Australia has lost fewer than 1,000 lives to the coronavirus. Consider that fact on its own, and it’s amazing. Romania, with a slightly smaller population, has lost 34,000 lives. Sri Lanka, another island nation with a similar population, has lost 7,750 lives.
On this most important score — saving lives — Australia can claim to have the best response to COVID-19 in the world.
But the most important measure of a COVID response isn’t the only measure. Having done well so far on suppressing cases doesn’t guarantee continued success.
If we consider Australia’s COVID response broadly, it’s dreadful. It’s unscientific, it’s illiberal, and it’s inhumane.
Just consider some stories from the past week or two.
Mounted police have pepper-sprayed Australians who came out to protest the lockdowns. Australian news ran a segment on “those doing the wrong thing,” in which they cheered “little sympathy for anyone ignoring the health orders.” The bad guys in this segment included teenagers caught hanging out on a remote beach. Helicopters hunted the teenagers down, police cuffed their hands behind their back, and one of them is shown bleeding. They were fined $1,000.
Hundreds of people were fined “for being outside of their home without a reasonable excuse.” This is dystopic.
In celebration that “it’s getting harder and harder to hide if you’re doing the wrong thing” from the COVID police, the news channel showed a black police boat detaining some Aussies out in the open seas.
That is, the Aussies aren’t merely tyrannical. Their rules are dumb. Consider the rules governing their vaccine requirements:
Why can’t the Australian government make rational decisions about anything to do with Covid-19 vaccinations?
Latest case: you can’t register overseas vaccinations unless the vaccine was approved in Australia *at the time of vaccination*, regardless of whether it is approved now. pic.twitter.com/LhMKXfP8BQ
— Ashley Craig (@ash_craig) August 25, 2021
So, this will end up with fully vaccinated people getting revaccinated at the expense of the unvaccinated. Considering that only one-fourth of Australia is vaccinated — half the rate of the United States — this is dumber, overly controlling government.
Defenders will say this dumb, overly controlling government has saved lives. That may be true. But let’s consider those death numbers. We know that while COVID-19 takes lives in obscene numbers, lockdowns also cost lives. In Australia last year, there was a particularly horrible incident in which four babies died in a month because Australia’s rules prohibited transfer to a hospital that could have saved them.
“Children who would normally have emergency transfers to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital for the treatment … are currently unable to because of coronavirus restrictions on re-entering South Australia from Victoria,” reported Australian news.
Horrific.
