Experts want Albanese to lead on indoor air quality as pandemic planning continues

Experts want Albanese to lead on indoor air quality as pandemic planning continues

Last month, a delegation led by Brendan Crabb, head of the Burnet Institute, a prestigious medical research institution, met with Anthony Albanese at the Prime Minister’s office in Parliament.

Its members, including Lidia Morawska of Queensland University of Technology, a world expert on air quality and health, also attacked ministers and staff, urging the federal government to lead a comprehensive policy on immaculate indoor air and for the issue to be placed on the national cabinet agenda.

They pointed out to Albanese that indoor air is an exception in our otherwise comprehensive public health system. Despite people spending most of their time indoors, indoor air quality is largely unregulated, unlike standards that apply to things like food and water.

There are many health and economic reasons to be concerned about air quality, and one of the most critical is to reduce the spread of airborne diseases like COVID.

For many of us, COVID has become a bad memory, despite its enduring and mixed legacy. For example, if it weren’t for the pandemic, fewer people would be working from home now. More compact businesses would be blossoming in our CBDs. You could argue that fewer children would be trying to catch up on under-education.

Even though the media has largely lost interest in COVID-19 and people are relatively indifferent to it, the disease continues to take its toll.

There will be around 4,600 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in 2023, and in reality the number is likely higher, given that Australia has had 8,400 “excess deaths” (defined as the number of deaths exceeding the number of expected deaths) this year.

As of July this year, 2,503 deaths have been recorded due to COVID-19.

In nursing homes, while COVID survival rates have improved significantly thanks to vaccinations and antiviral drugs, there are 117 lively outbreaks as of September 19, with 59 fresh cases in the past week. There have been 900 deaths this year.

Long COVID has become a sedate problem, with a variety of respiratory, cardiac, cognitive and immunological symptoms. It is estimated that there are between 200,000 and 900,000 people in Australia I currently have long COVID.

Albanian authorities are currently awaiting a commissioned report on their handling of the COVID pandemic.

Bronwyn King (Burnet Institute), Anna-Maria Arabia (Australian Academy of Science), Lidia Morawska (QUT) and Brendan Crabb (Burnet Institute) pressed the Prime Minister on indoor air quality last month.

The study looked at the Morrison government’s performance, but its scope did not include the states. This limits its usefulness, but there was politics involved, given Labor’s influential state governments.

Not that the state and territory leaders from those days are still alive (apart from Andrew Barr in the ACT). The faces that had become so familiar from their daily press conferences had vanished into oblivion: Dan Andrews in Victoria, Mark McGowan in Western Australia, Gladys Berejiklian in Novel South Wales, Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland.

COVID has had a variety of effects on or damaging the reputations of leaders. McGowan, in particular, has reached stratospheric heights of popularity. Andrews has deeply divided people.

Overall, COVID has strengthened support for leaders and increased public trust in them and in the government. In times of uncertainty, the public turned to established institutions and authorities. Trust has since declined again.

The experts found each other during the pandemic, but then found themselves in the middle of political arguments. In retrospect, some of them were wrong.

Pandemic leaders at Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting.
Marc McCormack/AAP

Overall, especially in terms of mortality and the economy, Australia has weathered the crisis well. But if you look closer, the story is more elaborate, as documented by two leading economists, Steven Hamilton (based in Washington and affiliated with the Australian National University) and Richard Holden (of UNSW).

In their recent book Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism, the authors concluded that Australia had been largely successful in its (very costly) economic response, but that health outcomes were mixed.

While Australia quickly emerged from the blocks, closing the border and introducing other measures, it suffered a dramatic setback on two fronts: the Morrison government failed to order a wide range of vaccines and failed to buy enough rapid antigen tests (RATs).

“The vaccine acquisition strategy was an irreversible disaster,” Hamilton and Holden write. It was not just “the biggest failure of the pandemic – it was probably the biggest public policy failure in Australian history.”

“We put all our vaccine eggs in two baskets,” both of which failed to varying degrees. That was “a terrible risk. Pandemics are times of insurance, not gambling,” they write.

“And while our tax and statistics authorities mobilized their forces to move much faster and more efficiently to meet the desperate needs of a government facing a once-in-a-century crisis, our medical regulatory elaborate repeatedly ignored international evidence and experience, and our political leaders capitulated to their advice. And then the Prime Minister told us that when it comes to vaccinating Australians, ‘this is not a race.’”

The inability to order every vaccine that was expected meant that when there were problems with production or delivery of vaccines that we were counting on or had already ordered, their rollout was delayed.

After that mistake, “to our bewilderment, we turned around and made the same mistakes all over again,” failing to obtain and freely distribute a huge number of RATs. In that failure, “our federal government demonstrated the same lack of foresight, the same thrifty but foolish attitude, that it has shown in the vaccine rollout.”

The authors blame Scott Morrison, then Health Minister Greg Hunt, then Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy, the Therapeutic Goods Agency (TGA) and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) for health failures that prolonged the lockdown, cost lives and delayed the reopening.

In calling for better preparation for the next pandemic, Hamilton and Holden have a list of suggestions. They emphasize that we need to make sure we have the capacity to manufacture an mRNA vaccine (which has made quite a lot of progress). We need to get the vaccine “right off the bat,” regardless of cost. Massive quantities of RATs should be acquired as soon as they become available, ready for immediate exploit.

The medical-regulatory elaborate needs to be completely overhauled. Australia should also continue to invest in its “economic infrastructure.” Economic strain has been made easier during the pandemic by the single-touch payroll system. “The first obvious candidate for improvement is the ability to report GST turnover in real time.”

Perhaps a comprehensive indoor immaculate air policy could be added to the list of infrastructure elements.

The government review will have its own recommendations. Crabb and his colleagues hope they will include attention to indoor air quality, the following tips from the Chief Scientist and the National Council for Science and Technology.

The delegation members say the Prime Minister listened to them carefully.

Anna-Maria Arabia, chief executive of the Australian Academy of Science and a member of the delegation, says Albanese “understood that improving indoor air quality is a fundamental requirement for preparing for future pandemics and [he] “has been tuned to the practical implications of having good indoor air quality systems, including the ability to keep schools and workplaces open and functional, reduce absenteeism and enhance productivity.”

But beyond awareness, timely political action is needed. Pandemics do not give many signals about their arrival.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *