Why we want to forget masks, lockdowns and social distancing but shouldn’t

We all want to forget masks, lockdowns and social distancing but the mayhem caused by Covid is not over. Here’s what every Australian can do.

OPINION

Covid has really been an extraordinary story and I think difficult to grasp because it’s out of the range of experience and really nothing of this magnitude has happened for 100 years, so it has been a big learning curve for every single person.

If we look at the data we see the effect around us at the moment, we know Covid infection is the third most common cause that Australians still die.

We know that when they look back the effect goes beyond the acute infection and there were 20,000 more deaths in our country last year than would have been expected if the pandemic had not happened.

Some of it is people get crowded out and can’t access care, some of it is they have long term effects from a Covid infection, so there’s a lot going on and it continues to have an enormous impact on Australian society.

The days of compulsory masks are over.Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

But I get the fact, I get the sense people really, really want it to be over.

I wonder if when you look at the number of people who statistically ought to have been eligible for another booster but haven’t had it, how much of that represents the fact we just want it over and people are wishing it was over and the mindset is that if we act like it’s over, then maybe it will be over.

It’s an extraordinary societal psychology that we are dealing with and we will still be learning about it for years to come.

AMA president professor Steve Robson. “As doctors we too want to forget.” Picture: Supplied

If you think about it for something that continues to take such an enormous toll on Australian lives, it has really dropped out of a lot of the discourse across our society and the media and social media and I think we will learn why, it will be studied, there will be many PHDs that will come out of the public’s response, as we move forward.

The continuing death toll doesn’t surprise me. The thing that surprises me is there is so little comment about it in the community. I think we know it is a virulent and infectious virus and it shouldn’t surprise us that the vulnerable still – if they contract it even with anti viral treatments and the knowledge we have now and how we treat and manage things – die.

That doesn’t surprise me as much because we know it is a lethal virus.

The Covid-19 drive through testing clinics became a fixture throughout Australia. Picture: Richard Dobson

What surprises me is that deaths at such a massive rate in the country largely seem to go uncommented these days. For me that’s the big surprise.

I know it’s boring and you know people think “oh this week’s figures, it’s been going on for years now’. But in the end I think it really is startling that so many Australians are losing their lives and really there is this great wish to just get on with things and let it pass.

Prof Robson said the pandemic has not finished yet.

It’s an extraordinary time in our history and I think we will look back and ask questions. You know we read these historical things and think ‘why didn’t they do anything, what were they thinking at the time?’ Living through it you sort of see the psychology and how it affects the community. I get it.

Nobody, nobody wants this over more than doctors let me tell you having spent so much time treating people and being involved in the disruption of it all through the hospitals.

But at the end of the day you just have to grit your teeth and say ‘its not over yet, if we all do what we know protects us then hopefully it will be over soon but we are not quite there yet’.

– Professor Steve Robson is the Australian Medical Association (AMA) president

Originally published as Why we want to forget masks, lockdowns and social distancing but shouldn’t