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Nicola Roxon, How Smart You Were

Marc Hendrickx

Apr 21 2020

7 mins

If you want to see what a proportionate response to a pandemic looks like re-visit 2009. That was when the Swine Flu pandemic’s projections posited up to 20,000 deaths in Australia, yet there were no lockdowns. AFL and the rugby codes proceeded unimpeded and no one accused solitary golfers of killing their fellow citizens, as Victoria’s Daniel Andrews told the ABC just days ago. Travel and the economy were similarly unaffected. The exaggerated response to COVID-19 is what you get when policy is placed in the hands of bureaucrats given their head by elected leaders taking their cues from hysterics.

In coming months our politicians and bureaucrats will be busy crafting the history of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Considerable emphasis will no doubt be placed on comparing early epidemiological models, based on data from other countries, which suggested tens of thousands were at extreme risk from the virus. Indeed, exactly that spinning is now underway, with Victoria’s…

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