I wrote a book and no one read it. It’s time to face up to what we have lost

Two years ago, I wrote a book about Melbourne’s pandemic experience. Few people bought it and fewer still read it.

I suspect that among the copies that were sold, many are sitting on bookshelves, crisply unopened, consigned to a history no one has much desire to revisit.

Bourke Street in Melbourne during a lockdown in 2020. Credit: Wayne Taylor

The same fate likely awaits the report of the Commonwealth Government’s COVID-19 Response Inquiry.

A report that extends beyond 800 pages doesn’t invite many readers other than health bureaucrats paid to complete the task. And when it comes to learning from the pandemic, Australia is still experiencing an acute case of COVID brain fog.

Nonetheless, there are two reasons why the findings of the panel of inquiry, Robyn Kruk, Professor Catherine Bennett and Dr Angela Jackson, should be read and read thoroughly.

The first is self-evident. To be better prepared for the next pandemic, we need to understand what we did right and wrong in our response to the last one.

The second is less obvious but no less important.

Parts of Sydney, much of Victoria and especially Melbourne were deeply scarred by what we went through in 2020 and 2021. The social harms inflicted by the pandemic and our public health response are real, serious and ongoing.

These harms go beyond disruption to schooling, destruction of businesses and the overwhelming burden now loaded onto our inadequate mental health services.

The report talks about “unresolved emotions and resentment” splitting families and dividing friends. It charts the way initially strong public support for uniform health measures was replaced by mistrust, anger and disengagement, as state-led pandemic responses became inconsistent, punitive and overbearing.

It documents the loss of trust in government and other institutions, including mainstream outlets such as this masthead, that the pandemic caused.

“Negative experiences during the pandemic have disrupted some factors contributing to the societal fabric of Australia,” it finds. “Resentment towards what was lost... has led some mainstream audiences to become more sceptical and critical of government policies and decision-making.

“There is a need to repair and rebuild these elements of the social fabric.”

This language, while unusually plain-speaking for a government-commissioned inquiry, does not quite capture the radical polarisation and breakdown we have seen in public discourse, on just about everything, since the pandemic years.

It is three years since Melbourne’s final lockdown lifted. Former prime minister Scott Morrison, former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and every other state premier who led our pandemic response have retired from politics.

Are we now capable of acknowledging, without partisan vitriol, the unintended damage inflicted by some of their polices? This is an essential first step towards dealing with the long-term implications.

A good place to start is a piece of qualitative research work commissioned by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to inform the COVID inquiry.

It is a series of focus group studies, conducted by social research group Orima between May and June this year, in which 176 people living in different circumstances and in different parts of Australia reflected on what the pandemic meant for them.

The results, which were published by the Albanese government on the same day as the inquiry report, are compelling. Not all experiences detailed in the study are negative, but most are. Some people describe a traumatic experience, others remain bitterly sad and others relate a sense of hopelessness.

Mostly, they feel let down; by a federal government that abrogated its responsibility to lead and heavy-handed state governments that yanked up the slack.

We hear from John, an introverted man in his 30s, who lost his job early in the pandemic and spiralled into drinking, loneliness, anger and a steady diet of social media information and disinformation.

We hear from Noor, a teacher at an Islamic school who could see her young students were disengaging from class. Three years later, Noor is still trying to reconnect them to their studies.

We hear from a person in Melbourne for whom the Daily Dan press conferences and nightly updates about COVID deaths and hospitalisations became too much. “I just shut off from everything,” they say. “I stopped believing it … it didn’t make sense. I was asking people if they knew anyone who had died, and they didn’t know. Where are all these people dying?”

The fact so few people died in Australia from COVID between 2020 and 2021 is the enduring triumph of our pandemic response. As Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said on Wednesday: “The actions that we took during that time saved lives.”

Thomas added that she hadn’t read the report in detail.

The COVID inquiry accepts our pandemic response saved lives. It also warns that something else of value has been lost.

Chip Le Grand is The Age’s chief reporter.

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