Gladys Berejiklian’s debacle in New South Wales has already inflicted considerable political damage on Scott Morrison and threatens to present him with a messy political problem for which there are no easy solutions.
The Berejiklian problem is pretty simple: the reopening plan agreed to by national cabinet didn’t envisage COVID running rampant when vaccination rates hit 70%. On current form, NSW is likely to still have hundreds of cases a day, and a steady stream of deaths, when that milestone is reached.
In fact, the NSW premier has given up on getting cases to zero, with the inevitable mathematical logic that easing lockdown restrictions while the virus is circulating in the community will see numbers soar. But she wants to stick to the plan of easing come 70%, as does Morrison. Berejiklian, if she’s still premier by then, feels she needs to offer people in Sydney something other than six months in lockdown.
Other first ministers aren’t convinced and don’t fancy reopening when potentially thousands of cases are moving about freely over the border.
Morrison says the states signed up to the agreement and he’ll insist they stick by it. The only lever he has is fiscal — warning he won’t provide any financial assistance if they lock down after 70%. Trouble is, we’ve heard that from him before and it’s taken just a couple of days of pointed commentary from state politicians mid-lockdown before he caved.
According to press gallery journalists, Morrison just needs to change the mindset of Australians away from the number of cases to the number of hospitalisations and deaths. This seems to be more of the same cluelessness that led to political journalists missing how popular state border closures were and how foolish Morrison was being in opposing them. Remember Christian Porter and Morrison teaming up with Clive Palmer to fight Western Australia’s Premier Mark McGowan’s border closure?
Voters, they seem to think, will turn on a dime and embrace open borders even though there are thousands of infected people waiting to come from interstate. And then rejoice in not having lockdowns as the cases numbers soar and the deaths mount. The “Dictator Dans” and “Marshal McGowans” will be vanquished.
Let’s believe that when we see it. The experience of the past 12 months is that lockdown-loving, border-blocking Labor premiers are much more in tune with voter sentiment than the let-it-rip obsessives of business and The Australian Financial Review.
The issue is causing tensions in national cabinet well in advance of vaccination rates nearing 70%. Case numbers in NSW are in the 600s. If we’re lucky, those numbers are peaking and will start coming down in time for the reopening plan to play out successfully.
If we’re not lucky, the cases will mount into the thousands, making it impossible for any other state leader to publicly contemplate reopening. The worst-case scenario is that Victoria, too, is unable to get on top of the Delta variant and the problem is doubled.
This is the mess Berejiklian has caused. Not merely has she seeded outbreaks in Victoria, the ACT and New Zealand, she’s put at serious risk the reopening plan, and is likely to have created an awful dilemma for Morrison.
He has his own responsibility for what’s happened in NSW, of course, and he’s continuing to contribute to it by opposing business vaccine mandates. But with an election needed by May at the latest, the idea that he’s going to refuse to support premiers locking down and closing borders in four months is an interesting one, to say the least.
Hear hear!
If Gladys indeed relaxes the rules with 70% vaccinated, watch for the outcry as daily reports of more cases, more hospitalisations and more deaths.
The ideological right seems to have a constant urge to turn us into the US or UK – “let’s show how be right up there with them and have thousands afflicted”
Yet the poor old Australian public rather liked the few or none option that WA, Queensland etc managed to achieve, and which Gold Star Gladys thought she had achieved without any effort.
If Morrison and Frydenberg want to open up once a certain level of vaccinations is achieved but the daily infection numbers are still high, and the election campaign is imminent, he will find himself up against not only the Federal Opposition, but a bunch of popular State Labor Premiers who will be going hard against him too. And if, as usual in Australia, fear wins out over hope in determining people’s votes, Morrison will be gone.
The “poor old Australian public” liked the few or non option just fine last year and even earlier this year, when real lockdowns achieved that result. However the result is not being achieved with Delta, not even in Melbourne, where the lockdown is every bit as strict as last year; case numbers are going up, not down.
