Word power: “killer” statistic supports “outlandish” assertion

The “outlandish” claim:

Neoliberalism is spreading coronavirus faster than any “reckless teenager” ever could.

The “killer” statistic:

At the beginning of August, five of the Victorian (Covid19) cases involve one publicly run home and the remaining 923 cases were in private and not-for-profit homes.

The quotations are from an article by Richard Denniss, published in the Australian edition of The Guardian on 20 August 2020.

To better understand the significance of the statistic, I did a little further research.

According to an excellent article by The Age’s Michael Bachelard, published  on 30 July 2020 (read it, here), the vast majority of Australia’ aged care nursing homes are privately owned.

(be aware that many of those “privately owned” homes are “not for profit” homes, operated by Church-based “charities”)

Proportionally, Victoria has more “public” nursing home beds than does any other state.

According to Bachelard, 5,400 – or 10.8% – of Victoria’s circa 50,000 nursing home beds are in public (Victorian Government) homes;

So, I “did the maths”…

If Victoria’s “public” and “private” nursing homes were equally “safe” – or “unsafe” –  the “public” share of Covid-19 cases should be circa 100 of the 928 (5+923) referred to by Richard Denniss.

Given the actual figure of just five “public” cases – all of them in just the one institution – the unavoidable conclusion is that a Victorian “private” nursing home resident was twenty times more likely to “catch” Covid-19 than was a  “public” nursing home resident.

Richard Denniss’s assertion is, it seems, not outlandish.

Two key paragraphs from his article:

Put simply, if Australia relied on a well-paid, well-trained and well-resourced public sector to protect us then there might have been no shutdown in Victoria, no restrictions on interstate travel and no forecast of double-digit unemployment. For decades, advocates of the outsourcing and privatisation of public services have boasted of the cost savings of doing so. Today, we are counting the cost. We will be counting it for years to come.

It’s not the market’s fault that there are no minimum staffing numbers or minimum training standards in commonwealth-funded and privately run aged care homes. It’s the Morrison government’s. And it’s not the market’s fault if the private security guards protecting us from Covid-19 are poorly trained.

Click here to read the entire article.