Transcripts

And as for who is catching the virus, there's some really interesting research looking at who caught it in earlier waves versus who is catching it in this most recent surge, ABC Coronacast, March 30, 2022
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/when-two-variants-become-one/13817640

Tegan Taylor: And as for who is catching the virus, there's some really interesting research looking at who caught it in earlier waves versus who is catching it in this most recent surge.

Norman Swan: Yes, this research comes from Professor John Glover in Adelaide, an epidemiologist who specialises in disease patterns and health patterns down to the local government area. And he's using published data on PCR testing. He has looked at the waves of BA1 and BA2 and found that there is a distinct difference, that over December, January, the wave was much more in disadvantaged populations and disadvantaged LGAs, and now the second wave that's coming now is much more of a middle-class more advantaged suburbs outbreak. He doesn't know why that has happened, but it's quite marked and he thinks that possibly as things have opened up over Christmas, that it's the people who can afford to go out to restaurants, bars, entertainment venues and so on that are getting infected, whereas they were probably holding back earlier. He basically doesn't know, but it has become really quite a transition socio-economically.

Tegan Taylor: So perhaps before it was people who couldn't afford to stay home and now it's people who can afford to go out. What do we do with this sort of data?

Norman Swan: Or it's people who caught it more at home and stayed home, and people…and this is where we are spreading it outside. It just shows you that pandemics are about social and human behaviour as much as how the virus operates.

Tegan Taylor: Yeah, that's super interesting.