Victorian Premier Dan Andrews owes apologies to 6.6m plus one

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews owes his NSW counterpart Gladys Berejiklian a personal apology and 6.6m Victorians a public apology.

He owes the one to Berejiklian over his sneering ridicule of her softer lockdown approach to fighting the virus.

He owes the apology to every single Victorian over his excessively brutal – and is now becoming all too evident, both unnecessary and ineffective – lockdowns compared with NSW.

Both derived from Andrews’s absurd and utterly, utterly, delusional belief that he alone - not just in Australia, but in the entire world – knew how to defeat the Delta strain with brutal lockdowns.

Two months ago, he arrogantly declared that “we’ – meaning “I”, your all-knowing Great Leader – had “seen off” Delta not just once but twice and would do it again with the brutal lockdowns, curfews and nasty and pointless restrictions like closing playgrounds and skate parks.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Picture : NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Two months on, it is now entirely possible, maybe even probable, that the number of daily Victorian Covid cases will pass NSW’s – with Victoria going up and NSW falling or at least stabilising. And remember, this would happen in a state whose 6.6m population is only 80 per cent of NSW’s 8.2m – meaning Victoria’s real performance would be so much worse.

Over the last seven days, NSW cases have averaged 988 a day; Victoria’s 723. But adjusted for population, that Victorian number would have been 903.

More tellingly, the trend is against Victoria.

Over the two days of the weekend, when testing numbers (in both states) fall sharply, NSW recorded 1748 cases and Victoria 1484. But adjusted for the lower population, the Victorian number was the equivalent of – a higher than NSW – 1855. Why did I mention the testing numbers? Because daily tests in Victoria have been running at around half those of NSW.

Self-evidently – as Andrews himself and his two key health advisors Brett Sutton and Jeroen Weimar themselves declare repeatedly, if you test more, you find more cases.

Over the last 11 days NSW’s 11,551 cases came from 1.34m tests; Victoria’s 7181 cases came from 612k tests. If Victoria had done as many tests as NSW, it might – I stress, might – have found 15,664 cases, in comparative terms. What is absolutely clear and utterly undeniable, over those 11 days NSW was finding 8.65 cases for each 1000 tests, while Victoria was finding a much higher 11.73 cases for each 1000 tests. What is also therefore clear and undeniable is that Andrews’s more brutal – and in some areas deliberately and unnecessarily punitive – lockdowns haven’t delivered better outcomes.

That’s, with one clearly very, very important exception; deaths. Since August 1 NSW has recorded 237 deaths, Victoria only 24.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture by Joel Carrett - Pool/Getty Images

Apart from the obvious: just exactly how many lives were saved by banning kids from playgrounds and people from playing golf?

Let’s revisit the comparison at the end of October, as Victoria will very likely have racked up many, many more cases than NSW over the course of the month. Apart from Victoria likely passing NSW in daily Covid cases, there have been two other ‘passings’ of note.

Just as I foreshadowed a week ago, over the weekend Australia went past China in total number of recorded cases. According to Worldometer, as of Monday morning, we’d recorded 97,550 cases in total since the start of it all back in February 2020; while China had recorded only 96,115. Just to be crystal clear, those are absolute total numbers not population adjusted. And the Chinese numbers are complete and utter fiction – like every number on anything and everything ‘produced’ in China.

Also, Scott Morrison has now passed all his recent predecessors in time as PM, most recently Julia Gillard.

Morrison’s now 14th and will have jumped to 12th by the election. If he wins, he’ll get into the top ten.