Andrew Bolt: Some Covid rules are made to be broken

Many Australians are making our own virus rules — so the politicians should quit playing Big Brother and just leave it to us.

The Prime Minister on the weekend pleaded: “Don’t go down to the beach.”

But I walked the dogs on my town’s beach and saw that many Australians don’t trust our politicians.

Good. We’re making our own virus rules and our politicians should quit playing Big Brother and let us.

Our part of the beach is normally near-deserted, but on this lovely morning I saw at least 70 people, just six wearing face masks.

The rest were breaking Greater Melbourne’s draconian virus laws: Wear face masks even outside, and don’t go more than 5km from home.

They’d correctly figured the risk of infection on a windswept beach was actually about zero, and worth the joy of feeling the sand under their feet and the late-winter sun on their face.

In the supermarket in the town up the road it’s a different story. We all wear face masks, because we know this Covid virus is almost always spread indoors.

Mounted police patrol Bondi Beach on Sunday.

In Sydney, same thing. On Bondi Beach on Saturday, thousands of people sauntered maskless on the foreshore, despite police harassment to enforce stay-home rules and distance limits.

I can’t blame them. There’s no known case of anyone getting infected on a beach. The police trying to stop beachgoers from loving life should go do something that actually makes a difference – like making sure the infected and their close contacts don’t leave home.

Clearly, many Australians have worked out that some virus bans are too cruel or pointless.

That includes some of the lockdowns that again have half of all Australians confined to their homes, and one million children unable to go to school.

You might at a stretch say the NSW lockdown is needed, given the 415 new infections on Sunday. But Melbourne’s, with 25?

Is this how we must live until next year, in lockdown or unable to plan anything for fear of the next?

Our politicians are asking too much of us, and especially of our children.

Doctors follow a code called the Hippocratic oath, which forbids them to kill patients but also not “strive officiously to keep alive”.

Police patrolling St Kilda beach in October last year. Picture: Darrian Traynor

They shouldn’t, say, give a 90-year-old a lung transplant to buy them another month of life.

But many of our lockdowns now “strive officiously to keep alive”, causing such despair, depression and destruction.

In Victoria, not one person has died this year of the virus, which is no surprise given we’ve already fully vaccinated more than half those most likely to die – people over 70.

In NSW, true, 48 people have died in this latest outbreak. But how many such deaths is it our moral responsibility to prevent by staying locked up?

Of the latest nine to die, three were already in palliative care – dying already – and two of those were in their 90s. How long did we expect them to live?

Two others, a man in his 70s and a woman in her 80s, were vaccinated but had pre-existing conditions.

Also among the dead were a man in his 80s who had not been vaccinated and a woman in her 70s who’d had just one jab, despite months of pleas to the aged to protect themselves. Another woman died at home without going to hospital for help, and yet another was unvaccinated.

A deserted Flinders St on Sunday. Picture: Paul Jeffers

I get it. We need restrictions until we’ve tried to persuade the reluctant, reach the isolated, and vaccinate the vulnerable. But then it’s up to us, not the government, to protect ourselves.

I have an aunt in Holland who shows how we must then live.

She’s in her 70s and has severe emphysema. She’s vaccinated, but Covid could well kill her.

But Holland has no lockdown, even though it on Saturday had another 2300 infections, four times more than Australia.

Even so, my aunt doesn’t demand lockdowns. She just makes her own rules, like the people on my beach.

She bans friends from visiting unless they’re vaccinated. She rarely leaves home and protects herself when she does. She takes responsibility for staying alive.

One day very soon we must demand that same right, too.

Government must get us the vaccines and testing centres. It must shut out unvaccinated tourists, and lock up the infectious.

After that, it must just give us information we need – particularly local virus hot spots to avoid – and leave the rest to us.

It’s our right to then decide if a stroll on the beach, a trip to Bunnings or a cuppa with the neighbour is worth the tiny risk of death. It’s still our life.