Scott Morrison and his chief adviser, Brendan Murphy, have both repeatedly claimed that Australia has been a world leader in testing for COVID-19.
Here is what they’ve said:
On March 31, Morrison claimed, “We are the first country, to the best of our knowledge, that has been able to exceed [the 1% of the population testing] mark”.
“The testing resources that we are putting in place have been absolutely fundamental to our tracing … to ensure that we can restrain the growth and the spread of the virus.”
A few days later, Murphy, stated, “Our testing has been probably the best in the world. We are very confident that, while there will certainly be some undetected cases, we have a pretty good idea of the size of our outbreak”.
Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt then said our testing infrastructure represented an “extraordinary effort by our medical professionals, by our supply chain management, by our pathologists, who are very courageous leaders doing all of this work to save lives and protect lives”.
Are we actually that good?
While any sort of global figures for COVID-19 need to be taken with a grain of salt and can often conflict one another, Worldometer (which seems to be most people’s go-to for quick data points) recently added a “tests per 1 million population” data point. The data for Australia (of 297,000 tests) matches the federal government’s own WhatsApp application.
What it shows is Australia is far from being the global leader on testing. In fact, we’re not even close. In terms of raw number of tests, we’ve done far less than the US (1.65 million) or Germany (918,460).
But Morrison and Murphy were talking about per capita testing. In that regard, it’s even worse.
We have tested around 1.1% of our total population (and importantly, we don’t test randomly, so would be missing asymptomatic cases).
Iceland, which actually does lead the world in testing, has a rate almost seven times Australia’s (they have tested almost 7% of the population), Luxembourg is at 3.6%, UAE is at 2.2%, Norway is at 1.9%, Switzerland is at 1.8%, Estonia is at 1.5%, Slovenia is at 1.3% and Hong Kong a 1.2%.
Not only are we not leading the world, we’re back at number 18 (when you include smaller island nations). Our 1.1% puts us about the same level at Italy — which is tracking at 1.09%.
What about school closures?
One of our government’s challenges has been maintaining consistency in messaging and policy. Hairdressers and Bunnings can open but beauticians can’t. You can only go outside with one person, but building sites with hundreds of construction workers in close contact remain operational.
But the greatest absurdity from our patchwork lockdown remains Morrison and Murphy’s bizarre position on school closures.
Most developed countries have shut their schools: China, the UK, most of Europe, Hong Kong, much of the United States and South Korea. But Australia stubbornly refuses.
Even worse, Morrison even pressured Catholic schools to remain open by threatening to withhold their funding, and last week created what is essentially a $1.6 billion taxpayer-funded bribe to coax parents to send kids to childcare, risking the lives of thousands of low-paid workers.
Morrison’s reasons for keeping schools open are fallacious.
First, he claimed that if they weren’t at school, kids would be roaming around shopping centres putting “themselves in contact with the vulnerable and elderly population”. That is now not possible with the current stage three restrictions in place.
Then he argued widespread closures of schools “would seriously impact and disrupt the health workforce that is needed to save lives”. While this is a factor to consider, other counties have been able to mitigate this risk (the UK for example is allowing children of healthcare and limited essential workers to attend school). According to a study in The Lancet, 15% of healthcare workers have kids aged from three to 12 without a non-working adult or sibling. Only 6.8% live in single-parent households.
There’s around 500,000 nurses and doctors in Australia — so Morrison is forcing every school to open for a very small percentage of the population (which as the UK showed, can still be helped).
Finally, Morrison and Murphy cited Singapore as an example of a country that maintained very low community transmission rates while keeping schools open. But Singapore just announced they would be closing schools in an attempt to slow escalating infections.
Maybe Morrison just really doesn’t want his young daughters hanging around the house…
…. You’ll have to forgive Scotty. He’s from marketing.
Iceland, Singapore, Germany etc etc etc – whose fundament is he getting his shopped figures from? Brendan’s?
And why isn’t our MSM picking up on this line of demonstrable line of BS? The evidence is there for anyone – interested – to check out.
Too caught up in this “Hasn’t Scotty From Marketing changed”/“Scott …. Scott Morrison is emerging as one of the most capable prime ministers this country has seen in a long time” daisy chain group think?
Scotty and his “propaganda”? …. After all, in war the first casualty is truth.
You can trust the Morrison government to spin the figures and mislead Australians, even in a time of such crisis.
I’m still not convinced that we are really ontop of the curve. We were predominantly testing at our borders as people arrived back into Australia and now with less arrivals and stricter quarantine we have seen the number of infections detected reduce proportionally.
Test kits are easy enough to do, if you don’t mind 1 swab down each nostril until it finds where you gag reflex is and then one past you gag reflex in your throat.
