PLAGUE JOURNAL December 2020: Australia Wins with Masks, Unity, & Sacrifice
Masks and lockdowns. Lockdowns and masks.
[Note: All Plague Journal entries were written as events unfolded. I have edited the drafts for clarity, but the tone and content are original, reflecting what we could see at the time.]
Virtuous Behavior Crushes the Virus Again
Once we were told that safety required masks, we had to make every story conform, regardless of the evidence. On December 26th, I got an email from Quora, the social media platform, containing this question: “Australia just recorded zero cases of COVID-19 again after a big spike last month in Melbourne. What can the U.S. and the rest of the world learn from this?” Although the email arrived in December, the headline was from a November 1st article, which means the cases had occurred in September or early October.
The rational answer is that the U.S. and the rest of the world can’t learn anything except that it’s better to live in a warm, sunny climate. Climate matters above all else. Although Australia has had relatively few cases and fatalities overall, it has been disproportionally hit in Victoria, the only part of the country that sits in a grey, temperate oceanic zone, Koppen climate Cfb. There was almost no spreading during Australia’s hot summer in March and April, when countries affected by the Gulf Stream in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere were hit extremely hard.
Winter comes to Victoria
Suddenly, in July, cases in Victoria exploded. The cases were so unexpected that rumors spread about visitors breaking quarantine and about the virus sneaking into the country in food containers. These stories were the artifacts of a confused public that had convinced itself that Australia’s superior virtue and obedience had crushed the virus. The virus, dormant at 90 degrees, moves in cool gray weather. Melbourne’s daily low temperatures fell into the mid-30s for the first time on June 28th and sat there for three days. But Melbourne is not London or Brussels or New York City, and low temperatures didn’t remain in the 30s. Lows sat mostly in the low- to mid-40s, with only two days dropping into the 30s in July (the 17th and 18th).
The Southern Hemisphere has far less land than the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the high latitudes. Melbourne, on the southeast coast of Australia, catches easterly winds that create a relatively cool gray oceanic climate in the winter, but Melbourne’s latitude is just 38 degrees south, compared to Paris’s 49 degrees, even higher for Brussels, Dublin, and London. A little more latitude would make Melbourne a little cooler. Had they spent half their winter days in the mid-30s, as much of Northern Europe and a narrow stretch of the Eastern U.S. did in March and April, their cases and fatalities would have exploded.
As it was, Victoria, the only patch of Australia with a temperate oceanic climate, had nearly all of Australia’s cases. A BBC article from October 26th writes,
Victoria state was the epicentre of Australia's second wave, accounting for more than 90% of its 905 deaths.
The state capital, Melbourne, went into lockdown 111 days ago - enforcing home confinement, travel restrictions and and closing stores and restaurants.
However on Monday, authorities said the city was ready to re-open.
Naturally, the politicians and journalists took credit for the drop in cases (following the explosion in cases, for which no one takes credit). Naturally, masks, distance, and lockdowns crushed the virus. But the real story was nature. By September, days were longer and temperatures were higher. Lows never fell below 40 and highs began to clear 70. By October, when Victorians crushed the coronavirus for good, lows almost never fell below 50 and the days continued to grow longer. Low temperatures were confined to shorter periods in the middle of the night, when people were asleep.
Yet no one can imagine anything other than human control over nature. The BBC article writes:
In July, Victoria saw cases surge to more than 700 per day but the severe stay-at-home rules and a curfew have brought the numbers down.
Mr Andrews praised the state's six million residents, saying: “Fundamentally, this belongs to every single Victorian who has followed the rules, stayed the course, worked with me and my team, to bring this second wave to an end.”
By the same logic, they could just as easily have said that the citizens of Victoria had been wildly irresponsible in July and August, burning masks and committing unforgivable crimes of proximity—while their fellow Aussies in other parts of the country remained vigilant and cautious. But the newspapers won’t write that story. Although every place has a curve that rises and falls, the press tell us just half of each story— the downhill half where they approve of the politics, the uphill half where they hate the politics. Dodge City, Kansas blew it (red state); Melbourne crushed it (progressive, non-U.S.). In both examples, the stories credit human behavior, not nature. It feels better to say we did this; we beat the coronavirus than it does to admit that the changing of the seasons caused the spike and the fall.
We should look at weather forecasts to gauge risks, not at trailing case counts. Around the world, governments lock people down and require masks after cases spike, and often after a change in the weather has already caused the curve to turn down. Lockdowns and masks don’t seem to slow spreading (lockdowns may make things worse) but we love to credit these actions for any positive change in outcomes—even though a positive change in outcome will always come eventually.
Because the New York Times and their flack decided in March that lockdowns prevent spreading, and in April that masks prevent spreading, we attribute all outcomes to lockdowns and masks despite the absence of evidence for the effectiveness of either. Where we can’t find evidence, we invoke science. A Washington Post article from November 5th gave us the standard ideology, beginning with its title, “Australia Has almost Eliminated the Coronavirus — by Putting Faith in Science.” There is no science to be found in the article, but we get the familiar fables.
