Today, Explained - How Melbourne eradicated Covid-19

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Melbourne, Australia, had a first wave. Then it had a second wave. Then it decided it was done with Covid-19. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Dylan Scott, you report on healthcare at Vox and you live in Maryland, but we're going to talk about Australia today. Why? Well, Sean, I have been trying to live vicariously through some Australians that I know, because as of last week, Melbourne, one of the biggest cities in Australia, has been COVID-free for a month. For four full weeks, there have been zero active cases of COVID-19 in the state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is a part. And I know from my days of geography that Melbourne is relatively close to New Zealand, which also has done really well. But are Australia and New Zealand just uniquely positioned because they're so far away from all the COVID catastrophes, to just weather the storm better? I mean, look, it certainly helps Australia and New Zealand even more so that their islands, in the case of Australia, are a really, really big island.

You might even call it a continent. And they don't have any land borders to speak of. If they shut down international travel, then suddenly nobody is coming into the country and bringing COVID with them. And so that certainly gives them some advantages in combating COVID-19 that the United States does not enjoy. But I think what's notable about Melbourne's experience is that they kind of screwed up too. They, much like the U.S., when COVID was first popping up earlier this year,

they went into lockdown, they put restrictions on international travel, they asked people coming into the country to quarantine, and they tried to tamp out the virus immediately. And at first, their numbers started to look pretty good. The few cases that they had started to dissipate. There weren't new cases coming into the country. And so it looked like things were under control and they started easing some of those restrictions. Businesses starting opening back up. The same kind of stuff that we saw in the US in the late spring and early summer. But suddenly in Victoria and in Melbourne,

cases started to spike again. And so, you know, context again is important. Their version of a spike is a lot different from our version of a spike. Because nobody does it like we do, right, Dylan? Nobody does it bigger or better than the U.S., and that continues to be true. But, you know, they saw about, you know, at their worst moments, they started seeing like 700 new cases a day, which is like potentially the recipe for like an outbreak that's spinning out of control.

But, you know, by comparison, I did some like some quick eyeball math and I pegged Missouri as maybe the best state to compare Victoria to in terms of land size and its population. And right now, Missouri is seeing something like 3,000 new cases every day. So even at its absolute worst moment, Victoria and Melbourne were not experiencing nearly as much COVID spread as the U.S. has been for the last few months or even over the summer.

But nonetheless, you know, they saw a second wave coming and they decided, like, we really need to do something. And we don't want to go through this yo-yoing of, there's a spike, and then we lock down, and then the numbers go down, and we open up, and then there's a spike, and we lock down, and then the numbers go back down, and we start to open back up again. And they decide we need to act, obviously. Even though their cases never got as high as they did in the U.S.,

you know, that is the recipe for an outbreak that could spin out of control. And so they decided that they needed to do something dramatic. What did they do? They came up with a plan that would end with zero active COVID-19 cases. Their plan was to just get rid of COVID-19? Yeah. They decided that they would eventually eradicate it. That sounds like a great plan. How's it going? They've done it. By the end of November, Melbourne and the greater state of Victoria had had zero active COVID cases for a full month. COVID-19 just doesn't exist there anymore. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So this isn't New Zealand where they're just benefiting from being extremely remote and having, I don't know, functional government. This is, we had a second wave. We took a step back. We looked at it and we came up with a

plan to just bring our cases down to zero. Yes. zero. And it was hard. And it was a very detailed plan. It took months for them to get there. It required a lot of sacrifice by the people who lived there. It was controversial. There were protests, people, anti-lockdown protests popped up there, just like we've seen in the United States. Sometimes the political leaders would kind of hem and haw like, oh, well, we have this plan, but we're not trying to eradicate it. We're trying to aggressively suppress it or whatever. But if you looked at the plan, they came up with a vision for how to get to zero COVID cases. And as tumultuous as it was, they reached that end destination. And now they get to enjoy living in a world

where there's no COVID-19. Well, let's hear how they did it because I want to imagine a world where there's no COVID-19 and I bet a lot of our listeners do too. How did they get there? How did they get to zero, Dylan? So what I think is interesting about Melbourne is like, they didn't do anything that we don't already know to do.

