Scott Morrison, still hurting from his infamous prediction that 4 million Australians would be vaccinated by March (it happened in early August), continues to mislead Australians — but this time in the opposite sense. The increasingly unpopular PM continues to maintain that the Doherty Institute’s challenging 80% adult vaccination target will not be reached until 2022 while the phase B target (70% of adults) will happen by Christmas.
Morrison may be under-promising to allow himself to claim some sort of victory later in the year — the government’s vaccine pipeline and the Doherty roadmap both imply that Australia is likely to reach 80% of its eligible population vaccinated by mid-November).
But current rollout pace is understated because the vaccination rate is increasing daily and will increase even more in September. By then, Pfizer shipments will increase to 8 million a month. We’ll also be getting 1 million Moderna shots (on top of the rejuvenated AstraZeneca which is now available for 18+ in Victoria and NSW).
Assuming demand doesn’t wane (and Sydney and Victoria’s seemingly never-ending lockdowns are taking care of that) total doses should hit 18 million by September 1, 28 million by October 1, and 32 million by mid-October. Even allowing for the delayed timing of second doses, the official 80% level should come around Melbourne Cup day, many months before Morrison’s overly conservative “70% by Christmas” claim.
Morrison’s misleading messaging leads to several potential problems.
First, within each phase there remains a huge level of discretion. This discretion requires a significant degree of political fortitude to make any significant changes. With Morrison priming voters to only reach the 70% target by late December, when in reality we will be there by September, won’t make this easier.
But phase B (the 70% target) is largely ceremonial, essentially resetting us back to where we were a month ago before Morrison was forced by Dan Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk to slash stranded Australians returning by 50% in return for a commitment to reduce lockdowns.
So forget about the totally irrelevant phase B and let’s jump to the more pertinent phase C.
Phase C (the 80% one) has a different set of problems. It notionally allows vaccinated Australians to be “exempt from domestic restrictions” while also permitting state premiers to continue to lock down at their leisure. Will vaccinated Australians actually be exempt from anything in phase C if the premiers make the lockdown rules? It feels like Morrison is hoping internal polling will force the premiers to abandon their COVID-zero fetish. While this is entirely possible given by that time given a significant majority of voters will be vaccinated and likely to be sick of harsh stay-at-home orders, there’s no certainty.
The final issue is that the (otherwise fairly sensible) Doherty roadmap didn’t address the critical phase D (perhaps driven by political convenience — Morrison claimed there were “too many unknowns”). The as-yet-unspecified phase D still has restrictions for travellers returning from high-risk countries; it is essentially the current policy settings in the UK (with its green/amber/red classifications). It’s slightly strange that this setting, which still is very restrictive for international travel couldn’t have been part of phase C (the UK opened at a lower vaccination rate than our phase C, albeit with far higher natural immunity).
Moreover, we don’t have any idea what the target for phase D even is. Is it 90% of adults? Is it 70% of the total population?
The logical target for phase D is “anyone who wants a jab has been offered one”. At that point, maintaining any restrictions because of anti-vaxxers (who don’t want any restrictions) or the ultra-hesitant simply makes almost no sense. CDC data from the US indicated that more than 99% of COVID deaths since May have been in unvaccinated people, so those who remain at risk have made that conscious choice.
Being reactive and poll-driven worked brilliantly for Morrison for his first two years. It may even work now, especially with Labor doubling down on “Fortress Australia”. But if Morrison did a “Boris” and laid down a genuine vaccination target, outlined the potential freedoms that would result and met that target, it may be his best chance to turn around his ailing fortunes.
Morrison is relying on a complicit media in order to get away with his slippery tactics. On ABC’s ‘Insiders’ Greg Hunt declared “NSW is doing an extraordinary job to contain the outbreak” – at this point surely David Speers should have challenged him. Yet another opportunity was ignored to make this incompetent government accountable & exposed for ongoing propaganda.
Yes – totally agree.
To be fair to David, Hunt didn’t give him much chance to challenge him, he just talked over the top of him. It sounded like he had one (long-winded) talking point that he repeated no matter what question was asked.
That was what I was gong to say.
Murdoch hates the ABC so he lent them his pet.
Ratings for “insiders” must be through the floor at this point.
Didn’t Laura want the job, or wasn’t it offered?
I reckon its about time ita went back to fundraising for the liberals.
My god yes. I’ve sent like 20 feedbacks inc with article links re: compliance and how they are trashing it and have a formal complaint in atm.
Another Speers Insiders’ commercial for the Coalition.
The way Speers posed those Dorothy Dixers, then let Hunt run off at the mouth in whatever direction he chose, answering the question he wanted, without Dave pulling back on the reins looked like he was ‘just along for the ride’?
I wonder if Fran Kelly was happy with the question Spivsy asked on her behalf, let alone the lack of follow-up or “answer” . ..
That was “Fran Bailey” of course – amazed at this sneakily announced change to rules for people coming back home then what they have to do to go back to where they live or work.
