Lockdowns And Lock-Steps
On March 30th last year, the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, announced the state would enter Stage 3 restrictions to ‘flatten the curve’.
At that point, four people had died of coronavirus in the state. The ABC’s Health expert Norman Swan was predicting 150,000 people in Australia would die.
At that rate, the stakes were high.
But the words, and the reality, have never quite matched up in Victoria.
Today, 910 people across Australia have died from COVID-19. 820 of these deaths, or 90 per cent, were in Victoria. 655 of these were aged care residents with the majority exposed to the virus due to its escape from incompetently run Melbourne hotel quarantine.
The problems can be observed across the month of March 2020 – when the daily press deluge became the unfortunate norm.
Earlier that month, on March 10th, the Premier told the state that “Victoria has a world-class health system that is well-prepared to deal with an outbreak” and that all measures in Victoria “must be proportionate to the threat.”
He said “This is the time to plan and prepare.” He went on to say “But when it comes to protecting those most at risk, we need to be ready.”
448 days since those statements, one wonders what has happened.
How well did they plan and prepare hotel quarantine? How well did they protect the most vulnerable, given the state’s most vulnerable were not protected?
If they were planned and prepared – why are we in lockdown now – with seemingly no other option but the Big Button?
Then on 15th March 2020, the Premier and his then Health Minister Jenny Mikakos – the only Minister with a memory in the Coate Inquiry – announced a $100 million COVID-19 response package to boost hospital capacity in “…preparation for the pandemic peak.”
$60 million was to fast-track elective surgeries ahead of the ‘peak’. $30 million went to the Casey Hospital to add 140 beds for the ‘pandemic peak’. Even in my electorate the former Baxter House building - part of the Geelong Hospital - had a multi-million dollar revamp to become a stand-alone COVID hospital.
Three days later, on 18th March 2020, Premier Andrews put more restrictions in place in order to “flatten the curve so our health system is not overwhelmed.”
On that day, with `121 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Victoria and 464 confirmed cases nationally’, indoor public gatherings of more than 100 people were banned.
Yet the current lockdown was imposed with just 25 infected people.
And somewhere, at some time, ‘flattening the curve’ morphed into an unspoken strategy of elimination - an utterly stupid, reckless, expensive, highly impossible proposition.
But perhaps one of the most telling differences was revealed on March 21st, 2020.
This time, it was the Treasurer, Tim Pallas, who had words of wisdom for the masses.
On this day, Pallas announced a `$1.7 billion economic survival and jobs package’ which included `full payroll tax refunds for 2019-20 financial year to small and medium-sized businesses with payroll of less than $3 million.’
Premier Andrews said “We’ve listened to business and workers and now we’re taking unique and unprecedented action to help businesses and their workers through this crisis. Cash is better in the hands of struggling businesses than a Government bank account right now”.
Pallas said “We’re working in lock-step with the Federal Government to make sure our support complements their work as we weather this unprecedented global economic storm.”
But just two weeks ago – Treasurer Pallas celebrated 38 new or increased taxes in the State budget – including a $3.8 billion payroll tax levy on big business to pay for ‘mental health’. Another $2.9 billion in tax was whacked onto businesses in the form of land, stamp and windfall tax gains.
Oh my.
For the saying `what a difference a day makes’, 437 days makes a whole lot more.
Victoria is a state now facing a $155 billion debt. We are not in ‘lock-step’ we are in ‘lockdown’.
We have an economic crisis of the Premier’s and Pallas’s own making.
The crisis is not a health one, it is a political one.
One person is in hospital in Victoria today with coronavirus. That person is not in ICU.
There are 63 active cases of the virus in the state – clearly most are mild, though we are not told this.
Children are not at school. Workers are not at work. Aged care residents are alone. Families are separated. Our hospitals are not loaded with COVID patients. Ambulances are ramping because sick people have delayed their medical attention during this ‘pandemic’.
Toilet paper is again in demand.
One average, 368 people die every day in Australia.
The last person to die of coronavirus in Victoria was on 30th November last year.
Why is it that we deal with every other health issue with common sense, but not this one?
And instead of only hearing about the number of positive cases each day, we need to know how many got tested, how many in ICU, how many on ventilators and about the deaths along with any co-morbidity causes.
Because if the hospital beds aren’t overwhelmed, there is no need for a lockdown.
We indeed need a circuit breaker.
We need it from the mad excesses and appalling incompetence and double-standards of this Labor Government in Victoria.
Even their own officials, on six-figure incomes, don’t follow their own rules.
Matiu Bush, the General Manager of Infection Control for Victoria’s hotel quarantine program, clearly thought the rules were for others: refusing a covid test on one occasion and then failing to sanitise and put on a fresh mask after returning to a quarantine hotel having purchased a coffee.
This lockdown is bad enough on a personal front.
But as Melbourne restaurant owner Chris Lucas told Sky News last night, on the economic front ”…it’s not a circuit-breaker, this is a Chernobyl-style meltdown.”
The ‘proportion’ that this Government spoke about 448 days ago is quite literally a sick joke with Victorians sadly crying, not laughing.
1 June 2021