Common sense: quarantine is for sick people

Healthy Australians have been forced into various stages of lock down since 21 March: four and a half months ago.

At no stage did we ever think lock down was a sustainable measure. We were told we only had to flatten the curve. We were told the goal was to prevent overwhelming the health system and to save lives. When we flattened the curve, had less than 100 deaths in 25 million people and nearly no one in ICU, we were told we now had to have zero new cases for x number of days. Then, preceded by bureaucratic incompetence, the nevertheless inevitable second wave hit Victoria harder than the first, as predicted.

This virus is here to stay, and it always was. And we are still, by Einstein's definition of repeating actions expecting different outcomes, insanely choosing unsustainable public responses.

The Prime Minister, state Premiers and territory Chief Ministers have all dutifully droned on and on about following the advice of politically-appointed medical experts as if they are absolved of responsibility for the consequences of decisions they subsequently make.

The restrictions have frequently been utterly absurd in their excess and and their enforcement heavy handed.

The expert medical advice has been commonly inconsistent between various chief medical officers: suggesting not a basis in evidence and science but a basis in subjective political opinions.

The Queensland chief medical officer explained there was no scientific or medical basis for shutting down schools and causing massive social burdens to families ill-equipped with time or resources for homeschooling. Never mind the human cost to children caused by months of gaps in school attendance – she believed it was important to send a strong message to the community that the virus should be taken seriously – a political decision.

Same with a military fly over on Anzac Day. No scientific basis, but a desire to send a subliminal political message to not go for a non-essential drive.

Many people believe golf is a great way to ruin a good walk, including the Victorian chief medical officer. When asked why he decided to allow walking but not golf, putting 6,900 golf course employees out of work, he didn't point to the science, but admitted there was "some arbitrariness" in the decisions he made.

Likewise, the science revealed the latest virus to escape an embarrassingly insecure Chinese laboratory has a half life of just 90 seconds in direct sunlight with moderate temperature (21°C to 24°C) and humidity (20%). But political elites & an incurious media poured scorn on people who went to the beach in numbers or read a book by themselves on a park bench, in direct sunlight.

Why? Because "experts".

Jane Caro pointed out some governments can weigh advice from a wide range of experts and not slavishly agree the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance of doing exactly what cherry-picked experts say when they say. I agreed, offering the inconvenient example of the science of when every human life begins. Politicians are highly capable of ignoring such actually indisputable science when it suits their careers.

Please don't misunderstand me. It's not long into making a case like this that the people disagreeing with me will jump to conclusions and assume two things they shouldn't: that I dismiss experts and don't care about people dying. Such assumptions only make a donkey out of those making them, and are not based in reality.