Part of me is so sick of the Morrison government’s bungled response to the Wuhan virus that I can hardly bear to write more about it. But needs must. First off, most of the media is flat out misleading you. The massive economic damage coming our way has not been done by the virus. It has been done by the government’s response to the virus. Full stop. As Ramesh Thakur has pointed out, Sweden refused to impose any tough lockdown, kept primary schools and economic activities functioning, gave guidance to citizens and trusted them. This was just like with SARS, the 1969 Hong Kong flu, all past viruses — some of which were much more lethal than this one. And Sweden is doing better in deaths per million than a half dozen or so lockdown European countries plus 14 lockdown US States. 

The daily death toll of those with (not necessarily because of) corona in Sweden has been below 10 since mid-July, so less than an average flu season.  And don’t believe the ABC (see above). Sweden’s economy has contracted four per cent less than the EU average and 12 per cent less than lockdown Britain.  So fewer deaths per million than Britain, all basic freedoms and opportunities maintained, including schooling, and a recession less than half as bad as the UK’s (ours will be worse again than the Brits’). As the Swedish Chief Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has continually said from late March, lockdowns don’t work. They can’t work. As soon as you ease up the virus comes back. 

Back in early April I said these ‘we’ll implicitly go for eradication’ idiotic lockdowns would disappear if Australian politicians had to lose most of their pay and wealth the way all those private sector people deemed (by them) to be employed in ‘inessential’ businesses were losing theirs. I stand by that. If every politician here had to go on JobKeeper and lose his or her pension and everything else, we wouldn’t be in lockdown. Then, maybe, we’d all be in this together. Meantime, it’s a bad joke to pretend we are. 

As it is, though, we have a Prime Minister who will not let citizens leave the country without bureaucratic approval, who puts his relationship with Il Duce Dan above the best interests of Australians, who cares not a whit for freedom and (I choke to say this) is starting to look worse than Turnbull. Staggering but true. The Lib PM who brought us the most socialist, least freedom-concerned government in the country’s history. It’s time to GoMo.