They ramped up their testing. They did not only testing of people who are symptomatic or maybe exposed, but they started doing pool testing where you just start randomly testing people out in the community to see if there's any spread that you're not picking up on through some of the more conventional testing methods. Once they got down to zero cases, they started testing sewage because that's one of the first places that COVID can show up and it can be a leading indicator

that maybe spread is picking back up again. They ramped up their contact tracing. So if people went to a public venue, they had to scan their phone so that if it turned out that there was a case that could be linked back to that place, people would be notified and they could be isolated. I mean, they were turning around tests in like 48 hours, which I think to a lot of people who might be trying to get tested

in the United States around the holidays, sounds glorious, but totally unachievable because we're waiting more like five days. And the virtue of getting a test result back in a day or two instead of five is that people aren't going around waiting for their test results and spreading COVID to people. But I mean, the real core of what they did was they locked down. Businesses closed with the exception of certain places like supermarkets. People initially, during the first stages of the lockdown, people were required to stay within five kilometers of their house. Their borders were shut. And so there was a long period where there wasn't anything to do in Melbourne but stay home, go to the grocery store, and you couldn't even drive to the other side of town to go to a park. You had to stay right in your

neighborhood. And that's certainly why some of these provisions were contentious. There's always going to be a group of people who doesn't want to be told, you can't leave your neighborhood. But I think because they had a clear plan that had this tiered approach, like the end destination is zero cases, but in the meantime, if we can bring cases down to a certain level, then certain businesses can start to open back up. And if we bring it down a little further, then public transportation can open back up as long as you wear masks. And it was kind of this gradual approach with these clear benchmarks along the way, all the way down to zero. And I think because they had such a clear plan and communicated these goals to the public,

they were able to get a lot of buy-in. So as controversial and contentious as it was at times, the vast majority of the population bought in, and that's what it takes to get COVID-19 under control. Dylan, it sounds like all these steps you're talking about aren't like unfamiliar sorcery. It's like what we know works. Yeah. There was nothing particularly novel about what Victoria did. They just committed to the plan that works. And they communicated to the public what they were doing, why they were doing it, and what could happen if they saw improvements. If you're telling people like, look, we can go back to having businesses open and public transportation open if we hit these certain case thresholds, then I think that gives people

a lot of motivation to follow the rules, right? You would hope. You would think. And I mean, the proof is in the pudding, right? They've gotten there. Zero cases for four weeks. What I took away from Melbourne's experience is if you give people something to work towards so that they really

understand why we're doing what we're doing, it's not just an indefinite, we're going to lock down and we'll see what happens. There's some specific goals that I think that helps build a lot more buy-in, but that's unfortunately not something that we've seen in the US. And I think that helps build a lot more buy-in. But that's unfortunately not something that we've seen in the US. And I think that at least helps to explain why we've struggled so much with our COVID response. Okay, Dylan, let's take a quick break. And then I want you to explain to me whether it's too late for the United States

to try something like this. It is, but okay. That's great. We'll keep that. Okay. that's great we'll keep that okay support for today explained comes from ramp ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. My name's Eloise Shippert. I'm from Melbourne in Australia and we've had 40 days with no coronavirus cases. We've gone from being restricted to five kilometres within our radius, within our home, to being able to exit that ring of steel.

So now school has returned for my kids. For my younger children, they can go to childcare. We're able to return to cafes. We can eat indoors at cafes, at restaurants. And I was surprised how much I miss the gym. Now it's open again. I'm not going, but you know. Life is pretty normal.

Dylan, before we took a break, I asked you if it was going to be too late for the United States to try just eradicating COVID-19. And I wanted you to answer the question now, but you already kind of did. And you said, it is? It is. Nobody thinks it's realistic for the United States to get down to zero cases anytime soon. I don't have the data in front of me, but like we're reporting hundreds of thousands of cases every day and thousands of deaths. Like a 9-11 worth of death. As many people dying in one day from COVID-19 as died on 9-11. Like the situations are just completely different. And I don't think that there's any realistic way to get down to zero

until the vaccine is widely distributed and we start building up immunity in the population. That being said, is there something we can learn from what they did in the city of Melbourne and the state of Victoria? That is, I think, the lesson. The lesson is less go for zero as a policy proposal that largely mirrored what the Victorian government ended up doing, called it. And it's more that you've got to give people a goal. You've got to commit to the mitigation measures that we know work, testing, tracing, social distancing, wearing masks. And by doing that, you can build the kind of solidarity that it takes

