Lockdown

If you care about the way power is deployed in Australia, evidence-based public health policy and protecting society’s most vulnerable, this book is a must-read.

A searingly frank and detailed examination of the pandemic and our response to it.

Le Grand deftly takes us through the complexity, humanity, fear and, at times, irrationality of COVID-zero, and the unintended consequences we must never forget.

A forensic and at times controversial analysis of Melbourne’s journey with COVID-19, peppered with the scientific, political and personal stories of a very difficult moment in time.

Chip Le Grand is the chief reporter for The Age. He has worked as a journalist with The Australian and The Age newspapers for thirty years, and has spent most of that time writing about the people and politics of Melbourne. During the pandemic, he worked from home with his wife, three teenage children and two large dogs, reporting on the COVID crisis, and at one point wondering how to cook a frozen duck bought in panic when the shelves of his local supermarket were otherwise bare. His previous book, The Straight Dope, an investigation into the Essendon and Cronulla doping scandals, won the Walkley Book Prize and William Hill Australian Sports Book of the Year.