It was a very different and no-nonsense WHO in 2006 which revealed that Zimbabweans under Mugabe’s rule had the world’s shortest life expectancy. The country’s health system was so underfunded and abysmal that Mugabe – who reportedly amassed a personal fortune worth US $1.75bn – would go to Singapore for treatment. Nonetheless Ghebreyesus was desperate to bestow this honour on him.
As The Times revealed last weekend in its exposé of how China infiltrated and compromised WHO, the Chinese Communist Party wanted to reward Mugabe, a longstanding ally and kindred spirit. Being Beijing’s flunky, Ghebreyesus duly complied, although international outcry forced him to rescind the appointment four days later.
‘Code yellow’ and the WA premier
If Ghebreyesus is looking for another goodwill ambassador for his agency, he could consider Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan. He has all the attributes for that position, at least according to Ghebreyesus’s criteria. To begin with, McGowan rates highly on China’s social credit system, as evident in Chinese state-owned newspapers’ praising him for criticising the Morrison Government’s stance on Beijing. And the state government he heads cannot even provide its citizens with a functioning health system.
“Code yellow” is the catchcry of WA’s public hospitals, the warning signal that capacity has been reached, resulting in the diversion of ambulances. On Saturday, Perth Children’s Hospital, for the first time in its history, turned away sick kids because it was overwhelmed. This is the same hospital where in April seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath died of sepsis, having waited two hours to be treated. A subsequent report found senior clinicians had expressed “substantial concerns around patient safety” to senior administrators in the previous six months.
As ABC 7.30 reported three weeks ago, Perth physician Dr Peter Allely, the WA faculty chair for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, expressed grave concerns of what might happen should Covid-19 sweep through the state. “To be honest, most departments are running at almost disaster level, at least several times a week,” he said. For the month of June, St John WA found ambulances spent over 5000 hours waiting to handover patients at emergency departments – a record.
These issues predate the pandemic. In 2018, WA Today reported code yellows were being invoked on a “frighteningly regular basis”. Far from addressing the issues, the McGowan government has only exacerbated them. As Allely stated “We haven’t been able to recruit staff to fill positions because of border closures”. Last month the WA branch of the Australian Nurses Federation told The West Australian that 20 nurses recruited from interstate had been denied permission to enter the state. But hey, how good is it that McGowan looks like securing the AFL grand final for Perth?
No wonder the premier won't commit to opening up. Our health system is broken and not prepared even after 18 months of covid and record revenue
— johno (@Westozy) August 17, 2021
Heaven help West Australians if or rather when the Delta variant spreads throughout the state. Of all states and territories, it has the lowest take-up rate of vaccinations. In June McGowan advised those under 40 not to take AstraZeneca. “We need to allow people over 60 to get Pfizer,” he also said. “There is huge hesitancy amongst people over 60 and I understand that”. Small wonder vaccination hesitancy is a real issue in that state. His announcement last week that NSW residents would require vaccination passports to enter WA was as much a case of projection as it was protection.
Politicising the pandemic
No other premier has done more than McGowan to politicise the pandemic, a trait bolstered by his authoritarian streak. When he imposed the state’s border closure in April last year, he stressed it was for medical reasons. “It won’t be forever, it’s a temporary closure to make sure we limit the spread of the virus in WA,” he said.
But clearly someone was enjoying the role of gatekeeper too much to relinquish these powers. In March, while in campaign mode, he brazenly spoke of extending the state’s G2G pass system beyond the pandemic, ostensibly to thwart methamphetamine trafficking. And last October he had the audacity to complain West Australians would spend their tourist dollars outside the state if border restrictions were relaxed. That said, you can bet that if WA’s health system collapses tomorrow, McGowan will be screeching that the federation had abandoned West Australians.
Separating parent and politician
This politicisation of the pandemic comes in many forms. When federal Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher revealed yesterday her 14-year-old daughter, Evie, had contracted coronavirus, she took to social media to blame the federal government.
This morning we were advised that my gorgeous daughter Evie has tested positive for COVID-19. One of Canberra’s 17 positive cases today.
