We keep being urged to look at the UK to see what might happen with the Omicron variant if we don’t reinstate mask mandates, surveillance measures and restrictions on gatherings: 100,000+ cases a day, the NHS overwhelmed, a “major incident” declared in London.
But a look at the number of UK hospitalisations puts things in context: about 7500 people in hospital in total is a fraction of the near-40,000 in hospital back in January, or the 20,000+ during the first wave in April 2020. The number of patients on ventilators is below where it was in September, well before Omicron.
And that’s in the depths of a UK winter when coronavirus is at its most dangerous.
In New South Wales, where summer has belatedly arrived, the number of patients in ICU is just 39; those on ventilators just 11. In late October those numbers were tripled. Even now in Victoria 81 cases are in ICU.
Yet it’s NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet bearing the brunt of criticism for “letting it rip” — despite NSW’s 93% adult vaccination rate — and under pressure to restore COVID restrictions.
Perrottet is following the plan broadly agreed to by all governments earlier this year: once vaccination rates reached high levels, restrictions would be eased and borders reopened. Case numbers would soar, but hospitalisations and ICU admissions would rise by far less. The UK data bears out that scenario, even though the adult vaccination rate there is a little lower, at 90%. Perrottet is trusting the science.
Perhaps this moment was always going to come, but the emergence of a variant has given those who want more government enforcement the opportunity to demand a reversal of the lifting of restrictions. In particular, Perrottet’s focus on personal responsibility over mandating behaviour has riled people who’d prefer police enforcing mask mandates, QR codes and limits on gatherings.
This is another front in a very old fight. It’s one that is fought every day in public health — between those who want governments to control people’s behaviour for their own good, and those who’d prefer people to make their own decisions.
It’s driven by a paternalistic view that while I and the people I know can be trusted to do the right thing, ordinary people cannot and require enforcement.
The problem COVID presents is that at some point we will have to transition away from governments controlling our behaviour to relying on people to take responsibility for their own behaviour. We used to do that with highly infectious, and often fatal, diseases like flu.
COVID isn’t going away — it will be with us in 2022 and 2023 and beyond. For those who prefer government control, and the paternalist-minded, that transition point is always off in the future, and there’s always a reason to delay. For others, their idea of personal responsibility is distorted by decades inside the public health prism. Media personality and academic Julie Leask reacted to Perrottet’s emphasis on personal responsibility by claiming “people need help to be personally responsible. It is much easier for individuals, communities, organisations and industries if governments put in place an infrastructure of regulation, rules, and strong guidance.”
Only a public health expert would argue that “personal responsibility” must be delivered by government regulation and “strong guidance”, whatever that is.
What is evident, however, is that personal responsibility, or even a reversion to mask mandates and gathering restrictions, isn’t sustainable without the continued efficacy of vaccines. Evidence from the UK is that booster vaccinations more than halve the already much lower rate of symptoms among those with a double vaccination. In the UK you only have to wait three months for a booster and can book one as soon as two months after your second dose. In Australia we’re still forcing people to wait five months.
Primary healthcare providers and pharmacies will bear the brunt of the booster effort this time, unlike the state-run vaccination effort of a few months ago. That puts more burden on the federal government which so badly bungled its vaccination rollout, to ensure GPs and pharmacies are stocked and funded.
According to the Australian Medical Association, the volume of vaccines being administered by GPs and pharmacies has fallen dramatically and the Morrison government has cut funding to GPs delivering shots, meaning the booster program is already falling behind.
Without the federal government getting its act together and accelerating booster shots and ensuring they can be deliver en masse through primary care and pharmacies — or the states again pick up the slack — personal responsibility isn’t going to work.
When we know booster shots are so efficacious in reducing symptoms, another vaccine strollout would be an outrage.
Putting a decent mask (better than surgical) on is not much effort.
Every one putting a decent mask on does have a significant collective protective effect.
If we can’t manage that as a society, no wonder countries that can (Korea, Tiawan, ….) are advancing so quickly. Seems they see it as a public courtesy, some of us see it as an imposition on our “rights”. Also seems some of these countries (Korea, Tiawan) may have healthier democracy than we do.
We accept swimming pool fencing laws, driver’s licences, DD laws, blue cards.
Can’t see how mask mandates are particularly high on the paternalism index. Why is this even a topic of discussion?
Re boosters and aged care, we had to take a high care resident out of her federally funded home to get her 3 months overdue booster. The home doesn’t have any program to get it’s residents boosted.
It’s just a dumb virus, why so much philosophical argument and so little practical action – it loves our ineptitude.
…and the fact the rich world has not been able to bring itself to ensure the other two-thirds get affordable access to vaccination
and that variants mutate in the other two thirds. It seems the rich world is immune to self interest.
I guess that would be being ‘paternaistic’…these 2/3rds need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get their own vaccines ! That would be ‘taking personal responsibility’ I guess.
When I look at the crime stats and the number of anti vaxxers here and the irresponsible numpties in general, I am wondering who Perrottet is appealing to….maybe those nice conservative voters he needs for the next election. A normal person would think not spreading the virus is the most important goal in a pandemic, rather than waiting to see how many idiots we have.
Thanks Bernard. I enjoy driving at 150kmh so I’ve decided to take personal responsibility and drive at that speed whenever possible over the holidays. Merry Christmas.
Love this!! 🙂 🙂
Well of course the home doesn’t have a program to get its residents boosted. Booster shots are an optional extra. Highly recommended, but not strictly necessary. You’re considered fully vaccinated without one- just look at your vaccination certificate. Never mind the WHO and the vaccine manufacturers will and have said for a few months now that a third shot is the final dose for effective vaccination. Our governments don’t seem to acknowledge or care about that, perhaps because the federal government didn’t ensure supply. Again.
