Total lockdown and Henrik Ibsen

We won't know if it is sufficiently localised now until the current efforts have either succeeded or failed. But we do at least have a path towards a full shutdown again by simply adding postcodes as the efforts fail. Obviously the public health authorities making the local attempt are in a better position to judge the likelihood of success than anybody else and are entitled to a "margin for appreciation" in not knowing what to do quickly enough.

But is that situation acceptable?

Assuming they are right and the current second wave is contained locally, what does that tell us about the policy of "Suppression"?

No matter how egregious the blunders that produced this particular outbreak might be, we know that there will be more outbreaks regardless of how well those particular blunders are dealt with. The public health officials in charge have confirmed this repeatedly.

We also now know that at the present levels of social distancing etc a small single cause outbreak can easily become an epidemic.

To me that necessarily implies the present levels need to be tightened. Yet Government policy continues to be for further loosening and opening up.

So far that policy has not cost many lives. Do we really have to wait until it does before reversing it? The USA and Brazil are not outliers. The UK and several European countries where public health advice is not being spectacularly ignored still have larger death rates and are pressing on to open up their economies. There doesn't seem to be much other than "luck" preventing Australia joining the club.

The least developed countries do not have an option for attempting Eradication. China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong have demonstrated that it is at least worth attempting. Australia and New Zealand still have the option.

That option was explained in the "Group of Eight" Universities Report to Government but has been rejected.

I am not competent to say whether Eradication is feasible in Australia. It will certainly take a lot longer for States with community transmission. We are now more or less back to the starting point level of community transmission in Victoria, just from one major outbreak becoming an epidemic wave.

But I am competent to say that there has been no clear coherent justification for the current policy of not attempting Eradication. An attempt may not work and could take much longer than people hope, without working. That much has been coherently explained.

But we also know that the policy of Suppression is not working. The current level of opening up has already led to one epidemic wave and can be expected to result in more, even though economic activity is nowhere normal levels.