Caleb Bond: Anyone who believes that it is unsafe for SA to reopen its borders is anti-science

South Australia has finally joined the real world again. But don’t panic, the facts speak for themselves, writes Caleb Bond.

The great state of South Australia has finally joined the real world again.

The borders are open and Covid-19 has predictably arrived. Big deal.

There will be many who are soiling their trousers over this – as though there is no difference to 12 months ago and people are about to drop like flies.

The facts, however, speak for themselves.

When Melbourne ended its sixth arduous lockdown on October 22, there were 784 people in hospital with Covid.

Of those, 145 were in ICU and 94 were on a ventilator.

On Thursday, a touch over a month since Victoria reopened, there were 310 people in hospital, 48 in ICU and 31 on ventilators.

That’s an about 60 per cent decrease in hospitalisations, a 67 per cent reduction in ICU cases and a 67 per cent drop in people requiring ventilators.

All while Victoria has largely been open and free. Pubs and shops are full and there are no restrictions on where you can go inside the state.

Case numbers have remained stable at about 1000 a day since the reopening but there has been a massive drop in serious illness.

Victoria has a quarantine-free border with NSW – the other Covid-ridden state – where the rate of serious illness has been even better.

It has 75 per cent fewer people in hospital now than when the Sydney lockdown ended. Only 10 people are on ventilators.

Both states allow you to fly overseas and come back without having to quarantine.

And despite all of this – the stuff the Covid catastrophisers are so afraid of because it’ll supposedly kill our grannies – the rate of serious illness continues to plummet.

Anyone who believes that it is unsafe for SA to reopen its borders is anti-science. They deny the obvious fact that vaccinations have done their job and it’s time for the world to go about its normal business.

They cry: “But SA is only about 80 per cent fully vaccinated! How can we POSSIBLY open up? We MUST wait till we hit 90 per cent!”

Well – both Sydney and Melbourne began effectively reopening when 70 per cent of people were fully vaccinated and have opened up more and more since then. Reopening started at 70 per cent of people aged 16 and above and it did not lead to more people in hospital – it led to fewer.

More than 90 per cent of Victorians and New South Welshman have now been vaccinated. SA is moving a bit slower but will be there by the end of the year.

European data shows that, once you hit about 75 per cent full vaccination, the death rate falls off a cliff.

Lithuania, where 72 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, has 69 Covid-related deaths per million people. In Austria, at 74 per cent, that death rate halves to 35 per million.

People reuniting at Adelaide Airport on the first day of the border opening. Picture: David Mariuz

Of the 14 European countries that have achieved at least 76 per cent full vaccination, only one – Belgium – has a death rate above 20 people per million, or 0.002 per cent.

These are the facts. And facts don’t care about your weird state-based xenophobia.

Do people who are now in a flap about a handful of Covid cases in SA actually want to separate families for ever more so they can live in a Covid-free hermit kingdom?

Did they not watch the many videos and photographs of families and friends being emotionally reunited at Adelaide Airport on Tuesday and feel their stone-cold hearts warm just a little?

That’s what you stand in the way of if you believe that the border should remain shut.

SA is basically starting from zero here. No cases and just four deaths through the entire pandemic. That is something for which all should be grateful. And it means SA’s case numbers and hospitalisations and, possibly, deaths will rise slightly.

But that is the price of life. Nothing is without risk and the complete elimination of risk is not worth shutting SA off from the rest of the world.

Vaccine campaigners have continually implored us to trust the science. Now it’s time to do the same on reopening.