Why Not When
Victoria needs a conversation about the values underpinning COVID restrictions, not a set of arbitrary dates that mean nothing to its people
Nothing sums up Victoria’s approach to COVID-19 like a picture of the Premier posting a picture of himself with a doughnut on social media. Unsurprisingly he did not post the 125 million dollars wasted on every one of the 112 days where Melbourne’s 5 million inhabitants had only four reasons to leave the house. He did not post the exacting toll of lockdown on mental health, children’s social development and small business.
The New York magazine defines zeroism as “an inability to conceive of public-health measures in cost-benefit terms.” This misses (and politicizes) the values that underpin the decisions that our leaders make. The true definition of Zero-ism is a policy of COVID-19 eradication at all costs. There was a time where this position was defensible. Melbourne was able to enjoy seven months where only a brief 5-day lockdown punctuated a summer of freedom. The “ring of steel” around Melbourne also meant that Australia’s 20 million other inhabitants could live virtually all of 2020 and 2021 without fear of catching covid-19 or being locked in their house for months on end.
Times have now changed. There is no seven month covid-free period on the horizon. The calculation has changed; it is either thousands of cases now or thousands of cases later — when more people are vaccinated. A difficult conversation about what the future holds must be had publicly, honestly and transparently with the Victorian people. It is not. We are being delivered a mixture of bullshit, toxic politics and riots.
Throughout the 112 brutal days of lockdown and the subsequent reopening, “zero-ism” embedded itself in the collective psyche of Victoria. Zeroism was justifiable at the time and Victorians suffered greatly for it. The benefits of the sacrifice were obvious to all citizens in the months that followed. Lockdowns have unsurprisingly proven to be emotional, and highly political. Stuck inside with lots of spare time and infinite reasons to be angry, we have become ill-equipped to discuss the values that underpin the policies that shape millions of lives without it devolving into a political shit-show. In mid-august, the Premier of Western Australia announced a zero-covid policy even once they reach the target vaccination rate of 80%. Victoria’s Premier initially resorted to more evasive language. He told Victorians that he
“hopes and expects that (80% vaccination) doesn’t mean lock downs in the same way” and that the Victorian government will “do what keeps Victorians safe. Whether it is popular or not.”
After flirting with the idea of Zero-ism for some time, Dan Andrews and his select group of decision-makers outlined a plan to re-opening the state roadmap back to a new normal that involves living with coronavirus. This extremely conservative approach is consistent with the extremely slow relaxation of restrictions following Melbourne’s outbreak in 2020. On December 6th, after 37 days of no cases, Dan Andrews announced that he would finally allow offices to be at 50% capacity, by January 11th — a full 73 days since the last recorded case. Unsurprising this milestone was subsequently delayed by a minor outbreak. Workplaces across the state were needlessly hamstrung for months, hampering productivity, freedom and growth. This has been the case for young families, struggling to hold down a job and teach their children from their often cramped and hectic homes.
Despite vaccination and date-driven freedom thresholds in the current roadmap, it is unclear what the future holds. The current roadmap comes with the asterisk that ceasing of all restrictions will depend on “the public health advice at the time”. The roadmap provides a false sense of security. It implies that by the 5th of November it will be all over. It will not be.
Outcomes from countries around the world show that the delta-variant has reduced the effectiveness of the vaccine significantly. Despite protecting against hospitalization and death, vaccines have a limited effect on covid transmissibility.
Amid such uncertainty, politicians have emphasised modelling and data-driven decision making. These models are bullshit of the highest form and have never been subject to the most basic of scientific principles, validation by experiment. The only prediction published ahead of time overestimated the result by 250 cases (30%). It also predicted that the observed outcome was so unlikely it was virtually impossible. A glance at the black line reveals almost immediately that what happened was not a freak accident and that common sense would have performed better.
The proliferation of such nonsense disguised as science is no coincidence. It serves a very convenient political function entirely political. The results of the Docherty report were unashamedly manipulated. By prematurely ending the simulation, they underestimate the number of deaths in a high vaccination scenario. In the simulation of the 50% coverage example disease sweeps through the population and disappears forever. In high vaccination scenarios, the rate of disease is still climbing when the simulation stops. How convenient. The fact that vaccination reduces deaths is obviously true. Those that cite this report undercut trust by feigning scientism and muddying the waters by not differentiating between good and flawed science. Selecting politically convenient data to support a pre-existing opinion only empowers vaccination sceptics and reduces trust in the decision-makers that hold an unprecedented amount of power over everyone’s lives.
All of this pseudoscientific babble distracts from the fact the there is immense uncertainty in the challenges that Australia and the world may face. No country without significant naturally acquired immunity has ever fully opened up in the face of the delta variant. Countries around the world, from Israel to Portugal to Denmark and the UK have had vastly different outcomes caused by an indistinguishable mix of culture, weather, timing, wealth and vaccination rates. Nobody knows how the virus might mutate and how the level of immunity provided from vaccines and previous infections will be affected. Developing a plan based on a prediction is a fool’s errand.
