Australian spirit will overcome the Covid pandemic lockdowns

When New York was enduring its endless lockdown last winter, Covid-free Australia was the envy of the world. Maybe the virus requires an equal pound of flesh from everyone, writes Miranda Devine.

It’s sad to look at Australia from afar and see the ongoing suffering of lockdowns. It’s hard to square with the freedom we enjoy in America now that vaccines are commonplace.

But, of course, when New York was enduring its endless lockdown last winter, Covid-free Australia was the envy of the world. Maybe the virus requires an equal pound of flesh from everyone.

It’s tempting to rail against the failure of the vaccine rollout and all the other mistakes politicians and bureaucrats have made. But there’s no point crying over spilt milk.

Aussies’ laconic common sense and no-frills camaraderie has the power to heal. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

There is not a single leader in the world who hasn’t stuffed up on a biblical scale through the pandemic. And those who were feted as messiahs have turned out to be the worst.

One thing the pandemic did was add moral clarity. Every person sanctified by the media we now know was a villain.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Picture: J. Scott Applewhite / AFP

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned thousands of elderly New Yorkers to certain death — and then covered it all up to make millions from a self-lauding book.

He won an Emmy and was lauded by Joe Biden as the “gold standard” in pandemic leadership. But 11 sexual harassment allegations later, he is dead man walking as donors desert him and state and federal investigators close in. Character is destiny.

Sharing equal billing is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus tsar whose gargantuan ego is in inverse proportion to the credibility of his flip-flopping medical advice. He might have kept his halo if not for documents that show he helped fund Frankenstein research on bat viruses at the Wuhan lab, and emails suggesting a cover-up.

Last week, he was ruthlessly disembowelled in a Senate hearing by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a physician who brought receipts. The satirical Babylon Bee summed up: “Debate Erupts Between Trusted Medical Doctor And Dr. Fauci.”

Illustration: Terry Pontikos

But equally, leaders who have been vilified as dangerous fools have come out smelling like roses, just about.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott were vilified as Neanderthals by President Biden and his media boosters for coming out of lockdown early and eschewing mask mandates and vaccine passports.

But they were vindicated by healthier economies and no Covid disaster (although the situation in Texas is iffy thanks to the superspreader event at the southern border that Biden has flung open to every unvaccinated illegal migrant in the world).

The point is that there could hardly be a more devilish proposition than Covid for a political leader to manage and, while they all need to be encouraged to make wise decisions or be turfed out at the next election, our anger ought to be aimed squarely at where it started.

In China, on the military research that was done in the Wuhan lab, on the wilful naivete of Fauci and others who partly funded it, but most of all on the ruthless calculation of President Xi Jinping to facilitate the spread of the virus from Wuhan to the unsuspecting rest of the world, while protecting his own country.

The drive-through Covid testing clinic in the Fairfield RSL car park. Picture: Toby Zerna

How that all plays out is for the future. But at least the average Australian or American is under no illusion about the malevolence and existential danger the regime poses, nor how treacherous are the global elites who keep pretending it’s business as usual with the CCP.

From 16,000km away, Scott Morrison, Gladys Berejiklian, even Dan Andrews, and their health advisers, seem to have done their best with the cards they’ve been dealt and none of the sideline snipers have the answers.

But while I think it often pays to err on the side of caution, I wonder if, in a few years, we will look back and realise the lockdowns and pain weren’t necessary.

There is already evidence in America that that is the case, when you compare states like Florida and California, or go further afield to assess how free Sweden fared compared to its neighbours.

But to even suggest keeping an open mind on the topic means you will be vilified as a thought criminal by half the population.

The terrible thing about fear is it makes people turn against each other. One side demonises the other.

The lockdown people think the freedom people are dangerous, reckless, selfish brainwashed idiots and are going to get everyone killed and the freedom people think the lockdown people are irrational, neurotic, selfish brainwashed idiots who are destroying our way of life and creating a totalitarian world where you may as well be dead.

Social media makes everything worse, with people coalescing in their virtuous corner taking potshots at the evildoers, instead of having a bit of empathy.

Neurotic fear porn and curtain-twitching dobbers on one side and anti-vax/Great Reset conspiracists on the other.

Every fault line in our society has come to the fore. With good reason, no one trusts the institutions we once used to rely on for the facts we need to make sense of the world.

But selfish older generations misjudge how much longer young people — who generally are unaffected by the virus — will continue, selflessly and with no thanks, to comply with rules that are destroying their future.

They know the mathematics of Covid. You can’t gaslight them. All you can do is count on their continued good graces. So be nice.

You can make yourself crazy if you allow yourself to be panicked. You just have to take a deep breath and remember that Australia truly is the lucky country.

It’s one of the few places in the world where egalitarianism is still kind of treasured, and where the laconic common sense and no-frills camaraderie of the national character has the power to heal most rifts.

Give it time. She’ll be right.

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph