Covid crisis: Watch an economist’s BRUTAL response to a 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.

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

The panel discussion featured Sydney GP Kerryn Phelps, paediatric infectious diseases specialist 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 were preventing people from dying.

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

“When we locked down Australia, we should have made sure the 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 learnt to be better prepared for a future pandemic.

At that point, Professor Foster rolled her eyes.

UNSW School of Economics Professor Gigi Foster (pictured) rolled her eyes as Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake spoke during a panel discussion on 7News Spotlight

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

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

“It was lives against lives… it’s always lives against lives and it’s the lives that count, the quality of lives, the length of lives, the number of lives.”

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

“The more people we appoint with power, bureaucracies, who are not accountable to the people and are not elected, the worse the results will be,” she said.

In late March 2020, a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine rule was introduced for all international arrivals into Australia.

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

States and territories have also implemented hotel quarantine protocols for travelers traveling from state to state.

Professor Senanayake said drastic public health measures such as hotel quarantine kept people from dying (stock image)

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

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

“At that time, it was the best response we could do to extend the life of the virus and contain 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 lockdowns were necessary to “fight the virus”.

Professor Foster rejected her claim that the measure was effective.

“People’s quality of life has suffered, as have the direct mental health costs of lockdowns and overcrowded health care systems that have led to increasing numbers of people dying,” 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 happened before the Covid pandemic which she believed helped people develop better immunity.

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

Queensland’s Premier said while hotel quarantine was unpopular at the time, the strict rule prevented more Australians from becoming infected (stock image)

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

The excess mortality rate in Australia was about 20,000 in 2022 when we opened [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 need to be better addressed 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’.