The world’s first failed lockdown, part II

The catastrophic news of 428 (four hundred and twenty-eight) new COVID-19 cases in Victoria is both painful and extremely revealing.

Even Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton, speaking on ABC television, is now implicitly admitting that this current lockdown might prove the first in the world to entirely fail to reduce numbers. Sutton said he expected COVID-19 numbers to begin to fall on or before nine days into the lockdown. However, COVID case numbers appear to be on an upward trend more rapid than ever before, especially when one factors in that only ⅔ as many tests were conducted today as had been conducted during the first few days of the lockdown.

What this suggests is stark. The possibilities are to say the least alarming.

• It is first of all clear that far too many services are permitted to open when there exists anything other than absolute safety against the spread of the virus as per the World Socialist Web Site, let alone the present risk
• It may be that COVID-19 is spreading so rapidly within Melbourne that even operation of essential services cannot be done without extreme risk of continual spread
• for instance aged care workers often have to travel from the western suburbs to the Sandringham and Frankston corridors
• there exists extreme risk of spread from surfaces touched (even unintentionally) by these aged care workers, especially if they do not have time to clean them
• It could be that Melbourne’s populace is so frustrated there exists a non-negligible proportion that is unable to adequately comply with even present relatively lenient rules

The possible futures are equally stark:

1. Continuation of present Stage 3 lockdown with more and more rapid rises in case numbers
2. Shift to Stage 4 lockdown with all services except food and medical shops closed – with public works postponed or cancelled wherever not technically impossible, and tradespeople allowed to work only on demonstrably urgent maintenance
3. Shift to hard lockdown with people excluding law enforcement and medical workers not allowed outside home even for shopping – and nonresidents allowed inside residence only for COVID testing or demonstrably urgent maintenance

Plans 2) and 3) have long-term hope of reducing case numbers as the present lockdown clearly never will. Nevertheless, even if either 2) or 3) can finally reduce Melbourne’s COVID-19 case numbers, being judged successful – “successful” meaning the reopening of non-essential services with absolutely no recurrence of COVID-19 (whether to exclude externally acquired cases constitutes another issue) – is another matter.

It is certain that 2) or 3) will need to be adopted in Melbourne as case numbers skyrocket and skyrocket under the existing Stage 3 lockdown, despite Premier Andrews and Chief Medical Officer Sutton defensively saying that case numbers might be much larger without the Stage 3 lockdown. I have the most extreme scepticism, however, that even if case numbers under the adoption of scenario 2) or 3) do finally start falling, that it will produce a successful second reopening. For one thing, the World Socialist Web Site has demonstrated that demands of big business were a major cause of the premature reopening that has left Melbourne in its present state of explosive COVID-19 spread. For another – and I am in no way immune to this myself – Melburnians would be even more frustrated with a more rigid lockdown than they were with the Stage 3 autumn and current lockdowns.

As the World Socialist Web Site and many leading epidemiologists have demonstrated, for a truly successful reopening COVID-19 must be completely eliminated, or at least reduced far below the level of 8 cases per day in Victoria during the week before the first failed easing of restrictions.

In the present situation, sad to say, even if a hard lockdown were imposed now, it would take minimally eight weeks (until 12 September) before that hard lockdown could be ended with COVID-19 eliminated from Melbourne. A Stage 4 lockdown imposed today would take minimally ten weeks (until 26 September) for an analogous result. I have extreme doubts Melburnians would accept such stringent restrictions for so long, and doubt they would accept them even should they fail so badly as the present Stage 3 lockdown has. Moreover, unless COVID-19 is completely eliminated, there is the danger it would come back even more quickly after a severer and/or longer lockdown than observed in the autumn. The Melbourne public embraced its new freedoms with eagerness when restrictions were eased at the end of May, and they would undoubtedly do so more eagerly if they were eased from a more rigid level this spring or summer. Thus, whilst a long-term plan to end the present skyrocketing COVID-19 growth, get cases down to a sustained zero, and reopen Victoria is needed, presenting it to the public and carrying it out successfully appears quite impossible even in the long term.