Virus spread strategy gets a shave and a haircut

The first decision is well known. It could, easily and plausibly, be explained away as simple incompetence. This was the choice allowing passengers from the Ruby Princess to disembark in Sydney earlier this month without any health checks, warnings, or attempts being made to trace their future movement. This was despite the fact that four people on the ship - three passengers, one crew - obviously displayed flu-like symptoms. One of those was taken straight to hospital, where they subsequently died.

The key to suspecting this was the result of simple bureaucratic incompetence is the ensuing, unseemly squabble to evade responsibility.

Border Force had, it appeared, sent six officers wearing "masks and gloves" to the ship. Nonetheless these officials waved everyone onboard straight through the entry barriers, because a NSW Health risk assessment issued earlier had granted the vessel a "green light". The Ruby Princess was, apparently, classed as "low risk" by the Agriculture department - although it's not known if that body was actually considering the possibility COVID-19 had been discovered onboard the vessel.

The shock - for anyone who still believes in co-ordinated government - is that by this date Scott Morrison was insisting no more cruise ships would be allowed to dock in the country. Despite this supposedly definitive edict, the ship was not merely permitted to dock but its passengers were allowed into Australia without even the most cursory of temperature checks.

This breach was so egregious, so widespread; surely the only possible explanation is bureaucratic incompetence?

Planning a breach such as this, requiring so many separate slips and gaps, would be impossible. It would require the construction of such an overarching conspiracy theory that it would have to collapse in a heap, burdened by its own improbability. Something like this could, in other words, not possibly be planned: it would require too much organisation. So let's simply write this off and attribute it to incompetence.

The next issue, however, poses a far more difficult conundrum. This was last Tuesday's announcement that hairdressers would be allowed to continue operating provided they "restrict the amount of time a patron is in the premises to no more than 30 minutes and preferably less".

Like me, the PM doesn't have a great deal of hair - so it's genuinely possible he might really believe it's possible to have a hair appointment within a half-hour. Where the incompetence defence fails, however, is when you realise that Morrison was also insisting, at the very same press conference, that he expected hairdressers to socially distance themselves from their customers. This meant, he helpfully explained, no more than one person per four square meters. Unfortunately he did not detail how this might be achieved in the close confines of a hair salon. Did Morrison make this decision simply because the US is, in places, allowing hairstyling to continue? Even the chief executive of the gloriously named Australian Hairdressing Council, Sandy Chong, insisted these conditions were "completely impractical", leaving those in the industry "quite outraged".

"We have," she said, "huge concerns for the safety of our hairdressers, their family, their children, as well as the community." She likened the decision to a "slow kill". She hinted that the decision may have been made simply to prevent hairdressers accessing government handouts if they decided to close.

Shortly afterwards, the head of Just Cuts, Denis McFadden, joined in with the pronouncement that it was "physically impossible" to shampoo or cut hair without touching clients.

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If these assumptions, made by experienced practitioners, are correct, they pose a problem for adherents to the usual theory that holds everything can be explained by government incompetence. That's because it appears, to the impartial observer, implausible that Morrison could be so completely and utterly detached from reality as to be unaware of something that appeared so obvious to so many. Indeed, during the very same press conference that the decision to allow hairdressers to continue was revealed, the PM insisted nail-bars, beauty parlours, spray-tan salons, tattooists and masseurs would all close (along with amusement parks, indoor playgrounds, RSLs, auction houses, real estate open homes, health clubs and shopping centre food courts, if not the centres themselves). The first thing to notice here is the precision. Somebody has carefully considered this issues - very possibly Morison himself - and made a thoughtful, reasoned decision. This was no accident. It's not incompetence. Surely it must be, instead, a deliberate, reasoned path forward.

The huge difficulty with this conclusion comes, however, when it is followed through to a logical conclusion. That would imply mendacity beyond comprehension. It suggests that the government does, indeed, intend the virus to proceed on a slow, controlled spread through the community, quite literally at the hands of the hairdressers. Surely this could not be the case?

There is, however, a logical argument for exactly this to happen, because this is the way to develop that (almost) chimerical concept; the so-called "herd immunity". The starting point for this beast is the idea that once the genie (or virus) escapes from the bottle (China), it can't be forced back. If this is the case, the only vital requirement is not to overwhelm medical services. This is becoming a very plausible strategy - particularly as we discover how far COVID-19 has spread through the Indian sub-continent and Africa. The problem with this as an explanation, however, is that the government has pointedly denied this is the strategy it's adopted.

So we're back to the beginning: incompetence or planning?

You decide.

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