One thing that the pandemic has really brought home is how much I hate the word/concept "safe", when presented as a universal good. No, I don't want to be "safe", in the absolute sense that its advocates mean. I want to trade costs and benefits, cos that's what maximises utility.

That doesn't mean advocating for mad nonsense like Trump, but it also doesn't mean keeping tens of thousands of citizens living overseas in misery barred from returning in case one of them breaches quarantine and the resulting mini-cluster kills a local.

Similarly Morrison has done a bad job of pushing this politically, because he isn't very good, but he's right that it's immoral to ban families and friends who live across state borders from seeing one another, when the risk that these bans are supposedly mitigating is near-zero.

We're seeing two equally insane and extreme covid positions emerge in Australia, and only the marginal one with no prospect of happening ("let it rip"/Qaren) gets the opprobrium that it deserves, whereas no amount of misery inflicted is too great to invalidate the cult of zero.