Why the COVID-19 variants are so dangerous and how to stop them spreading

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Michael Plank, University of Canterbury and Shaun Hendy

With new, more infectious variants of COVID-19 detected around the world, and at New Zealand’s border, the risk of further level 3 or 4 lockdowns is increased if those viruses get into the community.

These include a variant called B.1.1.7 that has spread very quickly within the UK, with other new variants now observed in South Africa and Brazil.

Changes in the genetic code of viruses like COVID-19 occur all the time but most of these mutations don’t have any effect on how the disease spreads or its severity.

These changes can be useful because they leave a signature in the virus’s genetic code that allows us to trace how the virus has spread from one person to another.

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But the new variant detected in the UK is more transmissible than the original virus that was dominant in 2020. That means it spreads more easily from one person to another.

The good news is it does not cause more severe illness or have a higher fatality rate than the original variant. Evidence so far suggests vaccines will still be effective against it.

But the bad news is because it spreads more easily, it has the potential to infect many more people, causing more hospitalisations and deaths as a result.

Why variants that spread more easily are so dangerous

The average number of people an infected person with COVID-19 passes the virus on to — the so-called R number — is 40%-70% higher with B.1.1.7 than the original variant.

As the graph below shows, the mathematics of exponential growth means that even a small increase in the transmission rate gets compounded over time, quickly generating enormous growth in the number of cases.

A variant like B.1.1.7 with a higher transmission rate is actually more dangerous than one with a higher fatality rate.

Sure, a 50% increase in the fatality rate would cause 50% more deaths. But because of exponential growth, shown in the graph, a 50% increase in transmissibility causes 25 times more cases in just a couple of months if left unchecked.

That would lead to 25 times more deaths at the original mortality rate.

How do we know the new variant is more transmissible?

The number of cases of the B.1.1.7 variant has risen rapidly relative to the original variant.

This can happen for a number of reasons. The new variant might simply happen to be present in a part of the country or group of people who are spreading the virus more rapidly for some other reason.

It could have become resistant to immunity, meaning it could more easily re-infect people who have already had COVID-19. Or it might cause people to become infectious more quickly.

Researchers in the UK used mathematical models to test these hypotheses.

They found the explanation that fitted best with the data was that the new variant really is more transmissible. And they estimated a person with the new variant infects 56% more people on average than a person with the original variant.

Contact tracing data from the UK also showed more of the close contacts of someone with the new variant go on to be infected.

Some countries cancelled flights from the UK over fears of the new COVID strain.
Shutterstock/rarrarorro

Patients with the new variant have also been found to carry more of the virus. Together, this provides strong evidence the B.1.1.7 variant is between 40% and 70% more transmissible than the original variant.

The variants found in South Africa and Brazil share some of the same mutations as the B.1.1.7 variant. There is some evidence they may also be more transmissible or better able to evade immunity.

But there is more uncertainty about these variants, partly because the data quality isn’t as high as in the UK, which is very good at doing genome sequencing.

What does this mean for New Zealand’s border controls?

The new variants have been detected in many countries, including in people in New Zealand’s managed isolation facilities.

There have previously been several cases of people working in these facilities picking up infections from recent arrivals.

The more transmissible variants arriving at the New Zealand border increase the risks to these workers, who in turn have a higher chance of passing the virus onto others in the community, amplifying the risk of a community outbreak.

In response, the government says international arrivals will require a negative test in the 72 hours prior to departure. They will also be required to take an arrival day test when they get to New Zealand.

These measures provide an extra layer in our defences against COVID-19.

How can we manage the risk?

The new variants spread in the same way as the original one: through close contacts between people, especially in crowded or poorly ventilated environments.

This means all the tools we have developed to fight the virus will still work. These include testing, contact tracing, masks and physical distancing.

How face masks make a difference.

But any variant that is more transmissible has a higher R number. To control an outbreak, we need to bring the R number under 1 and so we may need to use more of these tools to achieve this.

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For example, in the Auckland outbreak in August 2020, alert level 3 was enough to contain and eventually eliminate the outbreak. Our analysis showed alert level 3 reduced R to about 0.7.

If we had a similar outbreak with the new variant, R could be 50% higher which would mean it is above 1. In other words, we would likely need to use alert level 4 to contain an outbreak, and it might take longer to eliminate the virus than it has previously.

To give our contact tracers the best possible chance of containing a new outbreak without needing alert level 3 or 4, we all need do our bit. This means looking for QR codes when out about and using the app to scan them, as well as turning on Bluetooth. And it means staying at home and getting tested if you feel sick.

Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury and Shaun Hendy, Professor of Physics

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Achieving COVID-19 herd immunity through infection is dangerous, deadly and might not even work

Under relaxed public health restrictions, deaths will spike far before herd immunity is achieved.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Steven Albert, University of Pittsburgh

White House advisers have made the case recently for a “natural” approach to herd immunity as a way to reduce the need for public health measures to control the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic while still keeping people safe. This idea is summed up in something called the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal put out by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank.

