Andrew Bolt: Dan’s plan is just a road map to more destruction
Daniel Andrews promised a “road map” out of the bans that have smashed Victoria, but instead he delivered a map to destruction that will destroy more businesses and see restrictions almost certainly sticking around to Christmas, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Victoria’s Premier promised a “road map” out of the bans that have smashed his bleeding state.
Instead, Daniel Andrews on Sunday delivered a map to destruction – to a lockdown that will almost certainly last to Christmas.
Hundreds more businesses will now go broke.
Andrews said he will not lift the curfew, the stay-home law and the bans on shops until October 26 — but then only if new infections are down to an average of just five a day, over two weeks.
Not even NSW has managed that, yet still keeps business ticking.
Worse, Andrews says most shops won’t be allowed to open before November 23, and then only if there are no new infections for two weeks.
Not even Queensland has achieved that, yet will still host even an AFL Grand Final that Andrews won’t.
What does Andrews know that NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk do not?
What he “knows” — he thinks — is the modelling he’s seizing on like a drowning man.
It’s from a “supercomputer”, he says — but a supercomputer that seems to have been fed garbage.
It is, in fact, part of Melbourne University’s “agent-based dynamic policy model”, which produced the modelling by academics such as Dr Jason Thompson and Professor Tony Blakely that Andrews now cites.
We must accept this longer lockdown, they say, because look overseas if we don’t: “Stratospheric levels of demand for intensive care occurred and much could not be met.”
That’s largely untrue for Western countries, other than Italy, and certainly for Australia. Even now, we have just 27 coronavirus patients in the 7000 intensive care beds that have been prepared.
And what of past predictions of these academics? Blakely in March said his modelling showed 125,000 Australians a day would get sick with the virus, and 165,000 in all would need intensive care, even with social distancing and after closing restaurants.
In fact, just 26,000 have got sick so far, and the vast majority had only mild symptoms.
This is the “supercomputer” persuading Andrews to drive his state off a cliff?
God save Victoria. It’s in the hands of man who now seems deranged — like a World War 1 general who’s already sent so many soldiers to pointless deaths, but still orders “one last push” into the machine guns to win the war before Christmas.
Christmas? Don’t set the table in Victoria.