Unsurprisingly,the spike has prompted another epidemic of “expert” demands for yetmore overweening government intervention in the lives of the vast majority who have nothing to fear from this disease. And,given the mob has now worked that out,the only argument for mask mandates is to protect the hospital system.
Cast your mind back to 2020 when the first lockdowns were imposed,expressly for the purpose ofpreparing the hospital system for the pressure that was bound to come. Then,we were assured,intensive care capacity would be buttressed,so it could be surged to more than 7000 beds.
And yet,18 months into the pandemic,it emerged that hospitals in states such asWestern Australia,Queensland and South Australia could not cope with even routine demand. Maybe that’s because the number of acute care beds in Australia has more than halved in the last 28 years.
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That is a reason to change negligent governments,not licence for politicians and health bureaucrats to impose restrictions on populations to mask their breathtaking decades-long incompetence.
Exactly a year ago,this column said that,soon enough,the great lie at the heart of Australia’s COVID-19 elimination strategy would be revealed because “the disease can’t be eliminated”. It was the only rational conclusion and yet,at the time,a parade of luminaries were still clinging to the intellectual corpse of COVID-zero and those arguing against it were vilified.
In August 2021,the best minds inNew Zealand’s health system decided the COVID elimination strategy could be continued indefinitely and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared it “a careful approach that says,there won’t be zero cases,but when there is one in the community,we crush it”.