Unite to protect the frail
No time for political games
TIMES of crisis bring out the best and worst in mankind.
Recently we’ve seen people brawling over toilet paper and supermarket shelves stripped of essential items.
Some, including the elderly and infirm, are going without while others selfishly stockpile.
But we’ve also seen generosity and willingness to help those struggling to cope.
And, though much of the media focus has been on panic and hysteria, there is a surprising, some might say disturbing, level of normalcy in the community.
We are living through an extraordinary period with daily changes to what is considered best practice.
There is so much we don’t know about this virus; even the number of infections and mortality rate are educated estimates at this stage, given authorities are not clear on how many people have coronavirus but are unaware due to being minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the US, has said the fatality rate of coronavirus is likely to be about 1 per cent, which is still roughly 10 times deadlier than the flu. In Italy about 7 per cent of those who tested positive have died but that may be due to the health system being unable to deal with an influx of seriously ill patients.
A hospital administrator, Dr Lorenzo Casani, explained what happens when there are more patients than hospital beds and necessary equipment: “If you have to choose between a 75-year-old person and a 20year-old person, who are you going to choose? Obviously, it’s the person with the higher expectation of life.”
In South Korea the fatality rate for coronavirus is less than 1 per cent.
Trust the experts, we are told, but even the very best minds are divided about what is the optimum approach. One only needs to look at the Netherlands’ “herd immunity” strategy to see that some experts are not on board with the measures adopted in Australia, the US and much of the world.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said “experts” had advised that the best approach was to “build up group immunity” by allowing people to become infected.
“Those who have had the virus are usually immune afterwards … the larger the group that is immune, the less chance that the virus will jump to vulnerable elderly people and people with poor health,” he said.
It’s an approach that has alarmed many experts who believe it’s reckless and will lead to a greater number of deaths. But the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, backs herd immunity, telling the BBC that Brits must “build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission”.
Locally we’ve seen differing advice from authorities with Victoria’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, recommending people stockpile a two-week supply of food while Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said “panic buying is just stupid” and encouraged people to buy only what they needed.
Australia, the US and Singapore were among the first nations to take decisive action in imposing travel bans from China in January.
From the start of this crisis we’ve seen political pundits and players injecting race into an issue that has nothing to with race and trying to use a global crisis to damage their domestic ideological foes. This is no time for political games.
The newly formed national cabinet contains a number of Labor leaders, including Daniel Andrews. Suggestions that opposition leader Anthony Albanese should be invited into the national cabinet are obtuse; we had an election, a government was formed and we must allow them to govern.
The coronavirus crisis will, in the short term, change life as we know it although for most of us the disease is not life threatening.
But coronavirus is a terrifying prospect for the ill, elderly and frail. We all carry a responsibility to do what we can to protect them during this traumatic period in time.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist. rita.panahi@news.com.au @ritapanahi