It is a simple fact that regional Victoria has gone it alone when it comes to effective suppression of the COVID-19 virus when compared with Melbourne.
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The daily news conferences from Premier Dan Andrews have for some time now been glum affairs.
He has not swayed from belting the community time and time again with the lock-down message.
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And so he should. When the expert advice remains that the numbers of daily diagnosed cases continue to be in the dozens, the severe risk remains.
A major outbreak could still occur.
But what is difficult to understand is why regional Victoria has had to suffer from lock-downs almost as severe as metropolitan Melbourne when COVID-19 has rarely been seen.
It is sensible to have some degree of restrictions, predicated mainly on common sense social distancing, but the extent to which this has been imposed is highly questionable.
The North East in particular just hasn't been recording cases and yet rules that are destroying businesses and upending lives are still in place.
One argument put this week against an early, genuine removal of the more harsh restrictions is this would make it more attractive for city-folk to travel to the regions to enjoy a taste of their former lives.
That though is a bit of a Furphy given there is supposed to be a "ring of steel" around Melbourne.
It is encouraging though that Mr Andrews is finally beginning to make noises, however muted, about the regions being able to move out of stage three restrictions.
This is based on the 14-day average of new cases falling to under five, but the problem with that is - as we have reported - that the zero case load in our region is then impacted by numbers in areas that have had outbreaks, such as Geelong, Bendigo and Ballarat.
It's time the government made the effort to treat the regions on an individual basis.
For the North East that would mean properly losing the shackles and doing so with some haste.
