The effects of social distancing are most systematic in Victoria where the 20-30% daily increase has dropped every day for four days and is now down to 11.6%. NSW is showing good signs too. It will take another week to see the real affects of so-called Stage II restrictions including the closing of almost all businesses in which people gather together.

Modelling shows that we need about 80% of people to socially distance and that 70% won’t be enough.

For goodness sake every one: distance! Stay at home if you can. Don’t go near seniors. Help them with their grocery deliveries. Phone them. Skype them.

The Victorian and NSW governments – without saying it- are heading towards an eradiction model (which is what I urgently recommend). But due to mixed-messages, including from the Prime Minister, we are actually dancing between eradication and the unethical ‘herd immunity’ approach and the not much better ‘flattening the curve’ approach.

Eradication

An eradication model attempts – with closed borders & social distancing – to locally eradicate the virus and then hope (with good reason) for early release of vaccines upon safety ahead of efficacy.

It can work! Look at China and South Korea.

Early, but safe, vaccine release

Nobody in Australia is talking early release of vaccines upon safety ahead of efficacy but they must start talking this way. Others around the world are slowly realizing that a slight relaxation of vaccine regulatory protocols could enable vaccine release in only months. The way it works is you keep releasing vaccines that are safe and in parallel develop alternative vaccines. By the time efficacy is proven, at least one of them will likely work well and we’ll already have at least partial vaccine-generated herd immunity.

I fear that the Australian fixation on ‘flattening the curve’ (which would result in perhaps 200K Australian deaths including 20K young people) is distracting them from early vaccine release thinking.