Armchair experts cloud confidence in COVID response
As Australians, we like to think of ourselves as an easy-going, laid back lot who take life’s ups and down in our stride, but the truth is we have become a nation of critics and whingers, all too ready to complain and critique our leaders (and each other) for our perceived shortcomings.
The latest outbreak of whinging started soon after the COVID19 virus came to our shores in 2020. Since then, our political leaders and public health experts have been pilloried by journalists, political opponents and armchair experts who carp and criticise everything from the vaccine rollout, quarantine arrangements, and the dreaded lockdowns that have upended our way of life.
The decision by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to lockdown greater Sydney is a case in point. Her decision has been widely criticised for being too late by MPs, commentators, journalists and other assorted ‘experts’.
This is a first for the NSW Premier who, until recently, had been cast by media, business and public health experts as one of Australia’s best leaders at managing the unprecedented complexities of the COVID19 pandemic.
While Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has been criticised for invoking shutdowns prematurely, with consequent impacts on business, the economy and people’s mental health, Ms Berejiklian has been hailed as a leader better able to balance public health advice against the disruptions brought by ‘hard lockdowns’ that curtail freedom of movement.
The Australian Industry Group, for example, has said the Berejiklian government is “to be congratulated for holding the line with its successful, proportionate and targeted approach to dealing with COVID”.
On June 24, Australian Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the BCA supported the NSW government’s “proportionate and risk-based response”.
“This type of commonsense approach means that where possible people can still get on with their lives and businesses can keep their doors open,” Ms Westacott said.
Westacott’s comments were echoed by Business NSW chief executive Daniel Hunter, who said Sydney could avoid a lockdown if it could get on top of the outbreak quickly. “Businesses of all sizes are grateful they can still welcome customers during this period,” he said.
While business leaders have broadly supported the NSW government’s approach, armchair critics have been breeding like the plagues of mice now infesting large parts of Queensland and NSW.
Critics with no expertise offer advice
Research epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws has been a vocal critic of the decision by NSW Chief Health Officer, Kerry Chant and Premier Gladys Berejiklian not to send Sydney, or at least parts of it, into a lockdown sooner than she did.
Her specific expertise is in hospital acquired infections. She has never been an adviser to government at the sharp end of balancing the daily complexities of balancing health advice against the impacts of lockdowns on business and the wider community.
Another armchair critic is Bill Bowtell, an adjunct professor at UNSW’s Kirby Institute. He’s been a frequent critic of the federal government’s COVID19 advertising campaign (an easy target, admittedly) and its bungled vaccine rollout.
Mr Bowtell has lately joined Professor McLaws in critiquing the NSW Premier’s reluctance to call a hard lockdown in Sydney.
His biography describes him as a “strategic political analyst and consultant with long experience in social and political marketing and polling, as senior adviser to the Australian health minister between 1983–87, Bill was an architect of Australia’s response to HIV/AIDS.”
He is not a medical doctor, a virologist or an epidemiologist, and he has no postgraduate qualifications in public health or any other field. He earned a BA (Hons) from the University of Tasmania in 1975. He is not a faculty member at UNSW and the term ‘adjunct professor’ is an honorary title. But this hasn’t stopped his ability to generate media interest in his opinions.
Media, of course, thrive on conflict, so armchair critics with fancy titles can often garner media attention, despite having little to no hands-on experience.
Another high profile critic of governments, both state and federal, is the ABC’s health reporter, Dr Norman Swan. Dr Swan (a doctor with postgraduate training in paediatrics) is a persuasive media commentator who’s comments carry weight in community and government circles.
On the eve of the NSW Premier’s decision to put Sydney into an initial two-week lockdown, he issued a series of tweets that accused the government of ignoring best available public health advice.
“This cannot be described as an epidemiologically sound approach and given there are many competent epidemiologists NSW you have to assume they’ve been given the right advice but the politics are working against it or slowing it down,” he said in one tweet.
“Just listen to the new venues. Makes absolutely no sense that they’re not going city wide. They knew that yesterday. This is politics not public health,” he said in another.