The basic idea behind this proposal is to let low-risk people in the U.S. socialize and naturally become infected with the coronavirus, while vulnerable people would maintain social distancing and continue to shelter in place. Proponents of this strategy claim so-called “natural herd immunity” will emerge and minimize harm from SARS-CoV-2 while protecting the economy.

Another way to get to herd immunity is through mass vaccinations, as we have done with measles, smallpox and largely with polio.

A population has achieved herd immunity when a large enough percentage of individuals become immune to a disease. When this happens, infected people are no longer able to transmit the disease, and the epidemic will burn out.

As a professor of behavioral and community health sciences, I am acutely aware that mental, social and economic health are important for a person to thrive, and that public health measures such as social distancing have imposed severe restrictions on daily life. But based on all the research and science available, the leadership at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and I believe this infection-based approach would almost certainly fail.

Dropping social distancing and mask wearing, reopening restaurants and allowing large gatherings will result in overwhelmed hospital systems and skyrocketing mortality. Furthermore, according to recent research, this reckless approach is unlikely to even produce the herd immunity that’s the whole point of such a plan.

Vaccination, in comparison, offers a much safer and likely more effective approach.

When enough of a population is immune to a virus, the immune people protect the vulnerable.
Wildpixel/iStock via Getty Images

An uncertain path to herd immunity

Herd immunity is an effective way to limit a deadly epidemic, but it requires a huge number of people to be immune.

The proportion of the population required for herd immunity depends on how infectious a virus is. This is measured by the basic reproduction number, R0, how many people a single contagious person would infect in a susceptible population. For SARS-CoV-2, R0 is between 2 and 3.2. At that level of infectiousness, between 50% and 67% of the population would need to develop immunity through exposure or vaccination to contain the pandemic.

The Great Barrington Declaration suggests the U.S. should aim for this immune threshold through infection rather than vaccination.

To get to 60% immunity in the U.S., about 198 million individuals would need to be infected, survive and develop resistance to the coronavirus. The demand on hospital care from infections would be overwhelming. And according to the WHO estimated infection fatality rate of 0.5%, that would mean nearly a million deaths if the country were to open up fully.

The Great Barrington Declaration hinges on the idea that you can effectively keep healthy, infected people away from those who are at higher risk. According to this plan, if only healthy people are exposed to the virus, then the U.S. could get to herd immunity and avoid mass deaths. This may sound reasonable, but in the real world with this particular virus, such a plan is simply not possible and ignores the risks to vulnerable people, young and old.

You can’t fully isolate high-risk populations

The Great Barrington Declaration calls for “allowing those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally … while protecting those who are at highest risk.” Yet healthy people can get sick, and asymptomatic transmission, inadequate testing and difficulty isolating vulnerable people pose severe challenges to a neat separation based on risk.

First, the plan wrongly assumes that all healthy people can survive a coronavirus infection. Though at-risk groups do worse, young healthy people are also dying and facing long-term issues from the illness.

Grocery stores have been giving older and at-risk shoppers time to shop away from other people, but knowing whether the store employees are infected is not easy.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

Second, not all high-risk people can self-isolate. In some areas, as much as 22% of the population have two or more chronic conditions that put them at higher risk for severe COVID-19. They might live with someone in the low-risk group and they still must shop, work and do the other activities necessary for life. High-risk individuals will come in contact with the low-risk group.

So can you simply guarantee that the low-risk people who interact with the high-risk group are uninfected? People who are infected but not showing symptoms may account for more than 30% of transmission. This asymptomatic spread is hard to detect.

Asymptomatic spread is compounded by shortcomings in the quality of testing. Currently available tests are fairly good, but do not reliably detect the coronavirus during the early phase of infection when viral concentrations can be low.

Accordingly, identifying infection in the low-risk population would be difficult. These people could go on to infect high-risk populations because it is impossible to prevent contact between them.

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Sweden’s herd immunity failure

Without sharp isolation of these two populations, uncontrolled transmission in younger, healthier people risks significant illness and death across vulnerable populations. Both computer models and one real-world experiment back up these fears.

A recent U.K. modeling effort assessed a range of relaxed suppression strategies and showed that none achieved herd immunity while also keeping cases below hospital capacity. This study estimated a fourfold increase in mortality among older people if only older people practice social distancing and the remainder of the population does not.

But epidemiologists don’t have to rely on computer models alone. Sweden tried this approach to infection-based herd immunity. It did not go well. Sweden’s mortality rate is on par with Italy’s and substantially higher than its neighbors. Despite this risky approach, Sweden’s economy still suffered, and on top of that, nowhere near enough Swedes have been infected to get to herd immunity. As of August 2020, only about 7.1% of the country had contracted the virus, with the highest rate of 11.4% in Stockholm. This is far short of the estimated 50%-67% required to achieve herd immunity to the coronavirus.

