Doctor and activist
25/04/2020
There has been a general acceptance that the COVID19 coronavirus came from the Wuhan Seafood market from some of the wild animals there, with a pangolin, a type of scaly anteater. It was a wet market which means that species are sold there raw. This seemed more plausible than the various conspiracy theories that it […]
25/04/2020
Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs Inquiry into, ‘Adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia’ Terms of Reference The adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia, with specific reference to: consideration […]
25/04/2020
I am continually appalled by Centrelink’s callous incompetence. It usually does not affect me personally, but this week it did. One of my patients, who has not been able to work for over 4 years since a bad car accident and urgent neck neurosurgery came in for a SU415 certificate so that he could get […]
25/04/2020
Giving Out Money is not easy. Many are worried about big charities- how much actually gets to the people who need it? The government has not managed to give out the Bushfire relief money and it seem that neither has the Red Cross. Now they are promising help for the Corona Virus epidemic- do they […]
25/04/2020
US Sanctions will worsen virus effects in South America. The US does not like the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela. The fact that it is called after Simon Bolivar, who achieved independence of many South American countries gives away the orientation of the government, and is a Socialist government, which nationalised the Oil company and has […]
25/04/2020
24 March 2020 I am bombarded by posts warning of the dangers of 5G transmission towers. There were similar dire warnings when microwave ovens came out, so I was inclined to dismiss this, but decided that I should read up. This is the result. We need to put all this into its theoretical framework. Electromagnetic […]
22/04/2020
22 April 2020 The COVID-19 crisis highlights the failure of market mechanisms. The lack of good health care in the USA will highlight how private medicine simply does not deliver the health care people need. The same can be said in Australia, though we still had a bit more public system to build on. But […]
12/04/2020
12 April 2020
Prof John Ashton CBE, Ex-President of UK Faculty of Public Health is extremely critical of the Johnson government’s management of the corona virus epidemic. He says that the idea of herd immunity was an absurd one and amounted to an unlikely theory being preferred to information that had come from overseas, including China, which had initially covered up but once the WHO had come in were forthcoming of their experience in managing the epidemic.
The current problems include lack of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), ventilators and even oxygen are because of the lack of recognising the seriousness of the problem and failure to order equipment and to prepare.
He urges more attention to cleaners and porters who are as important as doctors in nurses in the spread of virus in a hospital environment, but the class system, which lessens their importance, has meant that they have not had enough attention to their PPE and this will lead to spread.
The other aspect is Private Public Partnerships, which have seen the creeping privatisation of health in Britain. He makes the point that there are no longer Community Nurses to trace contacts of the corona virus in the community as private corporations only do what is in their contracts, and are only of peripheral use in a pandemic. He wants a fundamental re-think of the privatisation of health, and a real investigation of who made what decisions when, not merely the outcome of awards to people who were high in the hierarchy, however incompetent their decisions.
Many countries have had health systems inappropriately evolved to deal with an infectious disease pandemic. How well countries have done is measure of the flexibility and responsiveness of their political systems as well as their health systems. His view is the UK has not done well.
We all need to look at our governments in the light of how well they responded to this challenge. The danger is that initial dilatoriness will then be replaced by authoritarianism, imposed on people while they are frightened.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBm7LCeOzHU&feature=emb_rel_end
02/04/2020
2 April 2020 This is now a current question because of a French trial. When a new disease comes there is a rush to test existing substances to see if they work. When AIDS arrived, many drugs were tested. One drug, acyclovir was found to help. Acyclovir had been developed as an anti-leukaemia drug but […]
07/11/2019
7 November 2019
I have some experience in this area, though I would not seek to overstate it.
In 1985 I won a public service fellowship to look at workplace absence and I looked at the evidence of whether drug testing in the workplace worked. The main place it was suggested was at pre-employment medicals. The idea was that if you tested them and they were OK, they could have the job. It was a pretty silly idea as only a really serious addict would come to job medical interview with drugs on board so the pick up rate was low, the costs high, and the impression on the workers quite negative.
Later in my OHS job a worker was sent in for a medical as he was said to be using hard drugs in the portable toilet (thunderbox). He was taunting and arrogant, saying that I could not prove anything, and could not do anything as he would not give permission for the test. He was right of course, but he soon proved his accusers right as well by falling out the door of the thunderbox with a needle stuck in his arm.
When I worked in private OHS, the NSW State government saved money by sending people on parole to be drug urine tested on Medicare by local GPs. I was stuck with it in our practice which was one of the few that still agreed to do the testing. A man came in, angry and abusive, demanding immediate service, which he was granted to stop him terrorising the waiting room. He brought in a jar of very cold urine for testing. I said that I wanted a fresh specimen, gave him a jar and pointed to the toilet, ten paces away. He left to ‘get a new specimen’ and came back some time later. I said that I wanted to see him pass it, so he pulled his undies down saying, ‘There it is, are you happy now?’ No I wasn’t, as he had another small vial of urine in his hand as he held his undies. ‘You are a hard bastard’, he said as he eventually passed the urine, which unsurprisingly showed he was still using narcotics. The Parole people were pleased. They said, ‘We knew he was using but could not get a GP to get us a specimen’. I was not surprised that GPs were reluctant. At $15.20 for a Medicare visit that involved a terrified waiting room, half an hour of time, a threat to have your head punched in and the disruption of a whole afternoon for a whole medial practice, I told them that we were not going to continue testing either. Presumably he went back to gaol, and one might wonder how much good that did.
My next encounter was a female friend who had been very traumatised by a previous serious rape attempt that she had fought off. She was going through Central Station on her way to work, when a sniffer dog made the Police insist on searching her bag and ‘patting her down’. She had an empty plastic bag in her handbag that she had had a small amount of marijuana in some weeks before. But she was very traumatised by the experience because of the memories that were stirred and by the idea that she could not even walk around without people assuming that they had the right to touch her body.
The NSW Government will not allow pill testing at concerts, but wants to try to stop the drugs entering. Presumably there is a risk that younger people will bring them in if they are exempt from searches. Where will this end? Body cavity searches? MRIs outside concerts?
Prohibition will generally not work in the workplace, let alone the rock concerts. We need harm minimisation policies. This is not easy and it is not perfect, but it is better than prohibition.
Here is the NSW story in the NY Times, presumably with the unstated subheading, ‘Look what these mad Australians are doing now.’
www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/world/australia/strip-search-children-drugs.html