When Covid struck Australia, hers was an important voice. As the ABC’s Virginia Trioli lamented: “When confusion or dissent in the public health response to Covid boiled over…. time & again members of the public would ask on programs like mine, ‘But what does Mary-Louise McLaws think?’   ‘Confusion and dissent’ is a euphemism.   As politicians and bureaucrats tried to minimise the impact of Covid, eventually going so far they removed restrictions that inconvenienced few and assured that many were inflicted, some to die terrible deaths, many others to be wreaked and wracked by Long Covid, an illness that is the first cousin of the ME/CFS that I know too well.

As I have written elsewhere on the social media site now known as X (the unknown quantity): “Prof McLaws was one of a small group of trusted scientists who, during Covid’s worst, showed us Courage, Integrity & Truth, unlike the many who, captured or muted by politics & bureaucracy, did not.”

I break into four groups the scientific response to Australia’s Covid outbreak. (1) A small minority of scientists speaking honestly and factually (including truth telling and promoting the need for an effective suppression regime). (2) A hefty group of experts censoring themselves. (3) A huge group remaining silent. (4) An extensive group telling lies, half-truths and expressing opinion as fact, whether because they were paid propagandists and liars, because they preferred to cuddle up to government and media for reasons of partisan politics or career advantage, or because of some imagined animus.

At the height of the Covid outbreak and the official denialism, I awoke to Australia as I imagined but had never witnessed it might be in a national disaster. A nation incapable of dealing with hard truths and so easily siphoned off into the clutches, of partisans, propagandists and charlatans, its leaders toxic in their timidity and wicked in their eagerness to entertain fancy. For the first time in my life I felt intimidated by my own inability to act. I discovered that by far the worst element of old age and ill health is the feeling that one has been disempowered.

DR PATIENCE SLICES, DICES & NAILS IT AGAIN

“These days the politics in the Australian parliament is little more than puerile game-playing, echoing what goes on endlessly and tediously in the undergraduate political clubs in our universities. It’s all about organising and winning the numbers. It lacks an ethical core, resulting in the country being paralysed by the politics of ennui and hopelessness. Prime Minister Albanese seems all at sea when it comes to changing this depressing political culture….

“He seems fearful of standing up to what is rapidly becoming the worst Opposition in Australian political history. He is running scared of the malevolent Murdoch media. He thinks voters don’t want radical public policies when in fact they are longing for inspiring [and] progressive changes to the governance of the country. They are longing for a morally inspiring leader.

“Albanese’s most egregious ethical failure so far has been his embrace of the alliance with America. A morally astute prime minister would have flatly turned down the ‘invitation’ to visit the White House in October. It was more an order than an invitation, underlining the Albanese government’s strategic failure to stand up for Australian sovereignty.” Much more of Allan Patience’s satisfying rhetoric here in 'The moral emptiness of Albanese’s politics’. He’s an academic able to cut through to the truth as a busnaip might slice a banana.

FINE WORDS IN PRAISE OF A 20-YEAR OLD CHAMPION

Kieran Pender, writing in The Guardian: “The pressure on the shoulders of the 20-year-old could not have been greater, in her first shootout in competitive football. Fowler walked slowly to the mark and stared down France goalkeeper Solène Durand. She bounced the ball like a basketballer, once, twice.

“The Manchester City player walked a few steps backwards before pausing to draw in a deep breath. She exhaled – this was it. A step forward, then another – almost prancing. And then she smashed the ball low and hard towards the left corner. Durand went the wrong way, but she never had any chance. It was a perfect penalty.”