Australia and our nearest neighbor, New Zealand, have been fighting a war called zero covid. A war to banish it from our shores, and to hail the respective governments as heroes. “Keeping us safe” has become the political mantra and one that a large portion of the population has embraced.
As we speak, NSW and Victoria are in a seemingly endless lockdown as the respective governments fight the delta variant outbreaks and New Zealand has locked down again for a single mystery case. As the world shifts focus on living with COVID, Australia and New Zealand still believe they will defeat it.
And at what cost?
When solving a problem, the wise strategy is to ensure that the aimed outcomes, don’t create associated problems and issues for other areas. And a zero covid strategy is just causing pain in many areas.
Let’s analyse the results.
- Health care costs. For states that have proven to skimp on health care costs, now have a seemingly infinite depth of funding to drive up to 100,000 covid tests daily. The cost of this testing regime is horrendous. Who is paying for this?
- The business sector is suffering from a massive short supply of confidence. There is no confidence in event planning and money is lost extensively from the government’s short-sighted decisions. With every “go hard, go early” snap lockdown, business suffers. Lost supplies, lost revenue, lost wages for the team.
It’s Time for A Proper COVID Risk Assessment
With all the statistics produced through COVID, there are ones that are glaringly being kept away from the public. A simple case of knowing where the actual risks are and not continually being told that everything needs to be locked down.
In Australia, we have police patrolling public parks and playgrounds. And rightly we have some of the population asking for an understanding of the actual risk.
We wear masks based on the directive of each state’s chief health officer, we socially distance from each other and kill off bacteria through overuse of hand sanitizer. And the question must be asked, if all this works, why still do we have the sledgehammer approach of lockdowns?
Surely, with all the data available we would truly be able to communicate the risks. Not just blanket “everything” as a risk. Based on what we know and remember I would classify that most clusters, cases seem to have been transmitted from:
- close family/friends contact in high-density areas,
- aged care homes
- hotel quarantine
Now, of course, this is just from my faltering memory, not from any hard facts, because these hard facts are simply not being made available. And they should be made available.
Where has the likely transmission come from?
As of the 18th of August, Australia has had 40,080 cases of COVID, since our first recorded case on the 25th January, 2020 where a man from Wuhan flew into Melbourne.
Since then we have seen Australia largely remain unaffected by COVID in comparison to others around the world. In fact, based on the key numbers, 0.15% of the population have caught COVID. You would have to say, that’s been a successful strategy.
We continue to lock everyone in their homes, and it’s understandable that many in the population struggle to comply. There is too much government influence in our daily lives. I am fairly certain that the vast majority of the Australian population do not want to put others at risk, but they do require the information to understand the full risk picture.
Release the data of where the “likely” virus transmission has occurred and let us know.
- Has the virus been transmitted in large crowds eg football crowds? I cannot recall this ever being advised, although listed as potential exposure sites.
- Has the virus been transmitted outdoors, in parks, while exercising?
- Has the virus even been transmitted at hotels, restaurants, coffee shops?
- Has the virus ever neem transmitted at Coles, Woolies, and other supermarkets?
- Has the virus ever been transmitted at Bunnings?
I am not talking about exposure sites or close contacts. I am talking about the “likely transmission” of the actual virus. Surely we have these records. Let’s release them and see what the actual risks are.
I know they won’t. It doesn’t suit the narrative.
The figures suggest that COVID has largely been contained in Australia. Compare our 0.15% with the American data of 11%, or the Japanese data of 0.9%, or the Swedish data of 10.87%. It suggests a great job, yet the covid hangover will last for a long time.*
And while our strategy continues to favour and focus on lockdowns, we will never get through this, no matter what we are being told. The economic, and mental health fragility will remain exposed for at least the next decade.
Politically it will take real courage to undertake a proper COVID risk assessment, based on our known data and data from other countries, but we need urgently too. Politically, most leaders have fallen in line with the fear and the narrative of being kept safe, so I ask at what level do we need courageous leadership, and where does it come from.
Now more than ever, we should be thankful to those that stand up against the whitewashing and the potential brainwashing, taking place.
*https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
