case total lockdown australias lessons world

#Case total lockdown australias lessons world how to#

In Australia, there had been just under 7,000 confirmed cases and 97 deaths, with 1,507 cases and 18 deaths in Victoria. At the time of publication, there were over 4 million cases and more than 291,000 deaths. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, by which time the disease had spread to 114 countries, with 118,000 cases and 4,921 deaths. Classical definitions identified pandemics as an epidemic that had spread to multiple countries, however some epidemiologists now classify pandemics if the disease is sustained in a newly affected region through local transmission. A pandemic is global in scale, and typically out of control. An epidemic is an outbreak over a larger geographic area. Outbreaks are a noticeable, often small increase over the expected number of cases for a given illness in a specified location. Epidemiologists and health authorities use them to categorise a disease scenario at different scales. Today, 'outbreak', 'epidemic' and 'pandemic' are terms all associated with a widespread health crisis. A note on terminology: outbreaks, epidemics, pandemics The final section considers what might be learned from this history from a range of perspectives, including: direct policy lessons general patterns in how communities and governments respond to health crises lessons about how pandemics transform societies the tendency to forget pandemics and the possibility that history offers few 'lessons' at all for comprehending the present crisis. Particular attention is paid to the 1919 Spanish flu, the episode with which COVID-19 is most frequently compared. The main part of the paper provides a chronological overview of major epidemic events in Victoria's past. This paper traces these themes through Victoria's long history with epidemics. History also reminds us that pandemic outbreaks are often forgotten, despite the impacts they inflict on societies. In Victoria, this includes patterns in how certain groups may be impacted by epidemics, recurring political issues of quarantine and federalism, instances of racism and the stigmatisation of impacted groups, but also patterns of community resilience, cooperation and activism. There are nonetheless clear parallels between these events that can help us understand how communities may respond to major health crises. Table 1: Past pandemics and mortality rates-Victoria, Australia, Global

#Case total lockdown australias lessons world how to#

Epidemics force governments and societies to make choices about how to respond that are shaped by pre-existing social tensions, global interconnectedness and economic structures. While epidemics are determined by the nature of a virus and medical knowledge, they are also political cultural events. As the table below summarises, Victoria has had a chequered and, at times, devastating history with epidemics. When comparing past epidemics, the most obvious point of contrast is mortality rates. At the same time, it emphasises the limits of drawing lessons from the past and the importance of appreciating the novel circumstances and problems of each crisis.

It seeks to draw out the parallels between these events, discussing what lessons may be drawn from the past in making sense of the current crisis. This paper examines the history of epidemics and pandemics in Victoria over the past 200 years. These events reshaped political and social life, the relationship of the Commonwealth to the states, exacerbated existing social tensions and also created new kinds of community strength and cooperation.

Each episode has had an important impact on Victoria. What, if anything, can we learn from history as we live 'through history'? Victoria has a long past with epidemics and pandemics, from epidemics of smallpox and other diseases through the nineteenth century, the 'Russian flu' (1890), 'Spanish flu' (1919) and 'Asian flu' (1957) pandemics, polio (1937–38) and HIV/AIDS (1980s to today) crises, and the 2009 'Swine flu' pandemic. The impulse in such circumstances is to search for historical analogies to help comprehend the scale, costs and challenges of the present crisis: the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, the Second World War? As was remarked more than once during the Victorian Parliament's emergency sitting on 23 April 2020, 'right now we are living through history'. In Victoria, as around the world, COVID-19-the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 -has caused the most remarkable interruption to daily life in living memory, if not modern history.