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Go on, just eliminate it: Supression is for people who love lockdowns

Scott Morrison says eliminating the virus is not viable, despite most states in Australia effectively managing to do that already. See the chart below. Instead he talks of suppression as if it’s viable to ride an exponential curve with a default position of “moonshot”.

At the start of June, Victoria was getting 20 new cases a week.  In the last three weeks Victoria has added 3,000 cases.

State premiers are being urged to reject an elimination strategy for coronavirus, with Scott Morrison and leading business groups warning the move would double unemployment and wreck the economy.

The Prime Minister, who has conceded the lockdown of Greater Melbourne was necessary given the size of the outbreaks, warned that any pivot to an elimin­ation strategy would double­ unemployment.

Suppression sounds like a management plan but means rolling waves of infection and isolation, with outbreaks of chaos and a constant higher level of fear and avoidance. This does not seem like a jobs creation machine.

Would we prefer one lockdown or three?

1. The hospitalization rate means hospitals will be overwhelmed within weeks (see Victoria). Therefore repeat lockdowns are inevitable.

2. It’s hard to protect the vulnerable when half the population is at risk. Almost one fifth of the Australian population is over 60 years old. One third of Australians have  some form of high blood pressure67% are overweight or obese. Then there are cancer patients, asthmatics, people living with transplants and people with cardiac disease. Even if they all overlap, that’s a lot of people with co-morbities  who won’t be spending much money on travel and restaurants while they hide from the virus. Protecting the vulnerable might be its own economy wrecker.

3. We lose access to hospitals during the waves. How much is it worth living in a community that has access to cancer care, elective surgery, stuff like that? What’s the cost of that burden?

4. The burden on the healthcare profession. Doctors and nurses are getting sick and some are dying from Covid-19, possibly from being exposed to high viral loads and working under pressure or with inadequate PPE. Some are living apart from their families, or in the basement, so they don’t infect loved ones if they bring germs home. Others are wondering if they should retire, and whether it’s fair on their family to keep working.

Suppression is the losers game. One rogue superspreader can infect 100, and suddenly it’s lockdown time again. Living with the virus means the constant threat of a major outbreak and the certainty of morbidity, mortality and lockdowns. It means we risk losing our hospitals for weeks or months on end, we can’t do large events. We can’t visit grandparents, and about half the population needs to hide away, as do those with high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and transplants.

Eradicating Eliminating* the virus means life as normal except for strong borders and quarantine and lots of testing. People can use hospitals, restaurants, and visit their old folks.

For some reason, Morrison is aiming instead for rolling outbreaks and repeat lockdowns.

Australia was close to eradicating the virus from the nation:

There has been (or was) no community transmission across most of Australia for two to three months. Though that may be about to change as the states open borders just in time to catch the virus from Victoria. If it continues to spread in Sydney, the ACT is a sitting duck even though it might notch up 100 winning days without community spread. But the ACT is only a few hours away from one invisible superspreader from Sydney.

Shame it may unravel in the next week. But it didn’t have to.  It was only inept management in Victoria that put the gains of the first lockdown at risk. The states of Australia paid their dues in the late Indian-summer of Vitamin D days and nearly won the battle. Four states and two territories were as good as done.  Even NSW managed to notch up 20 covid free days in a row, the day before yesterday (that’s over now) . Even Victoria was scoring 4 days of no new community cases in a row, and that was late April.

This is living with the virus in Victoria

In Victoria there are 2,500 active cases of Covid19/CCPflu, and there are 935 cases with no known contact source. There are 122 in hospital, 31 in ICU which includes five people in their 40’s, six in their fifties, and eight in their sixties. Since July 5 there have been nine deaths, which is bound to rise as it lags infections. About two-thirds in the ICU are on ventilators. Currently 150 healthcare workers are infected.

Victorian hospitals are struggling with the load already, and half of all urgent elective surgery is being delayed in public hospitals. About a quarter of urgent elective surgery is being put off even in private hospitals in Melbourne.

Before the pandemic Victoria had 476 ICU beds. Currently there are 1,000 ICU beds available and ready to go for Covid patients.

What happens next in Australia depends a lot on what happens in NSW.

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*Eradication supposedly implies world wide reduction. Elimination apparently means local or domestic eradication.

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