Community sector by sector, following the evidence for…

Community sector by sector, following the evidence for COVID control

Despite their differences, COVID policies for port, schools, hotels and shopping centres have a common aim.

VICTORIA is still the focus of Australia's coronavirus effort, but the need to manage a sporadic but persistent COVID caseload in other places means the economic impact is still being felt across the board.

Interviewed by the Newcastle Herald's Max McKinney, a number of Hunter publicans argued against what they believed was a "double standard" when it came to the restrictions and inspections the liquor industry was compelled to endure, when compared with other aspects of society.

QUICK COVID CHECK:

One publican identified supermarkets and travelling sports teams as two areas he felt were getting an easier run than hotels.

In reply, it could be said that supermarket shopping for food and other essentials is a bit farther up the hierarchy of necessity than a trip to the pub.

Sport, if amateur, is viewed as exercise.

If professional, it's seen as widely supported mass entertainment.

But the publicans do have a point.

There are inconsistencies in the way that COVID-19 restrictions are applied, but an examination of the details will hopefully find that the policies for each sector are all headed in the same direction.

Any differences between them should be the result of actual, real-world limitations, rather than arbitrary decisions that treat one avenue of life more leniently than another.

Daily notifications of coronavirus cases in Australia. Notice the relative heights of the two peaks. The highest daily total first time around was 497 new cases, the overall record 716 cases, an increase of 44 per cent.

If guidance and policies have changed since the early days of COVID-19, it may be because the novel nature of the coronavirus meant governments relied as much on instinct as hard evidence.

But anecdote and "commonsense" do not always serve us well.

The "evidence-based medicine" that we hear so much about today is a relatively new phenomenon, a movement founded by a Scottish GP, Archie Cochrane (1909-1988).

His determination to ensure that "standard practice" medicine actually worked, has fostered a revolution in medicine and healthcare.

This should mean that coronavirus policies are based on actions that are known to work.

Even so, the evidence-based method cannot always eliminate differences - or "inconsistencies" - between sectors.

The important thing, though, is for every single approach to work in the one direction.

And that's to minimise the spread of the virus while doing the least economic damage, while working towards a vaccine, and the eventual elimination of COVID-19.

ISSUE: 39,386.

Remembering the 44 per cent difference between the peak height of the first and second waves in case numbers, this graph is the Australian daily tally. During the first wave, the highest number was eight. This time, it was 21, a 262 per cent increase. This is likely because of the greater concentration of nursing homes in the Victorian outbreak than when coronavirus first arrived on our shores at the start of the year. The two graphs, although similar in shape, also display noticeable differences.

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