Pajero Club: President’s Report
April 2020
Covid-19 is now a global crisis. Strong words, but it is necessary that we grasp the seriousness.
The situation is described by the World Health Organisation as a pandemic: this is a word used rarely in our
lifetime. Scott Morrison has announced a Level 4 (the highest) travel ban to EVERY other country: another
first in our lifetime. Daniel Andrews, and leaders of other States, has announced a state of emergency to
give the governments additional powers. Every leader and health authority are saying that we should not
be judging the situation on the “half dozen deaths in Australia” but that we need to look at the pattern or
trajectory of how these pandemics evolve and grow. Apart from simple counting in each country,
pandemics like Covid-19 can be mathematically modelled with great predictive power. In a strange way we
should be grateful for the weeks and months of warning that we have been receiving about the pathway of
Covid-19 giving us the opportunity to see what happened to countries that did not prepare fully. (A contrast
might be the experience of the New York Twin Towers of 11 th September 2001 when we found out once it
was over).
To show how this pandemic is evolving quickly, the last paragraph was written four days ago and is now
quite superseded. Fast forward less than a week and we now have bans on travelling between States of
Australia: we can shelve any thought of a Simpson Desert or Top End 4X4 trip for a little while.
Our government is not saying that they can stop all deaths from Covid-19; what they are plotting is a
pathway to control the impending cases in a manageable way. They are planning a course which is a
balancing act between isolating 25 million Australians in their bedrooms tomorrow which would stop the
whole economy and cut all food supply, or letting everyone catch Covid-19 tomorrow and flood every 1000-
bed hospital with 10,000 sick patients. The second scenario is a little like we see in Italy - triage in Italy then
steps in and says that their hospitals no longer treat anyone over 60 – sobering!
Rather than having everyone sick on day 1, if we can spread those same 10,000 patients out over a month
there is a greater chance a hospital can respond to everyone.
It is a good question to ask how the Pajero Club Committee, or even the Prime Minister, knows what the
situation will be like in April, May or even August. Of course, we do not know. But we ask ourselves
questions like “do you expect this virus pandemic to disappear in two weeks so that we can hold the March
General meeting?” our own answers two weeks ago were “most unlikely” so we cancelled early rather than
procrastinating. In the case of the March meeting we got the answer right; we might make mistakes on
other occasions, but we will ensure such mistakes are not fatal for the Club. The Muster was the same, we
did not see the crisis disappearing by Easter, so we cancelled the event giving everyone clarity and saving
the Club losing deposits and incurring additional expenses. Not all Members agreed with this decision, but
I suspect that the decision will turn out to be appropriate.
So how does a Pajero Club make assumptions in such uncertain times? In other words, how does one predict
the future through a crisis like this? For our guidance influencing these decisions, we looked overseas where
countries were restricting some gatherings to ten people or less. Luckily, we have an exceptional resource
base in the Club and we use many more external contacts like https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/victorian-
public-coronavirus-disease-covid-19. Medical practitioners like Dr Ross Wines, Dr Rod Phillips and Dr
Catherine Crock (all Members) share their opinions, comment on our paths forward and tell us what they
see and hear as experts in hospitals and medical practices. Listening to Scott Morrison and Daniel Andrews
does two things: it informs us of new rules and guidelines from today but these leaders are regularly telling
us which way the crisis is heading “Here are the new bans today, but we expect they will be tougher as time
goes on” – that sentence is extremely informative if we listen carefully. For once in a lifetime, politicians
are answering questions directly and as clearly as they can.