Dan Andrews’s roadmap looks like a punishing trip

One can understand the posturing by politicians in Queensland and Western Australia where elections are scheduled in the near term but why has Daniel Andrews opted for the same unachievable virus elimination strategy (“Slow, steady, strangulation”, 7/9)?

Victorian cases have come down dramatically but because of the haphazard way restrictions were applied over time, it is impossible to know which were most effective. Most gallingly Mr Andrews had nothing to say about the state’s dysfunctional contact tracing system which together with the politically driven quarantine system fiasco led to hundreds of premature deaths, huge economic costs and untold psychological damage to families and small business owners and employees.

Harry Kinread, Brighton, Vic

As a GP in Geelong I feel compelled to advise you to encourage people to be patient and help them to see the necessity of following the expert medical advice and not to rush the process of easing restrictions in Victoria. Let me give you a tiny window into a COVID pod in an ICU in Melbourne and see the devastating effects of a bad case of this virus. People are dying alone with this illness that causes massive inflammation in the lungs until it slowly suffocates them. Patients are not transferred on to a ventilator until they are virtually unconscious from the fluid that has built up in their lungs.

With COVID-19, patients are on the ventilators many days or weeks longer than was ever the case in my days as a resident doctor 30 years ago. Only 20 per cent survive when they get to this point. If they do survive they are often left with multiple major organ damage and life-long health problems.

Dr Steven Sommer, Highton, Vic

The Andrews government’s exit strategy from Stage 4 restrictions requires a 14-day average of less than 5 new cases per day by October 26 and zero new cases for 14 days by November 23. Andrews need have looked no further than NSW to realise that these targets are both unnecessarily conservative and naive. In the last 14 days, NSW has recorded 104 new locally acquired cases despite an incredibly effective contact tracing system, with 10 new cases on Sunday. Victoria cannot reasonably expect to do better than this NSW result by October 26. A better approach for Victoria is to reopen its economy by mirroring the NSW approach.

A more realistic target would be to lift the Stage 4 restrictions when it achieves a 14-day average of less than 15 new cases per day. At this level, effective contact tracing can control community transmission while the economy is allowed to function.

Michael Feneley, Randwick, NSW

The arguments for continued hard lockdowns in Victoria have frequently cited “the science” (meaning model outputs) as their justification. That is non-science nonsense. These models are just mathematical formulae that make various assumptions, most basically that the future is a repeat of the past.

They sideline the critical science of what should have been learnt about managing, controlling and living with COVID; for example via better contact tracing, how to open up to low-risk activities and so on.

That the Andrews government has failed to heed and implement those lessons and instead has resorted to police state-style lockdown enforcement is a betrayal of the trust of not only Victorians, but all Australians.

Andrew W H Lake, Edwardstown, SA

Australia is in a mess, trapped by a Victorian concept of Federation that has allowed the constituent parts to devolve into the semi-countries they originally were. This has allowed paranoia, parochialism and party politics to run rough-shod over the wishes of the populace and has made us a laughing stock. It is also sending us broke.

My sister in London asked me how such a dire set of circumstances came to be and I told her: Australia has seventeen levels of government across the country. State, territory and federal governments all, with one exception, have an upper and a lower house. Seventeen. The extent of incompetence and waste is in that number. Seventeen.

Our cousins across the ditch have one: unicameral with semi-proportional voting. Cost of government per taxpayer has to be in their favour.

Mike Bevan, Frenchs Forest, NSW