Zero cases: The COVID-19 statistic Australia has to wean itself off

Zero cases is the daily statistic all Australians long to hear of, while one case sends us into panic. It’s a strange reaction and it has to stop.

COMMENT

So that’s it then, Australia’s borders are closed until mid-2022.

On page 36 of budget paper 1 was the bad news for anyone with a family overseas: “Inbound and international travel is expected to remain low through to mid-2022”.

Almost 30 per cent of Australians are first generation immigrants, many with parents overseas.

With a resigned sigh, some of those are now considering leaving jobs and homes here and emigrating back from whence they came. They don’t want to, but if the choice is between Australia and seeing elderly parents, some will choose the latter.

Much of the border barricading appears to be down one number: zero, and its irresistible allure. It’s an almost unique and bizarre Australian phenomenon.

Vaccinations are, slowly, cranking up in Australia. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Not zero, but actually kinda zero

The depressing budget forecast came days after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was reported as saying borders would be closed “indefinitely” as there was a “target of zero cases”. He later said he’d been “misreported” and there was no “zero” target.

But he did say vaccinated people might only be allowed to travel if there was “clear evidence that this prevents transmissibility”.

Official policy or not, that sounds a lot like a strategy to ensure zero — or near zero — COVID-19 cases cross the border and get out into the community.

That might make sense right now; no one is suggesting the frontier should be flung open a week next Tuesday. It will no longer make sense if, down the line, vaccines do their job and serious cases of COVID plummet.

Closed borders will then look less like a health measure, and more like a political ploy.

BAD NEWS ON BORDERS - page 36, Budget Paper No 1 for those who want to hit the books https://t.co/[e-mail]/70Ck8NJ2Ak

— Samantha Maiden (@samanthamaiden) May 11, 2021

Australia has fetishised zero cases. We’ve become intoxicated by our virus success. A single positive case in the community can send a city into panicked lockdown and lead to supermarket shelves being stripped.

Conversely, we love a doughnut day; even better a double doughnut day, of no cases in the community or in quarantine.

Australia’s success at almost entirely keeping COVID out is remarkable. No one wanted to go through the pain that the UK endured as it fumbled through the first months of the pandemic.

We’ve rewarded premiers who have promised the most hardline COVID approach with landslide election victories. The PM now appears to have taken note with it looking very possible borders will remain essentially shut until after the 2022 federal election, which could be as late as September of next year.

Keeping the frontier closed during 2022 is about fear: fear of more than zero cases, and fear of losing the election.

If you’re the PM, why would you risk easing the border open beyond New Zealand if you’ll get slammed by voters for a single case crossing the threshold? Even if, after we’re vaccinated, it might cause very little harm?

RELATED: Shock prediction on international borders

Why close the border if incoming COVID cases are, in the months to come, proven to be of very little harm due to high rates of vaccination? (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Australia’s bizarre fascination with zero cases

Zero cases is a potent drug.

Like all drugs it has harmful side effects. Not just for families but for the tourism, hospitality and transport industries who will miss out on international visitors if the border remains closed for longer than necessary. Businesses will shut, jobs will be lost.

Zero might soothe us now, but this drug could lead to a collective madness about borders if we demand they remain shut even after we’re jabbed. Zero is a drug we will have to wean ourselves off once most of us are vaccinated. But why get vaccinated, some might ponder, if there’s no prospect of travel? Easier just to let zero keep us safe.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has called for hospitalisation figures rather than cases to be the measure of COVID success (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

How we should judge COVID success

In March, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said case numbers should be replaced by hospitalisation rates as the future metric to judge COVID success by.

“Zero community transmissions are easy to achieve when we’ve got no international travel,” she told radio station 2GB.

“We need to change our measure or we will be left behind as a nation if we don’t think about travelling internationally.

“What is a good measure of success is keeping people alive and keeping them out of hospital.”

Australia loves a double doughnut day. photo Calum Robertson

Zero may never be achieved globally. What then?

Earlier this year, journal Nature commented on the “coronavirus-free” life of Western Australia. For the globe, however, WA was merely a “beautiful dream,” an “improbable” model of what will likely never be elsewhere.

Many scientists now believe COVID-19 will become endemic. That is, it won’t be eradicated and will continue to circulate but vaccines will have a double effect: infections will drop and those that do catch the virus will have a far less serious condition. Booster jabs and shots adapted for new variants will be the norm.

For most nations, reducing COVID transmission to low levels with few if any serious cases is the target — not zero.

We don’t yet know if that will come to pass. But the signs from countries with high rates of inoculation are promising.

In the UK, where 27 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, 2000 cases a day are being recorded. Sounds a lot — but that’s down from a high of 67,000 in a single day in January. On Monday, no one died of COVID-19 in England, and that’s with three quarters of the population still yet to get there full dose.

Israel has vaccinated 56 per cent of its residents. It had 43 cases yesterday and zero deaths. Fully vaxxed Bhutan has had one death – throughout the whole pandemic.

If, in a few months’ time, countries like Israel and the UK are continuing to see some cases but few hospitalisations, Australia will have to question its zero cases fixation.

Hell London, at some point in 2022, 2023, who knows? (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Australia’s sluggish vaccine rollout means it could indeed take until 2022 to vaccinate everyone. But if it picks up the pace and many Aussies, including those most at risk, get jabbed earlier, what then?

The single-minded focus on zero cases alone will become harder to justify as more people get their AstraZeneca or Pfizer shot.

Fully vaccinated Aussies will begin to ask why vaccinated Brits and Israelis, Americans and Spaniards, can jet off to see family but they can’t. Zero could mean people’s grandmas and grandpas, mothers and fathers will die needlessly separated from their Aussie loved ones, with last goodbyes done via Zoom.

The reality is the rest of the world may never get to zero cases but will carry on, just with far fewer people falling ill. If Australia insists on zero cases, we’ll carry on too, just with borders closed indefinitely and immigrants making heartbreaking decisions about whether to stay or go.