Three days before Round 2 of the 2020 NRL season kicked off, the government released figures suggesting as many as 150,000 Australians could die from COVID-19.
While he refused to state the numbers outright, Paul Kelly, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer (not the gravy guy or the ex-Swannies skipper), said at a March 16 press conference that Australia was looking at an infection rate of between 20 and 60 per cent of the population.
When asked how many people would not survive, he replied, “Well, the death rate is around one per cent. So you can do the maths.”
So while 150,000 deaths was the worst-case scenario – based on 60 per cent of Aussies contracting the coronavirus – the more optimistic estimate was still a whopping 50,000 passing away.
Put another way, we expected as much as 0.6 per cent of our entire population not to survive what the World Health Organisation had declared on March 11 to be a pandemic. That’s more than the percentage of deaths we suffered in World War 2.
Obviously these numbers have turned out to be wildly inaccurate, but that was the modelling our country was working off when the Bulldogs hosted the Cowboys at an empty ANZ Stadium on March 19.
Peter V’landys (Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Incidentally, at 11:59pm on that same date, New Zealand closed its borders to international travellers, with Australia following suit at 9pm the following day.
Then on March 22, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that pretty much the whole country was going into hibernation, as hotels, pubs, entertainment venues, cinemas, casinos, nightclubs, gyms and even places of worship were ordered to close, with no word on when they could let the general public back in.
It’s worth keeping all that in mind as we prepare for the NRL competition to resume some nine weeks after it was suspended on March 23, which Peter V’landys called at the time “a dark day in our game’s history”.
“We had to take this unprecedented action as there was simply no other option,” the ARLC chairman said.
“We have always said we would continue but only as long it was safe to do so.
“When the advice tells us we can no longer guarantee player safety because of the rapid rate at which infection is spreading, we must act accordingly.”
The infection was spreading – dramatically, actually, as you’ll see in a table below. The borders were closed. The pubs were closed! And somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 people were expected to die.
So it was a bit rich that V’landys has spent the past week going on about how the NRL could have forged ahead.
“If I had my time again, quite frankly, we wouldn’t have stopped the rugby league,” V’landys told a recent roundtable hosted by News Corp.
“If there is one regret, maybe we acted too quickly.
“Maybe we should have waited another week to see the infection rates.”
He doubled down on these claims in an interview with Nine Newspapers, saying, “As soon as we shut the borders, I knew it would be safe.”
Bit of selective memory there Pete, because we shut the borders on March 20 but you didn’t suspend the comp until March 23. And for the record, according to Our World in Data there were 1709 total cases in Australia on March 23, while on March 30 that number had more than doubled to 4093.
At the end of March, we were riding a sharp spike upwards in COVID cases – waiting a week wasn’t going to help keep the game running from an infection-rate point of view.
V’landys also threw his anonymous pandemic expert under the bus in his chat with Nine, calling her “a bit extreme”.
“She’s given us advice that hasn’t proven correct. I’m not blaming the lady for that. But I’m not going back to a person who’s already given me incorrect advice,” he said.
And fair enough, but when the country’s foremost medical experts are tossing up death rates in the hundreds of thousands, maybe her advice wasn’t so much incorrect as based on reliable sources that turned out to be incorrect.
As for the issues of how the game would have progressed given Australia and New Zealand’s borders closed and the states followed suit internally shortly after – indeed, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk may not let people from NSW into the Sunshine State until September – V’landys at least admitted it would have been tough from an optics perspective.
“Public relations-wise, it would’ve been difficult. People would’ve asked, ‘Why is rugby league still going and we’re not?’ It would’ve been a nightmare, along with the closure of the borders,” he said.
Now, I’m reluctant to speculate on what V’landys can and can’t do – that we’ll be watching the Broncos take on the Eels in two days’ time suggests he’s handy at striking deals – but it’s fanciful he could have got the likes of Palaszczuk, Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and even our league-tragic PM to allow for NRL teams to flout border closures so they could keep playing footy as businesses around the country closed and hundreds of thousands signed up for Centrelink.