for people to be willing to make sacrifices in their own lives to help control the spread and maybe benefit not only themselves, but people that they'll never meet. I think we fleetingly had that in the United States back in the spring, especially at the worst of it in New York City. I remember I had a friend send me something that when I was kind of down, he sent me, I think it was like a meme, maybe it was a real billboard, maybe it was fake, it doesn't matter. But it was something along the lines of every empty storefront you see, every empty sidewalk, empty playground, that is solidarity. That is people making sacrifices, holding back from what they want to do to benefit everybody else. And so I think there was a time, there was a moment when this kind of

strategy might have been palatable in the U.S. But clearly, you know, very quickly, our COVID response became very polarized. We started to see, you know, differences between Democrats and Republicans and how willing they were to wear masks. We saw differences between democratically led states and Republican led states in the social distancing and mask policies that they put into place. And it pretty quickly devolved. That solidarity disappeared. And, you know, I don't have to tell anybody listening to this show what we've been living through for the last six months. So my hope would be, you know, maybe, maybe this winter surge is already so bad and it's only going to get worse.

The lesson from Melbourne is you need to give people something to work towards. You can't just tell them we're going to lock down for six weeks and see what happens. You got to give them a goal because, you know, that's just human nature, right? Being indefinitely cloistered in your house is of course going to sound untenable to everybody who already feels like they've been doing that for the last nine months. But you tell people, if we can get our case numbers down to here, we can start doing X, Y, and Z,

then maybe that gives people a little bit more motivation to cooperate. And so I'm not a policymaker. I'm just a guy on a podcast. But I think, and experts say this too, Victoria did two important things. First, they actually took the mitigation steps necessary that we all know work, testing, tracing, mask wearing, social distancing. But they also gave people clear goals, clear objectives, and something to work towards. And again, would that work in the US? Who knows? I can't say for

sure. I can't say that the last year has given me a ton of optimism that we can all get on the same page again. But Melbourne did it. They have zero COVID cases now. I emailed a health policy professor there asking some questions about their plan. He emailed me COVID cases now. I emailed a health policy professor there, you know, asking some questions about their plan. He emailed me back and said, I'm sorry, you know, I was out at lunch with some friends and I didn't see this until now. And that's the kind of life that they get to live because they committed to this plan. And you wrote back, go fuck yourself. I said, like, take me there, actually.

Do you think, I mean, you know, we most recently compared Australia to the United States on election day on this show where we talked about how voting is mandatory there and turnout's a lot higher, obviously. But I wonder in this case specifically, if we're talking about apples and oranges here a little bit, if there's this very distinct sort of sense of personal liberty and individual freedoms in the United States that they just don't have down under, that's going to prevent everyone from getting on the same page, be it now or even nine months ago when these initial lockdowns and shutdowns happened? Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good question.

It's obviously a thing that's sort of impossible to quantify. I will say, like, you know, the Aussies are not conformists. You know, this was an island that started as like a refuge for prisoners, right? Do they like it when you remind people of that? It's just the truth, okay? But like, you know, Aussies are not conformists. You know, there's a strong individualistic streak in Australia, just like there is in the United States.

But I do think they have a shared sense of identity and camaraderie that allows people to buy into this kind of stuff. You know, I think people once believed America had that same kind of capacity. And obviously, recent history has really tested that proposition. So on the one hand, yes, I think there are some cultural differences. It's a smaller country. It's not completely homogenous. A reader reminded me that 25% of Melbourne's population comes from overseas. You know, there's plenty of diversity there too. Melbourne and Brisbane and Sydney are big, you know, cosmopolitan metropolises with all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds and views.

So I don't think we should like paint with too broad a brush talking about the Australians. But at the same time, like there is something in their culture that allows them to at least the vast, vast majority of them to come together and work together toward a common cause. And I think we've seen in COVID-19 that it's really hard for America to do the same thing right now. don't buy that like, oh, this is just impossible for red-blooded Americans because, you know, we value our liberty among everything else. Like, we can make sacrifices. We just haven't mustered the ability to do it, unfortunately, during this emergency. Dylan Scott, he's a healthcare reporter at Vox.com, where you can find his piece that inspired this episode. It's titled, like this episode, How Melbourne Eradicated COVID-19. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained.