Former deputy chief health officer Dr Nick Coatsworth has slammed those who continue to call for stricter Covid regulations, claiming that they have done more harm than good for many Australians.
‘We locked down our society, stopped children attending school, closed playgrounds, fined the least fortunate, separated families, created mental illness, all in the name of protecting our most vulnerable, yet for some it will never be enough. When will the moralising stop?’ the infectious disease physician wrote.
His remarks come at a time when much of the country is facing crippling staff shortages in critical industries such as healthcare, education, and transportation.
Despite the shortage, unvaccinated workers are still prohibited in many cases, exacerbating the problem.
Dr. Coatswroth described what has worked best in the nation’s response to the virus, what could have been done better, and where we are headed in a lengthy interview with Daily Mail Australia earlier this year.
He also criticised the ‘loud voices’ he claims are still frightening Australians who should have learned to live with Covid by now.
Coatsworth believes that restrictions should be lifted as soon as they are no longer manifestly necessary, and he will continue to speak up when an issue troubles him, such as forcing children to wear masks in school.
‘My preference was always to look at the benefits and consequences of whatever restriction was brought in,’ he says.
‘I’ve thought in general that we were too slow to realise the negative consequences of most of the restrictions.’
At heart, unlike some of the fearmongers he has railed against, the Sydney-born, Perth-raised doctor and father-of-three is an optimist.
‘I think we’re in a good spot in the pandemic compared to other nations,’ he says.
‘It’s difficult for people to see that because the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants have actually caused a lot of disruption, but we’ve got short memories, I think.’
Case numbers might be high but the fact intensive care units were coping was more significant.
‘At the really pointy end, which I think is what we always have to bring it back to with the pandemic, is how much actual morbidity and mortality is this disease causing?’ he says.
‘It’s really quite small compared to the number of cases that there are in the community.’
Coatsworth notes almost 95 per cent of the population are now double-vaccinated and an ‘extraordinary number’ of people have infection-induced immunity.
‘I think that happening all at the same time will probably actually lead to a really big drop off in the cases,’ he says. ‘That’s the most likely thing.
‘You’ll get these little spikes of cases but the trend over time will be downwards towards eventually just low levels of circulating cases in the community.’
Coatsworth was appointed one of three new deputy chief medical officers under Dr Brendan Murphy in March 2020 during the early days of the pandemic.
The consultant physician in infectious disease and respiratory medicine was seconded from Canberra Hospital where he was clinical director of medical services.
‘People often wonder where I got the job from and it was partly being in Canberra – I knew all the players around the table,’ he says.
Coatsworth had previously helped with Médecins Sans Frontières in Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, and Sudan’s Darfur region.
He was previously the executive director of Darwin’s National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre and led an Australian Medical Assistance Team to the Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
Moreover, Coatsworth had recent experience as a frontline clinical physician.
It also helped that he was acquainted with Professor Paul Kelly, who eventually succeeded Murphy as chief medical officer, through the Trauma Response Centre.
Coatsworth studied medicine at the University of Western Australia, where he met his future wife, lung transplant physician Rebecca Pearson, while dissecting foetus frogs. ‘It isn’t the most romantic,’ he admits.
The young doctor completed his internship at Royal Perth Hospital before returning to Sydney and working at Royal North Shore Hospital before moving to Darwin.
Coatsworth and Pearson married roughly seven years after meeting and relocated to Canberra when their two girls were one, five, and three years old, respectively. [This year marks their seventh, ninth, and eleventh birthdays.]
Coatsworth claims that the first major government response to Covid was to close international borders, which bought valuable time to plan for the impending pandemic.
‘I was confident that we were doing our best but I certainly wasn’t confident about what would happen,’ he says.
Priorities early on included obtaining personal protective equipment, assuring acute care bed capacity, and acquiring and manufacturing ventilators.
‘It was all pretty united in the first six months,’ Coatsworth says. ‘I think national cabinet was working, the states and territories were doing things in a broadly consistent way.
‘And then when it started to fracture and different states started doing different things it started getting quite confusing.’
Coatsworth’s first contract was for three months, but he stayed on as a part-time adviser for an additional year.
He became a recognizable face to most Australians through press conferences, television interviews, and advertising campaigns, but he still believes there was a lack of information about Covid’s future plans.
