October 19 likely won’t bring sweeping changes to Melbourne’s strict lockdown restrictions, as the city’s 14-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases slightly increased (by 0.6) to 9.9.
Melbourne’s third step out of lockdown has no restrictions on leaving home, permits all retail to reopen, and allows public gatherings of up to 10 people. But to get there the 14-day case average must drop to less than five per day, with less than five cases with an unknown source in the last 14 days statewide. That is the current Andrews government rule.
This morning, the city recorded 15 new cases with no fatalities. Victoria’s state of emergency has been extended until November 8.
It’s a bad sign for a city which has been in lockdown for months, crippling the economy and putting a strain on residents’ mental health.
With cases stubbornly staying in the double digits, is there any light at the end of the tunnel for Melbourne?
Strict rules angering locals
Many have criticised the state government’s approach, arguing the rules are too strict.
Hundreds of doctors have signed an open letter calling for an end to the restrictions, saying they are “disproportionate and unscientific”. The validity of Victoria’s lockdown is expected to be challenged in the High Court by hospitality figure Julian Gerner. And this morning, Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet Chris Eccles stepped down from his role — the second high-profile figure to resign following the state’s hotel quarantine inquiry.
In his resignation statement, Eccles said remaining in the role would be a “significant distraction to the ongoing work of the Victorian public sector”. He repeated that neither he nor the Department of Premier and Cabinet made a decision to use private security in quarantine hotels.
It’s about the narrative, not the numbers
Deakin University chair in epidemiology Professor Catherine Bennett told Crikey the roadmap needed to focus more on the narrative — the way people were getting infected — than the numbers. She believes waiting for a five-day average is too restrictive.
“We’ve had households which have contributed to a number of cases … but the number of cases under investigation or not immediately linked to a known outbreak, that number is very low. That’s the number we need to worry about,” she said.
Victoria recently ramped up its contact tracing efforts, investing in software and notifying more people with a connection to a positive case to go into isolation.
Bennett said even without these additional measures, the previous modelling has shown if Melbourne moved to the next step with the current numbers, the risk of seeing cases rise would still be under 20%.
“We’re not going to reach that number by the weekend … [But] if we’re not finding a lot of cases that are complex and more community-wide then we’re in a strong position and we should feel confident that we can take that next step.”
Patience is key
Ben Phillips, associate professor at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, told Crikey that patience is key to tackling case numbers.
“The goals are reachable. It’s a matter of how much time and patience people have,” he said.
Phillips isn’t certain changing Melbourne’s roadmap goals is the best idea, stressing a capable contacting tracing and isolation rules is the most important part of tackling the pandemic.
“Clearly what’s happening is working. It’s quite a painful process, but it is working.”
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Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
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The govt is definitely risking losing community support for lockdown/the carrot side of the carrot/stick equation. Feels like we’ve been kept in the dark a lot with government plans and it is hard to continue wholly supporting lockdown measures when the risk of relaxing the restrictions doesn’t seem that big.
Great round up of the diverse opinion on lockdown.
I’m one of the lucky ones who has a secure job where I can work from home, no kids to keep occupied and a nice big house with a backyard to isolate in. Lockdown hasn’t posed too much of a burden to me, but it’s undeniable at this point that many people are suffering immensely from these restrictions – both mentally and financially.
At this point I find myself agreeing with Professor Catherine Bennett that the lockdown rules seem to be too hyper-focused on the numbers and not where those numbers are coming from.
I am glad that Amber ends on a strong note – i.e. that the strategy is working, but requires a lot of patience. Comments from a number of sources, usually, but not always, from people not expert in the relevant fields, can be an irritant to those of us who could do with positive incentives to “stay the course”.
Patience?!!!?…your suck-holing crawling to the journalist here is pathetic. She’s way too smart for you bucko and the “patience” you sprout is the :”patience” of Rome burning while Nero, er sorry, Dan, fiddles.
So .. contact tracking, together with rapid testing, was always going to underpin a pandemic response. But just about every ‘high tech’ IT intervention / strategy since March ( !! ) has been flakey – remember the ‘sunscreen’ download app ? – and clearly the existing contact tracking solution was neither scalable or robust. In this age of GPS / Google Earth / SatNav / QR code recognition and all the digital marketing / AI / analytics methodologies and solutions, one would imaging contact tracking to be eminently achieveable – but apparently not. This is a failure of IT consultation and planning – risk management 101.- and requires a more detailed analysis that the standard glib ‘technical glitch’ or ‘investing in software’. State governments are generally behoven to top-end consulting firms who drive the strategy , solution design and deployment of ‘investing in software’. So can any reporter actually ask – and follow up – serious technical questions surrounding these failures ? Software development is never easy – but, since the H1N1 ‘heads up’ in 2009, clearly nothing has been put in place to deal with the same tracing issues that were screamingly apparent then.
