Scott Morrison and “diseased” asylum seekers.

““These Australians have been living on the front line of Labor’s failed border protection for the last four years.”
Melodramatic much, Mr Morrison. Another face I can’t bear to watch on the screen.

LikeLike

Well I might be the voice in the wilderness on this blog and this issue has troubled me with which way to lean for a long time. On the one hand we have amnesty posting a graph on facebook showing that all the arrivals fill only a tiny part of an MCG crowd, on the other the Australian Bureau of Statistics have a graph showing the policy effect on arrivals that clearly demonstrates that the current policy has lead to a massive increase in arrivals – no politics, thats just a fact. The question no one is asking is “Should Australia be some kind of santa claus to troubled countries in the world”? Where do we sit on this. Having confronted this at the cliff Face (Im part of an entertainment group that visits detention centres at their invitation and met some of these arrivals) I don’t buy the poor unfortunate asylum seeker story. These people have enough money to pay a huge amount to escape admittedly sometimes dire conditions. A lot seem to be political refugees from changed regimes. Certainly they arent broke, desperate or victimised. Given that, we then have to ask the question – Is it our job to give them what is effectively sanctuary? Some of the source countries have no visa or migration arrangement with Australia and hence the boats and planes and puting on being accepted are the only choice they have is Australia is the desired destination. A lot it seems choose to stop at whatever interim country they are at instad of making the full journey. It was interesting talking to them and hearing their stories. More than a few have families here, or brought them with them, Some are simply single wanderers (largely males) looking for a better life anywhere. But where should Australia sit on this? We have our own local regions to deal with. I think the parochialism big brother helper/policeman Australia displays to New Guinea, Fiji and other troubled pacific states (if welcomed which it isnt always) is about as far as we need to go personally but other think we should have an open door free for all. Not good governance and really the easy and lazy way out to me.

LikeLike

So…. Assuming that the other three-month periods had, say, only 1000 people arriving each, that makes 5000 people over the year in which those infectious disease stats were collected.

Picking the first disease on the list, that means there was a prevalence of chlamydia of a tiny 0.08%. Contrast that with our prevalence of around 10% in sexually active adolescents, or 2-3% in the general population, and we’re not exactly looking at an epidemic waiting to happen.

There are more syphilis carriers, which is not surprising, because disease patterns vary. Looking at the numbers again, that’s 0.58%. Australian syphilis data is based only on formal notifications (so possibly tip-of-the-iceberg), but is maybe 0.007% overall (incidence per year); much higher in certain disadvantaged populations. However – syphilis is readily and pretty rapidly curable; it’s just a matter of screening and treating.

Hep B? Around 0.8% of Australians have chronic hepatitis B; and this back-of-the-envelope messy-stats method gives me more like 0.2% amongst these asylum seekers.

TB? Aus: 1-2% (includes asymptomatic carriage). These figures: 0.02%.

LikeLike

Well our offshore processing has resulted in the murder of a young refugee at the hands of the Indonesia police over night, but we won’t talk about that.

LikeLike