The spectacular failure of Melbourne’s lockdown

 

 

Melbourne has become the most locked-down city in the world. As of the 8^th of October, almost 5 million Melbournians have spent a total of 250 days under lockdown since March 2020. And the current sixth lockdown is not due to lift until October the 26^th.

 

The Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has cemented his place as the czar of lockdown.  Awash with passionate intensity, he is wont to portray children’s playgrounds as mine fields, and sunset beaches as Mordor. The imposition of the harsh lockdowns, with squads of police seemingly happy to assault innocent people, have made headlines around the world, but curiously not so much at home.

 

Not satisfied in making Melbourne unlivable, Andrews is applying vaccination mandates for all authorised workers, insisting they be fully vaccinated by the end of November. Given how wide the list is, virtually everyone is within the mandate, from farmers to judges, and it includes jobs where people work on their own or outdoors. This mandated medical treatment ignores Australian common law, and contravenes Article 1 of the Nuremberg Code as well as Article 6 of the 2005 UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.

 

But have these drastic rhetoric and actions at least kept Melbournians safe from COVID-19? Not a bit. In fact, quite the opposite. As of the 8^th of October, the state of Victoria has the second most number of cases of all Australian states, with 49,104 cases, topped only by New South Wales with 67,672; but Victoria has the most number of deaths at 889. This means that despite the longest lockdown in the world, Victoria, which contains just under 26 per cent of Australia’s population, has nevertheless experienced 40 per cent of Australia’s cases and 64 per cent of Australia’s COVID-related deaths. Indeed, the daily case number in Victoria on the 8^th of October has set a new national record, at 1838.

 

Data as of the 13th of October
https://covidlive.com.au/report/deaths-per-population

We seem to live in an era where elemental wisdom has been forgotten in the hysteria of the pandemic. It used to be taken for granted that when reality differed from your hypothesis, you amended your hypothesis rather than trying to deny reality. Yet, the Andrews government has persisted with lockdowns, despite reality consistently showing that it does not work.

 

This is not only just an anecdotal situation from one place in one country. Multiple studies examining more than a hundred countries have shown that there is no link between lockdowns or lockdown severity and COVID-19 mortality.

 

Notwithstanding their no-nonsense attitude, the government has in reality botched the most important aspect of their quarantine responsibilities – stopping the virus from entering in the first place. Australia has the advantage of being a distant island, so stopping cases from coming in through government-led quarantines was vital. Yet the Andrews government has bungled that spectacularly – the Victorian Health Department is now facing an AUD$95 million fine for the sieve-like hotel quarantine program in 2020, which is linked to more than 800 deaths in Victoria. Hiring unqualified and untrained staff (one member of security allegedly slept with a woman under quarantine) was a chief reason why the virus spread so easily. Yet not a single decision maker is held accountable, with the fine most likely to be paid by the impoverished Victorian tax payers.

 

So the government has failed at the most important task, and decided to fixate on a solution that does not work. While on vaccinations, which do work, Victoria is behind. As of the 8^th of October, Victoria has 56.57 per cent of people fully vaccinated, compared to the national figure of 60.25 per cent, and well behind New South Wales’s 71.49 per cent. This despite New South Wales having 1.5 million more people.

 

Vaccination of people aged 16 years or above, as of 13th of October
https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines

In the meanwhile, the damage done by the extended lockdowns have been felt across the state. Attempted suicide rates among teenage Victorians have risen by 184 per cent over the last 6 months. A foodbank was forced to close its door in August as the one-kilometer queue of cars outside blocked a main arterial bridge. Businesses are floundering. Education has been uprooted. People have given up looking for work. You’d hardly believe this was once the most livable city in the world.

 

The inflexible, unscientific, unsympathetic and obstinate tactic of this government has damaged Victoria inexorably.