One would think a lot of patriots are being shot around here - yet look at all the airliner traffic. Something doesn’t add up.

History repeats (or rhymes, whatever. A fundamental problem with democracy is that lack of moral conviction in a mainstream party makes it chase a noisy minority. Here is James Hawes in A Short History of Germany describing how fascists got control of the Prussians.

I thought I’d start my day with an expression of my support for diversity and multiculturalism.

It’s shaped like a human.

The company that did the pool renovation, AIC, has this on its website (vaspray.com/aic/). From which we may conclude 1. Repairs to be under warranty - no “vandalism” 2. Jesus is to assigned ALL credit for the pool job

Was interested to learn that Saint Remy de Provence is both where Van Gogh spent his asylum painting period and where Nostradamus was born. Perhaps explains the recently discovered original Van Gogh windmill study.

Here is one of the Yallourn coal seams on fire during the big eastern state bushfires a few years back. Road sign for scale. Burned deep into the seam and took a long time to put out. Feedback loop anyone ?

A new year, and the race is already on for the most absurd headline in a major newspaper. Strong start by the NYT

The mask is off. The US world strategy document, like the latest US “peace” plan, is indistinguishable from the Russian one. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the idea was that liberal democracy had won over oligarch autocracy. The reverse has happened. This is not a temporary “Trump” glitch

Also. Finally it has been confirmed that bears do, in fact, defecate in the forest

The whole point is to get rid of inconveniently competent, honest, professional leaders.

SA has many sites of world wide geological significance/interest. The sharp boundary here marks the Acraman bolide impact layer - an extinction level event in the Ediacaran. This specimen from Brachina Gorge in the Flinders Ranges, picked up with the yellow tail wallabies looking on solemnly.

Unbelievable. Never knew these beautiful things existed - until today. Geraldton visitor centre, Western Australia, upstairs out of the way, display of photography by Colombian artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso. Then come home and this pops up on BlueSky !

If they are using AI (and you know they are because the real stuff is in short supply), the preamble is going read like this:

Latest WW C19 data from WA is out - very good to see ! Flu and some not flu not C19 not RSV unpleasant bugs are knocking family and friends about but C19 heading down @mikehoney.bsky.social @mackayim.bsky.social

Yes, I think it’s that. Compare the yellow line (cases from testing recorded) and the blue line (wastewater count) in this chart. The majority of infections in Western Australia in the last three years have not been recorded. My guess is that less than 5% of ppl have never had Covid.

Summer waves are bigger than winter ones in Australia (I think it is only coincidentally seasonal). We are in the onset of another “winter” wave now driven by NB1.8.1 and it’s already bigger than this years small summer wave. Very low vax uptake now

Flu was almost eliminated in Australia during the period of closed borders (and vaccination)

It’s hard to say how it will trend in one place vs another because the population immunity “landscapes” differ. For example, we normally get our biggest wave in our summer but the most recent one was quite muted. So there are fewer people still immune now (and vax rates have cratered).

@flinty01.bsky.social Perth wastewater spike to 16/9 is dominated by this new variant. Numbers are only being reported every fortnight now, which is a long time if one is trying to plan to minimise exposure and react. D’ya reckon there’s any chance that might go back to weekly ?

Yes. They average over 14 days but the last update of this chart before the current one (data to 16/5) was 3/5 from memory

C19 was eradicated in Western Australia until the border opened in March 22. Two Omicron waves followed that year and also in 23 and 24. Early on, with widespread testing, cases followed the wastewater curve very closely. Levels are low now but vax rates decreasing so we may see a resurgence

Has stayed down another week - lowest wastewater count since the beginning of measurement. Doesn’t mean risk is gone, but community transmission is low right now.

Hasn’t happened in WA up to a week ago. Will be interesting to see if there is an uptick this coming week

“If you really think the world is flat, Russell, wouldn’t you, of all people sign up for the most exciting surfing event ?”

The same experiment happened in the 4x larger population of Australia. Furthermore, the isolated state of Western Australia is a sub-experiment with no significant infection until 3 mo after the rest and with > 80% adults triple vaxxed by then.

This question comes up from time to time. Here is my Aranet 4 at 8000’ (unpressurised) over the Peel-Harvey inlet. It’s a lot of nerdy fun having one - it records continuously and is WiFi enabled. It shows when the wind direction changes during the might and when visitors arrive during the day

Certainly not - but they’re not the target of the populist distraction - just collateral damage from inflaming that most perennial curse of humanity - tribalism. What Dutton is doing is a canary in the coal mine for much darker things:,Martin Neimoller said it best …

Further to this, Covid related hospital admissions have not decreased as much as wastewater virus load