Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
For the better part of 10 years, Trump has been telling his base America's institutions are out to get him.
That he needed to drain the swamp.
That they needed to stop the steal.
And
for some people who — rightly or wrongly — feel they too have been hard
done by and pushed down by a system, that is a very powerful message.
His
guilty verdict is perhaps the most potent political weapon he now has
to continue making the claim that things are stacked against him.
His
most devoted supporters will not question the statement he made outside
court on Friday that: "This was a disgrace, this was a rigged trial."
"The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people and they know what happened here."
Trump and his supporters have called any attempts to investigate or prosecute the former president, a witch-hunt.(Reuters: Marco Bello)
Outside
the same court last year, as the first criminal indictment to name a
former United States president was unsealed, his supporters were already
calling this a "witch-hunt".
Trying
to really interrogate that statement with several of those supporters
taught me that there was no room left for logic because there was
something more emotional at play.
There
was no belief that Trump would be considered innocent until proven
guilty, no thought given to the team of powerful lawyers he would be
able to afford, no mind paid to the fact this gave their man an
opportunity to settle the issue once and for all.
For those people who had travelled to be there, they already believed Trump would be found guilty, but not that he was guilty.
For years, Trump had been laying the foundations.
He
had built a fortress around himself in the eyes of his most loyal
supporters by tearing down the credibility of the American institutions
that might be able to hold him accountable.
And it's the way he makes them feel that allowed him to do that.
A Donald Trump voter is many things
Some "super supporters" are devoted to the man himself.(Reuters: Aaron Bernstein)
There
is a difference between a rusted-on Republican who voted for that
party's candidate because that's what they've always done, and a Donald
Trump supporter who got the man's face tattooed on their body.
In 2020, more than 74,200,000 people voted for Trump. There is no way that group is a monolith.
Among
that massive cohort are all different types of people, with different
life experiences and different reasons for their vote.
There
are people who have always voted Republican, who believe in small
government and the right to homeschool their children. They're
politically motivated enough to get out and vote.
Maybe they don't like Trump's personality, but they can separate that from his politics.
For some, though, a vote for Trump was the first time they ever voted Republican.
Their vote for the GOP has only ever been about him and they would leave the party if Trump did.
Standing
in downtown Detroit just days after the 2020 election at a Stop the
Steal rally, I met a man who explained that he knew the depth of his
feeling for Trump was that he loved him.
A
former manufacturing worker from the Midwest where so many factories
have closed over recent decades, this man had now found belonging in a
Trump crowd.
To him, Trump was an aspirational character, wealthy and willing to say what other politicians won't.
Flawed just like him, a belief that he'd been pushed down by the system, just like him.
On
Friday, at an impromptu Trump car rally in West Palm Beach, Florida,
the former president's supporters talked of feeling a sense of sadness.
"At the end of the day, it's only going to increase his support," one man said.
His partner: "It's very scary. If it can happen to him, it can happen to any of us."
Trump's
"super supporters" will not be deterred by his conviction, but he needs
every possible vote to get over the line in November, and being a felon
is likely to impact some of the other voter groups.
Those who might be swayed
Donald Trump gestured towards crowds gathered at Trump Tower after the verdicts.(Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)
The pollsters will be busy putting surveys into the field that take stock of sentiment towards Trump now there is a verdict.
In the lead-up to Friday, there were a few notable polls that had tried to forecast what the impact might be.
Bearing
in mind Americans don't have to vote, that the number of undecided
voters is diminishing and that the hush money case is considered to be
less serious than Trump's other indictments.
But some polls still predict there will be an impact at the margins.
Several
polls that surveyed Republican voters on whether they would still vote
for Trump if he was convicted in the New York case found that between
4–6 per cent of respondents said they would change their mind.
An NPR/PBS poll found 67 per cent of all registered voters said a conviction would make no difference to how they vote in November.
In the same poll, 25 per cent of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for Trump if he was found guilty.
"The
latest poll also asked voters whether Trump being acquitted would
affect their vote preference. A large majority — 76 per cent — seemed to
see a not-guilty verdict as keeping the status quo, saying that outcome
would make no difference to them on election day," US public
broadcaster PBS published.
The trial was not televised and hardly revealed anything Americans didn't already know about Trump.
There
are still questions about how his non-core supporters will be affected,
but perhaps even more relevant ones about how this outcome will
motivate his base.
