Rita Panahi: Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton needs to cut the hysteria

Brett Sutton and Jeroen Weimar seem to be competing at who can scare us more, but they need to cut the hysteria and stick to the facts.

Arguably the most powerful men and women in the country right now are not our elected leaders but the public health bureaucrats who can shut down an entire state, profoundly impacting the lives of millions.

Chief health officers have gone from middle-ranking bureaucrats to wielding sweeping powers and it’s uncanny how closely they mirror their respective premiers in temperament and competence.

NSW’s CHO, Dr Kerry Chant, is not one to seek the limelight and gives sensible, fact-based analysis without indulging in politics or hyperbole. You won’t hear her talking about “beasts” or engaging in wild conjecture that needlessly terrifies the masses. Her advice has seen NSW record the best outcomes in the country.

Likewise, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been level-headed and competent throughout this pandemic, and has outperformed every premier as well as the Prime Minister. This week, as NSW recorded a case of community transmission imported from Victoria, she refused to indulge in the blame game or panic, relying on the state’s world-class contact tracing to do its job.

Victoria’s disaster-prone Covid response has seen the state’s health bureaucrats thrust into the limelight and some appear to enjoy the attention more than others.

Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton became a household name during the pandemic. Picture: Getty Images

Before the pandemic made him a household name, Brett Sutton was writing about “Why climate change matters for public health” and “the critical role of public health in driving action on climate change”. This week Professor Sutton and Covid-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar seemed to be competing with each other in coming up with the catchiest, scariest term to describe the Kappa variant.

Weimar doesn’t have any medical expertise; he has a background in transport and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, but that didn’t stop nightly news services from amplifying his unfounded claims about the virus spreading faster and in ways we’ve never seen.

One wonders whether these news outlets will give as much prominence to the many highly credentialed infectious diseases experts, including professors Greg Dore, Peter Collignon and Catherine Bennett, who have debunked or disputed the claims made by the Victorian health bureaucracy about the latest outbreak.

Prof James McCaw, who advises the national cabinet, said: “There is no epidemiological evidence that this virus spreads faster.”

It’s not just Prof Sutton who has been lambasted this week for hyperbolic rhetoric about “absolute beasts” and recklessly inaccurate comparisons such as “measles category of infectiousness”.

(For the record, measles is so highly contagious that 90 per cent of non-immune people exposed to an infective individual will contract the disease, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. No Covid-19 variant observed anywhere in the world is even in the same suburb, let alone ballpark.)

Testing Commander Jeroen Weimar doesn’t have any medical expertise. Picture: Getty Images

Talking about balls. South Australia’s CHO, Prof Nicola Spurrier, has grabbed national attention with her bizarre ball advice to footy fans attending the Crows v Pies game this weekend in Adelaide.

“We are looking at the seating at the moment and of course we are looking at the ball,” she said.

“Not that I have been to many football games but I have noticed occasionally it does get kicked into the crowd. We are working through the details of what that will mean, if you are at Adelaide Oval and the ball comes towards you, my advice to you is to duck and just do not touch that ball.”

There you go, folks. This is what counts as sober health advice in 2021; don’t touch the footy because it could have germs from those diseased Victorians in the Collingwood Football Club.

Never mind that every player is tested again and again and there are only 69 cases in a state of more than 6.6 million people despite extensive testing, including thousands of close contacts.

After going viral for her comments, and being mocked on TV and radio, Prof Spurrier claimed on Thursday that the comments were tongue-in-cheek – they most definitely were not, as anyone who saw the press conference could attest — and that as a health precaution the first two rows of seats at Adelaide Oval would be left empty.

But she couldn’t help proffer further ball advice.

South Australian chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier was mocked over her advice for footy fans not to touch the ball.

“To be perfectly honest, whenever you touch an object and in this case this is an object touched by I don’t know how many very sweaty men on a football field, sanitise your hands afterwards, and that is advice I would give pre- and post-Covid,” Prof Spurrier said.

Sadly, this doesn’t count as the most absurd Covid-related advice offered by state CHOs; that honour goes to Queensland where Dr Jeannette Young stepped in to ban an Anzac Day flyover in the name of Covid safety. Yes, pilots flying in formation presumably present an unacceptable risk of infection

Queensland Health also advised Brisbane residents in January to wear face masks when driving in their own cars, even when alone. The rule was changed only after much mockery and outrage from Queenslanders.

Perhaps it’s not a great idea to give unelected health bureaucrats unprecedented powers.

IN SHORT

The Morrison government is increasing the likelihood of further needless lockdowns with its latest compensation package. Every state except NSW has locked down rather than use contact tracing to contain even the smallest of outbreaks. Incentivising lockdowns seems like a bad idea for a government more than a trillion dollars in debt.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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