Andrew Bolt: Lockdown will kill Victorians — but not from coronavirus
Politicians are destroying Australia — throwing a million people out of work, causing suicides — because they’ve fallen for two great weaknesses, both of which will extend crippling lockdowns much longer than necessary, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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I received an email yesterday from a stranger. A desperate young woman, living alone in locked-down Melbourne.
She says she has been suicidal before, and now is banned by her government from doing what would save her — going out and meeting people.
What’s more, her friends have lost their jobs because of the virus bans: “No one in my support network has the energy to be supportive enough more …
“Genuinely, I’m terrified I won’t survive this.”
She is not alone. The number of young Victorians turning up to hospital after trying to stab, poison or otherwise hurt themselves is up 33 per cent.
With this in my mind, I write this.
Politicians are destroying Australia — throwing a million people out of work, causing suicides — because they’ve fallen for two great weaknesses.
One is this desperate hope that a vaccine will soon save us.
The second is this fake sentimentality that has my media critics babbling that I’m a granny-killing monster for noting that this virus kills mainly the very old and frail. These weaknesses mean we’ve been fighting new virus outbreaks with brutal bans that will cause horrific pain if they go on much longer.
Just look at Victoria. It is being smashed to pieces before your eyes.
How much will be left of this country if we keeping fighting the virus this way, month after month?
The hope in a vaccine is stopping many people from even asking this critical question.
Listen to them. It will all be over soon! We will “bounce back” next year! We just need to endure these bans for a few months and a vaccine will come, the virus will go, and we will “come out the other side”.
They sound just like World War I generals, dreaming of that last victorious rush into the artillery and machine gun fire that tore their men to pieces.
Last week the Prime Minister fed this fantastic dream of a vaccine just around the corner.
“There are many projects that are under way around the world,” he enthused.
His Acting Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly, backed him: “There is really strong optimism here … Well over a hundred different types of vaccine that are in development.”
But Kelly immediately faltered: “We can’t promise there will be a vaccine… We have never had a vaccine for a coronavirus in the world before.”
No, we haven’t. And the head of the World Health Organisation last week cautioned: “There’s no silver bullet at the moment, and there may never be.”
Sure, there’s hope. Oxford researchers are starting “phase-3 trials” of a potential vaccine to see if it works on people in real-world situations.
Russia will start its own mass vaccination campaign in October with a vaccine it still hasn’t finished testing. It might work. But WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said of the Russian trial: “We have not seen anything official that’s important.”
He added: “Between finding or having a clue of maybe having a vaccine that works and having gone through all the stages, is a big difference.”
Many potential vaccines fail at that final hurdle, and even those that succeed may have terrible side-effects or not work well.
As America’s top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, says: “We don’t know yet what the efficacy might be ... But the chances of it being 98 per cent effective is not great.”
And remember: we already have flu vaccines, yet 1255 Australians still died from influenza in 2017.
That’s one reason the WHO’s Dr Maria Van Kerkhove says no to national lockdowns — to a “blunt, sheer force instrument” like Victoria’s — each time there is an outbreak.
No country can keep doing that. The cost is just too high, she says.
Never mind the financial cost. People need human contact and get broken by lockdowns. People sick with other conditions die because they miss out on medical treatment.
In fact, researchers at Sheffield and Loughborough universities estimate 21,000 people in Britain died not of the virus but the lockdown. There must be a better way of fighting this virus that does not cause such suffering.
And there is. Let me say it yet again.
Be far tougher on quarantining the infectious. It is appalling that Victoria’s system of home quarantine is so slack that a quarter of the sick weren’t at home when health teams called to check.
Do faster testing. Why does Victoria have tests that take days to tell people if they are sick, when there are now kits that can give an answer within two hours?
Be far tougher on protecting those most likely to die. It is a scandal that the federal and Victorian governments let the virus get into more than 100 nursing homes.
Look now: Based on Commonwealth figures, 178 of the 210 Victorians to die so far were in aged care.
But that brings me to that other great weakness in our thinking: a fake sentimentality.
I pointed out last week that Victoria’s crude bans were essentially devastating the young to stop the very old from dying a few months, or a couple of years, earlier.
More than half our dead were 82 or older. Many had other serious conditions.
I have since been vilified by the media Left — particularly on the ABC — for allegedly saying the lives of old people had no value.
Bull. They do. Unlike my critics, I have warned since March that we weren’t doing enough to save the old.
I now say we are trying to save them with policies that cause a suffering that my critics refuse to confront.
These crude bans sacrifice young lives to save the very old. This cannot make sense.
But our politicians hide from this truth — that trying to stop everyone from getting the virus is too devastating, particularly if there’s no vaccine, and stopping the very old and frail from dying should be our chief aim.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was at it again on Sunday, insisting this virus could kill anyone: “I’ve had to stand here the last few days and report two people in their 30s who have died.”
But what Andrews refused to confirm is that at least one — probably both — of those unusually young deaths occurred in disability units.
In fact, more than 70 infections have broken out in disability care in Victoria, killing two people. At least three other deaths occurred in cancer wards.
No, I’m not saying their lives are worthless. I’m saying these victims probably had other medical conditions, and died because we keep letting the virus get into the very places we should shut down tight.
The government could have stopped that dying, without bans that cause even worse suffering among the young and fit.
Too “heartless” a truth for the ABC? Then look at what “compassion” is doing right now. It would break the hearts of those with eyes to see.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Lockdown will kill Victorians — but not from coronavirus