Vaccines offer a safe pathway to immunity for both the healthy and the vulnerable.
AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File

Exposure versus vaccination

There is one final reason to doubt the efficacy of infection-based herd immunity: Contracting and recovering from the coronavirus might not even give immunity for very long. One CDC report suggests that “people appear to become susceptible to reinfection around 90 days after onset of infection.” The potentially short duration of immunity in some recovered patients would certainly throw a wrench in such a plan. When combined with the fact that the highest estimates for antibody prevalence suggest that less than 10% of the U.S. population has been infected, it would be a long, dangerous and potentially impassable road to infection-based herd immunity.

But there is another way, one that has been done before: mass vaccination. Vaccine-induced herd immunity can end this pandemic the same way it has mostly ended measles, eradicated smallpox and nearly eradicated polio across the globe. Vaccines work.

Until mass SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, social distancing and use of face coverings, with comprehensive case finding, testing, tracing and isolation, are the safest approach. These tried-and-true public health measures will keep viral transmission low enough for people to work and attend school while managing smaller outbreaks as they arise. It isn’t a return to a totally normal life, but these approaches can balance social and economic needs with health. And then, once a vaccine is widely available, the country can move to herd immunity.

Steven Albert, Professor and Chair of Behavioral and Community Health, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shots fired in the Himalayas: a dangerous development in the China-India border standoff

Mukhtar Khan/AP

Stephen Peter Westcott, Murdoch University

In the midst of all the stories about China’s oppression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang and its expulsion of foreign journalists, a recent clash on its border with India may pose the greater threat to Asian security.

For the first time in 45 years, shots were fired this week.

Confrontation on the roof of the world

During the evening of September 7, Chinese and Indian troops confronted each other along their undefined, de facto border, known as the “Line of Actual Control” (LAC).

This in itself was not unusual. The two sides have been locked in several tense standoffs along the LAC since May.

What makes this confrontation stand out is it involved the first known use of firearms on the border in almost half a century.

What happened?

China and India have accused each other of provoking this confrontation, which occurred in the Rezang-La heights area, just south of Pangong Lake.

According to Indian reports, there were between 30 and 40 Chinese troops involved. Photographs published in Indian media show Chinese soldiers armed with crude Guandao-style polearms, as well as standard issue rifles.

It is unclear how many Indian troops were involved or how they were equipped.

Border tensions have been building for months between India and China.
Manish Swarup/AP

China claims Indian troops crossed the LAC and “blatantly fired shots” when Chinese border troops moved to deter them. India, has strenuously denied this, saying Chinese soldiers crossed the LAC and were blocked by an Indian forward position, who they then tried to intimidate by firing “a few rounds in the air”.

No troops have been reported injured or killed.

Regardless of which side actually fired the shots, the tactic did not work. Both Chinese and Indian soldiers remain in a stand-off, reportedly only 200 metres apart.

Unravelling rules of engagement

This recent exchange represents a troubling escalation between the two countries.
It directly contravenes the rules and norms painstakingly established by China and India to govern behaviour on the border.

Negotiations on the disputed border have always been tough for China and India. The two sides took nearly 12 years of tentative negotiations before signing their first treaty in 1993, in which they agreed to “maintain peace and tranquillity” along the LAC.

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Subsequent agreements were reached after negotiations in 1996, 2005 and 2013. These govern military conduct on the border and guidelines for a diplomatic resolution.

The prohibition against the use of weapons along the LAC was first laid out in the 1996 agreement.

Neither side shall open fire, cause bio-degradation, use hazardous chemicals, conduct blast operations or hunt with guns and explosives within two kilometres from the Line of Actual Control.

Until this week, China and India have upheld this agreement, even when previous border patrol confrontations became heated.

However, both sides have been pushing the limits of what the other will tolerate and have trying to exploit loopholes and technicalities for several years now.

Border confrontations have gradually escalated from farcical shoving matches to fully-fledged brawls and stone flinging, which caused injuries in 2017.

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This year has seen both sides up the ante, with the introduction of makeshift clubs in a lethal melee at the Galwan Valley in June and China now seemingly equipping some border patrols with polearms.

Earlier this month, Indian media reported India was using new rules of engagement. This change allows its border troops to use whatever means are available for “tactical signalling” against the Chinese.

A dangerous deadlock

As two of the world’s largest militaries – and two nuclear-armed countries – even a limited border war between China and India would be devastating for regional peace and stability. It would likely ruin what little cooperation there is left and potentially pull in third parties, such as Pakistan or the United States.

War between India and China would be devastating.
Manish Swarup/AP

It is clear from the flurry of diplomatic activity between China and India over the past months that they feel the gravity of their situation.

