Via the AFR:
The more we are locking down, the more we are slowing the spread. The other side to that is that it prolongs the extent of the economic shutdown.
The government, which has already rolled $240 billion out the door for stimulus, income support and health measures, knows the finances are finite and there is very little left to spend.
In that sense, after having arrested the rate of growth, it believes its task from here on in is to try to find a managed rate of growth for the virus while not imperilling public health, and at the same time enabling the economic engines to begin cranking up in six months.
Take the alternative extremes to their logical conclusion. If you lock everyone and everything down and reduce the rate of the spread of the virus to zero, it will remain that way for 18 months until a vaccine is developed. By then, you will have no economy left and a great deal of civil unrest.
Conversely, do nothing and let the virus rip and the whole episode is done and dusted within months but you have hundreds of thousands dead, if not more, and society in chaos.
Err, hello. There is a third, much better way. Hard lockdown followed by hard testing. The hammer and the dance by Thomas Pueyo:
So far we have been aided by Summer. Had we gone with partial lockdowns in Winter we’d now be Italy. Sadly, Winter lies ahead, which makes reopening very dangerous when we’ve only done a partial lockdown.
Keeping us on six months partial lockdown in the hope of finding a vaccine is madness. Coronavirus vaccines are very elusive and may never come. We needed and need to go hard lockdown to crush the virus close to zero and then open up with mass testing on every street corner.
There are already calls to ease the lockdown from business quarters:
In summary, Australia is flattening out the curve as we’d hoped. The elderly are being well protected. The economic and social costs should be considered in the next phase, when an easing of shutdown policies is likely to be warranted.
Yet do it into Winter and the outcome is entirely predictable, at the ABC:
Leading to hard lockdown.
Australia was always best placed globally to fight the virus given Summer and island borders gave us time to prepare. Our problem is that we’re worst placed economically owing to the same seasonality.
SloMo has still not awoken to the fact.
