It is almost a statement of the obvious, but one which the Australian state and federal government did not want to think about. A report into Australia’s Covid-19 response by former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold, Jillian Broadbent, former diplomat Peter Varghese and 2021 Young Australian of the Year Isobel Marshall, has concluded that the strict lockdowns that shut down schools was unjustified since schools were not hot spots for Covid transmission. “For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes,” the report stated. “The same applies to closing universities and vocational education and training centres.”
Nevertheless, the governments went ahead and did this. The public needs to aim now for accountability, which I hope will come once the ramifications of Covid vaxxes are felt by the general population.