Norman Swan’s scaremongering symptomatic of ABC’s Covid malaise

ABC health editor Norman Swan’s apology for comments about the deaths of cricket great Shane Warne and former Labor senator Kimberley Kitching just reminds media consumers how much the national broadcaster has got wrong through nearly three years of the Covid pandemic.

While ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland read Swan’s apology on air last Wednesday for comments made on the program the day before, why did ABC Online and the broadcaster’s various news programs not even report a story that made the front pages of several newspapers? Why did ABC chair Ita Buttrose refuse to comment, yet again? Why did Swan not tweet out his apology?

Doctors this column spoke to about Swan’s citing of Covid side-effects as a possible factor in the deaths of Kitching and Warne, both 52, from heart attacks earlier this year thought Swan’s behaviour unethical.

Swan had no knowledge of the cases, had not met Warne or Kitching, had not seen their medical records, and was forced to admit that Kitching had not even contracted Covid. Why drag her and Warne into his “Covid catastrophism”?

On Tuesday morning on News Breakfast, and on Wednesday defending himself against criticism from 2GB morning radio host Ben Fordham, Swan cited a study of 48 million cases from England and Wales to argue Covid was more dangerous than many think and can be linked to clotting events in the months after infection.

Shane Warne and Labor senator Kimberley Kitching.

But the study he cited was from 2020, when there were largely no vaccines. It covered the period January 1 to December 7. Former federal deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth has been sparring with Swan all year, critical of Swan’s reliance on the opinions of members of the OzSage group of health professionals who regularly call for harsher Covid restrictions.

Coatsworth last Wednesday said: “I am tempted to say this was just a bit of a brain explosion but the problem with that is it means you assume Swan has been reasonable throughout the pandemic. If you took a list of the 10 most frequent commentators nationally on Covid, he would be at the top. He has been one of the most pro-restriction voices. This case represents his desire for Covid to be treated as still an exceptional issue.

“The study he was relying on was conducted in 2020. It was pre-vaccine and pre-exposure, so the effects of hybrid immunity were not evident. People like Norman and those who take his position fundamentally don’t believe that the combination of vaccine and natural infection is protective against those effects that were found in 2020.”

Asked if the effects on the heart Swan cited were not similar to risks of influenza infection, Dr Coatsworth said: “Both create an inflammatory state that can trigger a heart attack. But you have to have heart disease first. That is, your blood vessels already have to be clogged. Inflammation from the virus can change a partial blockage to a full blockage.”

Swan’s mistake raises questions about his regular calls for harsher Covid restrictions. The Daily Mail on Wednesday said Swan had “dismissed the Covid restrictions in NSW during the Delta outbreak in late 2020 as not a proper lockdown’’. He had said NSW was not “the gold standard”, instead hailing the lockdown of Melbourne, the most locked down city in the world during the pandemic.

It’s odd that as Victorian Premier Dan Andrews approaches his state’s election on Saturday, few journalists or doctors appear to have tested Swan’s view of Victoria’s Covid success. The numbers show Swan is wrong.

By last Thursday, Victoria had reported 5936 Covid deaths from a population of 6.68 million for a total death rate since the start of the pandemic of 0.089 deaths per 100 people. That rate in NSW was much lower at 0.067 for 5476 deaths from a higher population of 8.16 million.

Swan has made other errors on Covid. The Daily Mail last week reported: “Swan previously claimed Australia’s health system would collapse within days of Covid’s outbreak.

“The virus was vaccine resistant and … protection from masks was very small.”

Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson in his Media Watch Dog column here on October 24 rightly pinged Swan for being out of touch with the latest academic thinking in two reviews of Australia’s Covid response that found schools had been locked down too hard for too long.

Former federal deputy chief health officer Nick Coatsworth. Picture: 9 News

Swan told News Breakfast in March 2020: “We’ve just got to shut down schools … the risk to your child is low but it’s a public health measure because children spread the virus. And my feeling is we are, to be blunt, dicking around.”

A review by Lancet Regional Health of Australia’s pandemic strategy found “children were mainly viewed as potential ‘vectors of transmission’ (using an inappropriate influenza paradigm) without adequately considering the detrimental impacts of school or playground closures on their education, emotional and physical development and mental health.”

The Fault Lines report by Western Sydney University Chancellor and former secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department Peter Shergold found schools should stay open in future health crises “unless there is strong health advice that outweighs the likely educational, mental health, social and economic costs of school closures. Closures should be targeted so that only specific schools are closed and not entire school systems.”

Academic analysis has also been at odds with Swan on Sweden’s approach to the pandemic, which to be fair was criticised by many health professionals in 2020-21.

Swan tweeted out a piece from Nature in March this year which discussed “why Sweden didn’t follow the science … despite a long history of public excellence in health. The result was that many people died who shouldn’t have.”

The Conversation website on August 13 published a piece by senior Swedish medical researcher Emma Frans that looked at Sweden’s decision not to lock down, close schools or mandate mask wearing. Swedes were encouraged to work from home, limit travel and those over 70 to limit social contact. People with Covid symptoms were asked – and trusted – to self-isolate.

“Although Sweden was hit hard by the first wave, its total excess deaths during the first two years of the pandemic were actually among the lowest in Europe,” Frans wrote. “The decision to keep primary schools open also paid off. The incidence of severe acute Covid in children has been low … and Swedish children didn’t suffer the learning loss seen in many other countries.

“The Swedish strategy has gone from being called ‘a disaster’ … to a ‘Scandinavian success’.”

Shergold’s Fault Lines recommends Australia establish formal pandemic plans, set up a centralised body to be a trusted voice on public health, and improve transparency of decision-making – all pretty much in line with what Sweden actually did.

As Frans concludes on The Conversation: “It seems a bit unjust that the country that followed its pre-pandemic plans was the country accused of conducting an experiment on its population. Perhaps … the rest of the world underwent an experiment.”

Norman Swan is a very competent broadcaster, who was once a practising doctor. Yet on Covid he has fallen into the same politicised advocacy trap that has snared many much younger ABC journalists.