The scientists doing these tests tell me they are time consuming and manual and that they are starting to run out of reagent.
Other than the sheer stupidity of waving 2,700 people off a ship which had already disembarked someone as soon as they docked to a waiting ambulance, an ICU bed and ultimately to her grave. This plague ship is responsible for 1 in 10 of all of our detected cases and 1 in 3 of all of our deaths.
If there are undetected cases out in the population of Australia, then they must all be asymptomatic, because once one person presents as ill and tests positive, all their contacts are traced and tested.
Morrison blew his credibility with me, after the lying about the Hawaiian holiday, then the lying about helping the south coast of NSW and the Liberal Party ad to a tropical theme music………
Finally he has learned to shut up until the real experts tell him what to say and he still doesn’t stay on script, but he is getting an “improving” rating so far!
“If there are undetected cases out in the population of Australia, then they must all be asymptomatic, because once one person presents as ill and tests positive, all their contacts are traced and tested.”
The criteria that one needs to meet to be tested has being relaxed in some states in recent days and I expect that will continue.
For example the criteria for testing in Victoria requires more than just clinical symptoms as per,
https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/health-services-and-general-practitioners-coronavirus-disease-covid-19
A sound rebuttal of the loony position on school closures put by Bernard a week or so ago, in one of his weaker moments. Not one of the arguments put by Morrison holds water, as most parents themselves recognise. I also think the free child care for all deal could come back to haunt him. Even if it’s a success of some kind, the back-lash when he takes it away in six months will be lethal.
“Closing the schools” was driven by the Teachers union, on a fear campaign.
Well now that the teacher’s aides, casual teachers and contract teachers are unemployed, well done you!
As far as anyone can tell, most kids don’t get this particular virus and so, there is no reason why health children should not be at school instead of cluttering up the aisles following their grand parents around.
Once all the research is complete, I suspect that most children have some sort of immunity to this Covid19 that most adults don’t have.
Fact free rant.
Singapore were doing far more random testing. They did not only test people who had come from overseas or had been in contact with someone who has been tested positive. I agree with those who think that our number of positives would be far higher if we would do more testing. Hopefully soon we will be able to broaden the testing criteria. Once reliable and affordable antibody test being available, it will tell us more of who has been infected and who has developed antibodies. That should be a greatly beneficial information.
Singapore was keeping schools open but every child that arrived at a Singapore school, both child and whoever arrived with the child, had temperature checks and the same on leaving the school. We now know that children can get Corvid-19 and that they can die from the virus regardless of age. I could never understand the argument that children should be kept away from grandparents, as they might infect the elderly but at the same time we are told it is okay to keep children at school or in childcare. Can someone explain that contradiction?
I applaud most of the rescue packages (which by the way are not anywhere the high percentage of GDP, as many other counties have provided), the biggest issue I have are the big gaps in those support packages. The early child care package is extremely generous. Apart from exposing the staff (but then we have never valued them anyway), why are there no financial restrictions on who can receive the free child care. Even the wealthiest parent will benefit from free childcare. But casuals and temporary visa holders cannot be cared for. Seems to me that the government just can’t let fully go of punishing those that can’t make the big bucks. Despite the economy relying on all those workers. Rent relive is urgently needed. Not all landlords are rich. Was that not the argument be the government why we had to keep negative gearing?
On that “immunity of kids” :-
Insiders* yesterday (looking like Toad Hall overrun 100% by 4 ex-Murdoch weasels – with Bender Benson gloating <- Rosebutt picking up Spivsy and taking the ABC to the tabloid dogs) – rerunning footage, without reflection, of Scotty From Marketing’s claim that medical advice deems that kids aren’t at risk from the virus : while the NEWS 24 bottom-of-screen ribbon told us that “Five-year-old child among 708 new deaths confirmed in the United Kingdom”?
I agree with everything you have said. Probably the reason wider testing is not being done is because they have found themselves critically short of test kits . One of the deputy chief medical officers seemed to confirm that recently. It is sad but, because I can’t believe a word that comes out of Morrison’s mouth, I am doubting whether the Chief Medical Officer and his deputies are telling us the whole truth or simply only the politically sanitised version at Scotty demands. The CMO after all is promised a very high paying position in the future as Commissioner for Health but perhaps only if he behaves now.
“….found themselves critically short of test kits .”
Yep that’s the reason. Shortage is also the reason why we aren’t wearing face masks despite claims they aren’t effective or people won’t use them properly. The fact is we don’t have enough to offer protection to the population.
We are totally unprepared for this inevitable pandemic.
Teachers do not indulge in fear campaigns.
Children are not immune to C-19.
I’ve been wondering where the community tests are.
Surely to get on top of the pandemic you need to test as many people as possible, as widely as possible.