David Penberthy: It’s easier to put a population into lockdown than it is to get it out again
We accepted lockdowns when we feared COVID-19 sweeping across the state but with all signs pointing to elimination leaders face a new situation now, writes David Penberthy.
Opinion
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This certainly isn’t a complaint, because it’s been one of the key places that has kept me relatively sane during the lockdown.
But if there is one thing that has stood as a symbol of the mixed messaging that has accompanied aspects of our response to the pandemic, it’s my local jam-packed Bunnings Warehouse, where the carpark has looked like Saturday morning on a long weekend every day since this corona business began.
On one of my many trips to the Mile End store during the past two months, I decided to buy a small brazier for $59 that I had been checking out online.
The shop assistant explained apologetically that they had sold 100 of them the previous day and were waiting for a new shipment.
As we have been ensconced in our homes, entertaining ourselves with old-fashioned fun such as toasting marshmallows with the kids, Bunnings has been the go-to venue for the otherwise-incarcerated homeowner.
The mixed messaging is even more jarring in a state like Victoria where they still haven’t fully opened the schools, but when it comes to Bunnings, the firm rule all along has been that lowest prices are just the beginning.
At the same time, it was until recently completely illegal to enter and sit in a restaurant with your partner or a friend, and it will remain illegal for some time to stand with a small group of mates in a front bar and have a couple of rounds of beers.
In a similar vein, we received a text yesterday on radio from a listener, Fred, asking us to clarify the following point.
“If only 10 people can go to a wedding, can you get married on a bus and invite 50 guests?”
As I said, none of this is a complaint. South Australia has done so well in the curve-flattening department because we have all knuckled down, followed instructions without pushing the boundaries, and been led in a level-headed and consistent fashion.
But we are at a point now in the pandemic where, locally, it doesn’t feel like a pandemic at all. We are seeing other countries that have been smashed by infections, and devastated at the loss of thousands of lives, moving quicker than we are towards reopening.
I have no time for the argument that the response to the pandemic was an over-reaction. If you want to see what an under-reaction looks like, have a look in the direction of countries such as Brazil or the UK.
Brazil had 19,000 new cases yesterday, and the UK, with well under three times the population of Australia at 66 million people, has this week recorded 35,000 deaths.
That’s a national death rate 350 times higher than ours, which stands at 100.
It is a staggering differential and demonstrates what happens when a nation’s political leadership and medical advisers get the policy settings so spectacularly wrong.
For all that, though, I can understand the clamour among business – and importantly, among workers who have lost their jobs or had their hours slashed – to start putting the foot to the floor with the easing of restrictions.
The thinking behind it is not reckless. Indeed, it is easy to understand why people are getting itchy feet.
We have had just one new case in SA in four weeks, and four deaths in total. When the pandemic began, the strategy in Australia was to suppress the virus, but in states such as South Australia and Western Australia, it looks like it has been eliminated.
As long as international travel remains banned and provided the eastern borders remain closed, it is hard to fathom how new cases could suddenly emerge here. The last person who had it in SA tested negative and was cleared more than a week ago.
It is becoming clear in SA that the management of a staged and gradual emergence from lockdown is about two things – avoiding the headlong rush that has seen new cases emerge in countries such as South Korea and Singapore, and to avoid the kind of mob psychology where everyone suddenly thinks it’s party time and we see record numbers of people hitting the town and jamming into every pub and restaurant they can find.
Police Commissioner Grant Stevens made a good point about the vibe that exists in SA today versus the public mood when lockdown began.
The Commissioner said that, from a policing sense, and a community co-operation sense, it was actually easier to put the community into lockdown than it was to bring it out of lockdown.
Back in March, in the space of 48 hours, SA went from a great Friday night where tens of thousands of people crammed the city for the end of the Fringe, to a Sunday night press conference where Prime Minister Scott Morrison put a line through everything from going to nightclubs to going to church.
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The public was ready to accept it because we were all genuinely scared about what was coming. Counter-intuitively, the management of a laid-back and unfrightened population is a harder challenge.
For what it’s worth, my thoughts on all this are the same as they have been all along over the past few months.
Businesses have every right to lobby and put their case, especially when Bunnings is doing a roaring trade while pubs can’t open. But we still need to defer to those who are running the show.
I can understand the itchiness of those feet, and I’m gagging for a few beers with my mates.
But there’s a reason we have done as well as we have, compared with the poor buggers in Brazil or Britain, and it’s because we have been listening to good advice.
Soon enough that will be cause for all-in celebration.