But despite both sides proclaiming they seek a peaceful resolution to the ongoing standoffs, a culture of mistrust continues to poison discussions.

China and India’s foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the border standoff in person for the first time since the crisis began.

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Both countries will now need to engage in some masterful and innovative diplomatic work to find a way to rejuvenate their diplomacy.

And find a mutually face-saving way to disengage before the standoff escalates out of control.

Stephen Peter Westcott, Post-doc research fellow, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Whether a ratings chase or ideological war, News Corp’s coronavirus coverage is dangerous

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Denis Muller, University of Melbourne

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, in significant parts of its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, has become a clear and present danger to the welfare of Australian society.

Aping the worst of the American media – notably Murdoch’s Fox News – it rails against science, ridicules the measures being taken to suppress the outbreak, and tries to politicise a germ.

It also propagates hate speech, vilifying ethnic and religious minorities in whose suburbs, schools and housing towers clusters have broken out.

In all these ways, it drives divisions in Australian society and sows doubt in the minds of an anxious population about the need for lockdowns and other precautions.

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This critique is directed primarily at its opinion articles and television commentaries, rather than at its news coverage.

The news coverage has been extensive, has included many voices, and has kept its audiences up to date with what is going on. It has also been vigorous in holding governments to account for their mistakes, which is exactly what the media should do.

But the racism, ridiculing of science and ideological warfare that has disfigured much of the commentary have nothing to do with holding governments to account or providing the community with essential information.

On Sky, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, launched an attack on Muslims and South Sudanese people over Melbourne’s second wave of COVID-19 that was a toxic mixture of vitriol and ignorance.

She blamed South Sudanese people living in Coburg for a cluster of 14 new infections, which she said were triggered by a feast to mark the end of Ramadan, the Muslim season of abstinence.

The Society of South Sudanese Professionals pointed out to her that more than 90% of South Sudanese in Victoria are Christian, not Muslim. Moreover, very few of them live in Coburg and the cluster did not consist of South Sudanese people.

For those errors of fact, Credlin apologised. But her fairmindedness did not extend to an apology for a nasty rhetorical question about the character of South Sudanese immigrants in general, linking well-worn tropes about gangs, unemployment and alleged inability to speak “Australia’s national language”.

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was onto the same immigrant-bashing exercise. He noted that three of the worst COVID-19 hot spots in Melbourne were the Flemington towers, the Islamic Al-Taqwa College and the Cedar Meats abattoir.

Here was a trifecta for divisiveness: African immigrants, Muslims and a meatworks that, according to Bolt, employs many immigrants and donates money to the Labor Party.

Most recently, as mask-wearing was made compulsory in Victoria, Bolt and Alan Jones turned their attacks against that too. That represented a significant change and was based on new data.

In June, The Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world, published an article based on a meta-analysis of 172 observational studies and 44 comparative studies into the efficacy of physical distancing, mask-wearing and eye protection as ways of reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection.

It found face mask use could greatly reduce risk of infection.

The breadth and authoritativeness of the study persuaded health experts in Australia and elsewhere that mask-wearing was now a more important part of the armoury against COVID-19 than had been previously thought.

Bolt likened this to a kind of political backflip. Jones called it “alarmism”.

They might do well to recall the remark of economist John Maynard Keynes:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Jones proclaimed on Sky (July 20) that he had a pile of medical data stating that mask-wearing was ineffectual. He said he had done some research of his own over the weekend to support this proposition.

He went on to declare that government responses to the pandemic were shafting ordinary hard-working Australians.

Bolt stated he no longer trusted what Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said about coronavirus. Like Jones, Bolt questioned the medical basis for the decision to make mask-wearing compulsory.

There has also been a party-political dimension to the News Corp coverage.

This has been evident in the contrast between The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Ruby Princess debacle (Coalition government in New South Wales) and the Herald Sun’s coverage of the hotel quarantine debacle (Labor government in Victoria).

My analysis of 464 articles in the Telegraph on the Ruby Princess showed the coverage was extensive, quoting many voices trenchantly critical of the way the government handled the case. However, the newspaper itself made no direct personal attack on Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

A similar analysis I undertook of 411 articles in the Herald Sun about hotel quarantine and subsequent second wave likewise showed extensive coverage quoting many voices trenchantly critical of the government. But there was an additional dimension: direct personal attacks on Daniel Andrews, which has become a speciality of Credlin’s.

While the Murdoch organisation’s approach stands out as systematic and sustained, Channel Nine has also made episodic contributions to this dark side of Australia’s media performance.

Its Today program has twice disgraced itself. First it gave Senator Pauline Hanson a platform from which to make a racist attack on the people in Melbourne’s public housing towers. Then Today hosted an extreme right-winger, DeAnne Lorraine, from the United States, who says COVID-19 is a conspiracy to change the world.

