These meandering Covid road maps lead to a dead end

‘If Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ “go hard, go early” lockdown proved anything, it’s that lockdowns don’t work.’ Picture: Sarah Matray

There’s a saying: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Some of us were shocked when Australian governments copied communist China imposing Covid-19 lockdowns. Some thought this was a too single-minded focus on health over the economy, jobs, education, social interaction, family relationships and civil rights.

People tolerated it for various reasons. I’m past the point of tolerating it any more. After 20 months, all I see are desperate, tired people with frayed emotions, hanging on because they think it’s nearly over. So it was incredibly disappointing during the past few months to see state governments renege on allowing citizens a full, normal life.

The so-called national plan signed off by all states and territories dangled rewards for 80 per cent of adults fully vaccinated. The rewards were illusory. Queensland and Western Australia threw the national plan out the window. And NSW and Victoria made their own, more restrictive, road maps.

Under NSW’s original road map, substantial restrictions remained even after NSW reached 80 per cent, including limitations on household visitors and other gatherings; masks indoors; businesses subject to density restrictions; stadiums restricted to 5000 people; schools not fully open until November 1; funerals, weddings and churches subject to density restrictions. If one thing epitomises the cruelty of lockdowns, it’s grieving via streaming.

These restrictions would not lift until December 1, with some density restrictions continuing indefinitely.

On Thursday, new NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet announced an earlier easing of some of these restrictions, including increased caps on visitors and other gatherings, scrapping masks in offices, partial opening of nightclubs and schools fully open by October 25. But restrictions will still continue until December 1.

Victoria remains under an iron fist. It will reach 80 per cent later and, after it does, will maintain even more restrictions than NSW’s original plan. Restrictions will continue until 80 per cent of people aged over 12 are vaccin­ated, likely Christmas Day. Then households can have 30 visitors.

Businesses in both states must deploy staff as bouncers to keep out unvaccinated customers (in NSW until December 1, in Victoria indefinitely). Health bureaucrats may think this will increase vaccine rates. But spare a thought for small businesses, which already have borne most of the pain and cost of lockdown, now also deputised as Covid police.

We’ve no idea when Australians will be allowed to travel freely within our country.

It’s only a matter of time before Covid gets into the non-Covid affected states, prompting cycles of endless lockdowns and false promises. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has threatened to keep borders shut until the federal government gives her state more money. This is the Premier who banned dancing and mingling at school formals while permitting 40,000 people, leaping and shouting, at the football.

Australians are like kids on a long car ride repeatedly asking when they’ll get there, with Mum fibbing it will be soon to tide them over until the next stop. I’m tired of being treated like a child; tired of rule by highly paid bureaucrats and their complex, contradictory and sometimes absurd edicts.

How many of them have run a business or created a job? They seem to have no idea how hard it is to operate with constraints on income while trying to pay wages, rent and the rest.

Health bureaucrats clearly don’t care about jobs or businesses or the economy, or reuniting families, or mourners being able to properly grieve, or children’s education, or civil liberties. They don’t even care about health.

They only care about one disease: Covid-19. Scroll through the NSW or Victorian health department’s social media accounts and see how many posts are about anything else. What are they doing about other public health priorities? What are they doing about the health problems created by their own lockdowns, such as the deterioration of youth mental health and the significant decline in cancer screenings?

Thursday’s announcement of earlier easing of restrictions in NSW was welcome. But it’s not enough. Why must NSW wait another five to six weeks after reaching 80 per cent for the return of freedoms and businesses operating near capacity? Why must density restrictions continue?

How will small businesses cope with staff forced into isolation if a Covid case walks through the door?

Mandatory isolation triggered by Britain’s contact-tracing app, dubbed the “pingdemic”, wreaked such havoc the UK largely abandoned isolation rules.

And who will rein in the lockdown-addicted bureaucrats so we don’t have to go through this again?

If Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ “go hard, go early” lockdown proved anything, it’s that lockdowns don’t work. Victoria’s latest outbreak soared higher and faster than NSW starting from the same point. Yet NSW’s chief health officer has refused to rule out lockdowns after reaching 80 per cent. Why is it up to her?

Lockdown is the hammer. Covid is the nail. And health bureaucrats see nothing else.

I think Perrottet understands this. Let’s hope he has the courage to lead the state out of this wilderness, not follow the bureaucrats deeper into the mire.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine is author of Speaking My Mind and Warren Mundine: In Black and White.