To which Hunt goes off on some vapid, unfettered, tangential excuse.
Speers : “Do you conceded we may not be seeing as many infections now, had you signed the deal with Pfizer 12 months ago when countries like the US, Japan and Canada did?
Hunt : “There was no other deal available. So we’re happy to receive any criticism for the things we control but that notion of another deal being available has been completely debunked*……. There was no other deal available for any earlier vaccine or any larger quantities”?
a) *”debunked” by whom?
b) If there were “no other deals” then why did the US, Japan, Canada and others get one?
c) Was an expanded deal sought with Pfizer – or not?
d) Did Morrison, Hunt, Murphy et al think they were smarter than everyone else and “had it all covered for minimal cost”?
I wouldn’t lump Brendan Murphy in with the hopeless lot who forgot to appoint a permanent CMO to order vaccines.
From March 2020 until November 2020 there were a series of acting CMO’s and no one authorized to order or assess vaccines.
Apparently Brendan Murphy approached Pfizer in late February 2020.
He then had to get cracking in his new job as the head of the Department of Health so that he could front the RC into aged care.
Smirko decided so cleverly, to control the narrative and so no permanent CMO was appointed until November 2020. The Pfizer deals had already sailed, long gone.
Pfizer said that no one returned their calls for 8 months.
“How good is Australia?”.
Murphy : The volunteer fig-leaf face “medical expert” of “Morrison’s Covid Task Farce”?
His spirited defence of the Morrison Plan before Senate estimates?
As I’ve said before, going on his public appearances and fulsome support, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he does an Michael Wooldridge and pops up somewhere as a “Liberal (celebrity) candidate in some “winnable seat” ….. like some “Human Railway Car Park”?
Is risk their contain the outbreak BS will cause some to conclude vaccines don’t work when it doesn’t.
Once again the State Premiers will do the PM’s job for him when it comes to the vaccine rollout. He’ll claim credit as he always does but they will do the heavy lifting.
I am not so sure, the Queensland Premier said this morning the State is only responsible for 30% of the vaccine rollout. Sounds like a free kick to the Feds.
I think that you misunderstand the roll out of vaccines.
The states run vaccination clinics using the vaccine that they are given.
The Federal Government hired a private company to vaccinate the people who live in aged care accommodation, they did not include the staff in the contract.
GP’s and Pharmacies get their vaccine directly from the Federal Government, how much and when is in the lap of the stuffed uniform who Smirko has given the job of punching bag to.
The vaccination rate is directly related to vaccine supply.
If you’re really interested in the ratings for Insiders, you can find them on this very site!
If we look overseas we can see that the UK is at 58% of adult population vaccinated. It appears that the last 20% are going to take a while. Given that we are at about 20%, achieving an another additional 50% in the next month seems ambitious based in the evidence elsewhere. Be interesting to see how we go. Oh and having Moderna announce that they are thinking of using Australia as a ‘trial’ site for vaccinating children isn’t confidence inspiring.
I agree; it’s that last 20 to 30% which are going to be difficult, providing the vaccine doses arrive as predicted/spun. Adam Schwab has always been precipitate in his articles about the pandemic, rashly jumping to self-interested conclusions on the basis of scanty, premature or cherry-picked evidence. He’s been wrong so many times that I wouldn’t bet a dollar on the vaccination targets being met early. Like the UK, the USA’s vaccination rate has also declined for first and second doses, despite the well broadcast news that about 99% of deaths are of unvaccinated people. Israel reached a plateau well below 70% in April – falling to a rate which would have seen the country at 70% fully vaccinated as late as October 2022 – and only began increasing the rate again when the more feared Delta variant cases spiked in June. It’s hard to see how Australia could avoid the same phenomenon, especially if the NSW situation can be reined in; that would reduce again the sense of urgency in the population.
Adam mentions ‘the government’s vaccine pipeline‘, which suggested to me a timeline of vaccine doses coming into the country, but the link points merely to a government powerpoint presentation with graphics of the distribution, so far, of vaccine doses by age group, state, source of delivery, and the to-be-expected gathering pace of vaccination. The experience of other countries which had earlier led the charge in fully vaccinating their populations suggests getting to 80% fully vaccinated may not be as easy as Adam predicts.
These might change your mind about being a trial site for kids:
> https://downloads.aap.org/DOFA/AAP%20Letter%20to%20FDA%20on%20Timeline%20for%20Authorization%20of%20COVID-19%20Vaccine%20for%20Children_08_05_21.pdf
>https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/cloth-face-coverings/
> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/delta-variant-covid-children/619712/
>https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/08/19/these-6-states-have-almost-no-icu-beds-left-as-covid-hospitalizations-soar/?sh=2a816da66bb5
How thoroughly refreshing to hear from Adam as a columist and not an epidemiologist for a change.
…. They ran out of the Self-interest vaccine?
But supplies of Self Delusion solution remain plentiful except that he clearly doesn’t believe a word of this tripe but is happy to oversupply others, Jonestown style.