Her stream of consciousness in support of this proposition included a reference to the Caduceus, symbol of medicine since time immemorial.

Fake science. And look at the snake. The snake is their logo. That should tell you everything you need to know, right there.

Whether the motive is to chase ratings, as with Nine, or to prosecute ideological and cultural warfare, as with Murdoch’s News Corporation, the consequences for Australian society are dire.

The coronavirus pandemic has created well-founded anxiety in people for their health and economic well-being. In times like these, there is always a tendency in human nature to look for scapegoats or to deny reality.

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Media coverage of the kind described here exploits that anxiety and feeds those natural human impulses, leading to social division and resistance to medical advice.

Both these consequences work against suppression of the virus. That is why it represents a clear and present danger to society.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why Modi’s India has become a dangerous place for Muslims

HARISH TYAGI/EPA

Priya Chacko, University of Adelaide and Ruchira Talukdar, University of Technology Sydney

Last week, India’s capital, New Delhi, experienced its worst communal violence targeting a religious minority in more than 30 years. The death toll currently stands at 43 and parts of northeast Delhi remain under lock-down.

As per usual after incidents of violence against minorities in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded with days of silence. Finally commenting on Twitter, he said, “peace and harmony are central to our ethos” and appealed for “peace and brotherhood at all times”.

But under Modi, India’s ethos is Hindu, and peace and brotherhood requires religious minorities to know their place. It is this sort of Hindu nationalism that led to the attacks on Muslims, their homes, schools and their places of worship.

Angry people across India are protesting against the communal violence in Delhi last week.
PIYAL ADHIKARY/EPA

The Gujarat model goes national

Modi was elected in 2014 on the promise he would bring his “Gujarat model” of high growth rates driven by private-sector-led manufacturing to national prominence.

But the Gujarat model also involved the promotion of a vicious right-wing populist politics, which sought to create and elevate a Hindu majority out of a socially and economically diverse population to act as a voting bloc for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This strategy relied on the creation of a common enemy in Muslims and secular liberals. It involved the strategic use of violence to polarise communities in areas where the BJP faced the most electoral competition.

Critics warned that although Modi had seemingly adopted a technocratic focus on governance and development during the election campaign, his right-wing populist politics of division bubbled just below the surface and would be unleashed if the BJP came to power.

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As polarisation has intensified over the past six years, the critics were proven right.

Muslims and Dalits have been the targets of lynchings by Hindu activists in the name of protecting cows, a long-standing Hindu nationalist preoccupation.

University students, activists, opposition politicians and protestors who challenge the government have been charged with sedition or incitement to violence.

Yogi Adityanath, a militant Hindu monk, was also appointed as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh.

Since being reelected in May with an even bigger majority, the Modi government has claimed a mandate to fulfil long-standing Hindu nationalist demands to further marginalise minorities in India.

Indian paramilitary soldiers stand in a vandalised area in northeastern Delhi after last week’s deadly clashes.
Stringer/EPA

The Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens

The Citizenship Amendment Act was one of these demands. The act violates the non-discriminatory spirit of India’s constitution by allowing persecuted Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan – but not persecuted Muslims – a fast-tracked route to citizenship.

Modi’s government has also promised a National Register of Citizens that will require Indians to provide documentary evidence of their citizenship.

A version of this exercise was conducted in the state of Assam, with disastrous effects. About 1.9 million Assamese were declared non-citizens and will now have to go through a long appeals process in special courts that function poorly.

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Human rights groups have called the proposed NRC an anti-poor measure. Indian Muslims fear the government will also rob them of their citizenship and constitutional rights.

The joint CAA-NRC agenda of the Modi government has stirred millions of Indians into peaceful protests around the country, showcasing a spirit of collective resistance not witnessed since India’s independence movement in the 1940s.

The most powerful protests have been led by Muslim women – a first in Indian history – in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area. The protesters have occupied a public space here for two and a half months, braving the bitter cold of northern Indian winters.

Shaheen Bagh has also inspired over a hundred other women-led permanent protests around India.

Rhetoric leads to violence

Last week’s violence in New Delhi is a consequence of the ruling regime’s campaign against the protests. This campaign intensified during the BJP’s election campaign when the party mobilised public support against the protesters by accusing them of fomenting violence and disrupting public order.

Travelling to Delhi to energise voters, Adityanath, the militant Hindu monk in Uttar Pradesh, said the protesters should be fed “bullets”. Anurag Thakur, a BJP member of parliament and minister of state, chanted “shoot the traitors” at an election rally, referring to protesters.

This was followed by two incidents of shootings at students and protesters by individuals who identified as Modi supporters.

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Despite being roundly defeated in the Delhi election, BJP leaders have continued their campaign of polarisation in preparation for future elections.

