this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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Inquiry warns distrustful public wouldn’t accept COVID measures in future pandemic. (theconversation.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/australia
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[–] Nath 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The biggest problem we faced in 2020 was that the federal government of the day dropped the ball. One of the federal government's primary duties is border control. The borders should have closed and national quarantine facilities engaged to control and protect repatriated citizens.

This ended up being left to the State Governments. And in fairness, the premiers stepped in and filled that void as best they could. It was heartening - party politics took a back seat to addressing issues that faced everyone. Internally, the states had a real mixed bag of responses - and their varying levels of success should be case studies on how to approach this in the future. Melbourne locked down, and while that was no fun for anyone, the death rates of Melbourne are a tiny fraction of any comparable city in the USA.

WA just shut the whole border. This had its challenges, but from within we cruised through 2020 and 2021 as though there was no pandemic. A couple of short, sharp semi-lockdowns in there when the odd minor outbreak threatened is all.

NSW dabbled a bit with locking down, but opened up again too quickly. We saw the effects that had on case numbers.

It isn't that the public doesn't trust the measures employed - it's that they were a patchwork of different measures and they had varying degrees of success. Hopefully, the next time this happens, the federal government will learn from 2020 and step in with a nation-wide response that we can all get behind.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Idk where you experienced it but I did not get the impression of party politics taking a back seat.

Federally the LNP played with misinformation (e.g. children can't spread it, a completely absurd statement) in order to push on with their business first agenda. Ultimately instituting a deeply corrupt and flawed bastard welfare measure that was terminated early. Not to mention losing vaccine deals because of arrogant pride.

In NSW the LNP favoured the rich east, and played politics with masks. Notably Dom being photographed outside without a mask. They literally deployed the military on westies while being like "oops lmao" every time someone from liberal heartland caused an outbreak.

I was absolutely disgusted with the cowardice, contradictory statements (don't use masks, wait use masks, don't go out, now go out, oops go back), and venal politicking. It is completely unsurprising that despite the admirable performance by the APS and existing strategic stockpiles trust in government was utterly annihilated.

[–] zurohki 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

don’t use masks, wait use masks

IIRC this one was about ensuring the supply of masks for medical staff early on before production ramped up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

So this might have been the case however:

  • Australia maintains a strategic stockpile for events like this.
  • There was at one point no evidence masks stopped spread (after all, we didn't know how it spread). Some people touted this as evidence masks don't stop spread. This is a perversion of how evidence works and a very silly thing to think.
  • You cannot change messages and expect people to keep trusting you. you need to be honest.

Australia's readiness had been criticised for years, indeed it used to be one of the ways I bored everyone stupid at house parties when I got political. If the stockpile of masks was insufficient this was massively forseeable, although I think it was actually adequate and the pollies were just reckless idiots for panic reasons.

[–] Taleya 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

yup. Basically everyone did their own thing and then fucking NSW leeroy jenkins everyone and no matter how hard anyone did the "right" thing jackasses just fucked it up for everyone. So what was the goddamn point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

While I agree that the federal government response was at best mediocre, the people were just plain stupid. I cannot count situations where people were refusing to were a mask because it "limits the human rights" or "it suffocates". Honestly, I hope next pandemic will be more deadly, so the nature will run its course.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yep. It was infuriating to know in Feb that everything was gonna shutdown and watching the Libs drag their feet for weeks. They waited until everyone who could voluntarily isolate already was, and reasserted that Conservatism is too selfishly incompetent to ever make tough decisions and lead anything or anyone. It's a miracle we didn't have a domestic outbreak like Italy; thousands of boomers and up would've been fucked.