The expert class turned out in force last week with pessimistic predictions about the nightmare soon to be visited upon British hospitals and mortuaries because of the Prime Minister’s latest folly.
A letter signed by 100 medical experts in The Lancet accused Boris Johnson’s government of “embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment” by ending social distancing rules. Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organisation’s Health Emergencies Program, said the rush to reopen the economy amounted to “moral emptiness and epidemiological stupidity”.
Johnson’s courage in defying the experts is a virtue that should be emulated by political leaders closer to home. In Britain, Johnson revives the Dunkirk spirit, fighting Covid-19 on the beaches, landing grounds, fields and in the streets. In Australia, premiers call on their subjugated citizens to fight the virus from their couches.
The extraordinary decision to shut down further sections of the NSW economy indefinitely raises further doubts about the wisdom of the present strategy. What began 15 months ago as an attempt to flatten the curve has become an exercise in flattering the conceit of health bureaucrats who claim to have the power to make the virus go away.
You don’t have to be a virologist to work out that the more transmissible the virus becomes, the harder it will be to stamp it out. The Delta variant is not so transmissible, however, that we can’t keep it out of nursing homes or otherwise protect the vulnerable. That is where non-medical government interventions should end.
For the rest of us, exposure to our fellow humans poses little danger. Septuagenarian construction workers, if there are any, might care to stay home for a bit, but the rest should get back on the tools.
The data from Britain tells us what would happen if the number of cases were to increase from hundreds a day to thousands or tens of thousands. In the three weeks it has taken NSW to clock up an extra thousand or so cases, more than 590,000 Britons have tested positive, almost all of them to the Delta variant. There have been 526 deaths, suggesting a mortality rate somewhat lower than 0.1 per cent. The UK data shows that every person who has died from the virus since April had an average of two comorbidities.
The good news, seldom highlighted, is the overall mortality rate in England is in negative territory. Since April, the number of deaths from all causes has been 6 per cent lower than normal and 8 per cent lower for those over 75, suggesting the English, like us, have learned how to quarantine nursing homes.
Dementia deaths there have inexplicably fallen by 20 per cent, death from acute respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia is down 25 per cent and death from Parkinson’s disease is down 15 per cent. Covid-19, it seems, has been ascribed as the cause of death for many who were already at the end of their lives.
Lockdown apologists will claim that the Brits are being kept safe by vaccinations, but that is only part of the story. About 20 million Britons remain completely unvaccinated, more than two million more than in Australia. In any case, vaccination does not guarantee that you won’t get sick. Of the 92,000 people who were admitted to hospital from the Delta variant in Britain between February and June, 43 per cent were vaccinated.
Those who advocate tough measures conveniently ignore the evidence that lockdowns themselves are injurious to health. Having wagged their fingers at us for years about our drinking habits, the public health nannies are now driving us to the stuff.
Fewer Brits may be dying overall, but there has been a rise in deaths from cirrhosis and other liver diseases. Public Health England reports that despite the 31-week closure of pubs and restaurants, there was a 59 per cent increase in people drinking at higher risk levels between March 2020 and March 2021. Consumer data shows that 12.6 million extra litres of alcohol were sold in shops and supermarkets in 2020-21 than in the previous financial year, an increase of 24 per cent.
Tunnel vision also blinds public health officials to the evidence that lockdowns drive people barmy. In May, the OECD reported that the health service that had been most stretched since the advent of Covid-19 was mental health. The prevalence of anxiety and depression increased in all member countries, and in some countries doubled. Periods of heightened mental distress correlated with periods of high Covid-19 deaths and strict confinement measures.
We can at least forgive the health experts for the myopia that blinds them to the growing number of small businesses condemned to fail and livelihoods impoverished by their actions. Responsibility for the failure to balance competing policy objectives belongs to the politicians alone.
The estimated hit to the NSW economy so far of more than $3bn falls into perspective by noting that the recently completed, state-of-the-art Northern Beaches Hospital with 500 beds cost about two-thirds of that amount and is an investment that will continue to save lives long after the terror of Covid has subsided.
The idea that we need to vaccinate almost everyone before we can emerge from the doona ignores less draconian but effective ways to reduce the risk of Covid-19 deaths we have already implemented and the others that we can adopt without causing disproportionate pain. It ignores the rapid vaccination rates that are at last being achieved. The 10 million mark was passed on Sunday and there are expected to be another 900,000 this week. Almost 75 per cent of over-70s have received at least one jab, meaning the level of risk to public health is declining rapidly while the risks to the economy are rapidly rising.
Still, the decision-makers remain in splendid isolation, pursuing their zero-case strategy with an almost fanatical zeal. They remain impassive at the loss of dignity and income being endured by those stuck in lockdown world, incapable of weighing the balance between benefits and risks.
They have become snookered by their own exaggerated rhetoric. Having insisted that the last three weeks of pain were unavoidable in the face of an apocalypse, it is only human that they should discount the mounting evidence that they have made an error of judgment.
Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre.
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