8th of August 2020
It has bothered the CAA for some time that the inappropriate staff used at the Quarantine Venues did not seem to be a problem, at least on paper, as far as transmissions within the community of COVID -19, for three months despite anecdotal failures of the Quarantine system circulating for quite some time.
From about the 7th of April with cases at 33; it wasn’t until the 25th of June when the second wave started to emerge with cases again rising to 33.
What is somewhat puzzling is why the cases remained so low for about three months. Then suddenly, the numbers literally exploded to a full-blown second wave.
With the incubating periods well known and we can reasonably assume that the behaviours of the Quarantine and Hotel Staff remained constant over this period, the lack of cases during this three month period raises concerns that have never been adequately addressed.
This begs the question, ’Were we being deliberately misled and if so by whom?’
We now know that there is an allegation that the Chief Health Officer or the Health Department may have withheld information from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, the peak body for the national health response to COVID.
What was that information? Would the timely release of accurate information have enabled the Government and others to respond more rapidly and effectively to avert the intensity of the second wave?
Victorian Health Officials are not the only ones allegedly misleading everybody over the impact of this virus.
Complying with the World Health (WHO) advice Doctors are required to record the death of anyone diagnosed with COVID as being the ‘underlying cause’ of death, irrespective of whether the clinician assesses that the ‘underlying cause’ of the death was actually something else.
COVID, in many cases, may well be a contributing factor but not the ultimate cause. A heart attack, or pneumonia, suicide, or a road death or any number of other clinical or traumatic reasons for their demise, maybe the ‘underlying cause’, but because of the WHO guidelines, if the deceased had COVID at any time prior to their demise, even months prior and recovered or not, COVID is recorded as an ‘underlying cause’, and that is added to the statistics.
Many of our aged victims and others may well have died with COVID rather than from it because we know that not all older patients infected with COVID die of that infection; it may still be a contributor but not the ‘underlying cause’ although COVID appears on the Death Certificate, which we assume is the source of the statistics.
In the UK, they have also experienced problems with the data on COVID deaths. They have estimated that the deaths attributed to COVID as the ‘underlying cause’ is probably overstated by a factor of 10%.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thousands-englands-virus-deaths-to-22477213
The approach in the UK to identifying this error was quite refreshing for a morbid topic; they went public straight away, so the public was informed.
At the very least, our Government must advise Victorians where any problems in the data exist and what might be a presumed outcome of a correction.
It is immaterial at this stage, ‘who done it,’ just identify and fix it. It is important that the community can have confidence they are being told the truth.
It is sad to say but anything that the Andrew’s government utters can only be taken with a grain of salt. Andrews claims to be completely transparent during press conferences yet when an inquiry is held, Andrews forbids ministers answering questions and he hides behind this current inquiry by saying that it would be wrong to comment whilst Judge Coates is investigating the quarantine mater, when that was untrue. Andrews will go down in history as the worst premier Australia has ever seen and yet despite his government being responsible for deaths etc, he will walk away from this disaster with a lifelong offensive superannuation payment.