Because for
all the times Trump has said the system is rigged against him, what he
has been implying to his faithful supporters is "I know it's rigged
against you too".
As the campaigns come into focus over the next few months, expect to hear the words "rigged trial" a lot.
Just
moments after his guilty verdict came down, Trump's campaign donation
page was splashed with new, yet familiar, lines about a "rigged
political witch-hunt" and being a "political prisoner".
He called on 10 million people to make donations as the site struggled under the weight of heavy traffic.
Donald Trump's campaign sells merchandise featuring his mugshot.(Reuters: Alyssa Pointer)
It's
a reminder of the mugshot merchandise Trump's team sold with the slogan
"never surrender" running alongside the image taken as he turned
himself into Georgia's Fulton Country Jail in August.
Authority coming after Trump is an opportunity for his campaign.
Even if by spinning a false narrative, Trump can emerge as the candidate who knows what it's like to be dealt an injustice.
It
might not be true, or logical at all, but it is a very strong emotional
connection that compels people to give him their money, wear his
merchandise, travel across the country to be at his rallies and, no
doubt, cast their vote for him come November.
Officials are closely monitoring bird flu outbreaks at poultry farms in
Victoria and WA, as other strains wreak havoc around the world. (Reuters: Mariana Nedelcu)
Link copied
When
Victorian health officials confirmed Australia's first human case of
avian influenza last week, there were a few key details that struck some
of those listening as odd.
The announcement came
on the same day that the state's agriculture department reported an
outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm near Meredith. But the Department
of Health made clear that the two incidents were totally unrelated.
Two
further outbreaks on Australian poultry farms followed, prompting
hundreds of thousands of chickens to be culled, while deadly strains of
bird flu continued to wreak havoc on the US dairy industry and wild
animal populations around the world.
There
is an unsettling, familiar tone to all of this news, and a quiet hum of
concern runs beneath it — could avian influenza erupt into the next
pandemic?
Some of the world's
foremost experts in infectious disease and public health governance say
while it is not time to panic, there is a reasonable risk that we must
be prepared for.
"What
we worry about is those avian viruses mutating to pick up an adaptation
to the human respiratory tract. That's how a human pandemic would
emerge," Professor MacIntyre said.
These
experts share a concern that the fatigue and divisiveness wrought out
by the COVID-19 pandemic present significant challenges in tackling new
outbreaks head on — already they are hampering efforts to test, report
and contain the outbreak in the US.
They also believe we're closer to another pandemic than many people realise — but we have "a golden opportunity" to prepare now and get it right.
What's going on with bird flu in Australia?
First, it's helpful to understand how different outbreaks of bird flu are categorised.
Avian
influenza is an infectious disease that spreads predominantly among
wild birds and poultry. Just like human influenza, there are several
types of avian influenza viruses — these are classed broadly as either
high pathogenic or low pathogenic, indicating how sick they make
infected birds.
As
with other infectious diseases like COVID-19, avian influenza viruses
are divided into subtypes or "strains" and then further into clades.
These subtle differences occur as the virus evolves and mutates to work
around host cells' defences. Some adaptations can lead to "spillover"
events, where the virus passes from one species to another to infect
other animals and, in rarer cases, humans.
The affected Victorian properties were placed into quarantine.(ABC News: Rochelle Kirkham)
On
May 24, a second avian outbreak was confirmed at another Victorian
poultry farm in Terang, which had commercial links with the farm in
Meredith. Testing confirmed this outbreak was another H7 strain, known
as H7N9.
State
and federal authorities are working with affected industries to control
the poultry outbreaks, with the infected farms under quarantine and
orders for free-range and backyard flocks within restricted areas to be
temporarily housed.
It's
important to note that the human case is not connected to the outbreaks
at the poultry farms, and contact tracing has identified no further
human cases in Australia at this stage.
GISAID, a global database tracking infectious diseases as they evolve, identifies the human case in Victoria as H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1a. Genomic sequencing shows this is connected to the virus that is currently circulating in India and Bangladesh.
Another H5N1 clade, 2.3.4.4b, has been wreaking havoc across North America, Europe, and parts of Africa and South America.
Avian influenza has ravaged wild bird populations across South America.(Reuters: Diego Vara)
H5N1
and other strains are also circulating in China. A woman from Fujian
province died in April after falling ill with the highly pathogenic
H5N6. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), she had been in
contact with backyard poultry before she became ill.
What's the risk of human transmission?
