Rise in defiance of Victorian rules, for sanity’s sake

There is broad agreement that the failure to follow the lockdown rules is at the centre of the latest spike in case. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

Let’s call it Melbourne’s dirty little secret. For weeks, maybe even months, people in their millions quietly have been defying Daniel Andrews’ lockdown rules.

At first bending them. Then breaking them under the weight of record-breaking lockdowns, a desire for psychological relief, companionship and, to be frank, selfish reasons of comfort over the greater good.

For Mornington Peninsula Shire mayor Despi O’Connor, whose domain includes the playground of the rich and infamous on Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay, the increase in vehicle and pedestrian traffic has been evident.

“It’s certainly busy. Is it a good thing? I don’t think so. We’ve had an increase in cases down here. There are still people who think it’s OK to do what they like,” Ms O’Connor said.

The pandemic has divided Victorians off and on for 18 months and there is now a wide consensus that failure to adhere to the lockdown rules is ubiquitous, experts citing mobility data that shows the AFL grand final was a crisis point for the Andrews government.

Epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws warned that a significant weakness point in Victoria was the lower rate of vaccinations for those aged 16 to 39 compared with NSW.

Professor McLaws said only 23 per cent had been fully vaccinated in that age group in Victoria with 43 per cent having their first dose by Wednesday, bringing to 66 per cent the number of younger people to have received one or more needle.

This compared with 47 per cent fully vaccinated in that age group in NSW and 32 per cent with the first dose, lifting to 79 per cent those who were on the vax pathway.

Mary Louise McLaws, eminent epidemiologist, says Victoria is way behind in one key vaccination cohort. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“So you’ve been way behind. Victoria is behind,” she told The Weekend Australian.

With most active cases falling in the younger age groups, the need for those aged 16 to 39 to get on board is obvious.

There is broad agreement that the failure to follow the lockdown rules is at the centre of the latest spike in cases, which surged to 1438 in Victoria on Thursday.

On the 80th day of the latest wave NSW recorded 1533 cases compared with Victoria’s 1438 at the same time, but experts are worried the spread of cases across Melbourne is so wide that it’s possible the Victorian numbers could rise markedly each day, outstripping NSW.

The NSW positive case rate fell 9.2 per cent on last week, according to CovidBaseAU, while the growth in Victoria’s positive case rate soared 60.7 per cent, with NSW nearly doubling Victoria’s total reported tests on Friday. NSW active cases have dropped under 10,000 (9862), for the first time in six weeks.

Professor McLaws, from the University of NSW, said that at one stage Victoria was two or three weeks behind NSW but Thursday had put it about a week behind, with just more than a month before Victoria was due to hit the 80 per cent double-dose target. “I can only conclude that you have got enormous fatigue,” she said.

University of Melbourne epidemiologist Tony Blakely sounded genuinely shocked when Melbourne cases spiked on Thursday.

He had been wondering for the previous two weeks what was going on with the Victorian caseload because he had thought the numbers had “shouldered” about 10 days before. He became concerned last weekend when Victorian Covid commander Jeroen Weimar had suggested about half of transmissions were from household to household, which pointed to rule breaches.

Professor Blakely said a driving force was the length of the lockdown, which has been among the world’s longest. October 26 marks the first anniversary of the drive to zero cases last year after a 112-day hard lockdown.

He said it had been tough for many to conform this year: “Because they are sick of lockdown and just trying to live a life that’s somewhere near normal.

“The reality is we are human beings and we’ve had enough.”

Professor Blakely said NSW’s strategy of focusing on specific local government areas in the drive to restrict the spread of the virus had been successful but random things could change outbreaks, such as higher-risk social settings, density levels, household size and chance.

“You can’t deny that Covid just does what it wants. Basically,” he said.

Professor Blakely said it was also possible that the violent wave of protests that hit Victoria last week might have seeded cases, with a cluster at the CFMEU headquarters in Melbourne.

“It’s not even a smoking gun, it’s a gun, you can see it,’’ he said.

For Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp, there are reasons to be optimistic, with last week’s city protests provoking an unlikely response from people, who she said had rallied behind the city’s plans to rebuild.

Ms Capp said foot traffic in the city had plummeted to 10 to 15 per cent of pre-pandemic levels and that in her opinion the major lockdown rules were being adhered to by most people.

But there was some fraying around the edges.

“I think given we’re a city with the most locked down days some of that fatigue and fraying is understandable,” she said.

“Now we can see that light at the end of the tunnel this is probably the hardest bit because you’ve got to really stay in the now even though you can see the easing of the restrictions coming.”

The Victorian Premier, meanwhile, emerged on Friday a much happier man, with 1143 cases.

Andrews’s government has repeatedly stressed that NSW benefited earlier in its breakout from hundreds of thousands of extra vaccines, although he is exposed because the latest hard lockdown, nearly two months’ old, failed to stop the spread.

His best argument seems to be: “We can see to the other side of this.”