So far Australia has Seemingly Dodged the Worst of Coronavirus, Why?
As much of the rest of the Western world struggles with overflowing intensive care units and economically crippling lock-downs, so far Australia has seemingly managed to avoid the worst of the coronavirus outbreak.
But why?
Perhaps the most immediately apparent reason is the various travel bans enacted by the Morrison government, in response to the spread of the virus from China, Italy, South Korea and Iran.
While failing to enact a travel ban on flights from the United States (ironically the biggest source of cases contracted overseas) did somewhat setback the containment of the virus. The relatively early action on banning travellers from most nations struggling with large scale outbreaks of the virus at the time, clearly insulated Australia quite well overall.
But there are other potentially other important factors that may have contributed to Australia’s relative success in seemingly containing the virus so far.
A high number of infected travellers from both aircraft and cruise ships distorted the total case numbers
Less than a week ago it appeared that the virus’ progression in Australia was on much the same course as it was in Europe. This forced the States and the Federal government into enacting greater containment measures to attempt to ensure Australia did not face the same fate.
Its possible that an extremely high number of imported cases from both air travel and cruise ships made it appear that the outbreak was further advanced in Australia than it actually was, in terms of locally contracted cases.
While some may later categorise this as a mistake, this action likely played an important role in ensuring that there was no European/American style explosion in cases in the short term.
Australia is an island nation that doesn’t share borders
Unlike Europe which has freedom of movement for 420 million people and daily border crossings are a normal part of everyday life, Australia has complete control over whoever comes and goes into our nation.
For example, there are no Italian truck drivers just passing through to drop off a load of goods in Denmark or German businessmen taking a high speed train to Paris.
Meanwhile in Australia just a fraction of people interact with travellers from other nations on any given day compared with Europe.
This same factor was instrumental in ensuring that the mortality rate for the Spanish Flu in 1918–1920 was far lower than comparable nations elsewhere and one of the lowest in the world.
Conclusions
There is little doubt the Morrison government could have managed its response to the coronavirus outbreak better. For instance it could have not allowed the Ruby Princess to dock and ensured screening for all travellers coming into Australia, since the outbreak began.
But through a combination of containment measures that were introduced in time and the sheer luck of our geography once again proving one of our strongest allies against disease, so far things haven’t been too bad compared with the rest of the world.
Winter is still yet to come and the outbreak has far from run its course, so there are likely still many months ahead before we are out of the woods.
Ultimately, containment measures we have so far have bought us the most precious thing in this crisis, time.
Even as vested interests call for a return to normal, we should continue to prepare our health system for the worst and only relax containment measures when medical experts, not just economic commentators are sure the danger has passed.
