Every day will make it harder for businesses and people to bounce back. This means the national exercise in isolation and shuttered businesses can extend only a few more weeks at most. Donald Trump knows and understands as much. Does our National Cabinet?

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If we need a lockdown-- as I said, my personal view is that we do -- medical specialists have to give the government consistent, coherent evidence-based reasons why. So far, that explanation has been lacking

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The University of Western Australia's mild-mannered Professor Maurice Benn placed a rifle against the temple of his retarded four-year-old son, pulled the trigger and then summoned the police to collect him. What followed was a fascinating study of crime, punishment and, ultimately, redemption

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It is now 45 years since the Squire of Chantry completed his 12-novel series, 'A Dance to the Music of Time'. Today, exactly 20 years since his death, let me recommend his opus in these days of plague and fear as a distraction and escape from a century that has not so far been a happy one

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Beijing's machinations are so opaque that only an apologist or fool would trust President-for-Life Xi’s word on anything. If, when this plague is over, we again hear the voices of China's locally engaged quislings urging closer bonds with a fascist regime, the reaction should be one of loud, instant and utter contempt

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It is a brave political leader who fails to follow scientific advice in the present climate, but by failing to consider critically that advice they have done -- and continue to do -- much more harm than they need have done

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From the pandemic's dawning, Wuhan's horrific numbers were extrapolated, deliberately or subliminally, to imply what awaited this nation, with a draconian shutdown urged as the only effective response. That our leaders saw the epidemic only through the medicos' monocular prism set the stage for economic catastrophe

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Although I recognise the Wuhan epidemic poses a serious threat to public health, that should not be considered in isolation. Of equal importance to Australia, its laid-off workers and their future is the nature, extent and impact of the response, which seems to me to be is in urgent need of adjustment

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We have allowed the State to intrude, meddle, regulate and ordain so many petty aspects of our lives, from banning the serving of double nips to obligatory bicycle helmets, that the coronavirus panic-demic has left many feeling a childlike powerlessness. Is it any wonder?

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If the current strategy works far fewer healthy people will catch the Wuhan virus. Thus far fewer people will build immunity. And, unless the virus can be absolutely eradicated, the conditions will be ripe for its re-emergence. Do epidemiologists think it can be so eradicated? It would be nice if they told us

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