SA needs calmer Covid chiefs and less inflammatory language: Matthew Abraham

When our top health authority uses words such as “tinderbox” and “wildfire”, it’s no wonder there’s panic-buying, writes Matthew Abraham.

“In another moment, down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

And so, just like Alice in Wonderland, we have once more followed the Covid rabbit down its confusing, bottomless burrow, never once considering how in the world we shall get out again.

How and when will we get out? We very nearly got an answer to that last Wednesday when Premier Steven Marshall held a Covid-19 update to announce that we should all be relieved and, by implication, eternally grateful to him for deciding that despite a fly-out-fly-in miner flying in from the NT with Covid, South Australians would not be going into lockdown.

The miner and his wife, in their 30s, and their four tin lids under 10 – including a bub – now have the virus. Thankfully the grandparents who visited the family have tested negative. The Covid status of the family’s St Bernard dog, who is pregnant, is undetermined. Either way, the young family will all be in 14 days isolation.

SA Premier Steven Marshall and chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Somebody called Boris, watching the Premier’s live video feed on Facebook, commented: “I feel grateful and sorry for that miner. Getting Covid is bad enough but self-isolating at home with four kids is the next level. Wishing him and his family all the best.” We’re all with you on that Boris. Worse than home iso, they’ve been moved into the dreaded Tom’s Court Covid-positive medi-hotel.

But right now in SA, hundreds of perfectly healthy people who’ve returned home from almost zero-risk places interstate are forced to endure 14 days isolation at home, throwing their family lives into chaos. Our political leaders and their army of health advisers pay lip service to this sacrifice, because frankly they have little idea of the financial and mental health impact their decisions are having on real people who live outside their political bubble.

Let’s remind ourselves that just over a week ago, the state government reimposed pointless restrictions on gathering, singing and drinking standing up despite not a single case of community transmission at the time the decision was taken.

The Premier was pressed on this decision at Wednesday’s media briefing by The Australian and Sky News veteran journo Chris Kenny.

Clearly annoyed, the Premier explained it thus: “You can’t tell, because of the incubation period, you can’t tell … you have got to get in front of it (Covid). If you wait until you find a positive case it can be too late.” This is digging a very deep rabbit hole.

It marks yet another worrying ratcheting up of the political paranoia that has infected all premiers, with the exception of NSW Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Having Kenny at your presser is like letting the junk yard dog off the chain. But it brought us to nearly getting an answer on just how SA plans to dig its way out of Covid. Kenny asked SA’s chief health officer Nicola Spurrier if lockdowns and tighter restrictions with no community transmission meant the government is chasing a Covid-elimination or Covid-zero strategy, both an impossibility.

Revealing she’d had “very little sleep”, she said it was “very clear” from the national cabinet meetings that “we have a no-community-transmission strategy”.

The signals coming out of national cabinet meetings are as clear as mud, especially the farce over vaccination rollout, so I must have missed the very clear “no-community-transmission” strategy.

“If everybody in SA was vaccinated and you had poor vaccination rates in other states we would still be at risk,” she said. “Similarly, we also need to support other countries in becoming fully vaccinated.”

Think about this for a moment. It means not only do we need 80pc or more vaccinated in SA and in every other state but also need to ensure every other country is fully vaccinated. So, we shouldn’t wait up, then?

Perhaps it’s lack of sleep, but Professor Spurrier’s language when talking about the Delta Covid variant is increasingly alarmist. Instead of using words like “wildfire”, “tinderbox” and “hair-raising”, she needs to calm the farm. Little wonder that panic buying began hours before Wednesday’s midday media announcement, sparked by rumours that proved wrong. Fear is spreading like wildfire, not Covid.

I had to play catch up with the Marshall-Spurrier show because I was innocently stuck in a massive queue at Woolies, staring at empty toilet paper shelves. Maybe we rush out to buy toilet paper because each Covid panic attack gives us the runs.

Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice, and so do we.