Coronavirus: Gold standards lose lustre in light of human error

Everyone in every state does their best, but human error is inevitable. It is time our governments unite and fight the virus, instead of each other.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Getty Images

How’s this for a gold-standard claim? In May, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she had “made sure” that NSW had “the systems in place to be able to weather whatever came our way, so that we wouldn’t ever go into lockdown again”.

After this, the good folk of NSW were entitled to think that no matter what happened, they would never have to go into lockdown again. Unfortunately, it was just a gold-standard delusion.

Last week a new cluster was forming, and the NSW Treasurer said in parliament; “Gold-standard testing, tracing, quarantine”. Berejiklian asked people to use “common sense” and “make individual decisions based on their own circumstances”.

“We recommend you consider working from home or else living in the LGA where you work,” she said. “Just be extra cautious.”

On June 18, the Premier had asked people to avoid mass gatherings: “Unless you absolutely have to, our strong preference is that you do not engage in any activity.”

Many made individual decisions to ignore strong preferences for the use of common sense and extra caution, including the politicians themselves. A budget night function went ahead. Sixty to 70 people, including several ministers and, briefly, the Premier attended. This became a spreading event. Gold-standard hypocrisy. One rule ... er sorry, recommendation for them, the other for the people.

By June 24, calls were growing for a circuit-breaker lockdown. However, authorities confessed it was already too late for that. Chief health officer Kerry Chant said: ‘Three days is not long enough if you have distributed disease ... this has got out into the community.” There were “chains of transmission that we are not aware of because we have some unlinked cases”.

This statement meant only one thing. A lockdown was inevitable – the longer you delay them, the longer they last.

Still, the hubris continued. Federal Liberal Dan Tehan said he hoped other states would learn a lesson from NSW ... if they managed to avoid a lockdown.

“What it would demonstrate is if you can get the testing and the contact tracing in place, then you can minimise the damage to economic livelihoods by being proportionate to your response,” he boasted to Sky News on Friday morning.

Within a few hours, Berejiklian announced a local lockdown (without using the word lockdown – this is NSW you know) for some areas of Sydney. In trendy Newtown, along the busy high street, one side was locked down while the other side was not. What was to stop people using their discretion to cross the road? Nothing. It was a gold-standard farce.

A new health order was issued from 4pm that all workers involved with quarantine and transport at the international airport must be vaccinated and wear a mask. This was how the cluster started. Surely any gold-standard system would have had this order in place long ago.

On the Saturday, Berejiklian held a press conference to put greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Wollongong and Shellharbour into a two-week lockdown. The next day, AMA vice-president Chris Moy conceded the cluster had “beaten the NSW contact tracers, and the reliance of contact tracers and holding out (on lockdown) for a few days has led to seeding across the country”.

Shortly after, Berejiklian, when asked about what she had done, said “I do not regret a single decision we have taken because it has been based on health advice, and also when you are making a major decision to lock down millions and millions of people, you have to make sure it is based on health advice. I care about keeping people safe, and not putting burdens on them unless we absolutely have to.”

This is a gold-standard disregard for the rest of the country.

The burden is bigger than ever now, spread wider, and many are not feeling safe at all. The NSW cluster is not entirely responsible for the situation Australia finds itself in today, but it is a large part of it, and who knows what is yet to come.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of NSW contact tracers, who work very hard to help us all. It is criticism of the NSW government’s tiresome vanity, and its attempt to insert political differentiation into a pandemic management process.

To quote Victoria’s chief health officer this week, the virus has “humbled” us all.

Victoria made mistakes last year; leaving it about two weeks too late to lock down was one.

It is a shame those errors were not used for serious learning. For the foreseeable future, if required, NSW will be locked down, again and again.

Berejiklian has set the target for avoiding future lockdowns – 80 per cent of adults vaccinated. This seems sensible, and realistic.

In the meantime, we must support NSW, but no one needs to hear any more claims about NSW being the gold standard in anything.

Everyone in every state does their best, but human error is inevitable. It is time for our governments to unite and fight the virus, instead of each other.