The economic cost of lockdowns means families should be allowed to let elderly relatives with COVID die by letting nature take its course.
The comments come from staunch Catholic and former Australian Liberal Party Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
Abbott claims COVID is costing as much as A$200,000 (~NZ $220,000) to give an elderly person an extra year’s life.
He says the sum is substantially beyond what governments normally pay for life-saving drugs.
“In this climate of fear, it was hard for governments to ask ‘how much is a life worth?’ because every life is precious, and every death is sad, but that has never stopped families sometimes electing to make elderly relatives as comfortable as possible while nature takes its course.”
Abbott says the aim of preserving almost every life at any cost is a case of Governments shifting their goals from preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID patients to achieving zero transmission.
He accused Governments of approaching the pandemic trauma doctors instead of thinking like health economists trained to pose uncomfortable questions about a level of deaths countries might have to live with.
He told the Policy Exchange thinktank in London that it is not possible to pay so much to keep the elderly alive for another year while 40% of the workforce is on some kind of government benefit.
At some point we just have to live with this virus, he said.
Abbott claimed the response to COVID was causing a form of deep psychic damage.
“People once sturdily self-reliant are looking to the government more than ever for support and sustenance, a something-for-nothing mindset, reinforced amongst young people spared the need of searching for jobs.”
“Every day it goes on, it risks establishing a new normal,” adding: “Fear of falling sick is stopping us from feeling fully alive.”
Abbott also claimed officials were getting trapped in crisis mode for longer than they needed, “especially if the crisis adds to their authority or boosts their standing.”
Abbott proudly identifies as being pro-life and labelled last year’s changes to the NSW abortion bill as “death on-demand” and “morally shocking” also opposes euthanasia.
Australian Opposition leader, Anthony Albanese was swift in his condemnation.
“Tony Abbott was never known for his compassion. This is a new low,”Albanese said.
Senior Liberal cabinet minister Mathias Cormann distanced himself from the former prime minister, saying the economic cost of the virus was justified.
“Clearly, the first priority was to protect people’s health and save people’s lives by suppressing the spread of the virus, and that was absolutely necessary,” he told reporters at Parliament House.
“As part of that, we did have to impose significant restrictions on the economy in order to suppress the spread of the virus, and that was appropriate.”