A leading western Victorian medical professor says we need a dramatic shift in our ways to beat coronavirus, citing drink-driving campaigns as an example.
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Professor James Dunbar is an honorary professor in Rural Health at the Deakin Warrnambool campus.
Mr Dunbar, who played a major role in the 'Drink, drive, bloody idiot' campaigns 50 years ago, said we needed long-term behaviour changes to suppress COVID-19.
He fears regional areas that have remained largely COVID-19 free could be headed for a second wave, like what Melbourne is experiencing.
"In the next few days we'll get the answers because the numbers of Melbourne people who came to rural Victoria were pretty high," he said.
"At the moment we are COVID-free, but as soon as it gets into our community we need to be send into lockdown.
"Lockdown has been used for centuries - even back when the Italian cities were closing their gates to ships to stay out of the Venice port - we have done this for ages.
"A sure way to not get the virus is no contact."
Mr Dunbar's son is an infectious diseases physician in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom and diagnosed his first case of COVID-19 on March 1.
"The first week as people came in he watched patients die in one-to-three days, he saw hardened ward sisters in tears at the speed with which people died," he said.
"We don't know how lucky we are compared to many European countries and like the United States.
"We need to aim to be like Singapore and New Zealand and get on top of it."
He said COVID behaviour needed to be changed much like drink-driving was.
"If we want to change behaviour we have to deter people by making it clear that if you do the wrong thing you will be caught and punished," he said.
"We're at the start of that with booze bus-type road blocks and licence plate reading drones but police will need to go further, we need massive publicity towards how only fools break the rules and put us all at risk.
"People need to think it's wrong to not maintain social distancing, it's wrong to invite people to their house, to not get tested when you have symptoms, to go to work with symptoms.
"People need to think anyone breaking the rules is a pariah."
Little is known about the ever-evolving beast that is COVID-19.
Alarming new research has suggested the virus impacts could last a lifetime.
Mr Dunbar said disinformation was emerging as one of the biggest threats to health and safety.
"Disinformation is a new problem like the virus, I think because we've not seen the effects like my son sees in the UK people don't realise this attacks every age," Mr Dunbar said.
"Yes it's more likely that your grandparents will die than your grandkids but COVID kills people of all ages.
"What's emerging is many of the younger people who aren't ill enough to be hospitalised being left with disabling illnesses that look like they will be lifelong - they're breathless, they've got no energy, aches and pains, their mental functioning is impaired, this is not just flu and anyone who thinks that really haven't done their research.
"You only need to look across the water to New Zealand that has had no cases since May - that's what we need to do - lockdown really hard until we've got no virus and then we can all go back to normal."
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