Mary
Fifteen months since the start of this pandemic it seems nothing much has been learned. Here we are in Victoria into our fourth lockdown after 21 people were diagnosed as having the Covid-19 virus. We have to wear masks indoors and out, cannot travel more than 5 kilometres from our homes, cannot have visitors and can only leave home for 5 specified purposes.
The latest outbreak originated from a man who spent his hotel quarantine in Adelaide. He had tested negative during his stay, but it appears that he caught the virus through an open door, from a person in an adjacent room who was infected. Hotel quarantine in Melbourne has all taken place in inner-city hotels which were not designed to be quarantine facilities. So far there have been 17 “escapes” of the virus from hotel quarantine in Australia. Compare this to the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory, also being used for quarantine. It uses cabin style accommodation, allowing people fresh air and access to the outdoors. There have been no escapes of the virus from that facility.
The Victorian government belatedly realised that the current system is not working and put a proposal to the Federal government to construct a purposed built quarantine facility at Mickleham, on the northern fringes of Melbourne, adjacent to the existing animal quarantine facility. Prime Minister Scott Morrison originally dismissed the idea, saying that hotel quarantine was serving its purpose. However it appears that he may now be seeing the light.
The slow uptake of vaccines by Australians is also being blamed for the latest outbreak. Senior Australians are being accused of being “vaccine hesitant”. To many, the refusal to be coerced into receiving one of these vaccine doses is entirely rational. Those over 50 years old are being offered only the Astra-Zenica vaccine, with under 50s receiving the more effective and safer Pfizer vaccine.
Writing in The Australian, Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah says:
“When the options are a good, but not best, vaccine versus no vaccine, then the choice smacks of coercion”.
Ananda-Rajah states that 50-59 year olds have the highest incidence of thrombosis with thrombocytopaenia syndrome (TTS), accounting for 26 percent of the 309 British cases. In Australia, 24 people have developed TTS and treatment is not simple and long term outcomes are unknown. Authorities continue to assure us that this blood clotting disorder is rare, but that is cold comfort to those who have developed that disorder.
Many simply do not assess the risk of catching Covid-19 as outweighing the risk of the vaccine. The hospitalisation of federal health minister Greg Hunt following his vaccination was not a good look, nor was his statement that even with the population fully vaccinated we probably still wouldn’t be able to travel overseas. So why bother?
During the second wave in Victoria last year, most of the lives lost were people with an average age in their mid-80s, and those with underlying health conditions. Add to that the fact that a healthy person in their 50s or 60s living in a regional or rural Australian location has almost zero risk of coming into contact with the virus, or becoming extremely ill or dying from it, there seems no good reason to risk a vaccine. Maybe once these vaccines have been around for a few years and the long term side-effects become clear, people will be more willing to become vaccinated.
If the government wants to encourage the over 50s to get vaccinated then it is clear that those people must at the very least be offered a choice.
Another example of inconsistent and confusing messaging is best illustrated by an information sheet issued by the Victorian Department of Health in the tea-room at a location where I spend some of my time. It has been on the noticeboard since March 2020. One of the bullet points states: “Don’t wear a mask if you are well”. Yet we are now mandated to wear a mask even when out walking down the road with no one in close proximity to us. If we don’t, we risk a $200 fine. No wonder people have had it with the Victorian government and its busy-body bureaucrats.
The most worrying factor is that state governments are pursuing an elimination strategy and panic every time there are a few cases. Both South Australia and West Australia have locked down over one or two cases which did not even spread. With the current outbreak in Victoria one of the infected people had been on a pub crawl last Saturday night through inner city Prahran. Another had been to the footie at the MCG last weekend. They obviously weren’t feeling too sick. Yet these people are breathlessly referred to as “cases” and every location they have been to put out as an infection site. How long will it be before this virus is accepted as one of the risks of living and that getting infected is not a death sentence?
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