Daniel Andrews is the latest premier to lose the fight against Delta so the time has come for him to readjust his thinking beyond the draconian lockdowns damaging the welfare of the vast majority of Victorians and their children.
Andrews is now fighting yesterday’s war, trying to use the same blunt lockdown methods he employed for four months last year to bring this latest outbreak under control.
Delta is a different beast and it has got away from him with very little prospect of being reined in.
That fact is not Andrews’ fault – unlike Sydney, Melbourne’s lockdown could not have been harder or faster – but still Melbourne’s Delta cases are rising, not falling, and the lockdown that began on August 5 is being extended yet again.
The lesson from this is that Delta cannot be contained in large cities and Andrews needs to adjust his policies to that reality.
This reckoning will come to all premiers eventually when the country opens up, even to Western Australia’s Covid-zero Hermit Kingdom-cheerleader Mark McGowan.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has abandoned Covid-zero amid the uncontrolled Covid-19 outbreak in her state and has adjusted her own policies to meet this new reality.
Her direction last week to announce a slight easing of restrictions on social gatherings is an important nod to the toll that indefinite lockdowns take on mental health, especially among teenagers and children.
Andrews has derided the NSW policy as allowing for “picnics”, which suggests he is not adjusting his Covid-zero mindset to move with the times.
Andrews is now faced with two very stark choices, given that Covid-19 is unlikely to leave Victoria before the state reaches the Doherty Institute vaccination targets of 70 per cent and 80 per cent coverage (currently on track for November 3 and November 21 respectively).
He can continue his hard lockdown of the state, including pointless measures such as curfews and cruel ones such as closing children’s playgrounds, in the vain hope of beating Delta.
This will sentence Victorians – already the longest locked-down population on the planet during this pandemic – to at least two more months of hard lockdown.
It will inflict untold more misery on mental health, businesses and children’s education until the Doherty Institute vaccination targets are reached.
The alternative is a “soft lockdown”, as epidemiologist Tony Blakely has floated.
In other words, a middle path, which doesn’t take a “let it rip” approach to the virus but does offer limited personal freedoms to protect the welfare of an exhausted and frustrated population.
Yes, there would be some more Covid-19 cases, but as the much larger NSW outbreak has shown, deaths remain minimal and vaccination rates are soaring.
The health costs of a trade-off for greater freedoms is not remotely comparable to what it was during the Victorian lockdown last year.
So far, Andrews gives no indication he is the leader who can meet this moment in Victoria.
He has proven to be a one-trick lockdown pony. Now the time has come for him to show that he can move with the times and recognise that there is a middle way. But don’t hold your breath.
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