Caleb Bond: One day in Perth and now I’m sentenced to 14 in quarantine

Snap lockdowns all over the country – because one man in Perth tested positive – are utterly ridiculous, writes Caleb Bond.

We have turned into a nation of panic merchants.

One bloke tests positive to coronavirus and Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan shuts down the whole of Perth.

Then all the other states, including South Australia, wet the bed and impose border restrictions.

Of course, I had to be in Perth when this happened.

Not at the same time as the infectious man – who caught COVID in one of McGowan’s medi-hotels – was in Perth, mind you. But after he tested positive in Melbourne.

Now I’m sitting at home for 14 days twiddling my thumbs because a total of three people who happened to be in the same city as me tested positive for coronavirus.

Just three people. One of them had left Perth before I even got there. So there were just two active cases in the whole of Perth – a city of nearly two million people.

That is now, apparently, grounds to lock down a capital city for three days and impose hard border closures here in SA for everyone but residents, who must isolate for two weeks.

I completely understand people who are close or casual contacts of infected people being made to isolate and subjected to travel restrictions. That is sensible suppression of the virus.

But to require an entire city to stay at home – and to prevent the people who happened to be there at the same time as one person tested positive from moving around their own country – is utterly ridiculous.

Our political overlords are now completely devoid of any perspective, as is the “health advice” they hide behind.

Think back to that fateful lockdown we endured in SA last November.

There was a large existing cluster, which came to be known as the Parafield cluster, well before we were plunged into lockdown.

The only reason we went into lockdown was because a man claimed he caught the virus from a pizza box, which led health authorities to believe they were dealing with some virulent, mutant strain.

Yes, that lockdown was a cock-up. Epidemiologists around the country were saying there was no evidence of such a super strain and the contact tracers seemed to take his word for it, rather than engaging in just the smallest bit of cynicism.

But the point is that until health authorities (falsely) thought they were dealing with a fast-spreading strain they did not see any need to institute a lockdown.

All 33 cases linked to the Parafield cluster were found and made to isolate. Most of them were from the same family.

Those cases, like the two from Perth, were linked to a medi-hotel.

Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan speaks to the media on day three after his state government ordered a three day lockdown when a man was found to be COVID-positive after leaving hotel quarantine. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tony McDonough

A strong contact tracing effort, without the need for any lockdowns, was what contained that cluster without it spreading widely.

In that regard, I thought SA would become a model for sensible control of the virus when inevitable outbreaks occurred.

Unfortunately, the rest of the country has not taken notice. Queensland and WA have now both used this “snap lockdown” model in response to small numbers of cases.

I fear the goalposts have moved such that if SA were to record a couple of cases, we too would go into lockdown – even though we’ve proven that it isn’t necessary. Flattening the curve at some point became complete elimination at any cost. We weren’t told that would happen.

During the Parafield cluster, NSW kindly left their borders open to us. They haven’t been so kind to people in Perth. States are now simply reacting to each other.

If this is how we are going to keep doing things there will be no tourism.

Why would people want to travel interstate when they know they might be locked down at a moment’s notice and forced to isolate when they get home, all because of a few cases?

Having recorded so few cases, Perth is out of its lockdown on Tuesday. I, meanwhile, I am still forced to sit in isolation in SA.

The only sensible thing for Steven Marshall and Nicola Spurrier to do is end this needless quarantine.