Parochial premiers erode national pandemic strategy

It has been a dire week battling Covid-19: 261,832 new cases; 3933 patients admitted to hospital and 257 deaths – in Britain. Across the country, businesses are closed because staff have been “pinged” with tracing apps and are quarantining at home. That is the situation confronting Brits on the eve of “Freedom Day” on Monday, when Britain will lift the last of its Covid restrictions. It puts our pandemic tribulations into context: the equivalent of those statistics in Australia would be 87,277 weekly cases, 1311 hospital admissions and 86 deaths. By comparison, Australia recorded 605 new cases in the past week, we have 132 people in hospital and we recorded two deaths, a woman in her 90s and a man in his 70s in NSW.

Like Britain, New York has emerged from its Covid coma too. The city that never sleeps is buzzing again, night and day, Adam Creighton writes in Inquirer – even as about five people in the city still die from Covid-19 every day. Despite most New Yorkers being vaccinated, infection rates are rising. And the city’s long economic Covid continues; unemployment is 10.6 per cent, almost triple New York’s pre-pandemic level. Poverty and homelessness are on the rise.

On this side of the Pacific, many of the Twitterati claiming that a slow start to Australia’s vaccine rollout has put us into a dark place, shamefully behind the rest of the world, need a broader perspective. The rollout, incidentally, is gathering pace: a record 175,000 jabs were given on Thursday, half a million over three days and almost two million so far this month, Scott Morrison said on Friday. And, as vaccine supplies increase, the rollout increasingly will be assisted by pharmacists, national cabinet agreed on Friday.

While there is a long way to go, vaccines already are doing their job in NSW, Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said on Friday: “We are seeing a number of young people in hospital in ICU, rather than the huge numbers of older people we saw in Victoria.” On other key criteria – deaths from the virus, new infections and economic fallout – Australia’s performance remains a standout. Our economy is larger than it was before the pandemic. Unemployment has fallen to 4.9 per cent, its lowest level since 2011. For all their gloomy whingeing, we doubt the critics would prefer to be sitting out the pandemic anywhere else in the world. A sharp reality check is needed, soon.

What is becoming uglier by the day, unfortunately, is the party politics, which are striking at the heart of our national unity. Despite the Prime Minister’s pragmatic four-phase plan towards reopening the country, released just a fortnight ago, the nation seems to have lost any agreed narrative on how to steer out of the pandemic. The blame game is becoming all-consuming, the national mood impatient and angry. As Paul Kelly writes in Inquirer, premiers are calling the shots in a country “now consumed by state identity and parochialism in a way unprecedented for most people during their lifetime; the Australian mindset seems addicted to lockdowns as the reoccurring response to new or serious out­breaks”.

A flexible approach to lockdowns is vital as we have argued consistently; and the NSW lockdown has been necessary. But as the geographic spread of the Delta variant of the virus becomes more defined, restrictions should be as limited as possible. This will be especially important if, as Dr Khorshid said on Friday, Sydney is forced to live with restrictions for the “foreseeable future until everyone is vaccinated”. Restrictions should also be carefully targeted in Melbourne, which is on its fifth lockdown in 18 months.

Lockdowns, border closures and restrictions must be effective and proportionate and provide the public with as much flexibility as possible. Border closures, in particular, cause disruption, economic hardship, especially in the travel and hospitality sector, and heartache and stress around the nation, thousands of kilometres from the centre of localised outbreaks. On Thursday, dozens of travellers were left in the lurch after a Melbourne to Perth flight touched down 15 minutes too late to beat West Australian Premier Mark McGowan’s latest “fortress WA” restrictions. The travellers were given the choice of two weeks’ quarantine in WA or returning immediately to Melbourne after the tough new rules were imposed while they were in the air. Queensland declaring the entire state of Victoria a hotspot from 1am Saturday is more overkill.

Australia has developed its own political culture about the virus, as Kelly writes. It is “heavily risk-averse, instinctively inclined to lockdowns, and demanding the federal government stump up the money to sustain individuals and businesses as long as they are affected”. Such an outlook is a long way from life in Britain and the US. Opening up to the world and learning to live with the virus when most Australians are vaccinated will demand a different mindset.