Thread
One of the federal govt's ring-in deputy CMOs, Nick Coatsworth, published an opinion piece in the @smh yesterday. It starts with a shockingly bad misrepresentation of events & propositions about COVID19 elimination: a strawman fallacy. /2 https://www.smh.com.au/national/eliminating-covid-is-a-false-hope-but-aggressive-suppression-is-working-20200715-p55c8e.html #auspol

2/9 The proposition -not an 'inference', as Dr Coatsworth illogically terms it- is not that Victoria (& NSW & other parts of Aus) would have been free of current problems if community transmission had been eliminated: it is that ongoing community transmission /3

3/9 ... is too costly, too dangerous.

Coatsworth rightly notes the current upsurge in cases has "largely stemmed from breaches in quarantine arrangements for Aust'n citizens returning from overseas."

He then waffles about definitions, uses measles as a false analogy (see #8) ..

4/9 ... before coming back to borders and quarantine, simply asserting -

"It is impossible to completely seal the borders of any country – even an island continent such as Australia – and nor should we try to ... Our systems are excellent, but they will never be perfect." /5

5/9 This is a cop out, especially given the systems are not beyond Australian govts, and in fact are largely in place.

Coatsworth then says "The risk [that] elimination creates is a false sense of security that may diminish the community engagement with widespread testing ... /6

6/9 "..and lead to a downsizing of the enhanced public health response, based on an assumption "we have got rid of the virus once and for all in our part of the world".

There's so much wrong with that sentence: firstly, there wouldn't be any need for widespread testing if .. /7

7/9 elimination were to be achieved. Whether elimination would lead to a false sense of security could be contended & may be moot given the security ought to be provided by public health & biosecurity provisions led by people like him. /8

8/9 Yet, his deputy CMO of Aus asserts the public health 'response' would be inadequate.

What a disgusting cop out by a supposed public health leader. Especially when we revisit his waffle about definitions about elimination v suppression -

9/9 Among the waffles is an admission "that we reduce to zero the number of infections in Australia and target deliberate public health interventions to prevent re-establishing community transmission."

What Dr Coatworth's 'thinking' is is hard to fathom, but he seems confused.