The December Fairytale

The December Fairytale

6 September 2021

Our parents told us fairytales when they put us to bed at night. Australia has grown past that age and should ask for some reality from the Commonwealth Government on its demand to “live with Covid” from December 2021.

Arnold Swartzernegger recently remarked that climate change needed to be sold like a movie script, stating that no one would invest in a movie where there was “no hope”.

Conversely, the narrative surrounding the novel coronavirus has been heavy on hope and light on reality and one which could have sold the script for Contagion.

In that movie a (corona)virus from a bat devastates the world, bringing society to the edge of collapse. The movie ends with the development of a vaccine in around 4 to 6 months and with Matt Damon assuring his daughter and the audience that “It’s gonna start getting normal again”.

A similar story has been told since the Covid vaccines were announced in late 2020 - the vaccines will allow us to go “back to normal” (or, more recently, “come out of the cave”).

The fairytale ending.

The current reality is, however, that NSW ended Australia’s dream run of keeping out Corona and its belated “lockdown” (that still let you window shop and buy luxury handbags) failed to put the evil spirits back in the (Pandora’s) box and merely trapped hope inside.

After giving up any hope of getting their cases back to zero some time ago now, NSW deftly switched its narrative to saying you’ll just have to learn to live with it, that NSW will inevitably infect the Covid-Zero states (just like it did with Victoria, the ACT and New Zealand) and that NSW will show the rest of the country how it is done.

Having had its cases now exceed 1,500 a day, NSW has switched to peddling the “hope” that restrictions will be reduced once vaccinations reach 70% of the eligible population, regardless of the level of daily cases.

The current vaccines are modern miracles and are essential given the state of the world.

Unfortunately, they are not (yet) the silver bullet or "get out of jail free card" against a novel and rapidly evolving virus that watching Contagion would lead you to believe them to be. As is often the case, reality is far removed from the fairytale.

Israel made that mistake when it declared victory over Covid from 1 June 2021, due to it vaccinating approximately 60% of its eligible population with the Pfizer vaccine. With the kingdom and princess saved and evil Corona “defeated”, Israel dropped all restrictions and birthed into the world the vaunted policy of “living with coronavirus”- no more masks, no more lockdowns, international travel for all, no more military backed contact tracing (NSW has recently announced a similar intention to scale down contact tracing in place of an app that is already overwhelmed).

The effect on Israel was profound. It went from having several days of zero cases in June 2021 and only tens of cases in a serious condition to experiencing 11,000 cases a day at the end of August 2021 and 750 cases in a serious condition. Notwithstanding the temporary impact of boosters, Israel remains on the cusp of calamity with the start of the new school year on 1 September 2021 and children under 12 unable to be vaccinated.

The US made a similar mistake when it removed the requirement for vaccinated people to wear masks in May 2021 and declared independence from the virus on Independence Day. As America was warned, dropping masks for vaccinated individuals on an honour system just led to unvaccinated people acting like vaccinated ones and leaving the masks at home. NSW has recently announced an intention to allow vaccinated people to attend picnics of up to 5 people on a similar honour system.

The US is now experiencing a 7-day average of 165,000 cases a day (with 20% of those being in children), a 300% increase from Labor Day last year, with twice as many in hospital (more than 100,000 people). Covid is claiming 1,500 lives a day (almost twice as many as last Labor day).

NSW is on the cusp of repeating America’s mistake and has promised (or threatened if you are from any “Covid-Zero” state) to ease restrictions once vaccinations get to the magical 70% of eligible population on the hope that the Doherty Institute's modelling supporting such a feat was authored by Nostradamus.

As to that modelling, the Doherty Institute's modelling relies on a number of assumptions which have been omitted from the NSW and Federal Government’s “hopeful narrative”.

Contrary to what the latest Qantas ad would have you believe, the modelling assumes mask wearing and built in low level restrictions to be permanent if lockdowns are to be avoided- so no maskless faces on planes anytime soon

The modelling assumes that Pfizer would be 79% effective at preventing infection for Delta and that the protection would remain at those levels. Unfortunately, the data coming out of Israel and the UK shows that the Pfizer vaccine’s ability to stop infection begins to wane within weeks and is only 38% against infection by Delta (and even as low as only 20%) and potentially needs to be boosted after 5 months to 8 months to retain its efficacy against symptomatic infection.

This means that a critical assumption of the report was significantly over optimistic.

Finally, the report assumes Pfizer will be 50% effective at preventing infection by the theoretical “wild type” corona (meaning future variants). But Pfizer is already potentially below that against Delta, and there are worse variants in circulation overseas.

If you ignore the above, the Doherty Institute’s report provides a fairytale ending which can be held up as “proof” that the currently virus free states should openly welcome Delta carrying Victorians and New South Welshmen with open arms.

Unfortunately, when the gulf between the assumptions and the current data coming from overseas is considered, the Commonwealth’s plans for the “Covid-Free” States to forever discard lockdowns and to “learn to live with the virus” once we reach the magical 80% threshold in December, would appear to be as useful as following a manual on trench warfare to defend against blitzkrieg.

Time for the Grimm Brothers version of the fairytale.

The choice to “live with Covid” for Covid-Zero states is like Gretel letting the witch eat Hansel because the fight was taking too long.

The NSW and Victorian Hansels are already in the oven but this pandemic will not be over by Christmas and the Covid-Free Gretels still have choices.

The choice to prevent the irreversible seeding of Corona in their states by maintaining their sealed borders and judicious use of lockdowns (actual hard and fast lockdowns, not NSW dressed up light restrictions).

The choice to maintain their current level of economic activity and social freedoms. The US experience shows that “living with Covid” does not magically sustain consumer spending, consumer confidence or the jobs rebound as the indications are that people save their money, hold back on spending and eat out less when Corona is about.

The Prime Minister and the NSW Premier have recently asked “...if not at 70 per cent and 80 per cent, then when? Then when?” and have pointed to the compact between the States made in reliance on the Doherty modelling.

Whilst the modelling was updated at the start of August to account for Delta (but still based on assumptions which have not held up), Delta is just the beginning of the story.

The Doherty Report acknowledges this and specifically highlighted that:

“Should more transmissible variants emerge in future, transmission potential will be higher than anticipated here for any given level of completed vaccine coverage”; and

“Emergence of ‘vaccine escape’ variants will require re-evaluation of targets and associated requirements for public health measures.“

The world is still experiencing at least 4.5 million (and growing) cases a week and there are currently at least 6 variants of concern that the WHO is tracking.

Two of those of note are Mu, which now accounts for the majority of cases in Chile, Columbia and Peru and is now showing up around the world, and C1.2 (aka Beta 2.0 from South Africa) which has been mutating twice as fast than any other variant to date.

Both of these variants carry mutations which scientists are concerned will mean they can evade the immune response from the current crop of vaccines.

And that is just the known variants, let alone the “ultimate” variant 600 times worse than Delta predicted by Virologist Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dr Fauci in the US and leaders of other countries acknowledge that the emergence of a vaccine beating variant risks undoing everything achieved to date, resulting in those “living with Covid” Gretels joining their long-ago burned Hansels in the oven.

The only reasonable answer from the “Covid-Free” States to the Prime Minister’s question is therefore: “When what what has worked for the last 18 months no longer keeps Corona from the door”.

Whilst the detractors will say that position is like the punishment of Sisyphus, choosing to continue to push the boulder up the hill whilst the world vaccination rate increases and the corona variants play out is a better choice than choosing to be run over less than halfway to the top.