The Australian public will start to change their minds when three-quarters or four-fifths of them are all fully vaccinated and there are still calls for everyone to be confined to their homes and a 5 mile radius strictly for exercise only. Those three-quarters or four-fifths will mostly be wondering very loudly just why they have to confine themselves to barracks when they’re fully vaccinated and are almost certain not to get very sick or die even if they do happen to get infected.
McGowan calls the NSW government measures ‘illogical’ and ‘frustrating’WA Premier Mark McGowan says the NSW government has been taking “half measures” and would be over this outbreak already if they had followed the lead of other states.
He said requirements should be across the board, not just in certain areas.
“It’s gone on now for two months, whereby they’ve had insufficient measures in place,” he said.
“If they put the right things in place back in June, I suspect they’d be out of it now.
“So now, they continue to do half measures. I don’t understand it. It’s actually illogical.
“It’s so frustrating to watch what they do, the NSW government does. They always put in place half measures.”
Fortunately, for us thinking Australians,McGowan only answers to a parochial empty vastness sometimes referred to as Western Australia where they dislike everyone from the east anyway. They can have it, in fact they are very deserving of living their lives out there, where they will never amount to much of significance globally or even domestically.
I am glad he is your pinnacle of political nous. Maybe he’s reading your comments on crikey and approaching you for your deep thoughts on all matters covid related?
You could be a lockdown monitor in one of his Perth outer burbs? Saving lives by the millions.
Strewth seek help fast.
Crikey:
Take McKinsey, which has raked in over $10 million in pandemic related contracts, many involving the vaccine rollout. One one contract, the firm apparently didn’t provide specific advice to the government, and couldn’t produce anything beyond an eight-page report. Last year, McKinsey consultants also convinced the government and Health to go slow on signing contracts with prospective vaccine developers last year.
Then there’s Accenture, which got $8 million to track the vaccine rollout, and produced… an infographic.
Never ends
I’m confident the people of WA have never been happier, a beautiful State with no freaking tourists, not even from the east. They’re living normal lives, without risks from Covid. They’re over-freaking-joyed, I’d say. I don’t think that many are crying out for us east coasters to flood their State.
It’s an ok state, boring at best.
“Without risk from covid”, wow, the pinnacle of existence. What a one dimensional view of life.
A virus that trumps everything. I’d be ok with your statement if covid was measles or chicken pox or something quite dangerous, but thank goodness it’s covid.
Pretty sure they’re not gonna get flooded by anyone soon. I honestly think we should cut them off and let them go it alone.
Many over there would agree, so why not?
I realized recently that Aussies are some of very few people on the planet who have had actual normal life since the pandemic started. Priceless.
Hey Dog we think the same in the Nth. We’re with WA SA and NA (North Aus)
We sure are! 🙂 Happy that is!
Likewise Queenslanders!
well South Australia Liberals are going to trial home quarantine for people returning from New South Wales and Victoria how good is that
Good luck to them they have massive separation from clowns like scomo and Gladys so cash your chips
Yes, but what are you sinking about? Please go away.
I’m already outcrying, right now.
I wish I was from the boondocks like remote WA, oh hang on a second, I’m Australian, I am.
You’re a quid short
He is depriving a village somewhere of their idiot…
With epis saying most is luck and that each outbreak presents unique challenges odds are what Gladys promotes as her good management was just good luck – particularly after seeing her in action of late!
Morrison must be wishing NSW was a Labor state because a State Liberal Govt reflects on his own Federal circus.
Just to take issue with your “border-blocking, lockdown-loving Labor Premiers”, Bernard, kindly bear in mind that South Australia and Tasmania don’t mess around when it comes to closing borders and imposing lockdowns. In fact, Gladys is the one out of step with the rest of the nation – simply put, she has lost the plot.
There is no way the restrictions will ease when we get to 80% vaccination (and by that I mean all Australians, fully vaccinated, not “eligible Australians” only half-dosed) if the number of daily infections is still in the multiple hundreds. If any Govt tries it, they will be crucified by the epidemiologists and, in turn, an electorate that puts its faith in unbiased and objective expertise rather than failed and self-interested politicians.
