The health of society’s youngest members is an emotive issue at the best of times, let alone in a pandemic, so it won’t surprise that it’s become a lightning rod in ongoing debates.
“At times I think it would be better for all of us to sit in a room, and the first point of agreement would be to delete our Twitter accounts. That would be best for Australia – honestly,” he says. “The last thing the public needs is duelling experts.”
On January 23, he took issue with Russell over her tweet in which she stated that there’d been “very little evidence for PHSMs [public health and social measures] in schools ” – though she said she supported the Victorian government’s back-to-school measures which include mask-wearing and the distribution of HEPA filters.
The advent of vaccines has tilted the balance, with the “living alongside the virus” approach gaining the ascendancy among most of the nation’s political leaders . But the view that elimination is desirable wherever possible still has prominent adherents. Davidson, who has also clashed with the Murdoch Institute’s Russell over Twitter, is the mother of a child who is classed as clinically vulnerable. She says not enough has been done to reduce airborne transmission in classrooms and that measures adopted in NSW, in particular fall short of World Health Organisation best practice.
“With Omicron, it’s reasonably early days, we don’t know what the long effects are going to be, and in the absence of that knowledge I don’t think it’s reasonable to take risks with children’s lives,” Phelps says.
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