Last week’s violence was sparked when BJP leaders and supporters mobilised to break up protests against the CAA and NRC in Delhi. It was no accident the violence was concentrated in fiercely contested electorates where BJP leaders had urged voters to show their anger against the Shaheen Bagh women by voting for the party.

The perpetrator of the hate speech that sparked the violence, BJP leader Kapil Mishra, continues to make provocative statements against opponents. The police, who are accused of being indifferent and complicit in the violence, have yet to charge him with an offence.

Nothing to see here

While parts of Delhi burned, Modi was entertaining US President Donald Trump, who praised India’s tolerance. Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham was also visiting India with a large trade mission and touted India’s rule of law and tolerance as its strengths. Both declared the violence to be a matter for India.

Trump and Modi addressing a ‘Namaste Trump Rally’ during the US president’s visit.
White House

The tide is beginning to turn, however. Potential Democratic presidential nominees Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both criticised the Modi regime. (The BJP president, BL Santhosh, responded by threatening to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election.)

The Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi, meanwhile, has moved a motion in the Australian Senate that is critical of the Indian government.

Mounting international criticism is unlikely to alter the BJP’s policies or approach, which are rooted in its Hindu nationalist raison d’etre.

But international support will bolster resistance within India against a regime striving for political domination through violent polarisation.

Priya Chacko, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Adelaide and Ruchira Talukdar, PhD, Social and Political Sciences (SPS), University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Preventing foreign fighters from returning home could be dangerous to national security

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is pushing to have new security laws passed by parliament as quickly as possible.
Dean Lewins/AAP

Greg Barton, Deakin University

A key element in the success of countering terrorism in Australia has been a series of new and amended pieces of legislation – at least 75 – developed to respond to an evolving threat.

This includes legislation produced in October 2014 (Section 119.2 and 119.3 of the Criminal Code) that declared areas of Iraq and Syria, including the city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the so-called Islamic State (IS) caliphate, illegal for Australian citizens to enter. Anyone who has lived in this territory and seeks to return to Australia will have to prove they were not assisting IS or face prosecution and a possible punishment of up to 25 years in prison.

Innovative pieces of legislation like the proposed Temporary Exclusion Orders (TEO) bill introduced by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton are difficult to argue with. Existing national security laws already place Australia in a much stronger position than any other Western nation when it comes to managing the prosecution and detention of returning IS fighters.

Nevertheless, there is a limit to what legislation itself can do. Moreover, for every possible advantage, there are also possible disadvantages that need to be weighed up.

There is not a whole lot more the new TEO bill can be reasonably expected to achieve. And as the weight of legislation increases, there are reasonable questions to be asked about checks and balances and proportionate implementation.

In other words, the devil is very much in the detail.

Questions that need answering

Three questions need to be asked:

• First, what is the actual need for this bill? And what is the likelihood the proposed legislation can meet this need?

• Second, what are the potential downsides that might come with enacting this legislation?

• Third, in the light of the first two questions, what then should be done?

There is no question, that with at least 80 individuals who have fought with IS now in a position to possibly return, any legislative tool that can help manage this risk is worth considering.

Specifically, there is clearly a benefit to being able to delay somebody’s return by at least two years, and through a process of extensions perhaps many more years. There is also an advantage, when they do return, of being able to legally impose conditions on who they meet with and where they go.

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There’s no clear need for Peter Dutton’s new bill excluding citizens from Australia

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The government has pointed out that around 40 Australians have already returned from Syria and Iraq under suspicion of being involved with terrorist groups. To have been able to delay and then manage the return of these 40 fighters clearly would have been very useful.

But what has not been explained by the government is that these 40 individuals came back to Australia more than six years ago, and only a couple have so far been successfully prosecuted.

If the need was so urgent, why wasn’t a temporary exclusion order introduced in late 2014 when we first began to process a raft of counter-terrorism bills and amendments? Or in 2015 when the UK introduced similar legislation?

First line of defence

There is, in fact, no immediate crisis, and undue haste in passing further security legislation should be avoided because it is very dangerous to national security.

If TEOs are applied excessively, and without sufficient discrimination, a number of risks arise. Individuals currently detained in overcrowded detention centres in Syria or Iraq might be released if their repatriation to Australia is delayed by years.

Or, they could be broken out of detention by IS insurgents, who remain deadly and numerous. This happened on dozens of occasions when IS needed to replenish its ranks.

Allowing our citizens to be somebody else’s problem, out of sight and out of mind, does not actually make the security risk to Australians go away. Leaving them offshore leaves open the very real possibility that they will eventually slip away into the terrorist underground or rejoin the IS insurgency.

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Read more:
How Indonesia is dealing with the new threat posed by returning Islamic State fighters

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Should they do so, they immediately become a risk through their ability to influence others online and via social media.

