18 August 2021
I am a resident of Melbourne (Australia), and we are presently experiencing our sixth lockdown. This one is pretty severe: not only the restrictions on leaving the house, visiting other and closed businesses, but also playgrounds and a number of other public recreational sites are off limits.
The lockdown and the restrictions have come at a time when the community in Melbourne is very much ‘lockdown-fatigued’, which itself has presented a dual threat: people are tired and angry about the restrictions, and compliance with the prescribed measures is reduced and more grudging. That, in turn, raises the spectre that the spread of COVID in Melbourne will become worse, thus increasing the likely the duration of the current lockdown. Of greater concern is that, this time, people are turning on one another. Not a happy time.
Not surprisingly, there has been a deluge of commentary from (mainly opposition) politicians, business leaders, business operators (big and small), civil libertarians and others telling us that the restrictions are unfair, cruel and economy-killing. None of this commentary contains any alternatives to the restrictions, or any explanation as how relaxing them would bring about a more effective end to the spread of the virus or a quicker end to the lockdown. That is hardly surprising; as, epidemiologists and public health experts, nearly all of these commentators make great politicians, business leaders, etc.
I am not an expert either, but I point out that, even though they have been a dire and blunt instrument, the lockdowns and restrictions have been effective in reducing, or even eliminating the spread, of the virus. Further, that fact that we keep having new outbreaks is not due to the failure of lockdowns but is instead a function of the contagiousness of the current strain of the virus, the lack of supply of vaccines, the openness of our state borders, and the failure of individuals to comply with simple restrictions aimed at keeping the spread of the virus in check.
The mantra from opposition politicians and the business sector seems to be that ‘we just have to live with the virus’, and they invariably point to, and compare Australia with, other countries – but notably the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Much is made of the fact that, in these other countries, people are back at work, enjoying all leisure activities, attending sporting and cultural events, eating at restaurants, and life is ‘normal’ again. Until recently, one of the chief proponents of this view was the Premier of the
State of New South Wales, whose principal city is now in its eighth week of lockdown, ostensibly because her government tried to ‘live with the virus’ and failed. New South Wales is also the source of the each of the last two outbreaks in Victoria, one in Queensland, the current one in the Australian Capital Territory, and, as I write this, now in one in New Zealand.
The ‘live with the virus’ movement use comparisons and statistics to show that other countries around the world are able to operate near normally, and that the rate of infection and death in those countries is, taking account of the size and/or density of their populations, no worse than the numbers here in Australia. Comparisons are odious, and this one’s a stinker, and never has Mark Twain’s immortal ‘there are lies, damned lies and statistics’ been more apt.
The UK and USA, for example, have returned to some sense of normal, as long as you accept that 28,000 COVID cases and 100 deaths (in the UK) a day, and 140,000 COVID cases and 1,000 deaths (in the USA) a day, is ‘normal’. It should also be noted that these countries, and many others like it, either did not invoke lockdowns or restrictions of the kind that were used in Australia or did so very reluctantly (and far too late). In very simple terms, the leaders of each country made the judgment that they could never achieve zero transmission, largely because they would never get their populations to accept the measures that Australia has implemented. In turn, that has meant was that their leadership and populations have become used to the scale of infections and deaths.
Those that advance the UK and the USA as examples of ‘living with the virus’ also conveniently omit to mention that, in the UK, over 60% of the population is fully vaccinated; in the US, it is around 51%. Compare that with Australia, which sits on 25% of the population over the age of 16 (not 25% of the overall population) that is fully vaccinated.
Another country cited as an exemplar of ‘living with the virus’ is Sweden. It did not implement wholesale lockdowns or restrictions, and, as was trumpeted in an article I read last night, its infection numbers are about the same as Australia. Amongst the facts that the writer omitted to mention was that Australia is about the 17 times the size of Sweden, and its population 2.5 times that of Sweden. More significantly, in my view, was the failure to recognise that Sweden, and indeed other Scandinavian countries, have a public health system that is both universal and properly resourced. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that, in doing a risk-benefit analysis of wholesale public health measures, the Swedish authorities reasoned that their health system would be up the task of treating and accommodating the likely COVID infections, and therefore lockdowns and restrictions were unnecessarily harmful. If proper research had been done, it might also have been mentioned that one of the reasons why the Swedish health system is so well resourced is that Swedes pay taxes at a rate that would cause collective anaphylaxis amongst the politicians and business sectors in Australia.
Aside from their selective use of facts and comparisons, I am scornful of the ‘living with the virus’ movement in Australia because they lack the courage both to nominate what they see as an acceptable body count for living with the virus, and why it is that that body count should be seen as acceptable to us as a community. More generally, for people who always telling us that ‘the government must specify a plan’ for the way out of restrictions, proponents of this view never specify their own plan for how we deal with greatly increased infections, hospitalisations, deaths and the costs (human and financial) associated with each. Make no mistake, relaxing restrictions and ‘living with the virus’ will mean far greater infection rates and death than those experienced in Australia now.
Just as our governments are, rightly, being asked to explain and justify the rationale for restrictions, the community is entitled to expect the politicians and business leaders and operators who oppose lockdowns and restrictions to tell us what level of death and infection is acceptable to them, and why ‘returning to normal’ will justify those deaths and infections. I am not bloody-minded here. For Australians, low infection rates and an even lower numbers of deaths (certainly by global standards) has been the norm, and has become our expectation. That is why have, with varying degrees of good grace endured the lockdowns. If the people in power propose changing that paradigm, then they need to be open and transparent with the community as to what that will look like, how it will affect members of the community and, most importantly, what resources are to be made available to those who will be adversely affected by the virus.
I am reminded of the TV advertisement broadcast in Victoria a few years ago, which was intended to reduce the number of road deaths in the State. In it, the ‘everyman’ subject was asked what an acceptable number of annual road deaths would be, and, when he nominated a figure, a group of people of that same number appeared: they were all members of his family. At that point, the subject rapidly reduced his number of acceptable deaths to zero. It is easy to talk about deaths and infections in abstract.
For my part, I am happy that the governments in Australia, State and Federal, place the preservation and dignity of the lives of their citizens above economic and other interests, irrespective of whether they do so of their own volition, or in order to meet the expectations of those citizens (who, after all, vote them in – and out). However, if, in their wisdom, those governments believe preservation of life must be balanced with other interests, then they must be transparent with their citizens, admit that there will be deaths, acknowledge the costs (human and financial) of those deaths and infections, and provide appropriate support for those left behind, as well as the many more who will suffer ongoing effects of becoming infected. And then, they must face the judgment of their citizens, something from which opposition politicians and business leaders are spared.