And not one word of criticism came from Morrison or the Murdoch press.
Don’t get me started on the mainstream media. I don’t spend money on Murdoch but see enough of Bolt, Jones, Credlin, Panahi, Murray and the rest of the through other sources to know the position there. David Crowe at Nine squibs it every time. Hewson was good so they sacked him but fortunately he has been picked up by the Saturday Paper. As for My ABC – Sales and Speers have betrayed their able and skilled predecessors and turned their programs into a void. The world has gone so mad that Lisa Wilkinson on The Project and Andrew Clennell at Sky News have become the vanguard of journalistic integrity in Australia. The virus, like the gods, has moved the universe in mysterious and wonderful ways.
I am very disappointed with Leigh Sales. It appears that she is supporting the Berejklian government. Based on the explosive case numbers I would have thought Sales would have had the premier in for a chat. But no. Why?
We now call it ABC Sydney that’s the only audience they cater for now. I heard Leigh say last night “ Now the country has to learn to live with COVID.” At that point I turned it off.
Well, the country DOES have to learn to live with COVID. That’s the whole point. It’s going to be with us for years, so we have to adapt.
It’s not the point at all, rubbish.
Well, yes, but not so we experience peak cases, peak cases of long covid and peak deaths.
What does ‘peak cases, peak cases of long covid and peak deaths’ even mean? I don’t see why chasing zero is the logical way forward, when we accept all manner of other risks in our daily lives.
Again you stand on your hind legs and bark bullsh…
” Despite initially pushing the dosage interval for Pfizer from three weeks out to six weeks, NSW Health is now telling young people their second dose will be in eight weeks. It is a wait time baked into the state booking system.” TSP
You don’t know what it means by peak cases? No surprises you refuse to educate yourself, preferring to strut around like a lesser crested bantam musing on words and their meaning with not a whit of knowledge behind your insipid utterances, while people are fighting for their lives, ICU beds are already full, children are being admitted in ever increasing numbers. You’re a disgrace, the live with covid line of Sky News and the Coalition is being repeated ad nauseum by their numpties, only a couple here thankfully, but on the Murdoch channels which you are echoing, it’s home to the zombies wandering around bumping into each other seeing who can scream live with covid the loudest. Your mate here with the appropriate moniker ‘Beware’ is another loose cannon thinking he/she is some sort of intellectual genius; while scrawling illegible nonsense, such is the quality of the learn to live with covid automatons.
Woah, okay Allan. Straw man arguments, ad hominem attacks and baseless insults…you’ve really outdone yourself. There’s not much point engaging with you further. All the best.
Plnty of my other posts contain the information but a reply to you replete with information would do no good, you are one of those.
I hate to say it Allan, but I think you are trying to teach pigs to sing…but I do love this latest comment, should be read out loud in a couple of parliaments I can think of…
It appears that you can’t say that here, despite it being true.
There’s some who don’t want it to end!
Yeah you and your mates
You are so ignorant of the situation and what’s involved and have chosen to parrot the words live with covid to please your smug ignorance.
”NSW Health data shows the single largest age cohort in hospital due to Covid-19 infection is those aged 30 to 49, accounting for almost 30 per cent of all admissions. Almost half of all hospitalisations have occurred in those with the least access to vaccinations so far: people 49 and under.
On Wednesday, NSW recorded its single biggest jump in daily numbers since the pandemic began, with 633 new infections. On Thursday the figure jumped again to 681. The paper discussed at national cabinet on August 13 predicted just 391 cases for the same time.” TSP
Staff shortages are an issue. And NSW will be looking to drag in staff from other states to care for the sick and dying. They will be risking their lives due to your Coalition’s live with covid crapinkski. Shame on you and shame on them, in fact it’s more than shame it’s deliberate wilful criminal neglect and you posture here deafeningly like the empty vessel you are.
