Innovative solutions are needed, not less lockdown, to protect the mental health of young people in the face of the COVID pandemic

So apparently the University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor believes that Australia’s so-called “lockdown mindset” could be doing more harm than good, especially to young people. As extensively quoted in The Age on the 20th of August, Prof Maskell apparently expressed the views that the risk of poverty and suicide resulting from COVID related lockdowns may outweigh the harm is done by viral infection itself.

He was quoted as saying: "I’m very concerned actually that if we carry on in this kind of lockdown mindset for too long, we will seriously damage young people's lives."

He described concerns that an economy that is not functioning will lead to problems with poverty and subsequent significant morbidity and mortality. He then apparently went on to criticise those with social media accounts commenting on things with so-called “simplistic sound bites”.

There are several issues of concern here I would like to unpack.

First, the Vice Chancellor, is unfortunately just repeating the extraordinarily tired mantra that we have a binary decision: lockdown the economy to protect health and this will damage the economy and people’s mental health, or open up to save the economy, perhaps at the cost of higher rates of infection but better mental health.

This is just way too simplistic. Does anyone really think that rampant COVID infection is going to be good for anyone’s mental health? Increase rates of infection will directly lead to increased morbidity and mortality and this is going to have direct impacts on mental health extremely widely. The virus itself infects the brain: we don’t know yet how much this is going to lead to direct ongoing mental health consequences but the prospects are rather frightening. What about the other long-term physical disability that seems to result in some patients who are infected? What about the mental health impacts on health care workers who are already being infected in disproportionately high rates? These other people you want to be there when you get sick.

The other clear reason why this is not a binary choice is that it is just too simplistic to imagine that the economy just opens up in this face of an ongoing pandemic. I think if we look around the world, countries that are making less of a direct attempt to control a virus do not seem to be doing all that economically well. Share markets are, this is great for the economic viability of the top 1%, but I don’t think you can say that broader economies are flourishing in countries like the US.

What about the area where the Vice Chancellor has most concern? Does anyone believe that we can reopen universities when viral infection is common in the community?

Well actually yes, some people do. In the US they are opening universities, well temporarily, with disastrous consequences. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opened recently and had a major outbreak within the first week resulting in an immediate return to online learning. A whole series of young people got a serious infection, potentially fatal or with long-term health implications and I’m sure the local health system was put under major stress. From everything we know, healthcare workers probably ended up infected as well (this is an extraordinarily infectious virus and healthcare workers seem to cop the brunt of it even when using PPE).

If students can’t go to university, and especially younger students can’t go to school, you cannot ‘reopen the economy’ in a way that is meaningfully going to support anyone’s mental health.

The one view that I do share with Prof Maskell is the concern that the COVID pandemic is having a disproportional impact on young people. As I have previously wrote, the educational disadvantage accumulating in this generation is likely to have serious long-term economic and health impacts. The young people in our society are not the ones who have benefited from a resurgent share market which is comfortably sustaining the retirement portfolios (for now) of the older and more privileged members of our society.

The experiences of young people in the face of COVID need to be understood in a broader intergenerational context. They are essentially bearing the cost of what has been an intergenerational shift in wealth from young to old people. The baby boomers in our society have benefited from free university education and crazy accumulations in wealth associated with rising house prices over the last 30 years. They, in more recent years, have benefited from widespread tax cuts whereas young people face the increasing accumulation of debt to fund higher education.

Instead of making simplistic calls for an end to COVID lockdowns, what else could we meaningfully be doing?

Well what about beginning to directly address the group of so-called concern. Why do we not have a grassroots movement, and calls from prominent leaders like Prof Maskell, calling for the government to cancel HECS debt for students whose education is being affected by the pandemic or for a significant cohort of young people in general? Perhaps this could be paid for by a well targeted tax on the meaningful wealth gains accumulating in other sectors of our society.

What about in the universities themselves? Why aren’t we trying to shift even a small proportion of the staff of institutions like the University of Melbourne from insecure short-term employment to more humane ongoing working contracts as expected in most industries: this will have a significantly positive impact on mental health.

I hope that we can start to get beyond these polarised debates. We desperately need sensible and innovative solutions to directly address the varying groups in our society most at risk of long-term harm both from COVID infection and from the effects of the lockdowns we are undertaking to try and control it.