Coatsworth believes it should have been made clearer that while instances would eventually rise and a considerable number of people would die, the health system would be able to provide care to those in need.
‘That was the message that we needed to shift to in early 2021, to kind of prepare people,’ he says.
‘But unfortunately there was always a very loud group that thought Covid should be eliminated at all costs and I think that did hold us back a bit.’
The ‘inevitable’ happened when the Delta strain hit.
Coatsworth says vaccine mandates were ‘very important early on’ to drive uptake but have passed their usefulness.
‘There’s very few people who are likely to change their minds now because of the mandates,’ he says.
Wearing masks was also important, ‘when we didn’t know much about the virus and may still be important if we have a more lethal variant.’
Lockdowns, because of their mental health consequences, ‘probably caused more harm than good’, Coatsworth says.
He also believes working from home now serves no purpose from a public health perspective.
‘I think there’s stuff to be said about work-life balance, giving people the opportunity to have days at home,’ he says.
‘But I think for the people who are concerned about coming back to work we just need to reassure them.’
Internal border closures should have had an exemption process that allowed people with good reasons to travel the opportunity to do so.
‘It’s not enough to stand in front of a press conference and say “these decisions are heartbreaking” when you’re stopping someone from seeing a loved pass away,’ Coatsworth says.
‘I find it hard to describe those decisions in polite terms. I mean, we’re bloody Australians.’
Closing the nation’s borders was the right thing to do at the time but caused the same unnecessary hardships as shutting off states.
‘As an Australian citizen overseas, what on earth does citizenship mean if you can’t get home?’ Coatsworth says. ‘I think the right decision at the start but it set us off on a path that left us closed for far too long.’
Coatsworth agrees with vaccinating children aged five to 12 but does not think there will be much difference in disease severity in a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated child.
‘I have no problem that our child vaccination rates are sitting between 55 and 60 per cent,’ he says. ‘I don’t think that’s a major public health issue.’
Coatsworth reckons a fourth dose of vaccine is right for those with compromised immunity, and is probably worthwhile for those over 65.
‘For people under 65 unless they’ve got some pretty severe condition I reckon three doses is fine,’ he says.
Coatsworth’s views contrast with those of more risk-averse commentators, such as Dr Norman Swan of the ABC and former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps, who advocate for restrictions.
‘The problem is that group is loud and it’s influential,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit exhausting really.
‘I thought it’d be all done and dusted by now – not the pandemic – but this bloody argument.
‘It’s bad for the punters as well. No one wants to see duelling experts, but then you have a choice. Do you shut up and let them run the narrative?’
The emergence of an unexpected Covid variant which was highly transmissible and lethal across age groups would be the worst future scenario but was ‘very unlikely’, Coatsworth says.
When it comes to Covid-19, he avoids using the terms “winning” or “losing.”
‘While I wouldn’t say we’re winning or losing,’ he says, ‘we’ve put ourselves in a better position than most other nations.’ ‘You have to see it that way.
‘This is a pandemic. We’d never get through this without any deaths, labor shortages, or supply chain disruptions. That is just wishful thinking.’
Coatsworth believes Australians should be “100%” proud of their achievements. Covid-19.
‘It was a collaborative effort by the government, health-care workers, and the community.’ What it demonstrates is that Australia is not as polarized as everyone believes.’
Coatsworth returned to Canberra Hospital as the executive director of clinical services after his secondment to the Department of Health ended.
He’s currently working on a PhD in health and international policy at Australian National University, where he also lectures and occasionally contributes to Covid.
He says, ‘I’m trying to do it less and less.’ ‘I’m becoming increasingly aware that I should be doing less and less. I’m not a member of the government. ‘I don’t have any official responsibilities.’
But it’s difficult to remain silent when someone with a loud voice says something he strongly disagrees with.
‘I believe the best thing to do is ignore them and just attempt to run a middle narrative,’ Coatsworth adds.
‘Every now and then, my personality gets in the way.’ I’m getting a little irritated, so I have a go.
‘The kids in masks thing is something I just can’t seem to let go of.’ That’s probably the only thing I’ll continue to talk about. That is, without a doubt, the incorrect policy.’
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