— Katy Gallagher (@SenKatyG) August 17, 2021
My full statement is available on this link or on my Facebook page. https://t.co/uIbJlwmZIopic.twitter.com/2iFyecwgce
“My focus right now is on my little girl and getting her through this – but these events bring a sharp personal focus to the consequences of our government’s failure to ensure a prompt, efficient national rollout of vaccines,” said Gallagher, who also chairs the Senate’s COVID-19 committee. “If we had more people vaccinated, our children wouldn’t be as vulnerable as they are today.”
As a parent, Gallagher deserves our sympathy. I hope her daughter makes a full and speedy recovery. As a politician, she should not expect her claims will be allowed to go unscrutinised. She is right in the sense the Morrison government has been the laggard in rolling out vaccines.
Albo and AZ
But Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s obstinate refusal to encourage Australians to take up AstraZeneca undoubtedly contributed to vaccine hesitancy.
And what does Gallagher have to say about the position of infectious diseases expert Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, who last month was preselected by Labor to run in the Victorian seat of Higgins? Appearing on ABC’s Q + A in February she said AstraZeneca had “failed in terms of its efficacy”.
But Gallagher herself also bears some responsibility, albeit indirectly. In April she appeared on Q + A. During that show, fellow panellist and Liberal senator James Patterson condemned the scaremongering regarding AstraZeneca. “There is a real danger in following politicians’ advice and commentators’ advice and ignoring the expert medical advice,” he said. Gallagher turned to her fellow panellist and ABC medical reporter Dr Norman Swan and said almost adoringly “I think that’s you, Norman”.
Gallagher might well claim this was not a case of adulation, but rather her indicating to Swan that he was the subject of Patterson’s criticism. But she has priors for exalting Swan. As chair of the COVID-19 committee she praised him last year, hailing his “extensive experience”. Yet Swan himself conceded to the Sydney Morning Herald in May he had contributed to vaccine hesitancy, although he insisted he was only reporting concerns about AstraZeneca’s effectiveness.
Swan and the vaccine race
In May, Swan accused the Commonwealth of having “lost the race” regarding vaccine rollout. Yet when he appeared on 7.30 last November, he was sanguine regarding supply. “Everybody is saying (that in) March … we will start to receive vaccines and I think that is a good thing, we shouldn’t be too much of a hurry in Australia,” he said.
At least Swan has a degree in medicine, although he is not an infectious diseases expert. Strategic health consultant and former Hawke government adviser Bill Bowell is frequently assigned this title in his numerous media appearances, despite his only tertiary qualification being an arts degree. A Covid-elimination evangelical who frequently purports to speak on behalf of “the Australian people,” he has since the beginning of the pandemic castigated the Morrison government for its response.
Yet the media ignore the fact that Bowtell carries much baggage. Writing for Quarterly Essay in 2007, he said of former prime John Howard that he and those loyal to him “transplanted this foul exotic bloom from the American hothouses of neo-conservatism … to the ideological desert that was the Australian Liberal Party after a decade in opposition.” He was, wrote Bowtell, “a great necromancer”. And to top it off “Howard and his acolytes ceaselessly laboured to inflame public opinion against convenient scapegoats – Muslims, Aboriginals, homosexuals and single mothers.”
This guy is one of the single biggest spreaders of misinformation causing the current state of polarisation in this country.
— Carrick Ryan (@realCarrickRyan) August 17, 2021
He is toxic and any media that gives him airtime contribute to that.
The NSW Government locked down a few days too late, it did not "let Delta Run". https://t.co/hDQn3eYrQg
The politicisation of Covid-19, whether it be for electoral gain, or pointscoring, or self-aggrandising has been a constant since the start of the pandemic. Its practitioners revel in the theatrics. But it is a circus that few of us wanted to see. It is not a case of free but forced admission for us, and the only tickets are the ones the performers have on themselves.
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In 2017, only months after becoming director-general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus awarded the title of WHO goodwill ambassador to the late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. The dictator’s country, said a gushing Ghebreyesus, was one “that places universal health coverage and health promotion at the centre of its policies to provide health care to all”.