Even if he had managed to get all the right politicians on board, you reckon the general public and therefore the broadcasters would have been keen? As the rest of the country closed down, do you honestly think people signing up for JokKeeper would be happy that footy had somehow ended up being categorised with our frontline healthcare workers as ‘essential’?
More than likely the NRL would have got tapped from above, a la Dana White taking a call from the suits at Disney when he tried to push ahead with UFC 249 as thousands were dying across America.
“The powers that be there asked me to stand down and not do this event next Saturday,” White said, after the UFC’s broadcast partners realised that people bleeding, spitting and making extremely close contact with one another wasn’t a great look when everyone else on the planet had been told to maintain a personal bubble of four square metres.
And I’m sorry to harp on about it, but there’s also still that ‘150,000 people may die’ stat which the best-placed medicos in the land had advised just before the footy went on hold.
Hindsight is 20-20 and given what we know today, the NRL could probably have continued over the past two or so months. But it didn’t go on hold because one infectious disease expert made a bad call.
The footy season was suspended because it was the only sensible thing to do in late March.
Pressing ahead would have flown in the face of all the accepted medical advice at the time, would have been near impossible logistically as Australia and New Zealand closed down, and even if all that could have been negotiated, the backlash from the public would have been immense.
It’s awesome that the NRL will be on our screens come Thursday night and I applaud Peter V’landys for having the ambition and drive to make it happen.
But if he honestly thinks the NRL didn’t need to go on hiatus, he needs a bit of a lie down.
matth
Roar Guru
I knew Alan Jones would have to find a new hobby in retirement.
matth
Roar Guru
When I walk into Bunnings with my partner I should just give them $100 on entry because I can never seem to get out for anything less.
Nick
Roar Guru
Thanks, Don.
the_bear
Roar Rookie
Glad you are not an epidemiologist advising our State & Fed governments. It's clear you don't understand either what could have happened, nor why it didn't
Paul
Roar Guru
" It is completely delusional and irrational (and frankly stupid) to make estimates with assumptions like ‘nothing will be done to mitigate the pandemic’." Really? How do you establish a baseline if you don't model what happens if countries do nothing? You're also suggesting highly credentialed scientists are " completely delusional and irrational (and frankly stupid)", because they've come up with a set of numbers that complete novices in this field have decided are incorrect. Please also let me know where you dug up the quote " ‘nothing will be done to mitigate the pandemic’?
Nat
Roar Guru
Hunting? Mate, I'm their leader! :stoked:
Chris.P.Bacon
Guest
"If I take a while to reply because I had to go hunting." Nat, I imagine you're 'hunting' for "....those beer gutted gronks wandering the wilds of brisbane city" ? ;) (sorry mate!) :laughing:
Beni Iniesta
Guest
Dang autocorrect. It is completely delusional and irrational (and frankly stupid) to make estimates with assumptions like 'nothing will be done to mitigate the pandemic'. What kind of crazy assumption is that? It also perfectly explains how estimates and predictions from these 'experts' can be so so wrong. Do they think everyone is stupid?!? Certainly seems like it.
Beni Iniesta
Guest
It is completely delusional and irrational (and frankly stupid) to make reconstruction with assumptions like 'nothing will be done to mitigate the pandemic'. What kind of crazy symptom is that? It also perfectly explains how estimates and predictions from these 'experts' can be so so wrong. Do they think everyone is stupid?!? Certainly seems like it.
Beni Iniesta
Guest
Yes there was a spike - but you know where the spike came from? International travelers. Yes, that’s right - from returning Australians. There has never been much spread at all in the Australian community. Did you know there has been ZERO community transmission in Tasmania? Or the Northern Territory? ZERO. That’s right. NONE. There have been no people infected with this virus in Tasmania it the Northern Territory that can’t be directly connected to an existing outbreak it traveler. None. Zero. Nada. There has been a total of 1 person infected in the ACT, 9 in South Australia, 16 in Western Australia and 41 in Queensland. A total of 67 infections six Australian States & Territories in over 100 days. Less than 1 per day. Yes - there have been more in Victoria (182) and NSW (370). A national total of 619 in the entire country. When the fatality rate is around 1% you are looking at 6-7 people dying from this out of control infection in 3 months. Did you know 14,000 Australians die each and every month? 20/40,000 is not a high number - let me assure you. Further to this - did you know more than half of the deaths in Australia were from cruise ships (30), Newmarch House (17) or Dorothy Henderson Lodge (6). More than half! There was never any widespread outbreak in Australia and the figures bear this out - what there was was a lot of infected Australians returning from overseas massively bumping up the numbers. I could see this the whole way through that we would never have a mad outbreak here - and I presume PVL could as well. What was the best action we took? Closing our borders and mandatory 2 week quarantine for returning travelers. Everything else had minimal impact in truth.
