Covid crisis: Watch an economist’s BRUTAL response to health expert’s claim about Australia’s handling of the pandemic

A leading economist rolled her eyes at an infectious disease expert during a lively televised debate about Australia’s response to the Covid pandemic.

Professor Gigi Foster from UNSW’s School of Economics made no attempt to hide her displeasure at Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake’s comments during a panel discussion on 7News in the spotlight on sunday evening.

The panel discussion included: Sydney GP Kerryn Phelps, infectious disease pediatrician Professor Robert Booy and former Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, along with an often vocal live audience.

Professor Senanayake, an academic from the ANU School of Medicine and Psychology, said the drastic lockdown measures prevented people from dying.

He said stricter rules could have been enforced when hotel quarantine was introduced for domestic and international travelers after Australia went into its first lockdown in March 2020.

“When we locked down Australia, we should have made sure that hotel quarantine was impenetrable,” he explained.

“If you look at the report from Victoria, it looks like the hotel quarantine policy… was in place from start to finish, it only lasted a few days.”

Professor Senanayake said this was an invaluable lesson that must be learned to be better prepared for a future pandemic.

It was at this point that Professor Foster rolled her eyes.

Professor Foster said the lockdown measures failed because she claimed they were a ‘massively one size fits all policy’.

“We have failed to protect the most vulnerable,” she said.

‘It was lives versus lives… it’s always lives versus lives and it’s the lives that count, the quality of lives, the length of lives, the number of lives.’

She said Aussies were disappointed with the way the disease outbreaks were being handled.

“The more we bring in people with authority… bureaucracies, that are not accountable to the people and are not elected, the worst results we will get,” she said.

In late March 2020, a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine was introduced for all international travellers entering Australia.

The public health measure, introduced by the then Scott Morrison government, kept cases low during the first 18 months of the pandemic.

States and territories have also implemented hotel quarantine protocols for interstate travelers.

Ms Palaszczuk said while hotel quarantine was not popular at the time, the measure prevented people from becoming infected.

“I did hotel quarantine myself and it wasn’t good,” she admitted.

“At the time, this was the best answer in terms of what we could do in terms of the longevity of the virus and containing it.”

She defended the move, saying the decision was made in consultation with each state and territory’s chief health officials.

Ms Palaszczuk, who closed the Queensland border several times during the height of the pandemic, said closures were necessary to “fight the virus”.

Professor Foster rejected her claim that the measure was effective.

“People’s quality of life has suffered, and the direct impact on mental health from lockdowns and overloaded health care systems has led to increasing deaths,” she said.

‘Since mid-2021, tens of thousands more people have died than we expected. One of the reasons for this could be the delayed effect of the lockdown.’

Professor Foster also said there were “other coronaviruses” that emerged before the Covid pandemic, which she said helped people develop better immunity.

Professor Booy shook his head at the suggestion and said Covid-19 was a completely different virus.

“This was a virus that went around the world and probably killed more than 20 million people,” he said.

Australia’s excess mortality rate was about 20,000 in 2022 when we opened the economy [the borders] even though we had a very high vaccination rate. This is a serious virus’.

Dr. Phelps said Covid has not gone away and public health measures must be better managed during a future health crisis.

“The problem was that we went from these quite draconian measures to nothing but vaccines,” she said.

“The vaccine approach is not working and we need to look at that again.”