Under the guise of the ‘precautionary principle’, Australia’s health system has overnight transformed from a bureaucracy into an autocracy. This is no surprise to anyone who has worked in public healthcare. 

Some infection control measures — like hand-washing, sequestering the elderly and staying at home if sick, for example — make scientific sense. Yet other edicts, issued without clearly defined activation triggers, sunset clauses or limiting principles, are less common sense.  

This pandemic, unlike the swine flu in 2009, has given legitimacy to panic.   

Because the health system is trained to overestimate risk, it is not being transparent with the public.