Opinion: The world gives Australia a glimpse into its own COVID future: let’s not waste it
. The lesson for governments is not to rely on lockdowns that are too long or too frequent. Quite aside from the economic costs, lockdowns have diminishing disease-prevention returns.
Moreover, lockdown costs are not only economic. Protests have erupted in every country which deploys them. Europe has experienced a wave of protests much like the “freedom marches” in Australia, channelling a similar higgledy-piggledy set of whacky conspiracies and serious civil liberties concerns. Protests are, it seems, inevitable in any free country that locks down. Sometimes they end in looting and violence.
It might be some comfort to the federal government that Australia is not the only country to suffer from vaccine hesitancy as a result of its success in suppressing the virus and AstraZeneca’s bad PR. Taiwan, lauded as a poster-child of effective pandemic management, had less than 2 per cent of its population vaccinated at the end of May. Afound the Taiwanese were even less likely to have had the vaccine or say they intended to have it than Australians until the middle of July.
Lockdowns will have to end. Even contact tracing has its limits; the contact-tracing “pings” that are forcing British citizens to isolate if they have come in contact with a COVID-infected person are being rendered ineffective as people simply stop checking in. We must design our tracing system as we open up so that we are not hobbled by a “pingdemic”. Fully vaccinated people should not be required to isolate unless they test positive to COVID.
What wouldn’t any of us give to know ahead of time how difficult decisions will pan out. Australia is granted a glimpse into its own future. What a waste it would be to refuse to learn.
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