Throughout the entire pandemic Australian governments have relied on border controls, at an international and domestic level, and continue to rely on them, as an alternative to building up local health infrastructure | OPINION covid19
How is it that nearly two years into this pandemic, with all the knowledge we have about what public health measures work, one of the most vaccinated populations in the world, and medical treatments that are limiting the severity of illness from COVID-19, it still feels like we’re back at the beginning – withand contradictory and confusing government advice forcing many to take matters into their own hands by remaining home and missing Christmas yet...
This time around things feel worse because we made the sacrifices needed to keep each other safe by locking down for months and months, and despite a litany of government failures we got vaccinated in record numbers.
Unfortunately, after decades of hollowing out the public sector and shifting more and more basic services to private contractors, including everything from pathology to front-line healthcare, this kind of emergency response wasn’t geared towards building up something sustainable and long term. Instead, governments viewed the pandemic as something we needed to manage for a certain period, and once that was done we could wrap things up and return to “normal”.
Throughout the entire pandemic, Australian governments have relied on border controls, at an international and domestic level, and continue to rely on them, as an alternative to building up local health infrastructure., for example. The state’s health system is in shambles. Elective surgeries have been cut and ambulances are being forced to wait outside hospitals because there aren’t enough beds inside. This is all without COVID-19.
Instead of actually responding to the crisis, the government decided the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be stop anyone coming in.But the problem extends across the entire country. You would think that considering how much our response to COVID-19 has been driven by the desire to prevent our hospitals being overwhelmed, we might have increased our ICU capacity. We haven’t.