After laying with Rona for the past seven days, here are my top three thoughts from iso:
1) Sucked up, anti-vaxxers: The haters who regularly abuse me via email have been waiting for me to contract the virus, but I’m sorry to report that my triple-vaxxed immune system has reduced COVID-19 to just a dry cough for a few days.
That is it. Not even a sore throat. I was more at risk of ending up in the ICU from UberEats-related overeating than COVID. Many I know I have been much worse affected, and I wish everyone a speedy recovery, vaxxed or not.
2) McGowan Government RATs Are Dodgy AF: My criticism of the government-provided lollipop-style rapid antigen tests is based on the fact that some of them gave negative results in the minutes before AND after an immediate positive impact from a pharmacy-bought nose swab tests.
West Aussies already do a great job of pretending it doesn’t exist on the weekends.
A quick scan of social media reveals I’m not the only one experiencing this. You may wonder how many people are currently wandering WA with COVID, convinced by some dodgy RAT that their symptoms are just the common cold.
3) West Aussies will have no problem getting past the pandemic: They’re already doing a great job of pretending it doesn’t exist over the weekend.
Basing anything on WA case numbers is a fraught business; just ask Mark, “We’re past the peak,” McGowan, but it seems especially so when you compare daily infections to PCR test rates.
Camera icon Prime Minister Mark McGowan refuses to release the modeling on which his administration’s COVID policy is based. Credit: The Western Australian
As you’d expect, daily case numbers closely track PCR test rates, so if one goes up, does the other, and vice versa.
The prevailing argument is that people only get PCR tests when they feel sick, or are in close contact, so there would be a correlation, right?
But this becomes less certain when you compare testing rates to weekends and holidays, which EVERY week for over a month has revealed that West Aussies simply aren’t tested when a Bunning’s issue or a night on the tiles is offered.
You could also file this under “No shit, Sherlock”, but it suggests that only midweek COVID updates accurately depict the Omicron outbreak in WA.
Based on that assumption, and taking into account the school holidays, which also saw fewer testing, cases barely dropped from McGowan’s “peak” in late March, but restrictions were relaxed.
And now Chief Health Officer Dr. Andy Robertson said that we will soon reach 25,000 daily cases.
Predicting pandemics is difficult, but any propensity to mulligan the Prime Minister on this has been negated by the government’s steadfast refusal to release the modeling on which its COVID policies and rhetoric are based.
Did the modeling justify relaxing restrictions, or did Prime Minister McGowan channel The Castle’s attorney Dennis Denuto and base his decision on “the atmosphere”?
Without seeing the modeling, we can’t be sure.