Coronavirus: Grim past may be shape of Victoria’s future

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in Melbourne on Monday. Picture: Ian Currie

On the evidence before the official inquiry, and on the even stronger evidence of our own eyes, Daniel Andrews’ government cannot be trusted to take Victoria safely out of lockdown over the next weeks and months.

To manage “living with the virus” successfully, the Victorian government will have to do the two things we know for sure it has done uniquely, almost unbeliev­ably, badly: contact tracing and hotel quarantine.

Further, it is a government in disarray. The toxic, solipsistic derangement of Victorian Labor is evident in the fact the party never got angry with the Premier over the worst policy failure by any government in Australian history but has become distraught because a health minister plainly way out of her depth felt obliged to resign.

You know a party has gone comprehensively wrong when ministerial careers lost are more important than lives lost.

All of this comes as inter­national experience demonstrates how ruthlessly the virus exploits and punishes incompetent governments.

The world has just passed the cruel milestone of one million deaths officially attributed to COVID-19.

The Economist magazine conservatively estimates that there are a million more COVID deaths not officially registered.

Other epidemiologists say the true toll is almost most certainly much higher again.

Western Europe is in the grip of its second wave and acutely worried about the northern winter. The infection rate has been doubling every seven or eight days in Britain. Boris Johnson’s government wheeled out its two top medical scientists to say that if this rate of increase persisted, there could be 50,000 new cases a day by late October and in due course 200 deaths a day.

Those who want to downplay the virus say this is typical scare tactics, yet the virus’s ability to double, then double again, then keep doubling, is undeniable.

But no European government is taking lightly the threat of geometric progression this northern winter. Marseilles, Madrid and cities all over Britain and in much of Europe are imposing restrictions, some close to lockdown.

Europe’s second wave is much less deadly than the first, partly because the most vulnerable were killed in the first wave and the new infections are hitting the young more heavily. And treatments are better.

But both the hospitalisation rates and death rates are now rising in Europe.

It is also clear that if there are widespread outbreaks among the young, the virus eventually finds its way into vulnerable populations. European governments are terrified of again finding their health systems under extreme stress, if not overwhelmed. And significant numbers of those infected are left with severe long-term health problems.

This is all highly relevant to Victoria. Governments much more competent than that in Melbourne have been caught again and again by the virus with repeated and renewed waves.

Those countries that have managed good health results combined with limited economic damage — such as Taiwan, South Korea and Germany — have pursued energetic and effective contact tracing. Even in Wuhan, contact tracing has been the key to keeping the virus suppressed.

This will be even more important in Australia because we are not good at social distancing.

Massive lockdowns, while sometimes necessary, are a sign of policy failure.

The Andrews government has failed in every speck of policy that required any operational or policy sophistication.

It has succeeded only in draconian, auth­ori­tarian, industrial state lockdown, a modern iteration of the medieval response to plagues.

It is still miles behind NSW in contact tracing, which is mostly science but also partly art.

The Andrews government has neither science nor art.

Thousands of Australians want to come home. And if the Victorian economy is to recover, some international travellers will eventually need to be allowed in.

This will increase the risk of spot outbreaks and inevitably involve some hotel quarantine.

Is there any reason to think the Andrews government has ­acquired the competence to carry out these tasks effectively?

The hideous months Melbourne has just gone through may yet be the shape of still further things to come.