Virus psychos yell into echo chamber

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This is editorialism run wild at the AFR:

The reality dawning on doctors that hundreds more cancer and chronic disease sufferers will probably die as a result of Melbourne’s stage four lockdown scaring people from taking medical tests could prove to be a tipping point to scrutinise the trade-offs of the policy responses to COVID-19.

Non-COVID-19 “excess deaths” facts such as this, revealed by The Australian Financial Review last week, have scantly been acknowledged.

The direct and indirect long-term health, social and economic consequences of the rolling lockdowns are staggering.

…Medical experts including CSL chairman Dr Brian McNamee, Healthscope chief medical officer Dr Victoria Atkinson, cancer doctors, mental health specialists and domestic violence support groups are speaking publicly about the unintended costs and trade-offs of lockdown, in a series of articles published by the Financial Review this month.

Hand-picked, groupthink, businessomic opinions that lockdowns are more damaging than suppression are evidence only that the AFR’s hand-picked, groupthink, businessomic opinions think that lockdowns are more damaging than suppression.

There are oodles of authoritative voices on the other side of the argument. Ignoring them adds up to squat.

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The basic fallacy at the heart of the pro-death camp led by Adam Creighton at The Australian is that it ignores the counter-factual. Had VIC not locked down, it was entirely clear that the virus was going to explode, the hospitals and aged care were on the path to being overwhelmed, and a mass casualty event loomed. The private sector would have shut down anyway. As we saw in Sweden, the pro-death camp pin-up.

Paul Kelly chimes in with more drivel:

Pandemic protectionism is the new mantra of half the country. As an idea, it is popular and introspective, championed by premiers, justified by health officials, sanctioned by the imperative to eliminate the virus, and of course an assumed election winner.

Its main manifestations are the border closures enforced by Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

These premiers and chief ministers strut the stage as populist strongmen and women — political leaders as police enforcers. They impose rules as they like, boast about their enforcement and justify everything in the cause of health protectionism for a grateful public. There is only one problem. As a policy, pandemic protectionism is most unlikely to succeed beyond the short term since the “indissoluble” nature of the Australian constitutional compact must be reasserted at some point and, short of a vaccine, total elimination of COVID-19 is a fantasy, as New Zealand has just shown.

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New Zealand has shown only that elimination will require ongoing interventions from time-to-time. After 102 days of no virus, it’s much better off than Australia’s virus states, economically and in health terms.

Longer-term, sure, Australia is not about to break apart. But the states are quite right to keep their borders closed to protect themselves and their economies from the lockdowns plaguing the virus states where policy experiments like quarantine and suppression are as yet unproven.

Yes, NSW is doing a great job with testing and tracing, and that may provide an alternative path for virus-policy in the future. But it is also aided by more than just better execution. It is more humid and warmer than VIC in the winter. These are big advantages that cannot be overlooked.

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The AFR and The Australian aren’t doing anyone favours with this borderline psychopathic propaganda. They’ll just make closed states all the more defensive about it. Virus policy should be carefully calibrated based upon evidence not opinion and, at this juncture, both early lockdowns versus later suppression have strengths and weaknesses that may mean the deployment of either is a circumstantial decision.

The homicidal crud being served up by Murdoch media and alumni reminds me of pumped-up nerd economists that are always bullish. Like the RBA. They couldn’t forecast their way out of a wet paper bag and their enthusiasm for dubious methods looks a lot more like a badge of honour for entry to an elite echo chamber than it does anything to do with facts or good policy.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.