I’ve had enough. As a PhD ex-pandemic planner I’ve been calling for local eradication in Australia with closed borders for months now while watching ‘expert’ pandemic planners treat the fortunate eradication scenario that is actually unfolding as ‘impossible’, ‘unlikely’, ‘not to be aimed for’ and even ‘misguided’ with implications it is childish.

But despite all of those claims it looks like we can achieve it and it is by far the best scenario!

Maintaining it is not without challenges. But surely you plan for the best scenario, not just the worst.

I’m tired of this debate.

Because it’s a debate that didn’t occur. Certainly not in public.

It is only through the pig-headedness of the premiers and PM that we are in the enviable situation, along with NZ & South Korea, of having a chance of eradicating it. Think early school closures pushed by the premiers. Think Scott Morrison’s unprecedented recommendations for near-lockdowns. I’m serious, pandemic planners did not expect this level of commitment.

But I know what the leaders’ decisions were affected by. China. Italy. Spain. Otherwise known as common sense.

Nevertheless, the ‘experts’ kept guiding us towards, and arguing for, lesser goals of flattening the curve and down talking eradication. Even now they can’t use the word eradication (calling it suppression) because they still don’t believe it despite it occurring in front of their eyes! They seem to err on the side of over-simplistic or moderate solutions because they think leaders and the people can’t take any sense of nuance or hardship. Wrong!

If any of you still doubt that local eradication can work – with unprecedented testing, tracing and closed borders, while we otherwise gradually reopen to a new normal – here is a new pro-eradication paper in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

It’s calling for eradication even in the US!

Stop telling me it’s not possible here! For goodness sake!

Lessons: listen to minority reports, give more options, don’t over-simplify, plan for the best, not just the worst & don’t underestimate the desire of the people to live or the politicians to avoid deaths on their watch.

We need to learn from this.

I’m upset because I knew eradication was possible due to simulations I ran in 2010 combined with a common sense understanding of the need to save up to 200,000 Australian lives including 20,000 young-ish people.

I’m upset because I knew our planners would argue for heading towards herd immunity even with flattening the curve. I was essentially laughed at for talking eradication back in swine-flu scenarios in 2010.

I’m upset because planners never explained in 2020 until recently that flattening the curve only halves the number of deaths.

I’m upset that even 2 days ago Prof Blakey & Dr. Kelly were STILL talking down eradication. No apologies now either.

There was never anything scientific about all this. It was ‘flattening the curve is elegant & efficient and we’ll kind of hide the fact it only halves the desths’. Eradication only requires slightly stronger distancing (for shorter!) followed by unprecedented testing/tracing. So what! If it saves 200,000 lives you do it.

And we all, either way, need vaccines ASAP.

I wrote to the premiers & PM a month ago. I hope I might have even influenced them. Unlikely but one never knows.

We stumbled into this good outlook for COVID19.

And that I’m thrilled about.

Disclaimer

BTW, I’m no super-expert. But these colleagues of mine in Australia won’t answer my emails. I worked in the field 2008-2010 as a PhD Epidemiology Research Fellow and they talked the same way then.

And the CDC in the US is worse. They should have spoken out more.

I like all of these guys. Here and there. They’re smart too. I like Faucci. I’ve lunched with the Deputy Director of the CDC.

But they have been delinquent in this respect. Just completely and unscientifically ignoring the possibility of eradication.