The utter failure of Victoria’s government – and the consequences for everyone

The news that Victoria had 127 new cases – easily the most on record – this morning, after I half-joked that the figures would be much, much higher, was of itself no alarm given that I had been told that cases would rise due to outbreaks in a number of housing blocks in Flemington and North Melbourne. The alarming thing is that a mere sixteen of the new cases are due to testing in those above-mentioned housing blocks, leaving 111 – fifty percent more than yesterday – cases from community transmission.

What this shows is that government moves to merely lockdown affected or “hotspot” suburbs are an utter failure. At present rates of community transmission, Victoria will be receiving over 1,000 new cases by next week (13 July), assuming testing rates remain unchanged.

Premier Andrews, if he were serious about containing COVID-19, would accept that would have to implement a strict Stage 4 – stricter than the past autumn lockdown – with a law forbidding any revision until minimally four weeks (28 days) after the last new case. The rate of community transmission is so high at present that even under such a strict lockdown it is certain to take several weeks longer than other Australian states have taken to eliminate community transmission. If we base our calculation upon New South Wales, who took two months to largely eliminate community transmission, it would take minimally four months before Victoria would have passed four weeks with zero new cases every single day.

Four months from now would be early November, and after the frustration of the autumn lockdown, a much severer lockdown for twice as long or longer would be intolerable for most Victorians including myself. Nevertheless, if coronavirus is ever to be contained in Victoria there is clearly from recent figures absolutely no alternative except locking down until four weeks – or longer – after the last new case. Rigid rules that require any incoming traveller to test negative before being released into the community are also absolutely essential. This would have to be backed up by the severest punishments both personal and financial for those who breach these rules or who allow anyone positive to COVID into the community. As it stands, Stamford and Rydges must pay the entire economic cost to those placed out of work and financial support – their negligence is what has placed Victoria in its current predicament, and they must pay to get it out. New South Wales has conclusively demonstrated it is possible to open up without risk of a second, worse wave of infections. If Victoria eliminates COVID-19 adequately – which it had quite simply failed to do when it began to open up in June – it can if its quarantine is good enough reopen very quickly a second time with absolutely zero risk of recurrence.

As things are, one can only conclude that Victoria’s people and politicians are too frustrated to do what is needed to contain COVID-19 beyond an epidemic that could easily be much worse than any in Europe or North America. The radical left have shown all along that there is the money to defeat COVID-19 if the super-rich were made to pay for it. The present epidemic in Victoria is entirely or almost entirely the fault of wealthy hotel owners’ profit seeking leading them to cut costs in quarantining returning travellers, so the Trotskyist solution of seizing their profits and locking up their bosses without trial can appear absolutely just. Even if we do not fully accept the radical views of Socialist Alternative or the World Socialist Web Site, there can be no justice for economically displaced Victorians until these hotel companies pay in full for the damage they have caused. If they did pay the full costs of their negligence, it would be easier for Victorians already displaced from work for several months to tolerate twice as long a period out of work – but with the knowledge that when they were back at work they would be at zero risk of this happening for a third time.

The present government path of targetted lockdown is proving an utter failure. Either the government will have to rescind its current policy and adopt a Stage 4 lockdown until four weeks (possibly more) after the last new case to permit a rapid, zero-risk reopening, or it will continue its present failed policy of locking down more suburbs and seeing the virus spread for month after month with continuously increasing cases. Whilst the former policy is already unnecessarily painful – with unbotched quarantine Victoria would be already at the stage of a rapid and complete reopening with zero risk of recurrence – it will cost everybody less in the long term except for the super-rich businessmen who can make profits out of their negligence, and will mean Melbourne ending its COVID-enforced isolation from the rest of Australia much sooner.