Back in March over what seems like a 7-day period the world changed. From the Prime Minister saying he was going to the footy it took 24 hours for him to change his mind. Days later his Government announced they were establishing a joint coronavirus national committee to tackle the Covid-19 situation. The borders to Australia were closed and scientific advice was used to make decisions on how we all lived and worked. States took over at that time and in Victoria the Andrews Government instigated a similar science-based approach to the crisis. People complained of their rights, opposition politicians complained of every decision that was made in the daily developing crisis and the Premiere stuck to his guns.

All appeared to be working until the hotel quarantine reared its head and Victoria had a second outbreak. The Premier raised the stakes to counter this serious threat and the opposition politicians asked for the Premier to resign. Despite the seriousness of the mistakes made regarding the hotel quarantine matter the facts are that the Covid-19 crisis was not usual daily events for a any Government or any agency of Government. 

Looking back in times to come it might become apparent how huge this crisis was and how quickly changing the situation was and thereby an insight into the efforts made by our elected leaders in these trying times. Every day something huge had to be decided, decisions on restrictions to be put in place or eased had to be made based on scientific mathematical modelling of what might happen in two weeks’ time into the future. Make the wrong call and the infections would take over before anyone knew what had happened.

Some decisions were made that were not effective or best at the time but in context, only known in hindsight. Although some who were complaining about every decision claimed they were correct on those occasions, but the question is could they have done anything better overall or only make the matters worse than they were.

What happened in two overseas countries as a way of comparing how well our leaders did or did not do would perhaps be a better way to rate how well we were led or not.

The UK with three times Australia’s population had, so far, 60,000 plus deaths compared to Australia 912. On a same population comparison Australia would have had to have 20,000 deaths to be as bad a state as the UK. Now USA, they have so far over 265,000 deaths and at 13 times our population we would have needed 20,000 to be that dire. 

In those countries’ leaders led by showing indecision, changing their advice 180 degrees, and making populist appeals to keep business going ignoring the health of the population in general. Those countries are now in a desperate state and today predictions were made by scientific leaders in USA that they could have 450,000 deaths by Feb next year.