In yesterday’s daily press conference, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews swatted away a question about easing Victoria’s draconian lockdowns (watch from 37 minute mark in above video):
Question: “Have you heard the comments from the WHO about lockdowns and encouraging governments to not use lockdowns as the primary source of suppressing the virus? Especially when the lockdowns in the first wave, you were very clear that they were there to ‘flatten the curve’ and get the system ready. So, is the system ready and can the lockdowns be lifted?”
Daniel Andrews: “Lockdowns are not there for any other reason but to limit movements, and if you limit movement and the interactions between groups of people, you limit the number of cases. And the proof positive of that is that we started on 725 and we are now at 15 cases…
“This is not a theoretical exercise. This is not some doctoral thesis… We will have to make judgements about what is achievable. At the same time, that’s not a concession to some of the commentary I see today ‘oh I should open up today, open up yesterday’. Not only is that unhelpful, but it just completely ignores the science of this. Cause I can tell you what happens if we open up on 15 cases, and 9.9 [rolling 14-day average] at this point in time. If we open up right now, then it will be almost impossible for us to keep this thing contained. And every jurisdiction in the world that’s done it has had that same challenge…
“That’s not leadership. Because you will be popular for five minutes, then the hospitals will be overrun. And all the people out there calling for us to open up, including some members of the federal government I might add, they won’t be standing beside me to explain why our hospital system is completely overrun. You won’t see them for dust. That’s not leadership… We’ve gotta see this through. We can’t ignore the progress we’ve made. We shouldn’t do that. We should not do that. We should be proud of what we’ve been able to achieve. And we should be as stubborn as this virus. Because if we’re not, it will be back. And it will be back in unprecedented terms”.
I supported the Andrew’s second lockdown and even taking a shot at elimination.
But that has proven too difficult while NSW has proven we are capable of North Asian-style containment strategies. Victoria’s COVID-19 infection rate is now the same as NSW’s was at the beginning of this second wave and we should be able to do the same:
Nor does Daniel Andrews’ argument about “hospitals being overrun” make any sense. There are currently zero cases in ICU and Victoria’s hospitals are empty.
The real reason why Daniel Andrews is so reluctant to open up is because another failure of any kind will cost him power.
His government has had seven months to get Victoria’s contact tracing, hotel quarantine and health systems up to par. With under ten cases on average per day, how many contact tracers does it take to change a lightbulb? Not many.
Government incompetence across multiple fronts is now the only excuse not to open up Victoria.
