Emergency now is to prioritise our kids

’We have protected and cared for our elderly, now it is incumbent on us to look after our children.’ Picture: iStock

None of us can forget the horrific images last year of people dying overseas in car parks and makeshift hospitals, with First World health systems pushed almost to the point of collapse. Medical science had no solution to offer. No vaccine for the novel coronavirus existed.

Lockdown presented as the only available strategy. The hope was that locking down would “flatten the curve” to allow expansion of capacity in the health system to get ahead of the growth in the numbers of people expected to contract Covid-19 and require hospitalisation.

To our great collective credit, that strategy did work. Australians, and Victorians in particular, have shown remarkable fortitude and selflessness throughout these torrid years. Nowhere in the world has been in hard lockdown for longer than Melbourne.

It is always difficult for the public and our leaders to change course, especially when embarked on a course forged in fear and great sacrifice. So it is only natural that we have been inclined to err on the side of caution when it comes to this virus and that we have been slow to relinquish the apparent safety of the strategy that served us last year.

But we need to recognise the reality is different now. We are no longer confronting the horrors of an unknown deadly virus for which there is no vaccine.

We have built local manufacturing capacity in Australia of a world-class vaccine in volumes that substantially outstrip our demand. Indeed, we are spoiled for choice by ever-increasing supply of other brands of the vaccine. Each of these brands of vaccine has passed the most rigorous scientific tests, and each has been proven substantially to reduce the risks of serious illness and death.

We know the risk of serious illness from the virus is markedly lower for young people, and the risk of death even lower again.

According to the latest US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention study (using data updated to July), a young person aged between 18 and 29 is 95 times less likely to die from Covid-19 than a person aged between 65 and 74; 230 times less likely to die than a person aged between 75 and 84; and 600 times less likely than a person aged 85 and older. The data also shows children aged 17 and younger have even lower likelihoods of hospitalisation and death from the virus than young people aged 18 to 29.

Our local experience confirms this: of the 981 people in Australia who have lost their lives to the virus, two were young people in their 20s and one was a child.

The point here has nothing to do with any morbid philosophical comparison between the value of lives of different ages. The point is that those of us who were most at risk from this virus have now been protected (or at least been given every reasonable opportunity to be protected).

No one in this still great country of ours has been required to pay for their own vaccination. Every Australian aged 70 and older, together with other vulnerable groups, has been eligible to receive the vaccine since March. Of those, more than 85 per cent wisely have decided to avail themselves of at least one dose (as have more than 80 per cent of Australians aged 60 and older).

We have protected and cared for our elderly, now it is incumbent on us to look after our children. Denying them face-to-face learning, social interaction and fresh air and exercise is no longer justifiable. Our young children are not progressing developmentally as they should, and our teenagers are falling into despair, self-harm and suicidal ideation. As is too often the way, these hardships are falling disproportionately on those already suffering from disadvantage.

The emergency now – every bit as urgent and important as the one we successfully confronted last year – is to prioritise caring for our children. It is time to drop the unhealthy preoccupation with numbers of new cases. The vast majority of those will not lead to serious illness. Science has prevailed. We no longer need, and cannot afford, to focus only on this one medical risk at the expense and to the exclusion of other medical, psychological and economic considerations.

Covid-19 will be endemic in this country and throughout the world. We will not eliminate it, so we must learn to live with it. That is not to say we should “let it rip”. That would be foolhardy. Modern medicine has delivered us the vaccine and we must use it. Regrettably, it is unlikely that everyone among us will choose to be vaccinated, so we also will need some proportionate restrictions. These must be designed to incentivise vaccination and to protect those who still may be vulnerable. If and when the prevalence of serious illness from this virus rises to a level that genuinely threatens the viability of our health system, restrictions would need to be tightened.

No one should pretend there are easy decisions to be made, and we should be slow to criticise those in positions of responsibility for having made mistakes along the way. There was and remains no playbook for any of this. The aim has always been to find the least worst choice.

But the facts have changed, and so too must our responses evolve. It is not an answer just to do what we did last year in the hope it will address this year’s challenges. And it is certainly not productive to demonise those who object to the policy decisions being made, or to pretend decisions are not being made because there are no alternatives available.

The dangers facing us now are quite different to what they were. The calculus must shift to recognise that it is, in fact, our children and young people who are now most vulnerable to suffering serious harm during this pandemic. It is not the virus that threatens them. The graver threat to them is from us leaving the original emergency policy responses to the virus in place for too long, without nuance or attenuation.

Michael Borsky QC is a Victorian barrister, practising in commercial and public law.