The medical staff have to adapt, not you, but then again we could all be lucky and you could fail to adapt and just submit to covid while adapting, your lot are the reason we are in this state and it was a deliberate action to endanger the lives of so many and their long term health.
If they can’t cope now with so few cases what are they going to do if it’s an actual dangerous virus like measles or small pox? This is a dress rehearsal for the real thing next year or in 20 years , or 50 years, maybe not in our lifetimes again, nobody knows.
We are so fortunate to get the opportunity.
We can’t live in a cave forever. Next time it can’t be Scott Morrison or Dan Andrews or anyone of the ilk we have in charge now.
They will need to be proper leaders, not political pragmatists. It’s a failure that we should learn from.
Time to move on.
We are the laughing stock of the first world.
Meant to say opportunists not pragmatists
Exactly! Start looking overseas for models that work, and get on it. I live in Italy and my kids did and entire school year in the classroom, with masks, from Sep 2020 to June 2021, bar a couple if weeks of online learning for class related cases.
Oh here is again self-declared academic that enjoys a good debate divorced from reality
I recall Sales decade plus ago grovelling round and fawning over visiting UK journalist (tho’ not a bad one) Andrew Neill till the final question ‘Do you like Australia?’
Maybe because Sales realizes that the only way out is by learning to live with Covid. There are too many kids suffering with online learning and families falling apart to use lockdowns indefinitely. I agree that Berejklian has made a raft of errors (why were masks not obligatory from day 1, so easy, so cheap!!) but once you have 600 new cases a day there is no reaching zero, and the other states need to admit that some of those cases originally came from interstate or via hotel quarantine with citizens returning to those states. The battling between the states is honestly a bit sickening.
Sales is not an epidemiologist. All states & territories except NSW are listening to their health experts & acting accordingly. NSW is the odd state out. Guess where covid is out of control. People are dying. You have bought the ‘throw in the towel’ propaganda, hook, line & sinker.
I feel sad for my family trapped in NSW living with Gladys in control of their lives. Its a dangerous situation.
All right “moderator” how about :-
“Sales (Wednesday night :- “Howard on Afghanistan” FFS) and Speers haven’t disappointed me at all – they’ve been running true to form for years.
For those interested the signs and form have been there for years with Sales in her sweet ‘n sour political interview m.o. when it comes to the Coalition and Labor/Greens respectively. You gotta be a pretty, obvious, sh*t Coalition stooge for her to take a swipe at you.
She went to a presser with Andrews a few weeks back – to tear strips off him (in his “drop of a hat lock-down) : has she done the same with Shredderjikilan’s persona, or mused at how an “Andrews snapper” could have slowed this outbreak? NFL.
As for Spivsy – you don’t get to float in Rupert’s cesspit without the necessary “pro-Coalition roughage”.
When Klewso is moderated there has to be something gang too oft aglay.
SA Tassie and WA have the advantage of isolation which the eastern populated states do not have
Tassie perhaps, but this is hardly true of SA, which has a long border with those eastern states. There have been cases in Broken Hill, which is just across the border, and has strong links to SA. And, if SA and the NT are affected, then WA is in danger.
Indeed, separated by oceans of water or sand.
Yes, but SA and Tas are naturally level headed (temporarily LNP) Labor states and have behaved that way due to public sentiment…..
Small population, doesn’t have the enormous migrant suburbs either.
Oh yeah, there is that. Aren’t SA and Tas Liberal govts?
They are indeed and must be anathema for Scovid
As Andrew Bar said today it is not when the vaccination rate reaches a certain percentage of the population but when that rate becomes effective that we need to be planning for given that the vaccine takes a certain period of time to become effective after injection
It’s referred to as the metric and on the ABC cornacast yesterday Norman Swan elaborated.
New South Wales, to be blunt, is really messing this up for everyone, including New Zealand.
our metric is who is ending up in hospital, what proportion of cases are ending up in hospital, then in intensive care, then dying, and what age groups do they comprise. That’s the metric that we are talking about here.
