Polls Push Panicked Premiers

What a difference a few days makes….or should I say what a difference a few cases of Coronavirus make.

It seemingly changes everything.

NSW and Premier Gladys Berejiklian have gone from being the virus management gold standard to lock down purveyors of panic.

She’s even getting lectures from Daniel Andrews on how to handle it…and let’s remember his governments mismanagement of corona in Victoria led to 820 people dying from or with this virus.

Need I point out that almost every death has occurred in high risk groups – the elderly, the obese or those with comorbidities.

For the rest of us, the vast majority will have mild or no symptoms if we catch it.

Then we can go to the previous panickers in South Australia, Premier Marshall and Professor Spurrier.

They locked down an entire state over a strain of coronavirus they said was more deadly and more contagious than ever before, but it didn’t actually exist.

Political Insiders say they wanted to do the same last week when the only cases of COVID-19 in SA were in hotel quarantine. Apparently the Police Commissioner, who has the final say on these matters in South Australia, told them no.

It’s the right call by the commissioner but the fact that the final say on running a state is in the hands of an officer of the law rather than an elected premier says a lot about the abrogation of leadership.

Still a sober, sensible head calling the shots is better than a panicked politician with both eyes on the polls.

Nick Cater summed it up well in the Australian today. Fear has infected our leaders.

He also made some pointed comments about the state of South Australia.

In 2019, influenza was ripping through the state – including in 86 nursing homes.  There were 20000 cases and on a single day 37 people died from the flu bringing the total death toll to 82.

The chief health officer, Professor Spurrier said “It’s very unfortunate to see this number of people that have died,” and she told South Australians to wash their hands and cough into their elbows to keep them safe.

Cater writes:

The killer flu of 2019 claimed more than 800 lives in Australia, most of them elderly and most in nursing homes. Yet the authorities refrained from panic. There were no daily press conferences and no breathless reporting of the latest number of infections, which in NSW alone were averaging 826 a day in the first two weeks of July.

So why the fear porn being pushed by our politicians now?

The ‘new’ Delta variant does seem to be more infectious but less deadly…just like the flu…and we have learned to live with that.

There is no flu passport or mandatory jab. Just a modicum of common sense and a request that people consider the health of themselves and others in their decision making.

Most people have a very, very, very low chance of dying from either the flu or COVID-19.

We are going to have to learn to live with them both for the foreseeable future. Vaccinating people won’t eradicate either and vaccines won’t fully protect those who get them.

While vaccination will likely reduce the severity of symptoms, experts say you can still catch the viruses and pass them on. In other words, you’ll still have to use common sense and take reasonable precautions with your health and those of others.

So things have indeed changed when it comes to COVID-19, not only in the past few days but over the past year.

Back in February of 2020, we were dealing with a new and largely unknown virus.

Now we have the knowledge and the resources to make more prudent decisions in balancing the health risks with our economic necessities and liberty.

As Nick cater wrote today

“cognitive bias has been allowed to set based on assumptions made in the early months of the crisis when the risks of the virus in a country unprepared for a pandemic were far greater than they are today.”