The
risk of human transmission of avian flu viruses is relatively low –
it's generally picked up where there has been close contact with
infected animals. Health authorities around the world are urging caution
among people working in affected industries such as poultry and dairy,
or other jobs handling wild animals, but overall, the risk to the
general public is considered low.
Professor
MacIntyre, who leads the global biosecurity program at the Kirby
Institute at University of New South Wales, says this is due to the way
this virus operates.
"Avian flu
viruses are adaptive to birds, and birds have specific receptors in
their upper respiratory tract that we do not have. Those viruses only
spread easily between birds and between some mammals — not humans," she
said.
But that could change if the virus has opportunities to pick up adaptations that allow it to enter the human respiratory tract.
Raina MacIntyre is a professor of global biosecurity within the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
Professor
MacIntyre notes that avian influenza has already crossed over from
animals that have traditionally carried the virus — waterfowl including
ducks, geese and swans — into other wild birds and even mammals.
"We've
seen mass die-off of sea lions and seals, red foxes, coyotes, squirrels
… and we're now seeing it in 130 other wild birds that were never hosts
for spreading this virus before," she said.
"Antarctica
is a worry for us," Professor MacIntyre says, "because if the virus is
in Antarctica, then there could be flyaways of other birds that could
bring it into Australia".
Professor
MacIntyre says the statistical probability of the virus adapting to
infect humans more efficiently is highest with the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b.
If this kind of mutation were to occur, she suspects it would be in
Europe or the Americas.
In the
United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found
fragments of the H5N1 virus in samples of milk and other dairy products
for sale in grocery stores. However, none of these samples returned
evidence of live virus. This is likely down to the pasteurisation
process, which Professor MacIntyre explains "kills the virus".
Avian influenza has been detected in dairy herds across nine US states.
(Reuters: Jim Vondruska)
In
Australia, food standards require most milk or milk products being sold
commercially to meet pasteurisation requirements. Unpasteurised or raw
milk — apart from goats' milk — is restricted from being sold as a food
product, though there are exceptions in some states that allow local
producers to sell raw milk cheese under strict circumstances.
The raw milk market appears to be growing in the US,
and while the FDA has warned consumers to avoid these products given
the current H5N1 outbreaks, Professor MacIntyre says this is where she
has concerns.
"[If] people are
drinking raw milk, that's where you're going to possibly have the avian
virus mixing with humans and creating more chances for that mutation,"
she said.
For the moment, the World Health Organization, as well as centres for disease prevention and control in Europe, the US and Australia,
doesn't appear to be alarmed about the risk of a wider outbreak or
pandemic affecting humans. In its latest weekly update, the WHO wrote:
"Whenever
avian influenza viruses are circulating in poultry, there is a risk for
sporadic infection and small clusters of human cases due to exposure to
infected poultry or contaminated environments … The zoonotic threat
remains elevated due to the spread of the viruses among birds. However,
the overall pandemic risk associated with A(H5) is considered not
significantly changed in comparison to previous years."
Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor and scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, notes that the CDC's Influenza Risk Assessment tool
has ranked H3N2 and H7N9 as the most threatening in terms of avian flu
strains. But he says it's important to keep an eye on how the H5N1 clade
2.3.4.4b evolves.
"[We would
be looking out for] mutations, as well as reassortment with human or
swine viruses. The fact that it's infecting mammalian species — that's
one of the major hurdles a flu virus has to clear for efficient human
transmission. There's been some mild mammalian adaptation here and
there, but not enough to change the public health threat," he said.
However,
as several public health and infectious disease experts have warned in
the past few years, the question of another pandemic is not so much a
matter of if, but when.
Are we prepared for the next pandemic?
Professor
Kelley Lee has been studying the governance of global pandemics for
years, and most recently her work with the Pandemics & Borders
international research group has been reflecting on the response to the
COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen strategies for future outbreaks.
Broadly, her work aims to answer the question: is the world prepared for another pandemic?
"I
would say the short answer is no, we're not anywhere near prepared. And
indeed, in some ways, I think we're worse prepared than we were prior
to COVID-19," she said.
Professor
Lee says the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic has been how
global collaboration was instrumental in managing the spread and science
the virus — from identifying SARS-CoV-2 as a novel pathogen, to
developing vaccines and potential drug treatments.