Actually the home should have a booster program happening or upcoming – see the following url.
https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/information-for-aged-care-providers-workers-and-residents-about-covid-19-vaccines/residential-aged-care-residents
“If you are eligible for your booster dose ahead of your facility’s booster clinic, you can ask your facility to organise for a visiting GP or pharmacist to give you your booster now. You do not need to wait for your facility’s scheduled booster clinic to get your booster dose if you are already eligible – that is, it is 5 months since you received your second dose of a COVID‑19 vaccine.”
The lack of follow up and urgency is obvious in the facility I have seen, this falls back on both the facility and the Federal Government.
The statement “Never mind the WHO and the vaccine manufacturers will and have said for a few months now that a third shot is the final dose for effective vaccination.- the ongoing discourse regarding varients does really not make a position there will necessarily ever be a “final” dose – it may be final for the current varients. I am glad Victoria has pushed mRNA vaccine production along.
No personal responsibility again!. Thats our Scotty. I see he is telling us that parents know best for their kids too…he has made the same comments a few times lately. It would be nice if he could explain why we still have to lock our doors at night, can barely open a jam jar and why we still have so many laws, but, yeah, parents.Sacred.
A lot of parents have been trying very hard to take responsibility for vaccinations for their 5 to 11 year olds, but can’t get appointments. They’re continually told to “try again in a few weeks”, all over the country. Odd, that, since we’re told (sometimes) there’s no issue with supply.
There is no A/Z to be had in central NSW – only the mRNA experiments.
One hopes that “decent mask” is not a P75/95 one, because all that means is that if you have an asymptomatic case of Covid19 you are spraying the particles out of that stupid valve, all over the food, hand rails………….
The only place they are appropriate is on the faces of medical staff treating Covid19 positive cases.
I sometimes see them and deliberately avoid that person sharing and spraying their nasal cavity contents.
But then we’re also told a cloth or surgical mask won’t protect you or, by extension, your nearest and dearest, because you can catch COVID wearing one.
I was annoyed by Keane’s binary of government mandate/personal responsibility, that excused Perottet for the ‘let it rip’ policy. Mandated masks are not a tyrannical imposition but sensible precaution. Agree with above. And personal responsibility needed the right tools to work, eg readily available RAT’s.
This is dangerous nonsense, Bernard. First, whatever plans might have been drawn up with a view to the Dougherty model, the fact is that we do not know now just how dangerous Omicron is and whether it’s much greater rate of spreading-cases doubling every two to three days-will have a bad effect on the health system with the numbers we now have. Secondly, those who think that a mask mandate at this point in NSW will be a good precaution are not asking governments to force people to do things for their own good. In the case of the elderly, this is so to some extent but for younger people, the measure would be enforced not for their own good but for the good of others. Thirdly, while people can be quite good at taking responsibility for themselves, there are quite a few who are not good at all at deciding that they should take care of others. It is not that “ordinary” people are not good at it. Many are very good at it, while by contrast some “experts” are so bad at it that they cannot even keep marriages going. The question, Bernard, is not one of expertise but of what people value. Many, perhaps most, value helping others, while some just value helping themselves. Fourthly, the example set by the Perrottet’s of this world encourages these people to think they are being “responsible” when they endanger the health of others, so that it makes things harder for others to protect the elderly in aged care homes. which already mandate ( oh, how “authoritarian”!) flu jabs for visitors.
It seems to me common sense to mandate masks in enclosed public settings, at least until we have a clear idea how Omicron will influence things. It is common sense to follow the precautionary principle in matters of sickness and health, life and death. To paint a failure to follow that principle as “getting government out of people’s lives”, and a strike for “freedom” (the freedom to harm others, perhaps?) when it is a matter of responsibility to enforce rules when there are enough people that will not follow the rules, because they only care for themselves, is dangerous nonsense. Stop it, Bernard, please.
It is easy to assess whether what you are advocating puts the rights of the individual over the right of the general population to have health services which are suitable.
“Does the person suspected of being infected with Ebola, right to free passage through a crowded market, supercede those of the general population to not be exposed to this disease?
Exactly. And what will happen to the good folk who don’t take ‘personal responsibility’ and infect great swathes of the populace, again. Its not like we don’t know the country has a plethora of idiots, ready to mutate a virus for everyone. DP is up to something and it has nothing to do with our well being. I am thinking its a dog whistle.
I believe your argument about personal responsibility falls down in that we have mandates about seat belts, not smoking in certain places, talking on the phone whilst driving, texting whilst driving, not drinking until we are 18, not drinking whilst intoxicated, paying our fair share of taxes and so on and so on. We aren’t allowed to visit babies under a certain age unless we have a whooping cough injection. We can’t smoke marijuana or inject heroin. All of these ‘mandates’ make a lot of sense because experience shows that not everyone is responsible and the health and well being relies on ‘paternalistic’ (terrible gaslighting) laws.
Libertarian nonsense, Bernard.
Sums it up.
Indeed it does.
One wonders if there’s a colour-coded chart ensuring plenty boosters are available in marginal Liberal electorates….
I would put nothing past this government.
I live in Pearce, was otherwise at my regular doctor yesterday. The medical center is walking distance distance from Porters electorate office, they had plenty of vaccine appointments and refused to give me a booster until my five months was up.
I too would put nothing past this government, but here in the safe seat of Curtin I was also knocked back for a booster until my five months had elapsed. It seems this is a procedural thing rather than a political one.
@grimace They can’t because all hell breaks loose if a bosster or second vax is given 2 days early, once it is registered on the Medicare computer.