It is likely that TEOs will be also applied to women and children we really should be repatriating. This would pass the buck to others to look after and secure these women and children, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are already overstretched and unable to deal with the burden of indefinitely detaining those who have fled the decaying IS caliphate.

There is also a real risk this legislation, much like other bills that allow Dutton to strip somebody of their citizenship on the grounds they potentially have access to alternative citizenship, could undermine confidence and trust within key communities in Australia.

As then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said after the murder of Sydney police accountant Curtis Cheng by a 15-year-old recruited by IS supporters in 2015, our first line of defence in fighting groups like Islamic State is the Muslim community.

Intelligence is key to countering terrorism and working with communities and families to encourage people to speak up when they see something of concern. To the extent that trust and confidence are eroded, national security will be directly diminished.

Amendments that could help

So what should be done?

Speaking last week at his farewell dinner, outgoing Labor Senator Doug Cameron spelled out the larger issues that need to be addressed.

Our existing oversight is inferior and, in my view, almost non-existent. This is unacceptable and we should ensure our inferior parliamentary oversight of security agencies is changed and oversight is enhanced.

Cameron is not the only one to express concerns. This bill was first introduced into the 45th Parliament. The Liberal-dominated Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) produced an extensive review and a detailed report on the bill.

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Read more:
Why is it so difficult to prosecute returning fighters?

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Labor Senator Kristina Keneally, a member of the PJCIS, has since complained that the government had

rejected four of the PJCIS recommendations in whole, rejected six in part and ignored one.

This, despite the fact that these recommendations came as a result of the considered reasoning of senior figures from both the Liberals and Labor.

One of the key amendments recommenced by the PJCIS is that the minister of home affairs should only be empowered to order a temporary exclusion order if he or she

reasonably suspects the person is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activities outside Australia

And that a TEO should only be made

if it would substantially assist in preventing the provision of support for, or the facilitation of, a terrorist act.

The principle of being able to impose TEOs certainly bears consideration. While this is no “silver bullet”, there is a case for passing the bill after including the amendments thoughtfully proposed by the PJCIS.

Without a better system of oversight, we risk undermining community trust and confidence by setting in place policy that leads to dire consequences and diminishes our national security.

Now is not the time to make haste at the expense of national security, as well as the very values that define us as Australians.

Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yes, a tsunami could hit Sydney – causing flooding and dangerous currents

Manly’s The Corso pedestrian area could be flooded if a large tsunami arrived at Sydney Harbour.
from www.shutterstock.com

Kaya Wilson, University of Newcastle and Hannah Power, University of Newcastle

Sulawesi’s recent tsunami is a striking reminder of the devastating, deadly effects that the sudden arrival of a large volume of water can have.

Published today, our new research shows what might happen if a tsunami hit Sydney Harbour. A large tsunami could cause significant flooding in Manly. Even very small waves might result in dangerous currents in the entrance of the Harbour and in narrow channels such as at the Spit Bridge.

Beyond Sydney, large areas of the east coast of Australia would also be affected.

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Read more:
Making waves: the tsunami risk in Australia

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Our study considered a range of tsunamis, with heights ranging from just 5cm to nearly 1.5m when measured outside the Heads of Sydney Harbour. These wave heights sound small, but because the wavelengths of tsunami are so long (tens to hundreds of kilometres), these waves contain a very large mass of water and can be incredibly powerful and destructive. Wave heights also increase as the tsunami encounters shallower water.

A tsunami generated by an earthquake off Chile in 1960 created waves that reached Australia..
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage holdings

How a tsunami might happen

Most tsunamis are caused by earthquakes at sea, where a shift in the sea floor creates the sudden movement of a large volume of water.

Our study approach involved modelling the likely effects of different-sized tsunamis generated by earthquakes on the New Hebrides trench to the northeast (in line with the Vanuatu islands) and the Puysegur trench (south of New Zealand).

For each event we assigned Average Recurrence Intervals (ARI), which provide an average indication of how often tsunamis of different sizes are likely to occur.

The tsunamis we studied range from an ARI of 25 years to 4,700 years. The tsunami with an ARI of 4,700 had a wave height of 1.4m outside the Heads and is the largest tsunami we could reasonably expect in Sydney Harbour. An event with an ARI of 4,700 can also be considered as an event with a 1.5% chance of occurring over a 70-year lifetime.

What would the tsunami look like?

The tsunamis we’d expect to see in Sydney Harbour would be a sequence of waves with about 15-40 minutes on average between each peak. Some waves might break, and others might appear as a rapid rising and falling of the water level.

The highest water levels would depend on the tide and the size of the event – the largest events could raise the water level up to several metres higher than the predicted tide levels.

The visualisation below represents a tsunami in a fictional location, and shows the rise and fall of water levels (with time sped up).

Tsunami visualisation in a fictitious location (created by the IT Innovation team at the University of Newcastle).

