Susie O’Brien: Victorians not free until our old lives are back

Don’t pop the champagne corks just yet — vast parts of our daily lives are still denied to us. No wonder Victorians are getting sick of the shifting rhetoric and movable goalposts from our leaders.

Don’t start popping champagne corks just yet.

Victoria will not be ending lockdown on Friday because vast parts of our daily lives are still denied to us.

One Herald Sun reader put it this way: “If you can’t go where you like, when you like, or visit who you like as far away as you like, you are still in lockdown.” Spot on.

Melburnians won’t be able to go to the shops, visit family in the country, play sport or go to the gym.

Only one quarter of us can go back to work.

We have to still wear masks everywhere.

We can go to the pub, but not a bookshop. A cafe but not a clothes shop.

Kids can go to school, but for only a few days. The full return of all schoolkids full-time is still three agonising weeks away.

There’s no travel limit, but we can’t go to regional areas.

Kids can train for community sport, but not play.

Real estate, community facilities and creative studios are open for outdoors only – what’s the point in that?

Sure sounds like lockdown to me.

Vast parts of daily life will still be denied to Victorians. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Regional reopening is a lot more generous – including all kids back at school. Why not have the same measures across the state given that there are many cases and exposure sites in country areas?

Premier Daniel Andrews says lockdowns and hotel quarantine are soon to be a “thing of the past”. But they’re still a thing of the present.

No doubt the Premier has been shamed by the more generous reopening in NSW.

However, we still haven’t even been able to match their measures, which include bigger outdoor gatherings, and the reopening of gyms, indoor pools and cinemas at 70 per cent.

And the big one – no masks outside.

No doubt people in Melbourne are pleased about the removal of the ridiculous curfew, which was never properly justified.

It’s also good that the five reasons to leave home will no longer exist. I also welcome the return of dinner parties and pop-ins.

It does seem a little incongruous that a few weeks ago house visits were slammed for causing the new peak, and now we’re allowed to have up to 10 visitors indoors.

When we went into lockdown on August 4, it was triggered by just eight new cases, bringing the state’s total to just over 100 cases.

It was meant to be a “short, sharp” lockdown lasting only seven days.

Retail and gyms have been left out of the first stage of reopening, Picture: NCA NewsWire

Eleven weeks later, and we’re still not over it, and our case number has climbed to 22,000.

It’s no wonder Victorians are getting sick of the shifting rhetoric and movable goalposts from those in charge of our state.

When explaining why pubs are open but not shops, Andrews said health advice warned against it.

“If we could open everything at the same time and not have our health system overrun, of course we would do that,” he said.

While the health system is under great pressure, it’s not been overrun. Although some elective surgery has been deferred, people are still getting the care they need.

This kind of rabid scaremongering has kept us in a state of paralysis for months now.

The health advice the Premier is still relying on has been shown time and again to be alarmist, overly cautious and inaccurate.

New modelling has found that even if case numbers are likely to peak at a seven-day average of 3850 in mid-December, the chances of the healthcare system becoming overwhelmed has dropped from 63 per cent to 23 per cent.

Earlier modelling from September predicted 2022 Covid patients would die between July and December, but that has been revised to 1212.

So far, only 144 Victorians with the virus have died this whole year.

In fact, we’ve had an 85 per cent drop in fatalities compared to last year, but that hasn’t stopped us from enduring our fifth and sixth lockdowns.

At every turn we’ve been told concerns about hospital admission rates are the main reason why we have to be in lockdown. Even though these are tracking well below what was predicted, we’re still not fully free.

There is plenty of evidence from overseas to show how Victorians as a whole can live freely with Covid with some minimal precautions such as social distancing, good ventilation and mask-wearing where needed.

With our vaccination rate set to be among the best in the world, we deserve best-practice living standards, not micro-control from an arrogant government.

So, enjoy the thought of more freedom from the end of this week, but remember this: until we have our old lives back, we will still be locked down.