The last lockdown dribbles to its end

Dr Omar Khorshid, Australian Medical Association President. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

THE utter idiocy and frenzied hysteria over the virus was on magnificent and utterly unknowing display at - what better place than - the National Press Club in Canberra Wednesday.

Dr Omar Khorshid, Federal President of the Australian Medical Association, addressed the NPC on the pandemic.

I make no comment on the worthy doctor’s undoubtedly worthy address, but on what happened at its conclusion.

In thanking him, David Crowe – who I believe is a journalist at the Nine broadloid papers – makes a great show, in which the worthy doctor enthusiastically reciprocated, of bumping elbows.

No handshakes less the virus be transmitted from one presumably vaccinated person to another presumably vaccinated person. Yet the two of them – and the other 150 or so people there - had been quite happy to sit, unmasked, in a room, if not swapping spit, certainly exhalation for 90 minutes or so.

Now here am I thinking that the virus is principally – perhaps entirely – transmitted by aerosols, breathed out by an infected person (along with the planet and human killing carbon dioxide) and inhaled by an innocent victim.

But no, it would appear, there’s precious little risk of that; an esteemed expert such as the good Dr Khorshid is happy to breathe the air of 150 unknown persons but fears the handshake of one of them.

What better backdrop could there have been to the Claytons End of Victoria’s Lockdown. Two weeks ago, I accepted the lockdown as the lockdown Australia had to have.

That was on the basis of the number of and geographic spread of exposure sites – making it impossible to do a surgical (Sydney) northern beaches excision; and the timing – when Australia was on the cusp of significant vaccination penetration but still essentially unvaccinated.

Dr Omar Khorshid, Australian Medical Association President. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Let me emphasise, Victoria’s problem – and pain – was also Australia’s pain; in both virus and economic and financial terms. The lockdown has now arguably been shown – with 20/20 hindsight – to have been unnecessary. So let me emphasise also what I wrote that this had to be “the last lockdown” - not only for the lockdown state, Victoria, but indeed anywhere in Australia. Whatever the argument over the relative costs and benefits of lockdowns through 2020; now in the second half of 2021, the costs of a generalised lockdown like Victoria’s just far, far outweigh any benefits in even a partially vaccinated state/Australia.

What tends to get lost in this discussion is that the costs are not just financial; there are very real and very large health costs as well.

It’s debatable, but now essentially academic, whether the very real damage to both physical and mental health through 2020 – especially obviously in the lockdown state Victoria – had to be accepted as the cost of stopping the virus.

But in 2021, as we become ever more vaccinated, they cannot. Once Victoria emerges from its now Clayton’s end to the latest lockdown, that must be it. Never again.

Now, there’s been a broad acceptance of what I’ve argued: that a state government must be responsible for the cost of the damage done to the actual business and the business owner from one of its lockdowns, but the Feds pick up the tab for workers.

The latter should be obvious: when Ford and GM decided to close and exit the country, did anyone say the Feds shouldn’t pay the dole to the workers sacked because that would be “bailing out’ Ford and GM?

Of course not, and exactly the same goes for workers whacked by a state mandated lockdown.

As I’ve written, JobKeeper 2.0 was mean; not paying the first week and setting onerous access rules. It’d be nice if the Feds relented.

But, the Victorian government’s payments to business have been even more parsimonious and indeed actually punitive. They also need to pay more.