From Unmasked: The Politics of Pandemics (Bill Bowtell, 2021) excerpts
Other countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, did not recast their plans, nor did they deviate from the basic principles and assumptions underlying their pandemic planning. Australian authorities did not seem greatly concerned with the precautionary measures being taken to the north. Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and other Asian countries were not regarded as peer countries and therefore were presumably not consulted in the critical weeks of January and February 2020, nor have they been since. It also is not known whether, during that time, Australian authorities were in continuing and meaningful direct contact with Chinese medical and scientific agencies and authorities. The United Kingdom, in contrast, was held by the AHPCC to be a peer country despite embarking on a catastrophically ill-conceived path to disaster.
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The Emergency Response Plan struck a compromise between the two levels of government and between the many agencies and departments involved in one way or another with what might be thought to be the relatively straightforward business of managing cruise ship arrivals and departures. In normal times, these arrangements worked smoothly. But by midMarch, normal times had passed. The saga of the Ruby Princess’s sister ship, the Diamond Princess, had already highlighted the very serious threat posed to cruise ships by coronavirus. By mid-February at the latest, Australia should have followed Taiwan’s example earlier that month and stopped all cruise ship activity at Australian ports. Yet no such decision was taken.
The secrecy under which the deliberations of the AHPCC is cloaked means that we have no idea if the committee considered halting cruise ship operations; what, if any, recommendation it made to federal ministers; and whether ministers accepted or rejected any advice given by the AHPCC. The Australian Government refused to provide documents or to allow its officers to appear at the special commission. The Diamond Princess event does not appear to have triggered any overhaul or review of the mechanisms by which cruise ship arrivals were to be handled under the arrangements laid down in the national plan.
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The sense of relief at seeing off the threat of coronavirus obscured the fact that the modelling and assumptions relied upon by the AHPCC had not come to pass. The committee had been adamant that the Australian people would not accept a large-scale lockdown. Indeed, from the inception of the Emergency Response Plan, it appears that the AHPCC had been convinced that no lockdown could, would or should be used to stem the spread of coronavirus, and that therefore at best, coronavirus would infect some 20 per cent of the Australian population. No doubt to the astonishment of the AHPCC and the federal government, the one preventive measure that had never featured in their planning — the lockdown — was the one thing that worked splendidly to avert the catastrophe that, by 22 March, they expected was inevitable and unavoidable. Very stringent social movement restrictions were the only prudent and precautionary steps that should have been considered and recommended.
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The false dichotomy between the ‘economy’ and ‘health’ is at the heart of the neoliberal project that has held sway in capitalist nations since the 1980s. Spending on ‘welfare’ of all kinds, including public health and aged care, has been slashed as taxes on the wealthy have been slashed. But the foolishness of this approach has become apparent. The lack of spending on universal health provision, and above all prevention, was a driver of the US spread of coronavirus.
The redistribution of wealth from the rich to society generally strengthens public health care and limits the emergence of diseases—redistribution is prevention. Investment in robust prevention, detection and suppression measures would have stopped coronavirus before, not after, it became a pandemic. And the cost of these measures would have been a fraction of what has been spent to date. Neoliberal economics treats spending on prevention and public health as an expense, a drag on productivity, while the hundreds of billions thrown at vaccine research and production is welcomed as a boost to stock markets and profits.
Four decades ago, coincidentally at the time HIV/ AIDS emerged, the Reagan administration embarked on a neoliberal experiment that subsequently swept the world. That experiment has run its course. It will now fall to a better, more decent American administration to learn the lessons of another viral pandemic, repudiate neoliberalism, and build back better.
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