Politicians should spend less time navel-gazing and more time investing in practical steps that can protect Australians from outbreaks of all kinds. Rapid antigen testing, investment in health infrastructure and a national track and trace system are vital for the collective reopening of the country and will work regardless of the validity of any bullshit supercomputer forecaster.
But even this misses the most fundamental requirement for a prosperous future — an empathetic and transparent public conversation about the values that underpin the laws and regulations that are required to navigate the effects of the virus. It does not help that we have already been lied to before. As late as the 28th of September 2020 Dan Andrews attacked his former health minister and said that it was his government’s strategy to suppress and not eliminate the virus. The lie served as a political arse-covering mechanism in case elimination failed and vastly reduced trust in the governments’ leadership. Once a zero-covid strategy was clearly communicated it enabled the government to establish widespread public support for short “circuit-breaker” lockdowns. People were more willing to make sacrifices because they could agree to a common story as to why their sacrifice was valuable.
The current sacrifices are enormous. Australians must choose between investing in climate change, indigenous services, education and health for the future or funding this increasingly damaging lockdown today.
The economic losses of over 125 million dollars a day pale in comparison to the mental and sociological impact of lockdowns. Lifeline, the national charity dedicated to crisis management and suicide prevention is recording the most calls in its almost 60-year history. Almost 3,400 people a day are so desperate that they feel the need to call a stranger to talk to. This is 40% higher than what it was 2 years ago. The consequences of the prolonged lockdowns have scarring effects. In June 2021, before the current wave of COVID, more people living in Victoria (27%) experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress compared with the rest of Australia (18%). There is an epidemic of loneliness that does not show up in the statistics. If there is one silver lining of this experience it is the normalisation of speaking openly about mental health.
The effect is particularly acute for younger Victorians who have been socially isolated for now what is a considerable slice of their entire lives. Kids have started school but have not seen their friends, social development has been irreparably damaged, formals have been cancelled and thousands of children have been forced to endure the horrors of puberty imprisoned with their parents. University students have been denied the “prime of their lives” and young hard-working Australians have been shut out of the job market. Even the majority of fully vaccinated elderly Australians would prefer to spend their remaining time with friends and family rather than be locked inside their homes indefinitely.
It is time that Australia must move away from “cases” and even “deaths” and focus on the broader values that cannot be easily encapsulated by a single scary statistic on the news. Virtually every country on earth has navigated a trade-off between deaths, cases, the economy, mental health and human dignity without the benefit of vaccinations. As a tiny, wealthy and remote island we were afforded the opportunity to bypass the acute effects of the covid-19 pandemic but we cannot evade the chronic effects forever. The virus is now endemic, and living with covid-19 is now an inevitability.
The effectiveness of lockdowns in reducing the spread of the virus is also debatable. By removing the option to gather at outdoor venues, people socialise indoors where there is no ventilation or track and trace capabilities. The COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said about 55 per cent of the recent cases were household contacts, and the vast majority of the remaining 45 per cent was coming through social interactions between households.
Sydney recorded over 1400 cases for the first time on the 2nd of September when 70% and 39% of their population was fully and partially vaccinated. Despite having significantly stricter lockdown laws, Victoria leapt past the 1400 case threshold with 79% and 49 % of their population fully vaccinated. Lockdowns are only as effective as they are followed. Over one third of today’s 1400+ cases were due to illegal household gatherings for the AFL grand final.
If lockdowns are expensive, inflict lasting psychological damage, separate families, have a debatable effect on the spread of the virus, and are not being followed, for what reason are we continuing?
Today no coherent story exists. Is it to save the elderly who are already fully vaccinated? Is it to save the lives of the anti-vaxxers? Is it to permanently shut down the economy to protect the vulnerable who can never be vaccinated? Is it to protect the young, who have not yet had access to vaccination? Is it to flatten the curve, and provide respite for our medical staff?
The enforcement of covid restrictions is a complex problem and people will have conflicting values that inform the answers to each of these questions. But an attempt to reconcile and communicate is better than none at all. In the end, the government is accountable to its people and their actions must reflect the values of the public. Only when these values are known can the state even start to have a conversation about vaccine incentives, mandates and the future of living with Covid-19.
There is no better time to start opening up than now. The weather is good, the sun is shining and outdoor venues are appealing as ever. The majority population are recently vaccinated, the effectiveness of which will wane over time. The few who aren’t fully vaccinated are young, at low risk of hospitalization and have received Pfizer for which the efficacy after a single does is strong. Those that are not vaccinated are either in extremely low-risk categories or will never be vaccinated. Those that wish to practice isolation are obviously allowed to continue to do so. Those that determine that the economic and social benefits outweigh the health risk should be free to catch up pub for a beer, organise a dinner with family and go to work.
The state of emergency is over and as far as covid goes this may be as good as it gets.
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