Andrew Bolt: Restriction farce has gone on too long
If people want to risk the infinitesimal chance of catching the coronavirus at a pub or hotel then we should be allowed. It’s time these panic merchants who’ve needlessly destroyed our economy and curbed our freedoms stop this health fascism, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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We can’t keep being bullied by the timid and terrified. They can go social distance themselves.
Stop this health fascism.
If the rest of us want to risk the infinitesimal chance of catching the coronavirus at a restaurant, pub, hotel or B&B, then let us.
If you’re too scared to join in, then stay home. No one is forcing you to come.
So lift these bans now. Let us adults enjoy ourselves and give jobs to hundreds of thousands of staff.
Same deal with public transport. NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian still demands social distancing, so buses must be limited to just 12 passengers and each train carriage to 32.
But why? If you’re too scare to squeeze in, then catch a taxi or walk. Let the rest of us decide for ourselves whether the convenience of the ride outweighs the danger of sitting next to some fellow commuter.
We make such calculations of risk/reward every day, including every time we hop into our car, which is now far more likely to kill us than this virus.
Let us make that same calculation when now catching planes, too.
Instead, Qantas boss Alan Joyce on Wednesday got hectored by an ABC journalist for wanting to fill his jets rather than keep a seat spare between passengers for “social distancing”.
But if you think a full plane is too dangerous, then don’t fly. Why force the rest of us to either miss a flight or pay double?
Besides, Joyce says the air-filters on planes are hospital quality, and there’s not one known case of anyone catching the coronavirus in mid air.
I trust him, so why should my freedom to fly — and at a reasonable cost — be restricted by the panic merchants who’ve needlessly destroyed our economy and curbed our freedoms?
Most of us are smart enough to protect ourselves with handwashing and maybe a mask. Most of us also know some of these social distancing bans are just for show. They’re near useless.
Indeed, that’s just been made appallingly clear by a new paper, Tracking the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia using genomics, whose co-authors include researchers from Melbourne University as well as Brett Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Health Officer.
Remember Sutton? He’s been the architect of some of the country’s most draconian virus bans. He banned even golf and fishing.
But this paper now makes clear such bans played little role in suppressing the virus.
Well, “clear” is not quite the word, because the study contains a graphic which blurs this critical fact.
It plots the cases of infection in Victoria against when the State Government slapped on its bans, making you think the bans suppressed that curve.
But this graphic is highly deceptive. It tracks the infections by the date patients first noticed they were sick. In fact, it should plot those bans against when the patients were actually infected.
The federal Health Department says it can take up to 14 days between being infected and feeling sick, with a median period of five to six days.
When you adjust the graphic for that delay of five or six days, a startlingly different picture emerges.
It shows Victoria’s stage one bans were not imposed until at least a week after the peak of the virus, when daily new infections had already been cut by more than half.
The stage three bans — forcing people to stay home except for essential reasons — weren’t imposed until two weeks after peak infections. By then, new infections in Victoria had already fallen to around just 10 a day.
I’m sure the results would be the same in every state: we were already on top of this virus before the stay-home laws.
We’d already “flattened the curve” by taking the moderate steps of washing our hands, avoiding big crowds, stopping cruise ships, quarantining new arrivals and — most importantly — banning international visitors.
No one was saved by politicians then banning golf, closing beaches or chasing people out of parks. All those bans did was ruin the economy and make people miserable.
But politicians don’t want to admit they overreacted. They’d much rather boast: “We saved you.”
But not all of us want to be fooled. Nor do we want to bullied into obeying restrictions on our freedom that look increasingly pointless.
Sure, protect the vulnerable. Do more to save people in nursing homes, where more than a quarter of our 100 victims died.
Shut off the nursing homes, but open the pubs and planes. This farce has gone on too long.