On Wednesday this week Victorian Premier Dan Andrews posted a single word tweet: “Zero.”
Hemingway himself couldn’t have conjured a declaration of more dramatic brevity. Sadly the scenario it described was just as brief.
Andrews was of course referring to the number of new daily Covid cases in Victoria. At that moment it looked like Victoria’s hard and fast lockdown strategy had worked – in stark contrast to the more relaxed and gradual approach taken by NSW.
But that moment was fleeting. Twenty-four hours later Andrews was announcing another seven-day lockdown, just one week after its previous two-week lockdown ended.
Likewise the vast majority of the Queensland population has also been in lockdown for a week and will remain so until at least late Sunday, with the possibility it could be extended – as it was in Victoria – if overnight case numbers are not infinitesimally low.
And even if restrictions are lifted, citizens will be plunged into lockdown again at the first sign of a new outbreak — just as they have been now in Victoria.
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And this brings us to the cold hard truth that even the most fervent and fearful lockdown enthusiasts must surely be coming to realise — no matter how much you restrict or constrain the population this virus is not going away.
Naturally this will cause a lot of coughing and spluttering – and not of the Covid kind – but it is a simple unfortunate fact. Even when other states were shutting down and locking out because of the far less contagious earlier strains they weren’t actually eliminating it, they were merely hiding from it. With Delta it is clear that even hiding isn’t an option.
The NSW response has proven all this with both great pride and great disappointment. Our contact tracers were able to suppress all previous outbreaks without resorting to major lockdowns – the Casula, Northern Beaches and Berala clusters as well as countless quarantine leaks were all beaten by the best.
Other states and cities had to shut their borders or lock down their residents in far lesser circumstances. We never did.
The Delta strain, however, has beaten us. Even with both widespread and targeted lockdowns and a record number of world’s best contact tracers working around the clock we can barely keep it at bay. We had every reason to believe we could contain it as we had the others and we were wrong.
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Perhaps Victoria and Queensland will fare better having gone harder and earlier or perhaps the Delta variant will eventually overrun them too. Either way they will be captive to stop-start lockdowns until we get real about beating this thing, not running away from it.
Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer, Nick Coatsworth, an infectious diseases specialist who is now spearheading the national vaccination campaign, made all of this abundantly clear when he described elimination as a “false idol”.
But it seems the “listen to the experts!” lockdown warriors weren’t listening to the biggest expert of all.
Indeed, just three weeks ago Dr Coatsworth told The Australian Financial Review that Australia needed to learn to live with Covid and that a 50 per cent vaccination rate should be enough to start easing restrictions.
“You can’t say no Covid death is acceptable,” he said.
“2021 has to be a transition year where we get the Australian community used to the idea of Covid in our community through a successful vaccination program, and 2022 needs to be the year we have Covid in Australia.”
The eliminationist position is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that many lockdown activists refuse to get vaccinated, a stance only rivalled in idiocy by the fact that so many anti-lockdown activists refuse to do the same.
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Ironically, the solution is simple for both — if you’re scared of getting Covid, get vaccinated. If you’re scared of getting locked down, get vaccinated.
But the problem is the rolling waves of lockdowns and border closures send the opposite message. We are crushing our society, our economy, our relationships and our children’s future all for the sake of a selfish few – indeed a selfish many – who simply won’t do the smallest possible thing to make this all go away.
Every single adult in Australia has now had weeks or months to get their first dose of vaccine – something that will give them a 70 per cent chance of protection against serious disease from Covid-19 and an immeasurable protection for their loved ones.
Anyone who hasn’t done so – without a literal note from their doctor – no longer has any excuse.
Yes, there have been confusing messages from the government, health authorities and the media, but the message now is abundantly clear.
Yes, there have been supply issues, but there are endless doses of the extremely safe AstraZeneca vaccine for anyone who wants it.
Yes, there have been language barriers, but community leaders are now coming out in droves to spread the message in whatever language you want.
We are fast approaching a point where anyone who refuses whatever vaccine they are eligible for can no longer consider themselves a truly decent member of society.
Because if you care about your country, if you care about your community and if you care about your family there is only one thing you need to do to prove it.
So do it. Today.
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