Guest Post: Should lockdown end early?

A guest post by a reader:

As we hit the halfway mark of the level 4 lockdown, the Government will shortly find itself in the unenviable position of having to defend its decision-making. There is no perfect response to a pandemic. Overreact and you needlessly destroy the economy and your own peoples’ livelihoods. Don’t react early or hard enough and lives will be lost that could otherwise have been saved. Every Government in the world will come under fire in the wash-up, one way or another.

The problem for our Government is it has built its response on the belief that New Zealand faced the same scenario that has played out overseas. However, the facts as we know them don’t support that. As the days pass, more and more New Zealanders will start to question whether the current State of Emergency can be justified. Here is why. 

Dr Grant Morris, an associate professor in Law at Victoria University, recently noted the language our political leaders chose to use at the outset of this crisis has been laced with fear. In announcing the lockdown, Prime Minister Ardern said: “We currently have 102 cases. But so did Italy once. If community transmission takes off in New Zealand the number of cases will double every five days. If that happens unchecked, our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die.” The bold emphasis is mine, and it’s important. Our Prime Minister invoked the most draconian restrictions on our civil liberties in the history of this country on the basis that without taking such an action, tens of thousands of New Zealanders will die. Not could, might or may. Will.

You could write an essay on the psychology behind the choice of that word. But we’ll put that aside for another day and look at whether the facts support such a strong claim. Ardern did not release the modelling that she based this statement on until well after the country was already locked down. What that modelling said was that in a worst case scenario 27,000 people could die if coronavirus was left to spread unchecked. That scenario was given a 5% possibility of occurring. The media generously termed that to be a ‘plausible scenario’, compared with Ardern’s statement that it was effectively a certainty.

There are several reasons why this scenario isn’t really plausible at all. The greatest falsity that is being pushed onto the public is that New Zealand is in anyway similar to places like Bergamo, New York or London. The Government and the media continually run the narrative that without the lockdown we will experience the same devastation as the worst-hit cities in the world. This is, to be blunt, a lie.

It’s important to let the facts speak for themselves. Putting aside that Italy didn’t have any other country to model a response on other than China’s dictatorship, and was thus screwed from the start, its hardest hit city Bergamo has a population density of 3000 people per square kilometre and an average age of 45. Let’s look at some other cities to provide some context:

City	Population Density (per km2)	Average age
London	5600	40
New York	10,000	38
Auckland	1200	35

Coronavirus is ripping through cities with a high population density, particularly those with busy public transport systems. What doctors believe is that severe coronavirus cases are the result of viral load – this refers to how big a dose of the virus you get when first infected. Large gatherings in confined spaces pose the greatest risk of coming into contact with multiple people at different stages of contagion, increasing the possibility that you get a stronger dose to start with. For hospital staff, they are seeing the sickest so are exposed to stronger doses again. Which is why in Bergamo hospitals were the major transmitters of the disease as they didn’t know what they were dealing with initially. The average viral load spread from its hospitals was likely higher and combined with an older population has proven deadly.

In New Zealand, none of these factors are in play. We do not have densely populated cities or packed subway systems, and we were able to learn from the Italian example to restrict large gatherings and prepare our frontline healthcare staff. An even bigger factor in our favour is we are an island located at the bottom of the world. The number of people who can reach us is hugely limited and we have the ability to cut them off at any time, or quarantine them on arrival. We chose not to do that, but as it stands that hasn’t mattered very much.

The media breathlessly report the number of coronavirus cases as if they’re the end game. While we have 1106 cases confirmed (as of Monday), the real total is potentially several times the official count given a large number of those infected will have had minor symptoms they put down to a cold, if they noticed them at all, and will not have bothered getting tested. What’s actually important is our hospitalisation rate. At this point in time, our maximum hospitalisation rate is under 2% and the mortality rate is less than 0.1%. Our health system is not in danger of being overwhelmed. In fact, it is currently under-utilised.

Proponents of the lockdown will argue it’s easy to make decisions with the benefit of hindsight. I agree. And most New Zealanders, including myself, accept the Government’s decision wasn’t unreasonable at the time given what we were seeing play out in the world. But what we now know is that stringent border controls, restrictions on public gatherings and sensible physical distancing combined with good hygiene is effective at containing the spread of coronavirus. 

There is now a strong argument in favour of ending the lockdown early to give people a chance to salvage what’s left of their livelihoods, via a slow climbdown through the alert levels. But instead of reassessing the real risk coronavirus poses to New Zealand based on the facts in front of them, our authorities are instead focused on banning the recreational activities they don’t like. 

We should also deal with the strawman that has been built up over the past month. The nuance in the coronavirus debate hasn’t just been lost, it’s been forcibly squashed. Questioning the lockdown doesn’t mean you are happy to see people die for the sake of the economy. We tolerate a large number of preventable deaths that are part and parcel of living in a free society. More than 350 people die on our roads, dozens drown and dozens more die from influenza each year. We put in place protections to limit these deaths, but we don’t prevent them entirely and we shouldn’t. Any death lost to coronavirus is a tragedy, but it is no more tragic than any other.

Moreover, the continuation of the lockdown has real consequences of its own. Every week the economy is crippled will lead to more businesses failing, more lives resigned to the misery of welfare, more marriage breakdowns, more cancer patients missing treatment, more surgeries postponed, more domestic violence victims and yes, eventually more suicides.  When a Government uses its power to unilaterally remove the rights of all its citizens, at the threat of police force, the basis for that decision must be rigorously and continuously challenged. Every day we are denied our freedom is a day the Government must prove a State of Emergency still exists. The argument outlined above may not be perfect,  but based on the facts in play right now it is time to at least start asking some harder questions.