A slew of COVID-19 restrictions will ease in Victoria and New South Wales tomorrow. While we all want this blasted pandemic to be over, the eased restrictions are frankly ableist and reckless.
We have it pretty good in Vic and NSW: everything is open and we’re allowed to go about our regular lives. But a bunch of pretty crucial restrictions will be walked back on Friday including the requirement for household contacts to isolate for seven days. Instead they will be required to take a rapid antigen tests every day, wear masks while indoors, work from home where possible and avoid high-risk settings like hospitals. Basically they will be able to go about their lives provided they don’t have symptoms.
But this new phase of eased restrictions yet again leaves disabled, elderly, ill and immunocompromised people behind and essentially tells them they don’t have the right to feel or be safe.
On top of that, telling people they have to take a RAT every day for five days when RATs aren’t free is a joke, right?
The new measures also don’t seem to be based on anything other than the desire to forget about COVID entirely. They came as cases were still way up there. There were 185,898 known active cases in NSW on Thursday and 17,000 new cases were recorded in the 24 hours prior. Vic had 53,518 active cases and recorded more than 10,000 in the previous 24 hours.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday “hallelujah!” things were “getting back to normal”. But I’m sorry I didn’t realise the government could decide when the pandemic was over?
Health experts pointed out on the day of the announcement that no actually, things were not getting back to normal.
Now that Covid is over, I have never known so many people in my circle of acquaintance who are catching it
— Alison Croggon (@alisoncroggon) April 18, 2022
Not only does Australia have one of the world’s highest rates of new daily cases but more Aussies died from the virus in these first few months of 2022 than in 2020 and 2021.
“The message that it sends on Friday is basically that it’s all over, the pandemic is in the past tense. And it’s clearly not. Anyone who looks at the numbers knows it’s not in the past,” Professor Mike Toole from the Burnet Institute told Guardian Australia.
“People are still living in the belief that Australia somehow avoided the worst of the pandemic, they don’t seem to mind the fact that more than 4,000 people have died from COVID in less than four months this year. That’s twice as many as the combined number of deaths in 2020 and 2021.”
Melbourne University epidemiologist Professor Nancy Baxter agreed when speaking to ABC News Breakfast on Wednesday and warned we were heading into a deadly winter.
“If we relax all restrictions what we’re going to find is we have a plateau — a high number of cases on an ongoing basis — that leads to a lot of hospitalisation, significant amount of death and a lot of long COVID,” she said.
This is so bad for elderly, immunocompromised and disabled folks, and retail and hospitality workers who can’t afford to be even more at risk of catching covid. https://t.co/7blaNTiTUQ
— Jessica Walton – They/Them🦿 (@JessHealyWalton) April 20, 2022
Reactions have been mixed among health experts and some have said easing COVID restrictions was reasonable and we probably won’t see a huge spike as a result.
But the problem here isn’t necessarily the sheer numbers, it’s that the most vulnerable people will be the ones who continue to suffer and be ignored.
Disability activist and writer Carly Findlay tweeted a response to the move on Wednesday and urged everyone to continue wearing masks.
“Feeling very unsettled at the news of the COVID safety measures being lifted,” she wrote.
“The cases are raging and yet the governments are acting like COVID doesn’t exist. Well, it does exist, and it can be detrimental for older, disabled, young and immunocompromised people.
“Many disabled, elderly and immunocompromised people have spent the last two years staying home — and I expect the lifting of these safety measures will only mean further isolation.
“At the start of the pandemic individuals seemed to be looking out for each other. Now we are all exhausted but the collective sense of care seems to have gone. Please continue to wear a mask, get tested and stay home if you have symptoms, isolate and check on vulnerable folk.”
We were all in this together until we started to pretend that covid doesn’t exist.
— Carly Findlay OAM (she/her) (@carlyfindlay) April 20, 2022
Remember wearing a mask and isolating when you or a close contact are sick is about protecting your community as well as yourself. A mask is a minor inconvenience we can and should take on to make our vulnerable friends feel a little safer every day.