I can’t find any epidemiologists who think that we are going to bend the curve in New South Wales to the extent that we are down to zero spread or anything near it, we are going to have spread, a relatively high number of cases each day, but hopefully we will show what we’ve been promised, which is highly likely, which is that hospitalisation rates will go right down
It’s going to be a huge psychological and political issue for other states to open up to New South Wales when there is still a lot of cases in New South Wales, which there will be, but they might not have the immunisation rates, and even if they have the immunisation rates…so it’s a real situation for premiers in other states, to take a deep breath on this and when do they take a deep breath? When they are at 80%?
Israel is at 80% of the adult population and they’ve got a significant surge. They will get a significant surge too by opening up to New South Wales, a very difficult situation, which is why psychologically as much as anything else we’ve got to get to the rate of hospitalisation, the rate of going into intensive care, the rate of death, and show that when you get to a certain level of immunisation, that really drops down to very low levels and you can tolerate a reasonable number of cases a day.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/why-its-so-bad-when-covid-gets-into-the-regions/13501700
> Israel is at 80% of the adult population and they’ve got a significant surge.
Yes they do at 80% of the adult population. A recent study indicated you don’t really drive the reff down until you get 80% of the entire population.
If we progress to opening up with just 80% of the adults (likely given business pressures), we will get many cases. Given we have 10% to 15% of the adults are anti-vaxxer nut jobs, and then you have the “I’ll do it tomorrows” crowd, that is going to be hard.
Hard but necessary.
No ones going to like it, especially those who are happy doing not much.
….and getting paid for it….
Do yourself a favour and start reading reputable sourced information rather than the fake rubbish you are getting on Instagram and social media
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/22/we-need-to-do-something-now-the-urgent-push-to-prepare-schools-for-the-return-of-students
I don’t expect you and your kind to give a damn about kids but nevertheless they are terribly at risk
He would do us a bigger favour by taking his ratbag views back to the Murdoch rags where they belong…
Clearly one if those who think the mortality rate doesn’t matter. Who in your family will you choose to die?
Me.
Excellent
I’ll take a hit for the family, if that’s what it takes. I’m 80 (fully vaccinated) have lived a full life right up to the present. I believe it’s better to go while you are fit than die on a nursing home bed not remembering your name. Death is not something I fear. We are on our way to death the moment we are born. It is inevitable but many think they can delay it indefinitely. No one can do this.
I really doubt there are many people in the community that are “happy doing not much”. Certainly nobody under 30 is happy about it, no parents with school aged children and jobs, oldies who have retired and now can’t do anything won’t be thrilled, school kids are going to be very happy going back to school. I wonder which cohort is left?
I totally agree, and Id go as far as to say that they are actually miserable.
It’s why what we are doing needs to change, and why lockdowns are an ok response but far from the best or only response.
I’m not saying I know all the answers but I can see when something is a priori wrong.
To do or not to do, this is the question. While the government pays people to do nothing many will choose the latter.
Imagine the constant nervousness and fatigue that hospital staff are going to suffer as we “start to get on top of this”, and accept that a low level of cases enter the hospitals, that will be a constant for probably all of 2022> Stress is a killer too.
And the indicator that there is a lot of Indian variant in the community is when test numbers are getting larger and larger and the infected cases are rising along with the increased testing, which is what’s happening in the exciting future that Gladly Negligent told those facing severe illness, death, long covid, misery and fear, they can expect in a NSW Coalition covid rip state. It’s quite possible that NSW could end up with its own variant as per the UK, India, Brazil, South Africa and no doubt Indonesia; all places where those in charge preferred to appease the money bags to which they are attached.
I’ve got absolutely no doubt that we’ll all be dead by the end of august. Also of highest concern, to me personally, is the ninth booster shot that we’re gonna need, for the eleventh variant and the seventh wave. Now THAT will be serious.
Like I said you should seek help for those delusions you’re spouting here
Doubt he will give up Allan – a dogged dodo, excuse the mixed metaphors..!!
