Why the defenses of Australia do not persuade me
Alex laid out some complaints about Covid policy down under, I have been receiving emails and tweets arguing the following:
1. Australia is choosing a perfectly acceptable point on the liberty vs. safety frontier.
2. The Australian decision to do extreme lockdowns is democratic, and most Australians support it.
And sometimes I see a third point, which as far as I can tell is true:
3. Australia doesn’t have much in the way of ICU excess capacity, so a Covid surge would hit the country especially hard.
I think those responses, however, are missing the point of the critique. I would stress that if Covid risk has you with your back against the wall and the government is forcing extremely restrictive measures on your citizenry, you should be implementing the following in an urgent manner:
a. Twice a week rapid antigen tests for everyone. (Plenty of time to prep for this one.)
b. Much stronger incentives to vaccinate people more rapidly, including with the large stock (six million or so?) of AstraZeneca vaccines. Demand side incentives, supply side incentives, whatever can be done. Let’s throw the kitchen sink at this one. But as it stands, I just don’t see the urgency.
c. Mobile monoclonal antibody units, as they are used in Florida (modest progress here).
d. Maybe other emergency measures too? I’ve been hearing for decades that Australia has such a great health care system so surely they can make lots of progress on these and other fronts?
As far as I can tell from this great distance, Australia is doing none of these. And, while there is some disquiet about lockdowns, few of its citizens are demanding that they do any of those positive measures. Not many of its well-known politicians are proposing those ideas either. (Please feel free to correct me if that is wrong!…but I just don’t see word of it on-line.)
If Australia implemented all of those policies, or even just one of them, they could attain a much better “liberty vs. lives” frontier, no matter where you think the government should end up on that frontier. They could save lives, and enjoy more liberty.
And that is the great shame and indeed I would say crime. There seems to be an incredible complacency that people in some parts of the country will put up with the current measures and not demand the government look for more practical measures to boost both liberty and security.
So when you write me and suggest “this is democratic and the people approve,” yes that is exactly the problem.