The Covid virus is the pandemic prince of paradox. On Covid, only extremists have consistent positions – everyone else is caught in a blizzard of Covid contradictions. I know the virus is not a sentient being, but it’s done pretty well at confusing and dividing us. Covid has created, and revealed, a welter of contradictions in public policy: contradictions within our nation, within every political movement, within individuals themselves.
Take the estimable NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian. She has been, until the latest outbreak, the most successful state leader in coping with Covid, not panicking about small outbreaks but ruthlessly and effectively hunting them down and suppressing them. Now, in the midst of her latest lockdown extension, her government is racked with internal division and extremely confused in its messages.
When Scott Morrison outlined his four phases of Covid last week, Berejiklian several times said she was the most ambitious leader in dealing with Covid, meaning she wants as much normal life as possible. But she also repeated her preference, which is that she wants 80 per cent of the community vaccinated before Australia moves to the more relaxed phase two. No nation in the world has 80 per cent vaccination. We will never get it. So these two statements are a blatant Berejiklian contradiction.
This week her Health Minister Brad Hazzard hinted at the possibility NSW might even ditch lockdowns altogether and let everyone learn how to live with the virus. That contradicts countless previous statements that the NSW government would always follow the health advice. Similarly, the Premier said she wanted this to be the last lockdown.
That’s a very good ambition. But 70-odd per cent of Australia, and 70 per cent of NSW, still haven’t had their first vaccine shot. If in a fortnight there is another sudden, big outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant, will Berejiklian really let it rip?
Her contradictions are nowhere near as gross as those of Queensland. The Queensland Premier and her chief health officer took the view that Australians are so safe from the virus, because we have so thoroughly locked it out, that even the less than one-in-a-million chance of dying from the AstraZeneca vaccine was too dangerous to contemplate (whereas of course hundreds or even thousands of routine medical and drug procedures have far higher death rates than one in a million).
Thus the only way we can ever be safe enough to open up is to get vaccinated, but getting vaccinated with the main vaccine available is too dangerous. Therefore, we should do nothing and blame the federal government. Karl Marx used to talk of capitalism being caught up in its contradictions. Capitalism’s contradictions had nothing on the Queensland government.
As others have pointed out, the view of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, that the infinitesimally small risk of death from the AZ vaccine was enough to make it recommend against the vaccine for anyone under 60, was the single most devastating blow against the vaccination campaign in Australia, just as the Queensland CHO’s remarks were the greatest boost the anti-vaxxers ever received.
The public itself is full of contradictions. We hate lockdowns and the undoubted economic damage they do, but we vote overwhelmingly to return the governments that impose them. There is no doubt lockdowns save lives and equally no doubt they have economic costs. Respectable academic opinion agrees, but you don’t need to rely on anything as feeble as that. Just trust your eyes. During the infamous second wave there was one day when Victoria and the UK recorded almost identical Covid case numbers. The UK went on to record 130,000 Covid deaths, though this is an underestimate, while Victoria kept its deaths to several hundred.
The difference was that Australia had its borders shut, Victoria had its borders shut and Melbourne endured a long, hard lockdown.
The public itself is fickle. When we were enjoying a pretty good run, we saw infection rates in quarantine spark up with Australians returning from India. The government enacted a temporary pause on returns from India and was roundly condemned by every right-thinking commentator as a heartless beast. But in recent weeks it’s obvious that our creaky hotel quarantine system cannot cope with the Delta variant, so the Labor states demanded, successfully, that we halve the number of arrivals of any kind from overseas.
Heartlessness is in the eye of the beholder, it seems. The one area where the federal government is most at fault is not having purpose-built quarantine facilities with outdoor ventilation in all the states. Before the Delta virus these were less necessary. And the Delta virus was never on anyone’s road map.
Our metaphors for this virus have been misleading and contradictory themselves. Everyone wants a road map to get out of the virus. But road maps are for navigating static topography. No road map can show you how to win a tennis match. That’s because the guy on the other side of the net – in this case the virus – gets a say on what happens.
One glaring contradiction the virus has shown up is the fiscal contradiction of constitutionally powerful states funded in substantial measure by the federal government. Our Federation generally works not too badly. Tasmania is not as distant in living standards from NSW as West Virginia is from California because the federal government pours money into the poorer states. But that fiscal moral hazard makes the states mendicants and whingers. Covid has given premiers a de facto licence to spend federal social money. The states lock down, the feds pay. It’s another contradiction.
It’s certainly true that the only way out of the virus is through vaccination. As Nick Coatsworth observes, it’s a different disease once you’re vaccinated. But there’s no guarantee that the Delta variant is the last or worst variant the virus might throw up. Delta is much more contagious and it’s still not clear that it’s not more deadly. In the UK the death rate has declined because so many vulnerable people are vaccinated.
But a new variant could be yet more contagious, yet more deadly, and might find ways to break through vaccination. Vaccine effectiveness against Delta is already dropping. We just don’t know.
One final contradiction that’s really a paradox. We are a larrikin and irreverent nation, yet we’ve mostly obeyed the health rules. Are we less larrikin than we thought? Not at all. Australian soldiers, like Israelis, are highly irreverent and non-hierarchical about their superior officers. But in battle you can rely on them absolutely to work together and obey orders.
That’s a good thing.
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