And
conversely, where coordination was lacking, it slowed down the world's
ability to bring the virus under control. One example was the varied
approaches to imposing travel restrictions and border controls, which her research has shown came at huge economic and societal cost.
Professor Lee says the varied approaches to restrictions on cross-border
travel and trade around the world set up a "chaotic" dynamic.(AP: Charles Krupa)
"When
you have an uncoordinated introduction of policies, where every country
did things differently and would change them over time … it's nothing
short of chaotic," she said. "It's costly, but it's also not a good way
of managing risk."
Professor
Lee says jockeying between countries and their citizens over access to
resources, "vaccine nationalism" and other behaviours such as people
hoarding ventilators and masks, did significant damage. "Populations
that really needed those essential supplies didn't get them in time or
didn't get them at all," she says.
Over time she believes this contributed to a pervasive corrosion in trust and social cohesion.
"We're
more divided than we were before COVID. You would think that a
generational event such as this would have brought us closer together …
but in general, societies are more fragmented, less cohesive, and less
trusting. That kind of social environment makes us far less likely to
cooperate or coordinate our efforts, from the local level all the way up
to the global level."
Dr
Adalja, who has been advising public health bodies in the US during the
recent H5N1 outbreaks, says a similar dynamic is frustrating efforts to
manage the virus there.
He
says there has been a lack of transparency around testing, and in many
cases a lack of access for public health authorities. The setting of
this outbreak – in dairy farms across a dozen or so states – adds a
layer of bureaucracy that has further complicated the process. At times,
public health officials from the CDC haven't been in sync with the
Department of Agriculture, or with the state governments which must grant access for federal health officials to carry out testing on farms.
"We
saw with swine flu in 2009, there was reticence to really address the
risk on farms, and to sample farms — this has gotten better, but we
always run into this because there is a very big commercial aspect in
terms of export, and domestic consumption of meat and milk," he said.
"So
these types of things are constraining the ability to do more
widespread testing, to get more important public health information out,
at least to the farm workers where we think this risk is really high."
"Many
of the people that work on these farms are migrant workers. They may
not be willing to be tested because if they're sick, or if they're found
to be positive, they won't be able to work, which means they won't get
paid," he said.
Dr Adalja is concerned that if we don't get the response right this time, it doesn't bode well for any future pandemic scenario.
"The
problems we're seeing now are not a good indicator of how well we would
handle a more serious bird flu. It's important to get this ironed out,
because it's likely going to involve agriculture of some sort, whether
that's poultry, cattle, or swine, so we need to have really robust
surveillance of what's going on there."
So what can be done?
Professor
MacIntyre says for Australian authorities working to contain the
current poultry outbreaks, the most urgent priority should be
considering financial measures to make robust testing and reporting as
straightforward as possible.
"The
biggest thing that can be done is financial compensation for farmers.
Without that, there's not going to as much testing and reporting as
there should be, and outbreaks won't be disclosed," she said.
Professor MacIntyre wants to see action around financial support for affected industries.(ABC News: Morgan Timms)
Dr
Adalja is similarly focused on managing the outbreaks in livestock
industries well. He says a lack of trust in public health officials is a
fundamental issue to solve for efficient and thorough testing and
surveillance. Involving veterinarians with established relationships in
the industry is among some of the suggestions to work around this.
Outside
of encouraging stringent testing in these industries, Professor
MacIntyre says the other sign to watch out for will be mass die-offs of
birds or other wild animals.
And
while the current local outbreaks don't pose an immediate risk of human
transmission, it's a possibility she says we need to be prepared for.
"In
terms of the human pandemic, it's a problem for everybody. If a
pandemic arises in the US or Europe, it's going to end up here. So it's
in our interest to be closely monitoring for that."
Professor
MacIntyre views global data sharing and surveillance as paramount in
those efforts. Professor Lee says this extends to all facets of
infectious disease management.
"We
did learn that we can develop a new vaccine very quickly if we all work
together … and there are a lot of scientific advances on the horizon
that I think would make us more prepared," she said.
"But
this is a really a population health challenge. It needs society to
work together. If you have everybody hoarding toilet paper or masks or
just looking out for themselves, that doesn't actually help them,
because the virus continues to circulate."
Cross-border
communication is also critical, Dr Adalja says, "because we know that
these types of viruses don't stay in one country, especially when
they're hitchhiking on birds that migrate all over the world".
And
while highlighting all of these challenges may tap into a well of fear,
he believes "this is a golden opportunity to get it right".