If you’re relying on software to get you out of trouble, you really don’t understand what software is capable of. The old rule, garbage in, garbage out, applies. Software cannot ever overcome poor data problems.
I would add, also understanding through testing and data the status in, not the general population through headline data, but multiple sample populations that digs deeply; supported by hypotheses and sampling strategy to prove or disprove measures taken, or not.
This whole lock-down thing has become a boring circular argument. The typical marxist commentators here on this site continue their regurgitated MSM bollocks in support of Genghis Dan’s determined ( to show he’s a big tough guy ) lock-down.
While right across the world their are now hundreds of thousands of virologists, epidemiologists who are shouting from the roof-tops that lock-downs are not required and in fact are counter productive.
But no. The marxist commentators here know better.
Agreed. They are even influencing the Journalists to write something pro Dan for acceptance and positive critique. Even Schwab has backed off and put up the white flag.
But I give them much credit. Credit for their dogged determination to pull the rug from beneath the feet of Melbournians. A job that Dan is doing well enough on his own.
Thanks Crikey, for your techno treachery.
That was an interesting sequence of talking to yourself. Or are you replying to voices in your head?
Are you an American of the US variety? They seem to equate even the mildest touch of social democracy with hard core communism/marxism. You know – things like healthcare
.
A very distorted perception of left and right seems to be the only way you would find full on Marxists in the Crikey writers, and their seem to be very few among the commenters. Even Guy Rundle (who sees to have been banned from the new Crikey) would not claim to be a full-on Marxist. For example I think you would find Bernard Keane flips from Centre-Right to Centre-Left depending on the day and the story.
The only two people on this site who could be relied upon to think for themselves, even when wrongedy wrongly wrong, were Razer & Grundle.
Both banished.
Yeah, whatever happened to GRundle? No announcement, especially during a vibrant US election period. Did they announce that? That might make me think about my subscription.
No room at the inn of bland new frayworld.
That is disappointing. I certainly would n’t classify Rundle or Razer as Marxists. That title only goes to you.
They are probably collateral damage because of your incessant marxist flag waving. Marxism itself just a cover garment for the greatest international banking swindle in history..
ShallowCrevice, where the Sun never shines – Marxist? Moi?
I think Razer calls herself a Marxist. Where’s Guy? He’s the reason i subscribed.
Many people, over many years, have said that he was worth the subscription, along with the indefatigable & redoubtable Helen Razer.
There’s just no place for such as they in modern meeja, unwilling to toe the line of bland bromides.
BTW, he claim to be a recovered Trot.
But then Keane claims to have recovered from neolib nutbaggery.
Often.
I would say that your hundreds of thousands of virologists and epidemiologists are now rapidly dwindling in number as hundreds of thousands of more people get inflected daily all over the world. Funny how Australia is the exception right now.
Since when does SA, WA and NT constitute the whole of Australia? And your native Victorians?…what about them?
Would the “…hundreds of thousands of virologists, epidemiologists who are shouting from the roof-tops that lock-downs are not required..” be the “experts” who signed the IPA/Heritage/Great Barrington brigade?
The same sort of meretricious mediocrities who sowed doubt about tobacco, asbestos, sugar and climate change?
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/10/how-uk-climate-science-deniers-turned-their-attention-coronavirus-covid-19
Thanks for new website.
Including, I’ve read, Dr Harold Shipman, mass/serial murderer, appearing more than once, and numerous stupid made-up names. But what do you expect from a dodgy vested interest associated with and funded by the Koch Brothers? Shipman’s place in the shouting ‘hundreds of thousands of virologists, epidemiologists’ is a telling harbinger of what would happen if the fraudulent, Koched-up Great Barrington brigade had their way.
Connecting virologists & epidemiologists with tobacco, asbestos, sugar and climate change” is a long bow you draw their Robin.
Hundreds of thousands! Yeah, right, Valley Deep. Epidemiologists are trained in infection control, not much about lockdown efficacy. It’s a field of study outside their are of expertise, understandably.
But you carry on reading your Facebook posts.
Sweden is the perfect example of how Victoria should have followed. But your best of mates, the MSM, and their hidden-hand bureaucratic international layers of govt continued the attack just to cover-up their criminal complicity. I hope you are smug and happy as Victorian families stumble and fall. Kick ya toe and feel the pain.