The failure of the US to not predict the September 11 terrorist attacks has been described as a failure of imagination more than a failure of intelligence.
The ongoing COVID-19 disaster in Victoria is arguably a failure of both.
While the rest of Australia has come close to eliminating the virus, Victoria is reporting upwards of 400 new cases each day and will soon become the record holder for the world’s longest lockdown. Even worse, the virus is running rampantly through aged care centres and may result in thousands of deaths.
Almost everything that has gone wrong has been utterly predictable — the lack of solutions has been a drastic failure of imagination. While the failure to maintain a satisfactory quarantine has been Victoria’s most prominent health disaster, that hasn’t been the only foreseeable error. Victoria’s testing failures have been almost equally culpable.
While most countries have failed on the testing front (with only the odd honourable exception like Iceland and Singapore), there are actually two issues with testing.
First, the volume of tests. In this case, Victoria started far too slowly and even saw a period where it slowed in early June, falling from May’s peak daily testing rate 33,000.
But the number of tests is only half the problem. Arguably even more important is the speed of testing. On Wednesday, Premier Daniel Andrews castigated Victorians for flouting isolation rules: “If you feel sick, get tested, and get tested quickly. Then while you’re waiting for your result, wait for your result at home. Away from other people. Not at the supermarket. Not at work. Not anywhere else.”
The problem? If you get a COVID test in Victoria, it can take one to five days to get your results back. Very few people, acting in their own rational self-interest would both get tested and then fully isolate their entire family over that period when the results are overwhelmingly negative. (Even more so if you’ve got a low or uncertain income, kids at childcare or are younger and less at risk of serious health issues.)
That means tens of thousands of asymptomatic carriers are continuing to work and shop across Melbourne.
Rather than criticise people for behaving rationally, the smart response would be investing far more heavily in testing infrastructure to ensure all COVID test results are returned within 24 hours. This would lead to a huge increase in compliance. One day off work or childcare is bearable, five days can be catastrophic.
Estimates suggest the second wave in Victoria will cost the country at least $3 billion. Going by Bloomberg’s estimate that commercial COVID tests cost around US$50-$100 each, it could be argued that Victoria could test every person in Melbourne for upwards of $500 million — a fraction of the cost of the continuing lockdown.
Likewise, investing in far quicker test results, while more costly in the short term, is almost certainly going to provide a huge return. This is how China got its second wave under control in Beijing, after it tested 2.3 million people in nine days.
Less blaming, Dan, and more testing.
This article seems like a typical criticism without considering a solution – sure just get the test results back faster. How? Testing labs interstate, and private labs, are already involved. Should we have labs, equipment and staff on standby at all times in case they are needed? But how many would be needed? Do you keep spare capacity for an extra 10,000 tests per day? 50,000? 100,000? How many trained staff sitting around doing nothing most of the time would that take? And building new labs, training new staff, is not a quick process. I can guarantee if staff were trained up quickly then people would be criticising them because they had inadequate training to get everything right. How about before you criticise you consider what real-life solutions there are?
The clarity of the hindsight on display in this article is exemplary.
Beat me to it. I don’t recall Adam Schwab predicting any of the things he said were ‘utterly predictable’. Certainly not in that much-savaged simplistic attack on Andrews a couple of weeks ago; perhaps he just didn’t want to help him out in anyway. And it’s not just him; none of the chief medical officers, federal or state, or their deputies, predicted it, or anyone else for that matter, that I recall.
Yes, but you forget that being the co-founder of an unnecessary enterprise such as LuxuryEscapes.com is the only qualification required to comment on such matters.
His gig at Crikey is not much different to Jennifer Westacott’s at the Business Council of Australia. It’s a customised employment program.
Actually, I did. More than three months ago. Repeatedly.
Crikey article on 18 March “The key element in preventing the rapid spread of the virus (other than locking everyone in their homes) is widespread testing. In this regard, Australia is an absolute disaster. Like the US, we have a critical shortage of test kits. Unless you’ve been overseas recently or have knowingly been in contact with a carrier, it’s actually extremely difficult to get tested.
The primary goal of health authorities in Australia (who, led by the Morrison government, appear to be completely failing in communication and response) isn’t financial stimulus. The goal is to stop the spread of the virus. For that, we need critical testing infrastructure and we need quick isolation.”
[https://uat.crikey.com.au/2020/03/18/coronavirus-australia-south-korea/]
On 6 April, “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).”
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2020/04/06/australia-covid-19-testing/
On 21 April, referring to the huge risk of allowing returning travellers back, “For a government that has spent the past two decades appeasing its base and “stopping the boats”, the Morrison government’s willingness to allow virus-ridden Australians back in the country seems out of character.
This column has been a strident advocate of squashing the curve. The corollary to that was opening up the economy as soon as possible (the harder the lockdown, the quicker the opening).
Four weeks of hard lockdown would allow the domestic economy to start returning to some state of normal far quicker than half measures (this is better both for businesses and lives).”
https://uat.crikey.com.au/2020/04/21/stop-the-planes-coronavirus/
As Adam Schwab says “That means tens of thousands of asymptomatic carriers are continuing to work and shop across Melbourne. ” This is what the current positive test results of one to two per hundred extrapolate to over the lockdown population. The numbers aren’t dropping quickly because of this huge reservoir of asymptomatic carriers who will ultimately be tested, or more likely, just quietly recover. Hopefully, because of the lockdown, they aren’t infecting many others.
There should be more completely random testing and no shaming of those who choose to be tested and don’t self quarantine until the result is available.
As is the depth and relevance of research that found the Bloomberg estimate (in US dollars) of what it would cost you to be tested in the USA.
Doesn’t The Philippines hold the record for the world’s longest lockdown?