What area is at highest risk?

A tsunami is not just one single wave, but generally a sequence of waves, lasting hours to days. Within the Harbour, larger waves are most likely to breach land, and high tide increases the risk.

The narrow part of Manly – where The Corso part-pedestrian mall is located – is one of the most exposed locations. The largest tsunamis we could expect may flood the entire stretch of The Corso between the open ocean and the Harbour.

The low-lying bays on the southern side of the Harbour could also be affected. A tsunami large enough to flood right across Manly is estimated to have a minimum ARI of 550 years, or at most a 12% chance of occurring over an average lifetime.

Maximum inundation estimated to occur for a tsunami sourced from a 9.0Mw earthquake at the Puysegur trench.
Kaya Wilson, Author provided

Examining these worst-case scenarios over time shows how this flooding across Manly may occur from both the ocean side and the harbour side, isolating North Head.

Maximum inundation estimated to occur for a tsunami sourced from a 9.0Mw earthquake at the Puysegur trench and an animation showing the arrival of this tsunami at high tide. Each frame of the animation represents a two minute time interval.

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Read more:
An Indonesian city’s destruction reverberates across Sulawesi

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How fast would a tsunami move?

Even though the smaller tsunamis may not flood the land, they could be very destructive within the Harbour itself. Our modelling shows the current speeds caused by smaller tsunamis have the potential to be both damaging and dangerous.

The map below shows the maximum tsunami current speeds that could occur within the Harbour for the largest event we could reasonably expect.

Maximum current speeds estimated to occur for a tsunami sourced from a 9.0 magnitude earthquake at the Puysegur trench.
Kaya Wilson, Author provided

Areas exposed to the open ocean and locations with a narrow, shallow channel – such as those near the Spit Bridge or Anzac Bridge – would experience the fastest current speeds. A closer look at the area around the Spit Bridge, shows how even smaller tsunamis could cause high current speeds.

The animation below shows a comparison between the current speeds experienced during a regular spring high tide and those that may occur if a tsunami generated by a 8.5 magnitude earthquake on the New Hebrides trench coincided with a spring high tide. A tsunami of this size (0.5m when outside the Harbour) has been estimated to occur once, on average, every 110 years (a 47% chance of occurring over a lifetime).

Current Speed animation and maximum current speeds expected to occur at the Spit Bridge for a tsunami sourced from a 8.5MW earthquake at the New Hebrides trench. Each frame of the animation represents a 2 minute time interval.

This video below shows similar current speeds (7m/s based on video analysis) when the Japanese tsunami of 2011 arrived in the marina in Santa Cruz, California, and caused US$28 million of damage.

A small, fast-moving wave can have a huge impact.

Historical records show us what happened when a tsunami generated by an earthquake off Chile reached Sydney Harbour in 1960. We didn’t have any instruments measuring current speeds then, but we have witness accounts and we know that many ships were ripped from their moorings.

Fort Denison tide gauge records of the 1960 Chilean tsunami in Sydney Harbour.
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage holdings

A whirlpool and significant erosion was also reported in the Spit Bridge area. Photographs from the time show just how much sand was washed away at Clontarf Beach.

Clontarf beach erosion: (Left) 2014 in usual sediment conditions and (right) 1960 post tsunami.
Northern Beaches Council holdings

How to stay safe

A large tsunami affecting Australia is unlikely but possible. Remember that tsunamis are a sequence of waves that may occur over hours to days, and the biggest wave in the sequence could occur at any time.

The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre (JATWC), jointly operated by Geoscience Australian and the Bureau of Meteorology, provides a tsunami warning system for all of Australia.

Warnings when issued are broadcast on radio and television, through the Bureau of Meteorology Tsunami warning centre and on twitter (@BOM_au).

State Emergency Services are trained to respond to a tsunami emergency and there are online resources that can help communities with awareness and preparation.

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The bathymetry compilations used by this research are publicly available and can be viewed as a publication with links for free download.

Kaya Wilson, PhD Candidate, University of Newcastle and Hannah Power, Senior Lecturer in Coastal Science, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Most Dangerous Chemicals in the World

Monsters of Australia and New Zealand

The link below is to an article that features many of the dangerous creatures lurking throughout Australia and New Zealand. The threat is real – you have been warned! Visit at your own risk. Those Drop Bears are always out there waiting for you.

For more visit:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/146182

Australia: New South Wales – Barrington Tops Warning

Until such time as fugitive Malcolm Naden is captured, the Barrington Tops and surrounding regions should be considered potentially dangerous, given how desperate his situation has become. Having said that, realistically, he does not appear close to being captured at this stage. Certainly the police are closer than they have been for some time, but he is still successively avoiding capture. If he chooses to go to ground in the mountains following two close encounters with police in a fortnight, it is difficult to see how police will be able to capture him anytime soon.