Has Australia lost the plot on COVID-19?
When I was living in the United States last year, watching America’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic, I took some pride in how Australia had taken a tougher approach to largely eradicate the virus.
That was then. The pandemic has now been largely tamed here and yet there has been no sensible adjustment to this victory. The approach of some of our premiers remains one of paranoia and bureaucratic overkill, as if we were India.
Last week, my wife had the misfortune of being on QF778 from Perth to Melbourne, sharing that plane with a man who later tested positive for COVID-19.
Her treatment by Victorian authorities since then has been a dark comedy of errors which betrays the brutal and clumsy COVID-handling regime that is being quietly imposed on ordinary Australians who pose very little threat of spreading the virus.
Once news broke last Friday that a man had tested positive on that same flight from Perth with 257 passengers, my wife immediately went to get a drive-through COVID test and then self-isolated in a spare bedroom with an ensuite in our Melbourne home until we heard more.
We then heard that she and every other passenger on that flight would have to self-isolate for a full 14 days, a catch-all decision which paid no heed to the proximity of the infected passenger to others on that plane.
But what did that mean for myself and our 12-year-old son who also share the house? Were we free to go out into the community? There was no clear guidance on this. My wife tested negative and the next day I also got tested as a precaution.
It was not until Saturday night, three days after the flight and two days after the COVID-positive passenger was discovered that a health official finally called. That official said that both myself and our son were also required to stay at home despite my wife having returned a negative test and having been in ongoing isolation within the house.
This advice was then directly contradicted by two health workers who knocked on our door the next day and said that my son and I were free to move about in the community.
Given these mixed messages, we did not leave the house on Sunday, causing my son to miss his team’s soccer game and for me to cancel a long-planned family gathering.
When a health official finally called again on Sunday night, my wife was told she had two choices: to go to hotel quarantine for the remainder of the 14-day period or to stay at home in self-isolation in a bedroom. But the official then added the kicker that my wife staying home would mean that myself and my son would also have to isolate at home, meaning he would miss almost two weeks of school.
The official told us that the only way that myself and my son could be “released” back into the community was if she went into hotel quarantine and then returned another negative test.
This seemed a heavy-handed response when she was fully self-isolating in a bedroom, had already tested negative (as had I) and when zero COVID cases were emerging from that flight.
My wife felt she had no choice but to go to hotel quarantine to allow our son to attend school for the next two weeks. So a quarantine bus was booked for the next day, Monday.
But on the Monday — as a bus was driving to our home to take her to hotel quarantine — my wife got a call from yet another health official who said that in fact she was allowed to continue self-isolating at home and that myself and our son would be free to leave the house during that time.
So the bus was cancelled. But about an hour later another health official called, apparently a more senior one, and said our latest advice was wrong. She said the rules require that you either choose hotel quarantine or else the whole family must quarantine at home together. So once again, my wife was all but forced to choose hotel quarantine.
By this stage, my wife, who had no symptoms, had gone out to get yet another drive-through COVID test in the hope that this would help “release” my son and I.
Finally the quarantine bus came to collect her at 8.30pm on Monday, a full five days after the flight, when she had already taken two COVID tests and when no other passenger had so far caught the virus off the infected man.
Even Perth has lifted the lockdown associated with that infection. I have seen reports that there are still at least 50 passengers from that Perth flight who have not been tested at all, much less twice. And yet she was still forbidden from isolating in a room in our home without bringing the whole family into similar isolation.
Don’t get me wrong, we are more than happy to do our part to prevent the spread of COVID. But as my son sobbed watching his mother taken away for no good reason — her second two-week hotel quarantine in as many months because we returned home from the US in February — it was hard not to feel that common sense has been lost in Australia’s fight against the virus.
More Coverage
Read related topics:Coronavirus
Join the conversation
Burke mulls cancelling visa of academic who called Oct 7 ‘a celebration’
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is considering the visa status of a US-based academic who attended Monday’s Hizb ut-Tahrir-associated rally in Sydney, praising the Houthi rebels and saying Hamas's attacks were a day of 'growth' for Palestinians.
Read more
Israel a ‘miracle’, says Labor senator
Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill has condemned the rise of anti-Semitism, as politicians from both sides of politics paused to commemorate October 7 in Canberra.
Read more