Flawed Victorian COVID Modelling Report Is Aiming for Elimination

The modelling report promoted by Premier Andrews to justify his unilateral extension of Stage 4 lockdown advocates elimination of the virus. This is an alarming change from the suppression strategy and is terrifying news for Victorians.

This is the report’s summary, in its entirely: “Modelling suggests that elimination could have been achieved if Victoria had gone into full stage 4 lockdown immediately from 9 July”.

Let me quote further: “Lessons from NZ, Taiwan and the six Australian jurisdictions that have achieved elimination, (mean that) Victoria could have increased its chances of also eliminating community transmission…our work and that of others who have independently considered the alternatives consistently demonstrates that elimination was possible”.

While it’s true Taiwan achieved elimination early, they are idiosyncratic and globally unique. No Australian state has achieved elimination and nor has NZ despite the rhetoric. The entire report is deeply flawed and even dishonest by omission in places. It continues the Premier’s approach of deputising medical bureaucrats and academics into quasi-political support roles, to bolster his case for extreme shutdowns.

That the academic study, originally undertaken in July, was released last Friday is deeply suspicious. This was the last weekday prior to the Premier’s big announcement, and it was heavily promoted to media outlets on the very day of his announcement. Such behaviour erodes the necessary border between academia and partisan politics.

Of most concern is that the report appears entirely based on an irrefutable and overwhelming fallacy, that active virus cases in Melbourne are distributed throughout the community. They most surely are not. Melbourne’s spread and almost all deaths are occurring in our nursing homes.

The case concentration goes even further. The day of the Premier’s announcement, only one postcode – encompassing Werribee and Point Cook – had 100 active cases. Several surrounding suburbs had 50 to 99 cases. The real news is that 172 postcodes had one to ten cases, and many, many more had no cases at all. These numbers have since improved further. Active cases are highly clustered not widely distributed, and these numbers include cases within nursing homes as there is no data transparency. Any data, and any restrictions, that treat all postcodes equally is frankly useless. It is not Melbourne.

Having started with a false premise, the government’s report then hides a huge, dishonest qualifier. It seems positioned to be overlooked or poorly understood. In passing, the reports states: “In 640 out of 1,000 model simulations, reopening too early” resulted in a case spike. The honest, plain English version would say: Even based on the assumptions we’ve made, we are only 64% sure that easing Stage 4 restrictions will spike case numbers.

I’ll propose the real report headline: “Government’s own data admits more than one third chance they are wrong on virus risk”.

The third major flaw with the report is termed a false dilemma fallacy. The assumption in the report is that we have only two options: universal easing, or universal Stage 4. In reality there are many more choices, and rolling targeted lockdown of hotspots is one globally accepted approach. Countries including South Korea and Germany have learned to live with higher case numbers and appropriate restrictions while still operating a functioning society. We must not forget that the average age of a Victorian COVID-19 death is higher than the average human life expectancy.

Juxtapose the above facts with the fearmongering and half-truths of the report. I quote: “If restrictions are eased while the virus is still circulating widely in the community, there is a real risk that infections will rebound — causing restrictions to be reimposed and last much longer.” Armed with the above insights, you can now quickly disassemble the misleading assertions and logical fallacies in this dishonest sentence. This is not a transparent, honest presentation of the facts.

Like all models, this one merely simulates one set of circumstances within a limited model. The University of Melbourne is quite open about it. “The…agent-based dynamic policy model imagines a simplified world where agents move around like pieces on a chess board.” The model may be sound within these limitations, but this is not our reality and any epidemiological model is but a single, simplified perspective to help policymakers consider options. It must not replace the role of elected leaders.

It is these elected leaders who are charged with making the tough trade-offs. The most important one is how to manage the virus and protect the vulnerable, while sustaining citizen’s livelihoods to support their families. At present the Federal Government is giving Victorians pocket money, temporarily shielding the true economic impact of the Premier’s decisions. Our leaders must also be mindful of ensuring that a long-term rise in others causes of death – mental health, delayed cancer diagnoses, families slipping into poverty – doesn’t negate any health benefits. This doesn’t even consider the extreme emotional suffering most Victorians are currently experiencing.

Above all, we are not going to eliminate this virus in Victoria. We are being asked to do what no jurisdiction in the world bar Taiwan has done, and to do it with a DHHS that hasn’t been up to the task of tracing to even get close. It is an academic pipedream, suspended in a simplified, flawed computer simulation while we in the real world lose our liberties for naught.