Originally Posted by
MickG0105
Right, let's draw this argy-barge to a close because I do not have the time to be formulating "proper estimates" for non-financials.
If you want to compare a speculative 'let it rip' scenario to the actual solution that Australian Governments have pursued, run with a cost of around $450 billion (that's $350 billion for the federal response (including tax revenues foregone), $60 billion for the aggregate state based responses an $40 billion for the 'non-financials'). If that doesn't suit, put your own numbers in.
Lives "saved" - 35,000 if you use Sweden to calculate the likely deaths under a minimalist mitigation approach; 45,000 if you use UK/US.
Raw dollars/life saved is in the range $10 million - $12.9 million. Adjust to suit your needs.
We came into this with a Federal government with a two seat majority in the House and the minors controlling the Senate having to work under the Constitution with the various State governments, three or four of which were facing upcoming elections. A low/no-mitigation approach was never a realistic alternative. Either the states would have done there own thing or on the day we reached a deaths milestone (5,000 in total, 500 on one day, etc, take your pick ) the Federal government would likely have lost a vote of confidence.
If your going to compare our actual camel of an approach/outcome with a unicorn of a speculative scenario, gee, I wonder how that's going to play out? The problem of course is that unicorns aren't real.
Good summary of the “other factors”. It’s never as simple as the personal liberty VS lockdowns argument is put (by most people).
Even if we had followed a minimal restrictions approach and instead spent stacks of $$$ on health etc, business demand in various sectors would have dropped.
So a large number of business would have gone under anyway due to a change in spending patterns due to a large outbreak.
Airlines would have still put a lot of staff on unpaid leave because demand would have dropped at least 40%, plus international would have dried up because of the various restrictions all around the world.
Having quarantine on arrival made sense as a policy for Australia (an island). Plays to our massive strength. Having the nationwide lockdown last year made sense, originally to flatten the curve….
But that time should have been used to rapidly build “donga cities” in BNE/SYD/MEL/PER by mid year 2020.
Instead of arguing over a couple of dollars, Australia should have negotiated a similar deal to Israel for the Pfizer vaccine (as well as the AZ deal for onshore production, plus the failed UQ vaccine). This would have given us much better options. And a way out of the current mess!!
The general strategy wasn’t bad. And as mentioned was politically possible in our federation (states actually run the various health sectors, feds control the money). But around October last year, Australia was to busy saying “awesome job!” “Look how good we are!” when they should have been working harder than ever….