dollars to donuts...

[tielan]

Today is a 'double donut day' in Melbourne, Victoria.

0 new cases.

0 deaths.

Look, lockdown isn't fun, and no, it shouldn't be permanent. But in mid-July, Melbourne was getting 700+ cases a day. They went into lockdown and now they're 0.

Everywhere else that's comparable continued to have citizens wandering around, and they're reading 15K, 25K, 40K new cases a day. Don't ask about the deaths.

"Lockdowns don't work," people insist.

They do. They get the numbers down. They limit the spread. They instil habits of care in the population.

They're not fun or enjoyable. They don't give you that self-righteous feeling of Doing Good like bestowing charity does. They're not A Statement like masking up with your Comment On The World across the front. They're lonely and isolating and difficult and frustrating.

But they do work.

Now, at least, Vic Health can start from a base of no cases, and work to trace things from there. When cases spring up - as they will do, because they're surely doing so in NSW - then they can be followed up, isolaced, traced back to the origins. It will, if nothing else, give them (and the rest of Australia) a fighting chance to live COVID-normal in the coming months - including through Christmas.

People will get sick, yes. Cases will rise, yes. Individuals will die, yes. But at least Victoria - Australia - won't be looking down the barrel of a carnage that could have been stopped if only a politician had possessed the will to make some tough decisions and hold to them through months that became a media hell for him.

Frankly, if Dan Andrews ever runs for PM, he'll have bloody good name recognition and the respect of a lot of people - both in Victoria and out of it.

Comments

[lilysea]

I'd vote for Dan Andrews for PM.

I'd also vote for Mark McGowan for PM. Mark McGowan has kept WA safe [so far] by keeping the WA border closed in the face of ever-escalating tantrums from Scott Morrisson and Clive Palmer...

[tielan]

Sheesh, the tantrums. It's like watching pimply adolescents throwing their weight around and then sulking when they don't get their way. (At least toddlers you don't expect to know better and it's not unusual for toddlers to throw a tantrum; these are 'looks like reasoning human beings; act like idiots', which is 100% adolescents.)

[lilysea]

p.s. Would you be comfortable with me sharing this

a) on Dreamwidth under an access lock?

b) on Facebook under a friends lock?

[tielan]

Yes to both.

[deird1]

Absolutely. Melbourne’s lockdown has been horrible - but anything else would have been worse.

[tielan]

I call this the paradox of "no bodycount of the living". Because the bodycount was averted, there is no proof that things were ever going to be as bad as the worst case scenario.

And the number of "well, at least count apples to apples and compare Vic to NSW!!" is bloody frustrating. At no point were NSW cases climbing like Victoria's. There was no point of overwhelm like there was in Vic; we had maybe a dozen cases, and things looked iffy for a while, but by the time we hit the stacks, everyone was wary and on the lookout as they weren't in Vic back in June-July.

*sigh* And Murdoch media made it so much worse. Although I saw a repost of a tweet in which a sign indicated "We sell newspapers; we do not sell The Sun."

Now we just need more of them. And fewer people to be reading The Australian. And ABC and the SMH to stop taking their news from The Oz. *grr*

[thothmes]

Vermont, at least relative to the other 50 states, is doing fairly well. We have the advantage of being rural, so our people are spread out to begin with, we had warning because it struck the coastal cities first, and we had Governor Scott, a Republican, who bucked his party’s approach, and kept us locked down, mandated masks, and has been slowly opening up again, following the science and not the idiocy coming out of D.C. our cases are rising again as neighboring states see the predictable spike from that idiocy, but we are in far less trouble than the rest of the nation. You are lucky to have Dan Andrews.

[tielan]

I was going to say "Victoria is lucky to have Dan Andrews" but the truth is, yes, Australia is lucky to have Dan Andrews. Someone with less grit to him would have opened up under the pressure of the Murdocracy and our federal assholes, and then would have been sunk under the weight of the cases as the state crashed.

Now, if we can offer people alternatives to working themselves to death and spreading sickness to others because rental payments are more important than personal health, we might actually manage to keep this thing controlled.

[kore]

But Lockdown is Bad for the almighty god, The Economy!

....altho people dying like flies and overwhelmed hospitals and survivors going broke because of medical bills and inability to work again might be bad for The Economy, too, but somehow that never enters into it.

[tielan]

God Almighty, the Economy.

Take that however you will!

Yeah, there are studies showing that good health outcomes for citizens equals good economic outcomes for countries; and that giving people options out of poverty and debt results in a more prosperous society for everyone except those at the very top.

Unfortunately for all of us, those at the very top are making the rules as we go along.

[queenbookwench]

Lockdowns work (if your government is run by sane people who understand the necessity of paying people to stay home. Sigh)

[aome]

I'm jealous. You and NZ are poster children for Look What Works When You Stop Being Stupid.