Were the COVID-19 policy interventions the greatest success of public policy or will they be remembered as the most disastrous public policy failure of all time?
Commentary
This demonstrates a high level of public interest in uncovering the truth behind the events, understanding the rationale behind specific decisions, and extracting valuable lessons for the future.
This is particularly crucial for Australia to enhance its preparedness for future events and to appropriately assess the WHO’s new pandemic agreements.
Despite alarming predictions, there have only been five pandemics in the last century: the Spanish flu, Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, swine flu, and COVID-19.
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Over the years, advancements in medical knowledge, training, and technology have enriched the arsenal of disease response strategies, spanning prevention, treatment, and palliative care.
The average life expectancy has seen remarkable improvement as a result, with countries sharing best practices in disease prevention and management.
However, when COVID-19 emerged, several countries, including Australia, disregarded well-established pandemic response plans and instead reacted with fear.
Reacting out of panic is not a sound foundation for making individual or public policy choices.
Despite this, public health messaging deliberately aimed to instill panic in the population to ensure compliance with pandemic protocols.
The collective panic in early 2020 led to the abandonment of proper processes, preparedness plans, and centralized decision-making among a select group of government officials, ministers, and health experts.
The lasting impact on physical health, mental well-being, social dynamics, education, and the economy will reverberate through public life for years to come.
Were Australia’s COVID-19 policy interventions truly the pinnacle of public policy success, resulting in a significant number of lives saved due to timely, decisive, and evidence-based measures implemented by governments following expert advice?
Or will they be considered the most catastrophic failure in public policy history?
Why Were Established Practices Disregarded?
These are critical questions that warrant a thorough, independent, and unbiased investigation.
The first question to address is: why were the existing pandemic preparedness plans and medical decision-making protocols abandoned?
Relying on questionable data from a single city, Wuhan, in one country should not have been enough to overturn decades of scientific research and empirical evidence.
In particular, rather than succumbing to panic-induced measures such as widespread lockdowns, did Australian scientists and health officials rigorously assess international claims against local data on the new virus’s transmission rate, severity, and fatality?
Until these crucial details, specific to Australia, are thoroughly and credibly examined through an empowered independent inquiry, rebuilding public trust in health authorities and institutions to pre-pandemic levels may prove challenging.
How Was the Threat Level Assessed?
Assessing the threat of a disease outbreak against other killer diseases involves considering the opportunity costs of allocating human, financial, and hospital resources to different health risks. The quality-adjusted life years (QALY) measure is commonly used to assess one side of this equation. This measure recognizes that the death of a healthy child, adolescent, or young person is a greater tragedy and loss to society than that of someone above the average life expectancy.
It was known from the beginning that the average death of those dying with COVID exceeded the average life expectancy. Were standard cost-benefit analyses conducted on various policy interventions, including the risks of side effects and collateral harms? If so, why were they not published? If not, why not?
What About the Use of Medicines?
Another area of investigation is the lack of treatment between being infected and requiring in-patient hospital and ICU care. Why did Australian authorities not conduct high-quality randomized control trials of repurposed drugs with well-established safety profiles, like ivermectin?
A group of doctors recently won a case against the FDA for banning them from prescribing ivermectin to their COVID patients.
The doctor-patient relationship in Western societies has long been governed by principles such as the sanctity of the relationship, avoiding harm, informed consent, and prioritizing patient health outcomes. Why did professional colleges and regulators overturn these principles in favor of directives from a central bureaucracy?
The resort to coercion to enforce compliance with public health measures, such as mask and vaccine mandates, likely contributed to rising public distrust of institutions and vaccine hesitancy.
Inquiries should demand the science, data, and decision-making behind universal mandates, especially considering the age gradient of those at risk. Why did regulators not require local trials to establish safety and efficacy?
Have Harms Exceeded Benefits?
Ultimately, did the interventions to manage COVID-19 in Australia do more good than harm? It seems likely that the harms from mass lockdowns, mask mandates, and universal vaccination will exceed the benefits claimed through flawed modeling.
In the United States, it is estimated that societal-disruption deaths from lockdowns may have exceeded COVID deaths prevented. What lessons can be learned, and what principles and safeguards should be put in place to ensure optimal health and public policy outcomes in future pandemics?
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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