Covid-19 competence has given Australian governments some political capital. But there's a flipside.

Extract from The Guardian

Katharine Murphy on politics

Coronavirus outbreak

Katharine Murphy

Politicians have set a high bar for themselves – success on coronavirus has created community expectations that will be challenging to shift

@murpharoo

Sat 9 May 2020 06.00 AEST

‘Australians are participants in a live social experiment: how far can we go with reinstating normalcy without inviting the diabolical scenes that have played out elsewhere?’ Photograph: Rohan Thomson/Getty Images

“Let’s not give everything back, let’s not throw away all the progress we’ve made by letting our frustration get the better of us.” This was Daniel Andrews on Friday afternoon, shortly after national cabinet resolved to gradually restart economic and social activity by July.
The Victorian premier wanted people to understand he’d be hastening slowly – the message being here in the Massachusetts of Australia, we decide how quickly we’ll remove coronavirus restrictions. We don’t apply an arbitrary national average.
Minutes before that, Scott Morrison was jutting out his chin in Canberra. Have you noticed this unconscious habit of the prime minister’s? When Morrison intends to be resolute, or because he can’t smother his impatience, he juts out his chin. This body language generally means shut it mate, I’m talking. The prime ministerial chin was duly jutted, and Morrison declared that fresh outbreaks of the coronavirus after the easing of restrictions would not, repeat, n-o-t, be a reason to reverse course. Premiers just needed to hold their nerve.

Just for the record, Morrison declined to nominate a threshold at which this collective holding of nerves might shatter. At the moment, the big states are recording sub-30 numbers of Covid-19 cases a day. If there were 500 new cases a day after the resumption of normal activities, would Gladys, Daniel, Steven, Annastacia, Mark, Michael, Andrew and Peter still be commanded to hold their nerve – or might we all have to do something else – like try to shove the Covid-19 genie back in the bottle?
Between these two moments on Friday afternoon, 8 May 2020 – Morrison, bullish, in Canberra, and Andrews, bearish, in Melbourne – the Australian federation piloted out of phase one of managing the coronavirus pandemic. We entered phase two.
Given this pandemic messes with everything, and messes with our shared sense of time most of all, it’s important to mark these important pivot points when they are tangible. Phase one in Australia spanned 20 January to 8 May. Now we’ve moved to phase two – May to July.
Phase one was about flattening the curve.
Phase two is about learning to live with a virus we can’t eradicate.
Perhaps it can be eradicated in time, with a vaccine, but for now, Covid-19 lives with us and we with it. Over the next couple of months Australians are participants in a live social experiment: what does living with coronavirus look like? How far can we go with reinstating normalcy without inviting the diabolical scenes that have played out elsewhere?
Something to note. During phase one, the tempo of the public health response was set by the two most populous states – the jurisdictions with the most risks to manage. By championing lockdowns in the third week of March, and making it clear they would lock down non-essential services whether anyone else agreed or not, New South Wales and Victoria in essence forced the other states to follow suit.

Politically, it would have been impossible at that time for the smaller states to resist that centre of gravity, because then some premiers would be in a position of appearing to not care about saving lives as much as others did. That’s a big problem: if you are Steven Marshall, and you tell the people of South Australia there’s no need to lock down here, and then a significant of cluster of infections suddenly emerges, making a liar of you. A problem. One you’d want to avoid, and one you can avoid by remaining in the herd.
On Friday, when we jumped over the threshold into phase two, the herd split. The smaller states ran back in the other direction, flagging easing, while NSW and Victoria are continuing to telegraph their intention to move very carefully, because the circumstances are quantifiably different in Sydney and Melbourne.
The confident articulation of different strategies tells us a couple of things: the national cabinet is getting better at finding ways to agree to disagree and explain their disagreements to people watching on. It also tells us that the success of the opening phase of managing the pandemic has given the nine governments of Australia some political capital to take risks they were not prepared to take only a month ago.
I’m sure many Australians will be happy to resume something approximating normal life over the coming months, even if they pick up their former habits very tentatively. I’m also certain governments, all of them, federal and state, are moving now because they have more confidence than they did two months ago that the health system can cope with what the winter brings. Governments have used the opening months of this pandemic here to fortify the health system: investing in more intensive care capacity, more protective equipment, more ventilators.

We are not moving now because Morrison has always been an undeclared herd immunity disciple, restrained by saintly premiers. That is a caricature of the deliberative dynamic inside the national cabinet. Balancing the various trade-offs is more complicated, and Morrison is right to be concerned both about the health effects and the economic impacts. A pandemic of unemployment could be as devastating as a coronavirus pandemic. That’s not spin. That’s reality. That’s what previous recessions have taught us.
But we do need to be clear that moving to phase two contains plenty of risk, both practical and political. Right now, in the states that are moving to ease restrictions, the war gaming is about how to switch the messaging.
For some weeks, political leaders and their health advisers have been bringing people a steady stream of good news of declining case numbers. The successful containment of the outbreak has been held up as the hallmark of success. But when restrictions ease, the number of infections will most likely rise.
So what do you say then? Do you say don’t worry, it is OK for the number of cases to rise now, because our measures of success have changed?
It’s a can of worms, that argument. It’s a can of worms, because it leads you to a place where the trade-offs become explicit. More normalcy has a price. The price is more infections, and more lives lost. It’s not quite an unavoidable fact, because the future is yet to reveal itself, but it is an unavoidable likelihood of plotting a path back from lockdowns.

I said a moment ago the competent management of the outbreak has given governments some political capital to take risks. I believe that’s right. But there’s a flipside of competence, and it’s this.