Well, it’s more ups and downs from the illness isle, Australia. In our latest video offering we foreground positive responses and expose political fundamentalism, we sing along with a well meaning choir and we offer, yet again, a completely alternative microbiome narrative to the unfolding police state dystopia that is Victoria.
References (in order of appearance):
https://artistasfamily.is/
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/10/3596
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n623
https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covid-19-and-obesity-the-2021-atlas
https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-2-october-2021
Life expectancy Australia (Google)
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/06/25/australian-data-answers-key-questions-about-covid19-mortality.html
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/covid-19-mortality-1
The Guardian – Omicron variant first 2 cases
news.com WHO states omicron spreaders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwef0i8SCZ4&t=584s
https://www.who.int/health-topics/cardiovascular-diseases#tab=tab_1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52S15-YJpxc&t=127s
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114228
https://theathletic.com/2963733/2021/11/19/someone-collapses-football-pitch-every-four-days/
https://www.vicbar.com.au/news-events/media-release-%E2%80%93-victorian-bar-says-amendments-pandemic-bill-fall-short
https://www.multiplex.global/projects/centre-for-national-resilience/
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/is-the-mickleham-quarantine-facility-a-200-million-white-elephant-20211014-p58zxj.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFdWcJU7-0&t=30s
https://gateway.icn.org.au/project/4766/centre-for-national-resilience-melbourne-project-quarantine-facility
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A89CmMHcBtw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TFKkbj01NQ&t=921s
We hope this offering adds to your personal Covid compost and helps enable more nuanced conversations, which are the antidote to propaganda, shame-labelling and division. Signing off with love, Artist as Family.
Please do not parrot misinformation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-17/fact-check-2021-misinformation-wrap/100706224
I am not a robot of the current social news cycle, nor do I believe I am willingly led by fancy three word slogans and formal, apparently fact sourced statements of disillusionment.
It concerns you have errred on the side of disenchantment and it concerns me that ‘Artist as Family’ may be sliding on that precipitous slope many have been caught out by.
Kind Regards – PhilM
Well, that’s quite a comment, Phillip. What is it that you think we are parroting? We are not sure what you mean by three-word slogans or misinformation, if you’d like to engage with the content specifically, and ask us questions, please feel free to do so.
Makes sense to me. Not sure if I wanted to be more scared, I guess that means there’s even more to be unafraid of. What you say about mortality seems to ring true, just as festivals like ‘The Day Of The Dead’ seem like a panacea to my Australian upbringing. Good to see some politicians framed more realistically. Gratitude
J
Thanks for your comment Jack, we’re sorry to have evoked more fear. We’ve all had a gut full of it. Our intention with these videos is to harbinger what’s going on that is not being spoken so people can discuss, debate and act if they need to. Bring back festivals to celebrate and honour the dead!
Thankyou you Beautiful people.
Love you guys & your smiles.
Thanks Darren!
The problem with you or anyone producing studies backing up claims is that the information landscape has become the wild west. Finding where authority lies has become a lot more difficult. It takes me virtually no time to find other studies that come to opposite conclusions to what you present. Where does that leave the non-specialist? I think the real conversation between so called anti & pro vax is basically where we draw the line in terms of our confidence in our institutions. While I would never deny examples of appalling government & corporate behaviour, the idea that there is some kind of coordination or plan behind any of this seems like a big stretch. I think there is enough historic precedent to remain confident that our institutions are acting in good faith. Which again, is not to say we can’t find examples of poor behaviour. My other reason for holding a pro vax position is a numbers game. For example on the issue of climate science I’m not in the field and nor do I have time to dedicate to research this question. This is the position most of us are in. Therefore, I feel the only rational approach to this issue in todays day & age (in this wild west information landscape) is to ask the question: what do the majority of scientists say? We know the answer to that and it appears the same with Covid. Of course, if your trust in institutions is eroded then I guess you won’t accept the validity of that question.
Please do share the counter studies, Peter. We’d very much like to see them. What we present here has nothing to do with an anti or pro vax binary, that’s a straw man argument set up to cancel proper debate. We’re interested to find out what’s actually going on with this pandemic because a huge raft of scientists have either been silenced or are self-censoring because of the political landscape. As the so-called ‘fix’ falls apart we are staying with the science as it unfolds.
Hi AAF,
Thanks for the reply. Here’s a few:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34383732/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm7044e1_w
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/vaccine-induced-immunity.html#anchor_1635539757101
But as I said, it takes barely no time to find these so it feels a bit silly: ie ‘my study is better than your study’. My main point again is that all of us non-specialists are in the same boat – in a wild west information landscape. Make of these what you will. My argument is that the only rational approach for the non-specialist is to follow the majority of science. Majority being the key word. I’m guessing you believe in climate change. Why?
That aside, imagine a respiratory virus that had a mortality rate of 10, 20 or even 30% or worse instead of the 1% or whatever Covid is. In that case my bet is that there’d be little argument against hard & fast lockdowns to give our scientists time to try to develop a vaccine.
And in that case I doubt we’d be seeing this fracturing or having these debates.
But I agree that the demonisation is a disaster and we need to be able to talk and listen to each other.
By the way, I’ve been following you on insta for a number of years and I’m basically a big fan! Long may you continue but I definitely disagree on this issue. Best
Hmmm, the formatting on those links is clumsy. There’s supposed to be 3. Let me paste separately.
Thanks so much Peter, bc you sent links through with your comment WordPress requires us to approve first to avoid spammers.
While the CDC is a pharma-captured government organisation we cannot trust two of your three sources. Furthermore, as your only potentially credible Pubmed source was published back in August, and the current science is demonstrating Omicron preferentially infects vaccinated people (we’ll show data on that in our forthcoming video) – you have not advanced the argument by sending these three links on to us. Meg has degrees in communication and media and Patrick has a doctorate completed within the ecological humanities (science-arts hybrid thesis) at the Writing & Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University (for which he received 2 scholarships). But more than this we are skilful at asking bad-arse questions. As we’ve said many times throughout this pandemic we need generalists as much as experts. As this pandemic is about so much more than just medical science we need cultural commentators who can speak across disciplines. We decline to comment on your hypothetical scenario about future pandemics, only to say we’d rather investigate the corruption of institutions and societal systems now, so if a far worse pandemic should occur we have better democratic processes in place. We are grateful for your respectful engagement on this issue.
ahh, I can see them now!
I shared the counter studies with you. 3 of them. You seem to have chosen to delete these comments. Care to explain?
Please see your links and our response above… WordPress doesn’t publish comments with links immediately bc of potential spammers.