“… given that the vaccine takes a certain period of time to become effective after injection.”
Fair point. On top of that the effectiveness of the vaccine peaks some time after injection, then becomes steadily less. Which provides another big complication.
Israeli data says around 8 months after full vaccination the efficacy of the vaccine begins to diminish in both pfizer and AZ, and that despite pfizer giving a stronger protection initially than AZ, it is pfizer that quickly loses the lead it has and drops to the same level as AZ in that 8 month period.
one of the freedom idiots or anti-vaxxers dislike that information above well suck it up cupcake and remain unvaccinated
I’m fully vaccinated so can comment freely with nobody able to criticize me. I’ve done my part. However, I still think the vaccines provide relatively little benefit because despite being called vaccines they are only prophylactic drugs with little known long term side effects. Only got vaccinated so my life is not restricted when we lift the lock downs and open borders, sometime before we reach Zero (no, not Covid cases) I mean Carbon emissions, I hope.
Unfortunately we’re not even going to begin vaccinating school kids (except those at select private schools) until the end of this month. This means that when they get to 70% there will still be hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated teenagers exposed to the virus. Unless we keep the schools closed Gladys and Scomo are going to kill a lot of kids and make a bunch more suffer for the rest of their lives with long COVID.
I’ve got grandkids and I vote.
In some other places school age and youth were recognised as very effective transmitters of Covid amongst families, hence, need for vaccinations and safeguards e.g. masking.
We feel your power.
Is that you Snotty laying on the hands assaulting some poor woman and letting her feel the power of prayer, seems like it
It’s a horror shi..show of Morrison and Berjiklian’s making.
As theTSP reports today about second doses and what that entails:
“The interval for AstraZeneca, which was renamed Vaxzevria this week to bring it in line with Europe and Canada, has been reduced from 12 weeks to between four and eight weeks in outbreak settings. That’s good news on the AZ / Vaxzevria front but less than ideal for Pfizer.”
“That is just outbreak management madness,” McLaws says.
“Yes, you won’t die; but you are in the group that can spread it and you’re not going to get that [transmission] efficacy until the second dose. Quite frankly, we have gone outside the protocol of extending that dose between dose one and two of the mRNA vaccines and that prevents us from seeing fewer transmissions.
“We’ll see much less death and hospitalisation – and much less burden on the healthcare system – but it’s not maximising the prevention of the infection transmission cycle.”
Essentially, a person will still transmit the virus in the weeks between first and second doses – and the lack of supply has caused the government to extend that dangerous window. Vaccines won’t be the way out of lockdown in NSW, McLaws says, “unless you can get your second dose fast”.
Again, McLaws notes, current options for vaccination are being constrained by the foundational flaw in the vaccine program: supply.
As Premier Dan Andrews said: we just don’t have the vaccine supplies. And that is directly due to Morrisin.
It’s under 12s too – 19% of US cases are in children > https://downloads.aap.org/DOFA/AAP%20Letter%20to%20FDA%20on%20Timeline%20for%20Authorization%20of%20COVID-19%20Vaccine%20for%20Children_08_05_21.pdf
70% of what? – everyone in Australia? every adult in Australia? every voter in Australia? … and from what I’ve been reading, it’s numbers like 80-85% vaccination of EVERYONE is what is required – assuming another variant doesn’t happen along
70% of voters in safe LNP or marginal seats?
I am happy for Scotty to open up on the condition he allows his kids to go to nightclubs, mass church gatherings unmasked. Also, I want him and Gladys to host a huge party for his coal-donor mates, the Murdoch press and IPA. Let them breathe over each other.
80-85% of everyone, which is why an epidemiologist from Sydney uni was today saying we should be aiming for 95%.
And yes, I am and have been advocating for 95% of all over 12s as the metric we should be looking for. The number of genuine anti-vax era is tiny, my estimate is 2-3%, of course totally unverifiable in any scientific sense, but if health is genuinely on the line, as it will be, then anti-vax numbers will become clearer.