Melbourne’s 6th lockdown

The state of Victoria, with almost seven million residents, and almost as large as the UK, has just been shunted into its sixth lockdown. With the fifth lockdown having only ended on July 27, less than 10 days ago. What tsunami of cases were uncovered that would have triggered this frantic reaction, you ask, concerned reader that you are? Eight. Just eight locally transmitted cases and all recorded in one city, Melbourne.

 

This latest announcement means a return to a 5 km radius limit in which you must stay, and only five reasons to go outdoors (shopping for essentials, maximum 2 hours of exercise per day, compassionate care, essential work, and medical care). You can have no visitors at home, no outdoor gatherings, no school for children, and severe caps have been imposed again for weddings and funerals.

 

The trigger finger of the authorities in initiating lockdowns is unfortunately getting quicker and quicker. A year ago, it took 191 new infections to trigger a 121 day lockdown. Twelve cases triggered our 4^th lockdown in May. Ten cases were reported on the day of the 5^th lockdown, and now eight is apparently the new Rubicon.

 

And why shutdown the entire state, which is bigger than England and Scotland combined, over eight cases in one city? Even cities and towns that have reported no COVID-19 cases for months are now in lockdown. The lack of transparency on how the government decides these things means that the process is entirely capricious. The incalculable damages to people’s livelihoods, to children’s education, to the mental welfare of Victorians, and to the nature of the relationship between supposedly democratic governments and the people are growing with each lockdown. And as citizens of the state, we are never sure when the next lockdown will come. Even as one lockdown ends, you cannot plan ahead in case of the next lockdown waiting around the bend. The mental toll of living under this erratic governance with no view or hope of normality is only to be expected—a recent poll found that nearly one in ten Victorians “seriously considered suicide” during the 2020 lockdown. This most recent lockdown can only exacerbate this.

 

The Premier Daniel Andrews said that he had “no alternative” but to lock the entire state down. This is blatantly untrue. The alternative is to have the courage to trust that the people that you supposedly serve are largely sensible people who have been and who will continue to be taking reasonable precautions to lower the risks of transmissions. The alternative is to not act like the head of a totalitarian state and decide what almost seven million people can and cannot do, based on impervious standards, with less than 4 hours of notice. The alternative is not to say “Don’t be out and about because all you might be doing is spreading the virus”, when what people are actually doing is trying to live their lives in already difficult circumstances – circumstances made difficult by the very same clandestine and increasingly despotic policies of this government.

 

Furthermore, this hypochondriac attitude and the unhealthy Stockholm syndrome with lockdowns are completely unfounded scientifically. Firstly, the dreaded Delta variant has been shown in the recent Public Health England Briefing to be only a fraction as deadly as the original Alpha strain, similar to seasonal flu, with much of the data collected before the vaccination ramped up in the UK. Secondly, multiple studies have shown that lockdowns are inefficient for reducing mortality. In the UK, after opening up on the 19^th of July, daily case numbers have been dropping dramatically for over 2 weeks and deaths numbers have remained stable. In Sweden, a month after the country removed the last of its mask mandates, the 7-day death average has reached zero. 

 

Melbourne has already spent a total of 6 months under lockdowns since the pandemic began. With the sixth lockdown looming, more are sure to come if the mindset of the government does not change. It has to realise that the medicine it is prescribing is sickening the patient.