It appears Australians have elected a genuinely Trumpian Government. While it is busy “grabbing ’em by the pussy”, and giving away tens of billions to its mates in every way that it can imagine, when it comes to the serious business of government, like running the most important vaccine rollout in modern history, Morrison’s rabble can’t manage a piss-up in a brewery.
The news today for Australia’s vital vaccine rollout is all bad. At The Australian problems are spreading as fast as a virus variant:
- Doctors are in revolt over virus payments. Clinics are already at capacity and will need to stay open 24 hours to deliver shots. Australian GP Alliance is calling block payments to make it viable.
- The April target for four million immunisations is shot to pieces with only 125k done today.
- The October target of herd immunity is a joke. It is will likely bleed well into next year.
We are already all but last among developed economies in the rollout. Now we will fall far behind:
Last among equals
And that’s not even the clangor. Let’s recall the corrupt process that led to Australia choosing the Astra Zeneca vaccine as its front line jab in a mad political rush:
Goodness.
The Director of Government Affairs at Scott Morrison’s suddenly favourite new drug company AstraZeneca is former federal govt lobbyist Kieran Schneemann.
He’s also a former Chief of Staff in the Liberal party.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all.
— RonniSalt (@RonniSalt) August 19, 2020
I’m sure Scott Morrison forgot to mention it today.
It seems AstraZeneca have an interesting history in government contracting related offences
Since 2000, they’ve paid out over USD $543 million in fines.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
(thx @FutureGhost14 for tip) pic.twitter.com/GP4Jw91nD4
— RonniSalt (@RonniSalt) August 19, 2020
It seems Scott Morrison forgot to mention AstraZeneca’s vast corporate rap sheet when his government recently exempted them from covid-19 vaccine liability
From illegal marketing to product safety, tax avoidance & price gouging – it seems AstraZeneca has been there & done that
. pic.twitter.com/30HXJnO9Ou— RonniSalt (@RonniSalt) August 19, 2020
That rush job, designed by Morrison’s ever-present Game of Mates and not science, has now come home to roost. Europe was already preventing doses from arriving here and overnight a whole bunch of countries pulled it off the shelf entirely:
Denmark, Iceland and Norway have suspended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine while the European Union’s medicines regulator investigates whether the shot could be linked to a number of reports of blood clots.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has insisted the vaccine is safe for use in Australia.
Because Aussie blood is different? Australians might rightly ask is Health Minister Greg Hunt’s “bacterial leg infection” a blood clot following his AZ shot last Sunday and subsequent hospitalisation? Bad optics all around.
The truth is, all vaccines have minor side effects so this is not that unusual. But, it will still stall the rollout as trust in Government falls. Not least with women who are still coiled up in horror from the Government’s eleven separate alleged sexual assault scandals.
Not that PM Morrison has anything to worry about. He reserved himself a shot of the superior Pfizer vaccine:
ScoMo’s reserves best for ScoMo
Nothing can be allowed to get in the way of Morrison’s groper protection racket, certainly not ill-health or inconvenient blood clots!
In the meantime, countless billions continue to be hosed into the yawning gulf of Morrison’s vaccine and quarantine failures. Why are we paying billions on cheap flights when the border closure issue is unresolved? Who’s flying anywhere when they can still get stuck there thanks to vaccine and quarantine failure?
The good news is that a wider range of vaccines will eventually arrive, sometime around mid-year. So we’ll have a choice eventually.
But, the rollout is a debacle at the policy level, and that ineptitude will cost billions more in business losses and weak economic activity than it should have. It’s carrion comfort to note that state Premiers will prevent the federal health failure from being counted in lives lost.
That hardly absolves the “grab ’em by the pussy” Trumpian Morrison Government.
