Irresponsible COVID Policies will Destroy the Federal and NSW Liberals

29 August 2021

Ok. I am making a prediction.  The totally irresponsible Liberal COVID policies will destroy both the Morrison government and the NSW Liberals.

Why?  The strategy of unlocking with only 70% of over 16 adults vaccinated is totally irresponsible.  It is true that less children will get a bad infection and die, but some will- perhaps 1 in 100,000.  But if a few million children go back to school, that is still a significant number.  The unvaccinated children will also get infected and go home to their families and infect them. Every parent who has had kids start at day-care knows how many more colds they got that year. 

As far as the adults are concerned, if there are still 30% of them unvaccinated, that is a huge number to make an epidemic.  The hospitals always manage with very slim margins of capacity.  How many beds are in corridors and how many trolleys in ED normally? Quite a few. Now they are stopping non-urgent surgery, but these cases are not trivial, and cancer patients may well die of their delays.

But they key point is that the hospital system will be overwhelmed by cases and that those cases  would not be necessary if the government held its nerve and  continued the lockdown until all those who wanted the vaccine had it- upwards of 95% perhaps.  If NSW is vaccinating a million people a week and has 8 million people needing 2 doses each, that is 16 weeks, less the fact that almost half the adult doses has been given.  12 weeks might be a realistic estimate, better if the vaccine can be hurried further.  As far as the children are concerned, I recall in the 1950s when polio vaccine came- we were simply lined up in the school corridor at lunch time and everyone was done.

The cost of vaccination compared to the cost of hospitalisations does not bear thinking about. It is also probably that the cost of the hospitalisations and time lost will exceed the cost of a decent home support system- but Morrison will not even consider this, still talking about tax cuts before the election, as the national debt balloons to record levels.  Do the rich really need this?

Morrison also wants to force states that have almost no COVID to open up. Qld and WA, having isolated themselves, controlled COVID and given themselves quite a remarkably normal quality of life do not want to be forced to open to NSW and Victoria, where COVID is frankly out of control.  Morrison needs Qld seats to get re-elected.  If he forces Qld to open and the pandemic spreads there as it will, his chances of re-election is nil.

Gladys Berejeklian is now talking about vaccinations, trying to distract attention from the number of cases and is systematically getting us used to the idea that since we now can never get to zero cases, we have to open up, and might as well do it now as later.  This is not true, if now we are not vaccinated, and later we will be.  She is blamed for the Delta virus escape as she did not mandate vaccination for limo drivers who ferried people from the airport to the quarantine hotels and then was slow to lock down Bondi when the infection escaped in June. So now to say it is all inevitable and unlock with what amounts to a very low vaccination rate is likely to lead to very big epidemic, the health system being overwhelmed, a lot of unnecessary deaths and yes, Gladys losing the election.

And Gladys does not like Morrison either, so she had better throw him under a bus before he does it to her.