition of import that the premise and date of processing accompany the product on entry to the country), whether workers are undergoing additional testing for the virus (not just general symptoms), and whether workers at any of these facilities have been found positive for the virus.

Moreover, given investigations into the Cedar Meats cluster unearthed the practice of contract workers moving between different processing facilities, something that has been highlighted as a risk for spreading the pathogen, I would suggest that extraordinary care needs to be taken to ensure that workers at these facilities processing imported meat do not contract and spread the novel coronavirus.

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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2020