Covid in perspective

From AFR

Where is Australia's modern equivalent of one our great leaders, Sir John Monash, during the COVID-19-induced health and economic crisis?
It is a question prominent Victorians are asking, including former Liberal premier Ted Baillieu and the chair of biotechnology giant, CSL's Brian McNamee.
State premiers have terrified people into believing that blunt lockdowns and state border closures are the only responsible options against COVID-19.
Australians are prisoners in their own country, with most people banned from travelling overseas.
The uncounted costs to non-COVID physical wellbeing and mental health, social disruption, domestic violence, young people's education, jobs and incomes, finite government resources and opportunity for future generations have been consigned to the sideline.
Monash enjoyed a highly successful business, academic and military career.
Mathematically challenged journalists have little interest researching official mortality statistics to understand that more than 3100 Australians died of influenza and pneumonia – both respiratory illnesses – in 2018 and 60,000 aged care residents (164 a day) die each year according to the Productivity Commission.
Egged on by politicians and bureaucrats focused on a singular goal, the media fans angst with hysterical reporting – as University of Melbourne Nossal Institute for Global Health associate professor Nathan Grills notes.
It's little wonder businessman Richard Goyder bemoans that we are "absolutely paranoid" about the virus.

Under-siege politicians are playing God, trying to determine who lives and which people and their livelihoods are destroyed.
Monash, an engineer by training who was known for his intelligence and logic, may have handled things differently, according to those familiar with his history.
Baillieu says Monash "would take a situation and meticulously analyse it".
"He was a deep thinker, an optimist and an uplifter," Baillieu says.
"Where others might see failure and be a merchant of doom he would be objective and say 'We need to do this'."
It's a stark contrast to the morbid undertaker performances at daily press conferences by state leaders.
Monash's rise

Monash enjoyed a highly successful business, academic and military career, notes his biography on the Monash University website.
CSL's McNamee asks, "Where was our John Monash when we needed him?
"He was a strategist, a leader and a brilliant field general who deployed all his military resources in a co-ordinated manner to achieve success."
"He cared about his men, was in many ways one of them, yet understood the trade-offs necessary to progress Allied forces in the field."
Monash was dux in mathematics at his Melbourne school before dropping out of university due to financial hardship during the 1890s Depression and working on the Princes Bridge to pay the bills.
By age 30 he obtained a civil engineering degree and later law degrees at Britain's Oxford and Cambridge universities.
He was instrumental in designing many of Victoria's early bridge, railway and other large construction projects, but his leadership shone as a military leader.
He was among the first under fire at the 1915 Gallipoli campaign during World War I and he was the only Australian brigade commander among the original troops not killed or evacuated as wounded.
Following an improbable victory against the Germans at Villers-Bretonneux in France, Monash's leadership at the Battle of Hamel at the Western Front on July 4, 1918, became a storied textbook military operation. American troops made history by fighting under Monash and he secured victory in just 93 minutes to turn the tide against the Germans.
On August 8, 1918, divisions under his command breached the German defences at Amiens to help end the war, resulting in Monash being knighted days later by King George V.
The fundamental point is that Monash, on the battlefield and in broader society, was a brilliant tactician who understood life-and-death decisions in a genuine crisis.
As a statesman, Monash would have led with scientific evidence and analytical rigour.
A battle-hardened Monash may have accepted that some deaths were unfortunately inevitable to save other lives, but the nation would be better off in the long run.
Lessons for today

Today, a modern Monash might have considered more surgical strikes on the virus, without sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of many millions of Australians.
Options could include sensible social distancing, face masks, international border closures, hotel quarantine for returned travellers, hygiene, rigorous testing and contact tracing, isolation for suspected positive cases and restrictions on large group gatherings.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has tried his best to lead in difficult circumstances.
He has been hampered by parochial state leaders, particularly Queensland and Western Australia, playing short-term election politics.
Modern politics is dictated by polls and focus groups that show lockdowns and border closures have broad public support.
That doesn't make them right, nor in the long-term national interest.
Provincial state leaders milk the federal government credit card indefinitely without a sustainable strategy, hiding the real pain of their shutdowns.
Intellectually honest leaders would level with the public that, yes, this is a relatively bad virus, but it is not the Spanish flu of 1918-19 that killed 50 million people.
Unlike past pandemics and viruses, COVID-19 in Australia has barely affected young people, even if a very small number of them have been hit hard.
All serious illnesses occasionally do. In 2017, an eight-year old Melbourne girl tragically died of the regular flu.
The average age of death from COVID-19 is above 80 – over the life expectancy of people born in the 1950s.
It is very sad for these individuals and their families that their deaths may have been accelerated by a few months or years.
Yet in the short-term politically correct world of 24/7 media and social media, anyone mentioning analytical facts is shouted down as cold-blooded or immoral – conveniently ignoring the significant costs to many other lives and livelihoods.
Reflecting on Monash compared to today's leaders, Baillieu laments, "In this day and age today it's difficult for people who rise to the top to stop and think clearly."