Despite claims that ‘flattening the curve’ would be enough and we would ‘ride it out’ Australia is now in a suppression COVID-19 mode which could, with closed borders, even lead to local eradication.

This is fantastic news!

Major social distancing was implemented early enough that near-eradication (essentially near zero cases with a few spot fires carefully traced) is now within our grasp.

At the risk of tiring my readers out let me remind you that ‘flattening the curve’ only leads to half as many deaths as going for herd immunity (doing nothing). That still means around 125,000 deaths including 10,000 young people & 30,000 middle-aged people in Australia. But we might lose less than 50-100 with a suppression approach.

Then we will need early release of safe vaccines which seems possible.

But all this begs the question: why was academic expert advice against suppression initially? And in the UK Sir Patrick Valance even set that nation on a herd immunity path for 3 days! He must be in virtual disgrace now. He announced it without batting an eyelid or mentioning it would lead to a half-million UK deaths.

I can only honestly testify that while I was in the pandemic modelling & policy research community (2008-2010) I could not get other researchers to include eradication/suppression approaches for considered for study or reporting. It was for non-scientific reasons. It just wasn’t considered practical or smart enough. I was shocked and could not budge anyone despite explaining the difference in social distancing was perhaps only 10-15%.

It just wasn’t considered ‘elegant’.

But we’re doing it. Everyone globally is now trying to eradicate it. Nobody really wants millions of lives snuffed out on their watch as pandemic planners crazily recommended.

How much easier if we had been trying from the start, almost as Australia has without knowing it.