The world’s first failed lockdown, part III

Tonight, after I had been relatively calm over another record 484 cases in Victoria today compared to numerous nasty tantrums in the past few weeks, I had been playing the old Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego game from my childhood on My Abandonware, which I had discovered looking precisely for it on Google Images a couple of days ago.

Depressing news has become de riguer in Victoria this July, and my mother and brother have consistently said

“things will get worse before they get better”

So has Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton in his now-familiar daily addresses. However, with case numbers having risen threefold since the beginning of the lockdown, and Sutton forecasting that they will rise very soon to 500 or 600 per day, it is virtually certain that any reductions – let alone reductions below pre-lockdown totals – in case numbers in Victoria are a very long way away indeed. My mother and brother dismissed my prediction a couple of weeks ago that case numbers would never fall below 100 before the scheduled end of the present lockdown on 19 August, but the possibility they will fall that low so soon is becoming remoter by day.

In fact, Chief Medical Officer Sutton’s prediction of numbers of 500 to 600 in coming days constitute a tacit admission that the present lockdown is too weak to have the smallest long-term impact on exponential growth of COVID-19. This would mean quadruple-digit or higher totals are merely delayed by the lockdown and will be reached in August without any fall into the spring and beyond. Under this mapped-out future, saying “things will get worse before they get better” is a euphemism for a reality where things get worse and worse with improvement becoming a remoter and remoter possibility with each passing day. If quadruple-digit case numbers are already certain to be reached in August and beyond, then the impact on Victoria’s medical system would be incomprehensibly horrific, especially as nursing homes constitute a major source of infection spread.

In ‘Maximizing the probability that the 6-week lock-down in Victoria delivers a COVID-19-free Australia’ – published a week ago by the Medical Journal of Australia and authored by Tony Blakely, Jason Thompson, Natalie Carvalho, Laxman Bablani, Nick Wilson, and Mark Stevenson – it is argued that far stricter rules were necessary. The authors argued that:

“Under the ‘Standard’ [actual Andrews Government] policy approach, there is no chance that all infected people will have cleared their SARS-CoV-2 infection by 19 August (six-weeks after lock-down started).”

The rapid and continuing escalation of COVID-19 in Victoria since the article was written suggests that the authors, like Premier Andrews and Chief Health Officer Sutton, is exceedingly, even unrealistically, optimistic about the long-term effects of the present lockdown. It is abundantly clear to me that any reduction in case numbers, even in the long term, requires that all but the most essential workplaces – the source of 80 percent of current infections – be closed until at least six weeks with no new cases has passed. The World Socialist Web Site convincingly argue that enough money – by completely eliminating government bailouts to corporations – exists to pay workers’ wages in full until such a date passes.

The Medical Journal of Australia also argues that Australia’s economy will be adversely effected by

“public health measures necessary to prevent and control recurrent outbreaks arising from resurgent community transmission”

if the virus is not eliminated as it has been in the Territories, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. Professor Blakely had previously argued in the June 17 Lancet article ‘Integrated quantification of the health and economic impacts of differing strategies to control the COVID-19 pandemic’ that Morrison’s preferred “suppression” strategy is never optimal, with “mitigation” optimal at low levels of willingness to pay and elimination at high levels.

For Australia’s ruling class, willingness to pay is undoubtedly very small relative to numbers of “life years” gained, since the ruling class can afford expensive private health cover and protective living environments that effectively immunise them against the dangers of the virus. Logically, then, mitigation would be the ruling class’ preferred option. Mitigation has been officially rejected by politicians due to the high inherent morbidity and mortality – if 60 percent of Victoria’s population were infected the number of deaths could exceed 25,000. However, both Andrews’ premature easing of restrictions and his refusal to close down non-essential workplaces suggest that Australia’s major parties do privately prefer a mitigation strategy, despite knowing that extreme numbers of deaths would necessarily result. An exception to preference for mitigation would occur where elimination proves achievable via minimal lockdowns, as happened in most of Australia.

Assuming Australia’s ruling classes prefer a mitigation strategy whenever weak lockdowns fail to eliminate COVID-19 accounts for the behaviour of the Andrews Government amidst the recurrence of the past five weeks. Refusing to close department and hardware stores when numbers began rising, and refusal to close schools, amounts, as the World Socialist Web Site have demonstrated in numerous articles this month, to demonstrating that the Andrews Government is not willing to do what it takes to reduce case numbers. It is only willing to do what it takes to marginally slow growth whilst keeping as many private businesses as possible open.

If numbers continue to rise into four figures and even higher in August and beyond, and Premier Andrews fails to introduce tighter restrictions on what businesses can operate, it would be clear that he is in effect pursuing a mitigation strategy rather than a suppression strategy. What Andrews will do when the medical system is overwhelmed by four-figure case numbers is even now hard to imagine, but all choices are truly frightening.