Andrew Bolt: We can’t let the cure be worse than the disease

The government is right to impose stringent restrictions but at some stage people will start to ask if the risk of getting sick is worse than a dead economy, writes Andrew Bolt.

A million more people could be unemployed and thousands more businesses going bust once stage three restrictions are implemented. Picture: David Crosling

Now is not the time. Now is when we stay home to save lives. But Australians will soon ask: is the risk of catching the virus worse than the risk of going broke?

We already risk death when we drive to work or go on a building site, operate heavy machinery, serve in the police force or fire brigade, run a farm or work under high stress.

We accept the risk each year of about 150 Australians dying at work and another 3500 Australians dying of the flu.

We even accept the risk of eating fatty food and drinking sugary drinks in a country where more than 3000 people a year die of diabetes.

Yes, the risk of dying from coronavirus, if you catch it, is frightening. But on current statistics — only eight people dead of more than 2200 Australians infected — that risk may not seem unacceptable to many desperate people.

Those statistics suggest that of every 250 Australians who get sick, only one will die. Of course, those odds may worsen, particularly if hospitals are overwhelmed, Italian style.

But the time will come when many Australians will figure the certainty of having everything they and their family have worked for wiped out outweighs the slight possibility that they themselves die. It’s a risk I bet many will accept.

Call that selfish, particularly when the dying is probably done by someone else, most likely old or frail. But you’re talking about Australians who already horde food and fight over the last toilet roll in the shop.

That’s not how our politicians think, though, when they impose bans that are destroying the jobs and savings of many Australians.

But no politicians will lose their jobs. And none would dare hint in these risk-phobic times that a few hundred more dead people was a price worth paying for saving millions from ruin.

US President Donald Trump is, typically, the lone exception. He tweeted: “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.”

After this 15-day shutdown in the US, he said, “we will make a decision as to which way we want to go!” That drove many in the medical world crazy. They know the US, like Australia, desperately needs to buy time by slowing the spread of this contagious virus. How contagious? One man infected 35 people at a NSW wedding.

People queue for testing at Royal Melbourne Hospital as the virus is still spreading dangerously fast. Picture: Jason Edwards

Here’s the maths. A person with coronavirus appears to infect two to 2.5 people on average, compared with 1.3 with the flu. If we repeat that rate of infection 10 times, that one initial person will ultimately infect 14 others. But one person with coronavirus will ultimately infect 3325. That’s why hospitals are freaking. That’s why our governments rightly demand we stay at home while they get local manufacturers to build as many ventilators as they can and search for vaccines and treatment.

No Western leader has pushed harder on that drug hunt than Trump. He seized on limited research in France, Australia, China and Japan into an already approved antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine — research which suggested it could shorten the illness in most patients to five or six days — and New York yesterday started a mass testing.

Now the Morrison Government is backing two trials into hydroxychloroquine by the University of Queensland and Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, which in four weeks (why so long?) will start testing the drug on 2250 health workers exposed to patients with the virus.

Of course, this may not work and this isolation may not work either. The virus is still spreading dangerously fast here, although locked-down Italy is finally seeing a slowdown in new cases and China’s Wuhan province is reopening for business. But we still have our winter flu season ahead. That, in a very worst case, means we face another six months of restrictions and the even tougher “stage three” that Premier Dan Andrews said yesterday was inevitable.

And that means possibly a million more people unemployed and thousands more businesses gone bust. That’s countless lives and dreams shattered.

So the time will come, once hospitals have geared up with equipment, pills and staff, and we ring-fence the vulnerable, when the rest of us ask: isn’t death from coronavirus worth the risk of going back to work and saving our families from destitution? We already accept some risk every day. Will we soon accept this one?

IT’S ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

Should I be embarrassed? Turns out I’ve been living for years as if coronavirus was outside my front door, waiting to strike me dead. I heard my Premier yesterday warn us not to go out unless we really have to. Er, check. How else would I get all these books read over a quiet whisky?

He said we shouldn’t even invite people over for dinner. Hmm, never planned to. Have wife and children.

MORE BOLT

Keep your distance from other people, he ordered. Hey! All my life I wanted a better excuse for saying no to mingling. This one’s the best: by order of government!

And don’t go to work if you can do it from home. Sure won’t, Mr Premier. I abandoned my office at the newspaper years ago to flee to the quiet of my study at home.

But I worried. For years I fretted that I was some misanthrope, miserably lacking social spirit.

Now it turns out I’ve been living the perfect antiviral lifestyle all along. I’ve become a poster-boy of the coronavirus age and it didn’t hurt a bit. My day has dawned.