To watch what is happening in Australia right now is to watch a once-liberally democratic nation devolve into outright tyranny. Citizens in New South Wales and Victoria are being locked inside their homes and monitored by police, and anyone who dares protest the states’ strict coronavirus lockdown measures faces imprisonment, hefty fines, and even brutal physical attacks by law enforcement — all in response to a relatively minor outbreak of new cases among a population that is largely vaccinated.
This is going to be the new normal for eastern Australia if health officials such as New South Wales’s Dr. Kerry Chant get their way. Chant, who is the state’s chief health officer, recently admitted that pre-pandemic normalcy won’t ever be possible again because COVID-19 will always be around in some shape or form.
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“We will not … ever be going back to pre-COVID levels,” she said, according to a video posted to Twitter. “We’re always going to have to be mindful that COVID exists. We’re going to have to engage in booster shots. We’re going to have to engage with advice from time to time when we see outbreaks. We’re going to have to respond. So it’s not going to go back to normal. We can’t deny that we’re going to have to live with COVID.”
Chant added that high vaccination rates will only guarantee “minimal restrictions” and “minimal public health orders” as Australia navigates “the future years of COVID.”
According to our health officials over here in Australia, we are never going back to normal. pic.twitter.com/9mxNJc5t73
— Evelyn Rae (@_evelynrae) September 25, 2021
Chant and other public health officials responsible for this zero-COVID strategy have lost the plot. A COVID-19-free world just isn’t possible. It’s a virus, it will mutate, and it will continue to infect people regardless of vaccination status. The best we can hope to do is vaccinate as many people as possible to reduce the likeliness of hospitalization and death.
Australia’s zero-COVID approach is a recipe for keeping its society locked down forever. The virus will always be a threat, as will the flu, the common cold, and any number of viruses and diseases that spread among populations and make a good number of people sick every year. If we do not accept that reality, then of course coronavirus restrictions will become permanent.
We’re starting to see hints of this here in the United States. In Washington, D.C., for example, residents are still required to wear masks while indoors even though 70% of the city’s population has been vaccinated and fewer than 10 coronavirus deaths have occurred over the past few months. The numbers speak for themselves: COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency in Washington, yet the city’s officials are forcing the city to act as though it is.
This is the same logic that’s behind Australia’s draconian response. At what metric do we agree that restrictions are no longer necessary? Is there a specific vaccination rate U.S. officials have in mind? Are death rates more important, or are they still basing public health policies on positive cases?
These are the questions people need to start demanding that our public health officials answer. Because if we don’t, our public health officials will continue to shift the goal posts until they decide that normalcy won’t ever be possible for us either.