Justin Kearney
Roar Rookie
V’landys upsets you a lot doesn’t he?
Chris Love
Roar Guru
Well actually, he may have shut it down but the governments social distancing laws that prevented non essential contact and group size restrictions etc etc would have in effect shut it down for them anyway. When an orthodontist (who wears PPE on a daily basis), can’t open to fix a little girls broken braces that are cutting her mouth up, then there’s no way 10 men can pack into a scrum with sweaty faces touching and heavy breathing going on with spit flying everywhere.
Nat
Roar Guru
What is specultative is how he intended to keep it up and running. It is/was likely to be knocked back but we don't know what the question he asked. He gets the advice to shut it down and he does - fine. 7 days later "we got the wrong advice". 9 days after that we get the 28th May along with in-principle support from the Police Commissioner and State polies inc the Premier. I'm not supporting he should have kept going. I, too, thought it was inevitable. I just get the feeling he's put forward a few scenarios to the NRL advisor and they have said no. Then he asks the same question of the NSW Govt and they say yes, provided... Like I said, the continuation was likely not to get up but if he says he had a plan, recent history says he's got a chance of making it work. I'm skeptical about having crowds back by July 1. I can only see it working if they do away with the 1.5m. With the 1.5m in place, it's unviable. If we start to see groups clustering at matches, I wouldn't be surprised to see V'landys answering to the States with a real threat of suspension.
Nick
Roar Guru
My bad. I've confused you for someone else who always seems to want to compare everything to bunnings.
kk
Roar Pro
Thank you Nat. You read my mind.
Nick
Roar Guru
Isn’t that as much speculation as V’landys saying he could have kept going? Not really. My comments are speculative as they were postulating future based scenarios itself based on a scenario that never happened. V'Landys wanting to retrospectively review a decision, that's not speculation. He's saying if he had his time again, he wouldn't have paused the league. There's nothing speculative about that. While this is a first for 99.99% of us, it’s not for him. The comparison to equine flu is flawed and short sighted. The racing industry in NSW was 100% shut down during the EI outbreak. He didn't push through and say "we could have kept running it". Additionally, coronavirus has a far longer incubation period, has asymptomatic carriers and unlike horses, league players don't live in stables (although arguably they should!). I really doubt V'Landys would have responded to the doctor with "well, this is how we managed Equine flu...."
Nat
Roar Guru
What does that say about you if a mouth breathing trog such myself can put you in your place? You know who was talking about AFL the other day? No one.
Nat
Roar Guru
Of all people on this site, kk is probably the most polite, respectful and least confrontational of us all. For him to recognise this joker only come to league threads to throw stones and nothing more should speak volumes.
Forty Twenty
Roar Rookie
I have never posted my displeasure at Bunnings staying open.
Paul D
Roar Rookie
who would know spruce. all I know is I jump on here between discussing super and fire off a few missives, great way to kill a few minutes ready time. Apparently punching out a reply with his thumbs is a massive investment of time for Nat so he assumes it's the same for all of us. All I really wanted was him to stop following me around like a bad smell. He shows up on so many of my comments now. I think if I posted in e-sports he'd be there claiming I'm bringing politics into overwatch while he talks about Campbell Newman. Maybe the trick is to use lots of multi-syllable words, also known as free flowing BS. Complexity is often the achilles heel of the broncos fan, lord knows I see enough of those beer gutted gronks wandering the wilds of brisbane city so I'm probably doing a public service keeping him at home on the computer.