Lockdown might seem harsh, but it’s a luxury many nations don’t have

Lockdown, especially 200 days of it, feels like anything but a luxury.

But a luxury it is.

You can only go into a statewide (let alone nationwide) lockdown when you have a functioning government, a population largely willing and able to follow lockdown orders, police and defence personnel equipped to enforce such orders, and – critically – resources and subsidies to ensure people are sheltered, fed and provided with access to healthcare.

Given so many countries cannot hope to offer such care to citizens, lockdown as we know it is indeed a luxury for only some countries.

We see, for instance, harrowing images of Afghanistan across our screen, and forget that amid the death and chaos, its people, too, are suffering a COVID-19 pandemic. Yet there’s no one there able to implement a vaccination plan, let alone a lockdown to keep people safe.

Read more: Victoria’s COVID-19 lockdown: Getting ahead of the spread

We’re sick of lockdowns, for sure. But lockdowns save lives.

The UK is now out of lockdown, with most restrictions gone, yet even with very high vaccination rates the nation continues to record more than 30,000 new COVID-19 cases every day and, horrifically, more than 100 daily deaths.

Yes, we want lockdowns to end, but not if they result in catastrophic death numbers.

The trauma of lockdown will last for a very long time, and its impacts are real and need serious attention, but the trauma of losing a loved one endures forever.

The Indonesia experience

So yes, we’re sick of lockdowns, but if Indonesia had the luxury to implement and enforce a hard lockdown, it would be in a much better position.

The Indonesian government has announced partial lockdown measures, but with malls and places of worship allowed to operate at 50% capacity, this hardly stems the spread of infection when the population is 260 million people and largely unvaccinated.

WHO is urging action as mobility in Indonesia returns to pre-pandemic levels. It’s officially recorded almost four million COVID-19 cases, and well over 100,000 deaths.

But given that getting a test is difficult and expensive, and that people are dying outside of the hospital system with no record, these numbers pale in comparison to what the real numbers must be.

Sitting in Australia, many think the fate of Indonesia matters little to them, beyond, of course, the delay in a holiday to enjoy beers in your bikini on a Bali beach.

But indications are that Indonesia will be the location of the next super strain; uncontrolled epidemics are hotspots for the evolution of variants, and Indonesia is witnessing an uncontrolled epidemic.

Indonesia’s situation is made unforgivably worse because Australia has taken vaccines meant for poor countries.

We’ve been given this privilege of extra vaccines, and yet people throw this back in the face of poor countries by refusing to mask up and stay home.

The selfishness of people protesting in Melbourne, Sydney and the NSW-Queensland border makes a mockery of everyone’s sacrifices.

Indonesia has seen a staggering number of children die from the virus, many younger than five. Indeed, Indonesia’s children have a mortality rate greater than that of any other country.

If Indonesia had the luxury of a hard lockdown, so many children’s lives would have been saved.

Death statistics are reported as a single number, but these are not singular tragedies – loved ones, extended family, communities, schools are all impacted by a single death. We can recover from lockdown, but not from death.

If people in Australia think their lockdown is strict, look across the ditch. There’s no takeaway coffee, no Uber eats, no picnics in the park. If Sydney and Melbourne implemented this type of lockdown now, and really stopped people moving about in the community without an absolutely essential reason, surely the lockdown wouldn’t continue for months. I’d give up takeaway coffee and Uber eats to get out of lockdown.

Australia has the ability to lockdown – don’t squander this luxury.