Coronavirus: Experts split over lockdowns, timing

It’s not so much a debate over the necessity of lockdowns as the timing: too early will see us “living like hermits” for six months.

Beachgoers keeping distance on the grass at Bondi Beach in Sydney last Sunday after tens of thousands drew condemnation for flooding the beach days earlier. Picture: Joel Carrett/AAP

There is no prospect four in every five Australians will “do the right thing”, the bare minimum level of compliance needed to “bend the curve”, unless the country’s are forced into lockdown, Emeritus Professor John Dwyer has warned.

Prof Dwyer, the immunologist who spearheaded Australia’s fight against HIV/AIDS, says Australia’s best hope right now is to impose an immediate six week lockdown across the country.

“Maximum pain for maximum gain,’ says Professor Dwyer.

“The infection rates are doubling every three days in Australia, what does that tell you? You only have to look at the horror scenes in Italy and Spain … and you think, really, is anything too draconian not to spare ourselves from that here?”

“When the PM says every job is essential well that’s just bullshit. I don’t think hairdressing is an essential job.”

Prof Dwyer’s call for more hard line action from the Morrison Government echoes the increasingly desperate plea from doctors groups and front line health workers that everyone other than essential workers go into self imposed quarantine.

On Friday morning NSW Chief Health officer Kerry Chant said the rise in community to community infection overnight — now 145 in the state — was “a worrying trend”, and tougher lockdowns were inevitable. Just not yet.

Flattening the coronavirus curve graphic

Australia’s leading infectious diseases expert, Professor Peter Collignon, says while NSW, the epicentre of the crisis, would inevitably have to move faster than other states, ordering a lockdowns too early would force the entire country into the unsustainable position of “living like hermits” for six months.

Professor Peter Collignon. Picture: Kym Smith

“If we have to go into lockdown now we will have to stay in lockdown until September, because peak infection rates will be in June,’ Prof Collignon says.

“A vaccine is going to take 18 months or longer … I just do not think it is feasible to lock down society for six months so we are all living like hermits.”

Prof Collignon, who led the fight against the deadly SARS virus in Australia in 2009, is directly involved in developing the infection control protocols for COVID 19 for the Commonwealth.

He says Australia is still six weeks behind the catastrophic infection rates in the US and Europe. In Australia, overseas travellers still accounted for between 50 per cent to 75 per cent of all new infections.

He said the priority now was for much tougher regimes to ensure the infected, those exposed to the virus and recent arrivals from overseas were forced to stay in quarantine.

“We need much harder impositions like tracking of phones because we do not want this spreading widely,’ Prof Collignon said.

“The trouble is we have a million travellers returning home every month, and the infection rate on cruise ship passengers alone is between 5 to 10 per cent.

“There’s not much community transmission yet, though that may change in two weeks.”

Prof Collignon believes hotels could play a critical role for infected people or people in self isolation “who can’t do it at home.”

He also encouraged infected people caught at home without any protective equipment to make their own face masks.

“Its not going to be perfect but if you are coughing and spluttering it will help protect others in the home,’ he said.

The other critical issue was getting the message out that people over the age of 50 or 60 with underlying conditions needed to socially isolate themselves from now on.

He said while there was still ongoing debate about whether schools should be completely shut down, what appeared “beyond doubt “ was that children were not getting the virus at anywhere near the rate of adults, the same phenomenon he observed with the SARS virus.

“It might be the virus latches on to what we call our ACE receptors and children appear to have less of those,” Prof Collignon said.

He said while mortality rates from the virus in Australia were still tracking at a relatively low three in every thousand, “no-one is bullet proof”

“To get this under control we need to do more than flatten the curve, I want to see it go right down.’ he said.

But Prof Dwyer says while he supports all the COVID 19 initiatives of the Morrison Government, he’s confident “if people are given a realistic target they can work with it”.

He said six weeks was the lock down time frame that had been adopted by his colleague and fellow immunologist, Dr Anthony Fauci, a former warrior of the AIDS/HIV crisis who is now chief health Adviser to the White House.

“There are the infected well out there, people with mild symptoms or no symptoms at all,” Prof Dwyer said.

“That’s one of the smart tricks this virus has got up its sleeve. This virus either kills you or you kill it.”