We learn about travel restrictions, and then we learn, “Perhaps most important, though, leaders from across the ideological spectrum persuaded Australians to take the pandemic seriously early on and prepared them to give up civil liberties they had never lost before, even during two world wars.” As we’d been learning since April, messages of unity are the most important tool in the fight against a pandemic—even if many of the world’s lowest coronavirus rates are found in the world’s most corrupt and war-torn places.
The Pro-Government Narrative
In a paragraph under the subhead, “Heeding Expert Advice,” we learn that “Australians’ willingness to conform” made the difference. In Australia (unlike in the U.S., we are meant to understand), “governments tend to be regarded as the solution to society's problems rather than the cause.” The article quotes a medical professional and academic who says, “Regardless of who you vote for, most Australians would agree their leaders have a real care for their constituents and a following of science.” Australia is far enough away that U.S. reporters know they can say whatever they want and that most readers won’t check for accuracy.
The mainstream press has been peddling this view of docile and virtuous non-U.S. countries since April, to criticize the U.S. for its insufficient obedience. In fact, Australia has experienced widespread protests against their draconian and pointless lockdowns. The Post article admits that there have been “hiccups”—including a violent anti-lockdown protest resulting in 404 arrests just days before the article was published. More than a million people viewed a viral video from September of a pregnant mother arrested in her home by Victorian police for “incitement,” a crime that could carry a lengthy prison sentence. She had posted a message on Facebook supporting an upcoming anti-government protest called “freedom day.” Her post had described the event as a “peaceful protest,” but the police handcuffed her and confiscated her phone and laptop in front of her kids and husband anyway.
The Washington Post was correct that the government had persuaded Australians to “give up civil liberties they had never lost before”—but a simple peek beyond U.S. headlines reveals that not everyone is as docile as the Post wants us to believe. An MP from Australia’s Liberal party wrote, “Every politician that voted for laws that allows a pregnant mother to be handcuffed for a Facebook post (that criticizes government policy) stands condemned for eternity.” The feeling of unfair treatment and overreach was exacerbated by the conspicuous lack of a police response in June when 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters clogged Melbourne’s streets.
There have been similar anti-government protests all across Europe throughout the summer and fall, but the U.S. media ignored them, writing stories instead about European unity and model behavior, implying that the U.S. stood alone in our retrograde desire for freedom, which was now a dirty word. The press simply made up tales of science and unity, assuming we would take their word for it.
The Quora question—“Australia just recorded zero cases of COVID-19 again after a big spike last month in Melbourne. What can the US and the rest of the world learn from this?”—elicited a predictable self-righteous response from a reader:
What a shocker.
Masks work, contact tracing works, people, all residents doing the right thing works and when you don’t you lose lives, jobs, the economy and you are miserable.
Selective lockdowns work.
Closing borders work. By state and not just international.
Making all international flights that come in go into 14 day no exception hotel monitored quarantine. WORKS! After disasters where some people decided they didn’t like quarantine, left and became ‘superspreaders’ killing a few hundred and forcing a complete lockdown for the entire state of Victoria, Australia learned the hard way. If you are going to do something, be serious about it and do it right with no exceptions.
Is all this difficult? Absolutely. But look at the results. This works like in Perth yesterday.
He posts a photo from October 31st of a sunny beach full of mask-less people enjoying their corona success:
He then writes, “This did not work like in Sydney at the end of March,” and he posts a photo of another crowded sunny beach. Although the photos look similar, the Perth photo is meant to show success while the Sydney photo is meant as a warning.
Sunny beaches everywhere are safe from coronavirus. When I saw the photos, I immediately thought of Barbados. I can’t say exactly why, as I’ve never been there, but I knew that Barbados has beautiful sunny beaches. I knew that sunny places around the equator have virtually no coronavirus despite covering the vast human range of wealth, political structures, population density, ethnicity, or anything else to which we might wish to attribute outcomes. As of January 26th, 2021, Barbados has just 35 COVID fatalities per million, which puts it near the bottom of the world’s list. When I looked it up, I saw that it happens to tie with Australia, also with 35 fatalities per million, 11,000 miles away. How did I guess that Barbados would be so low? The media pretend it’s all masks and lockdowns and proximity and virtue, but it’s all temperature and sun and metabolic health.
What other countries reside in the same safety neighborhood, having crushed the coronavirus with superior masking, distancing, lockdowns, and quarantines? The countries ranging from 30 to 40 fatalities per million as of late January, 2021 include Sudan, Zambia, Australia, Senegal, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Kenya, Gabon, Seychelles, and the Cayman Islands. Are they models of behavior, as our Aussie social-media blowhard would have us believe? No. What they have in common are hot, sunny climates with low wealth (Australia excepted), few modern comforts, little heating or air-conditioning, low obesity, low life-expectancy, and low levels of “sanitization.” They live in nature, as we don’t, and wouldn’t want to.
Australians report wearing masks 10% of the time, lowest in the Anglosphere. Victorians probably wear nearly all of them. All around the world, people wear masks when they are scared and confused, like ancients supplicating their gods. Residents in these other countries with 30 to 40 fatalities per million probably don’t wear masks at all outside of international airports and hotels, where they are required. Yet the stories attributing success to virtue, masks, and lockdowns will continue, wherever the press decide they like the politics.