James Morrow: It is time for us to accept that coronavirus is here to stay

Our politicians should be priming the country for the discussion about risk around a Coronavirus future, rather than shutting it down, writes James Morrow.

Normally, the head of an airline is the last person you want to hear saying that a few deaths are the cost of doing business. But there was Virgin Australia chief Jayne Hrdlicka at a business lunch in Brisbane on Monday saying we should push to open borders as soon as possible even though, as she bluntly put it, “some people may die”.

“COVID will be part of the community, we will become sick with COVID and it won’t put us in hospital, and it won’t put people into dire straits because we’ll have a vaccine,” Hrdlicka said.

“Some people may die, but it will be way smaller than with the flu.”

Now, for those of us who believe that Australia should be fast-tracking its vaccine program so we can achieve the sort of herd immunity already seen in the UK and move to rejoin the world, her words were at first blush a PR disaster.

Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka was roundly criticised for her comments on border openings but her wider point is reasonable. Picture: ABC

But her underlying point is actually entirely reasonable.

A free society cannot eliminate risk, only manage it. We all have to rely on a combination of luck and prudence to get us through the day.

And one day we will have to ­reopen Australia, not just on a state-by-state basis but internationally, and accept that even with most people vaccinated, coronavirus will remain a risk that will still see some people get sick and, in some sad cases, even die, for some time to come.

Of course on cue, media and elected officials lined up to smash Hrdlicka.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison called her remarks “insensitive”.

“I’m not going to take risks with Australians’ lives,” he said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian was right there with him. “No death is acceptable” when it comes to the risks around COVID-19, she said.

Australia can’t be bubble-wrapped forever. Artwork: Terry Pontikos

Well, OK. But then the question must be asked: If COVID deaths are so uniquely awful, why are other deaths from other causes accepted so blithely as the cost of doing business?

Why are we allowed to go skiing, do DIY projects, race cars, ride bikes, and do a million other things that carry some background risk?

The fact is, even as we try to make life as reasonably safe and secure as possible, we still accept death every day — to the tune of about 158,000 Australians per year.

If we extended our attempts to ­essentially outlaw COVID deaths to other activities and deferred democracy to the health officers and Norman Swan, we would be living in a society as grey as East Germany and as sober as Iran.

Not to give anyone any ideas but, according to a 2010 Global Burden of Disease study, 4.92 per cent of deaths in Australia (so around 7700 a year, give or take) were caused by eating too much salt.

Yet visit any supermarket or corner shop in Australia and there are giant sacks of Saxa and boxes of Maldon available for purchase, with no limits, and accessible even to children.

Salt can also be inherently dangerous.

How long are we to allow this to continue?  Surely, if we were to ­listen to the experts, salt would be made available only in small packets, locked behind cages, sold in plain packaging and only available with a doctor’s note.

The same goes for consumption of red meat.

These days the stuff is now being implicated in everything from heart disease to climate change.

Beef, lamb and the like are all ­increasingly on the nose with a growing coalition of scolds including public health types, Guardian-reading vegetarian cranks and climate change activists who blame a Sunday roast in Croydon for rising sea levels in ­Tuvalu.

If these experts ran the world, the steakhouses would be shuttered and those American BBQ challenge shows banned from the airwaves like so many cigarette ads.

Then there’s alcohol: If we were to let the healthists behind the bar, we would all have to use our current QR codes every time we bought a beer or a bottle of wine and be told “no more” if we’d run up against the current ­recommended 10 standard drinks per week.

Maybe one day we will need a QR code before buying alcohol. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

And forget our pokey speed limits and hair-trigger “safety cameras” — there is no reason long stretches of the Hume shouldn’t be 130km/h — we would probably never be allowed to drive again.

The point of all this is not that we shouldn’t take COVID seriously (we should), but rather that we must ­urgently recalibrate our risks around it like we do with so many other things and not become prisoners of a “Zero COVID” mentality.

Here it would be nice to see politicians priming the country for this discussion about risk, rather than shutting it down.

Of course, there might be a case for letting risk-averse health experts run the world if they did succeed in ­extending life.

But there is little evidence that their dictatorship of virtue gets ­results.

Instead, like all dictatorships, they produce a blander society with no better outcomes.

Take Italy, which is now opening up after the pandemic, where speed limits are guidelines, whose citizens rank #7 in the world for wine consumption, and where men wander down the street with Toscano mini-cigars hanging from their lips.

Their current life expectancy? 83.35 years of la dolce vita.

Meanwhile, here in Australia, where even pre-pandemic we were tut-tutted at every turn, life expectancy comes in at 82.75 years.

At some point we are all going to have to take our chances.