More predicably, Western Australia’s Labor Premier Mark McGowan took a swipe at his NSW counterpart over the timing of her decision. He said, “the lesson from all of this is that we need to act quickly … delay is a problem.
“We have a different approach to NSW. We act quickly and we act with force and we don’t let it linger. Once you let it linger and it gets away from you it’s very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The lesson out of this is to act with haste … to crush the virus.”
The day before the Sydney lockdown, the Australian Medical Association gave the Premier its own unsolicited advice by calling for an immediate lockdown of metropolitan Sydney to tackle the new Delta COVID strain.
“A lockdown of Metropolitan Sydney would be the right move,” said AMA President Dr Omar Khorshid. “The rules need to apply equally to the whole of Sydney to allow us to get ahead of this virus, and give the contact tracers a chance to catch up and try to avoid months and months of restrictions in Sydney.
“The economic consequences of lockdown are significant. But the economic consequences of getting this wrong are catastrophic, not just for Sydney but for all of Australia.”
Talkshow panellists with 2020 hindsight
Even further from the day to day management of COVID outbreaks were the talking heads that appeared on the July 8 episode ABC’s talkshow Q+A. The panel contained three journalists, a philosopher, two MPs and a filmaker — and no real world experts.
A full two weeks after greater Sydney went into lockdown several panelists told viewers that the NSW Premier should have locked down earlier than she did.
Mind you, this advice can with the benefit of two weeks’ hindsight that has seen the virus continue to spread across the city.
“Would it not have been more effective to have locked down Sydney sooner?” asked solicitor, Karen Tam.
“I think it’s clear the Victorian lockdowns, which were much tougher and went earlier, have worked better than what the NSW government has been doing,” offered philosopher, Peter Singer. “I think they have been too soft and too slow. Now they’re getting the consequences of it.”
Commentators are creating uncertainty, says Public Health Association
In March last year, the Australian Public Health Association’s chief executive wrote to its members backing Dr Brendan Murphy, who was then Australia’s chief health officer advising the federal government on the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Slevin said conflicting advice from some medical commentators about managing COVID was contributing to public uncertainty about the government’s approach.
The letter asked its members, many of whom are public health experts with high media profiles, to consider the difficult task of Professor Murphy and his state-based colleagues in an environment of misinformation being advanced by alternative sources claiming authority on managing COVID.
In a Sydney Morning Herald report, Mr Slevin said he was not “suggesting there aren’t varying opinions” among experts. “There is legitimate debate about ways forward in the health community, but they need to be conducted in a calm and professional manner by experts,” he said.
In the same article, Norman Swan, Bill Bowtell and Medical Journal of Australia editor-in-chief Nick Talley were named as critics whose comments were at odds with government’s advice concerning issues such as lockdowns and school closures.
The SMH also quoted Tania Sorrell, director of the Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, who said high-profile commentators were well-intentioned but should be careful with their comments.
“I think everybody is trying to do the right thing and trying to persuade the authorities to do what they believe is in the best interests of the country,” Professor Sorrell said.
“But it’s difficult if groups of individuals want to convey a different message than what is the consensus message that is being supported by various professional societies and ministries of health at state and Commonwealth level.”
Professor Sorrell, in contrast to many armchair critics, is eminently qualified to comment on the management of pandemics — and to her credit, she has studiously avoided doing so.
Let Public Health Officers lead
Dr Tony Bartone, the immediate past president of the AMA, agrees that “evidence-based information led by the Chief Medical Officer is the way to go”.
“There’s so much information and material that goes into their decision making, that [you can’t] have a situation where you’re trying to make comment on only part of it,” he said.
“Everyone wants to be an expert. Let the evidence and the leaders speak for themselves. We need a single source of truth.
“The public want leadership, information and reassurance.”
Dan Gaffney MPH is the author of Journey Home: Essays on Living and Dying. His next book is about the culture of complaint that is turning Australians into a nation of whingers.
