OPINION: Don’t call me a sheep for playing it safe - Covid is still killing

As Queenslanders continue to die from Covid I thank the common sense I was born with to continue to mask up, writes Paul Williams.

This week I watched a woman, picking through fruit at the supermarket, cough so loudly and laboriously that tears welled up in her eyes.

The next day, queuing in a bank line, I watched a man almost double up with a hacking cough that drew all eyes upon him.

Each had ventured out of their home knowing they were ill; each roamed the community blithely without so much as a mask.

I thank the common sense I was born with to continue to wear a mask in shopping centres despite the odd taunt of “sheep” from some passing Neanderthal.

So far, no Covid-19 for me. Not so much as a bad cold in the 2½ years I’ve been masking up.

But it’s a different story for the 10.2 million Australians (including 1.64 million Queenslanders) who have contracted Covid-19 since 2020 (many more than once), and a tragic one for the 15,234 (including 2239 Queenslanders) who have succumbed to the virus.

The fact so many have died – arguably unnecessarily and for political reasons – since the lifting of lockdowns and border closures at the end of 2021 only compounds the tragedy.

Some people still wearing masks near Central Station in Brisbane City. Picture: Matthew Poon

Just a couple of weeks ago, Queensland was still registering – across a seven-day average – over a thousand new Covid-19 cases and 11 coronavirus deaths. We just don’t hear about those because they’re no longer newsworthy to report.

It’s that sort of statistic that really frightened me when, last week, national cabinet approved the end of mandatory isolation for those testing positive to Covid-19. Thankfully, isolation will still be required for aged, disability and Aboriginal health care.

Spearheaded by the unpopular NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (who’s facing an election next March), it was quickly accepted by Labor leaders, including Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (facing an election next month) and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (who’s public approval is in decline).

The decision comes just a month after mandatory isolation was reduced from seven to five days.

Yes, Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly did advise that falling transmission rates could facilitate an end to mandatory isolation. But he also warned that this “does not in any way suggest that the pandemic is finished … we will almost certainly see future peaks of the virus into the future”.

National cabinet’s crazy decision also comes despite Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson warning that “people who are pushing for the isolation periods to be cut are not scientifically literate and are putting the public at risk”.

Dominic Perrottet, of course, is a classical liberal who rejects what he sees as unwelcome government interference in our lives. Indeed, when Perrottet first mooted his state’s end to masks and lockdowns late last year, he argued personal responsibility was a far better mechanism for controlling potentially dangerous behaviour than government mandates.

But the assumption that people are sufficiently educated and motivated to do the right thing and protect others at the expense of their own comfort is, at best, pie-in-the-sky optimism in the altruism of our fellow citizen. At worst, it’s a leader’s wicked abrogation of the first duty of government to protect society’s most vulnerable members from harm, including disease.

If the “personal responsibility” principle truly worked, we would enjoy a voluntary taxation system, public charities awash with funds, and no need for random breath testing for drunk drivers.

Sadly, humans are hardwired to be selfish creatures who too often need to steered into safe behaviours by outside forces.

Yes, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the country’s eight state and territory leaders dropped the pandemic ball last week in allowing infected Australians to work, shop and mingle with healthy but vulnerable people, including the very aged.

In fact, it’s a struggle of and within liberalism itself. In one corner, we have an 18th century position of “negative liberty” that argues we should have a freedom from a government mandate that forces the sick to isolate or wear a mask.

In the other corner, we have a 20th century view of “positive liberty” that insists that we all have the freedom to go about our day without encountering a life-threatening virus.

And yet it still astounds me that, in the case of coronavirus, so many alleged libertarians (who are more accurately described as anarchists) still refuse to acknowledge that positive liberties produce a greater community good than the negative.

I’ve rarely been more disappointed in the collective failure of governments to produce evidence-based policy than I was last week.

Politics before good policy? It’s now the new norm.