Andrew Bolt: States’ snap lockdowns result of premiers’ self-serving hyperbole

Upon setting Victorians free, the premier victoriously proclaimed his lockdown “worked” — but at a cost of $1b, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Victoria’s farce is exposed. But bungling Premier Daniel Andrews has let 6.4 million Victorians out of their homes after five days without a word of apology.

Apology! He actually boasted about his grotesque over-reaction to the failures of his own quarantine hotels.

His shutdown, he claimed, “has worked”.

Just like Perth’s shutdown “worked” And Brisbane’s last month.

They all “worked” in exactly the same way that offering an animal sacrifice or a smoking ceremony would have “worked”.

As in, each outbreak was actually contained by exactly what we should expect: by finding the close contacts of the infected and putting them in quarantine. Plus public health warnings telling people to be careful and get tested.

Locking up millions of people – this time the entire state of Victoria – had nothing to do with it. Mere show.

Melbourne’s latest lockdown has once again left the CBD deserted Picture : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Same with Perth’s. The quarantine hotel security guard who got sick was already tested and isolated before the lockdown started. He could not then infect anyone, and didn’t.

And now Victoria.

From the moment the virus escaped yet again from one of Andrews’ “gold standard” quarantine hotels, it was clear what Victoria’s contact tracers, now under firmer leadership, had to do.

Find the close contacts – family and housemates especially – and stick them in quarantine. And anyone else who’d got close.

That is exactly what was done, almost all of it days ago.

“We have tracked all those trails down,” Victoria’s contact tracing boss, Jeroen Weimar, declared on Wednesday. About 3400 people had been found and isolated.

And that tracing is what found every one of the 16 people who got the virus directly or indirectly from the sick staffer. They were house mates and relatives – and others who lived with the sick.

Each case was clearly linked and found. (So much for the Premier’s talk of this virus being “hyper-infectious” and moving at “hyper-speed”.)

The Premier argues that without a lockdown, thousands of more people would have had to have been traced, and many more would have got sick.

These is almost certainly self-serving hyperbole.

Premier Daniel Andrews speaks to the media, annoucning the lockdown will end on time Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Fast contact tracing did find and isolate almost all the sick soon after the quarantine worker tested positive.

It may be that without a lockdown, the contact tracers would have had to work harder to find more contacts. Maybe.

But let’s not overlook the huge human cost of locking down a whole state.

Victoria’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates the losses of the shutdown at up to $1 billion.

That’s money out of the pockets of many shopkeeper and small business people who were struggling to stay afloat.

Then there’s the children who missed yet more school. The lonely who were again isolated. The Victorians stuck overseas who still can’t get home. The weddings postponed. The loss of freedom.

Melburnians have been relegated to having four reasons to leave home during the lockdown Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

All this for a virus which has killed not one Australian this year. Which last year killed Australians with a median age of 83, most with co-morbidities – Australians we therefore should in most cases be able to identify, isolate and protect when necessary. If they want that.

But, yes, I read the polls. I see how people are so frantic for a strongman to “save” them from what Andrews creepily calls a “cunning” and “wicked enemy” that Andrews is short-listed for the McKinnon Prize for leadership, while NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is snubbed.

What clearer sign of the medieval madness of so many of our fellow citizens?

The “tough” Andrews is worshipped, despite leading a state that’s had 90 per cent of Australia’s virus deaths and holds the record for lockdowns (177 days).

Berejiklian is ignored despite successfully fighting virus outbreaks while keeping her state open for all but 66 days.

Don’t tell me to shut up and trust Andrews and his experts. Look at the data.

Don’t tell me to trust the premier who last week boasted that his quarantine hotels were “gold standard” and this week tells us in fact they’ll probably have to be scrapped and replaced with ones safely out of city.

Which, I might add, is a no-brainer that non-experts like me managed to see months ago.

As I’ve said, would you put a nuclear plant in the middle of the CBD?

Then why put our quarantine hotels there, when we have state premiers whose answer to each outbreak is to lock up millions?