Opinion: Masses left reeling by new political Covid syndromes

They’re the new mental health issues that could only be caused by those running Queensland’s Covid-19 response, writes Mike O’Connor. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Just when you thought it was safe to leave home, Queensland Health has confirmed that cases of PTPCS have been detected and that tens of thousands of people may be infected.

Authorities are warning that anyone who shows signs of infection should stay indoors, turn off the telly, put a blanket over the screen and go to bed with a good book.

Vaccines to protect people from PTPCS (post-traumatic press conference syndrome) and its mutant CSI (credibility stretch injury) have yet to be developed and the only known treatment is to self-isolate and refuse to listen to anything that a politician says for 28 days.

The first symptoms are involuntary head-shaking and eye-rolling whenever a Queensland politician appears on television, followed by a barely controllable urge to pick up the coffee table and hurl it at the screen.

What a circus it has become. The only things missing as the Premier holds a media briefing now are acrobats on a trapeze performing above her head and clowns on unicycles juggling coloured balls in the background.

On reflection, hold the clowns. We already have more than enough.

I risked worsening an already chronic case of CSI last week and turned on the TV.

There was Premier Palaszczuk telling the ABC’s Q+A program that if she went to Tokyo, she wouldn’t be quarantining in The Lodge.

Forget about “if”. The Premier has packed her chopsticks and is Tokyo-bound, so you can imagine the relief the Prime Minister felt on hearing that on her return, she would not be turning up at The Lodge clutching her jim-jams and toothbrush.

Cognitive responses dulled by PTPCS, I struggled to fathom what the Prime Minister’s Canberra residence had to do with the Premier’s trip to Japan.

Then it dawned. When she returned, she would be a hero and go into hotel quarantine, whereas the Prime Minister had cheated and spent his 14 days at The Lodge.

Bad boy, Scotty.

You could have come to Brisbane and stayed at the Airport Novotel where Queensland Health puts healthy people in transit so they can become infected and spread the virus when they leave.

If you want a decent dose of CSI, tune into the nightly news bulletins where the screen explodes into scarlet, tomato sauce splatterings, each one denoting a site where one person and their budgie have tested positive.

“It’s spreading its tentacles throughout Queensland,” gasped one reporter.

Had the virus morphed into a giant squid? Would it find its way into our waterways and become the Moreton Bay Monster?

There was a time when people in public life valued their credibility.

What’s the point in talking to the electorate if it no longer believes what you are saying?

None, you would think.

The great pity is that so many lies and half-truths have been uttered that even if someone tried a novel approach and told the truth, no one would believe them.

The political scare tactics in which Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young indulged last week in warning under-40s not to take the AstraZeneca vaccine when she knew the chances of suffering a fatal blood clot were less than one in a million marked the low point of the whole sorry saga.

Deputy Premier Miles, allowed out of the naughty corner after that unfortunate performance that saw him appear to direct a clumsily feigned obscenity at the Prime Minister, crystallised the causes of CSI last week when he comprehensively misrepresented the number of people leaving and ­entering the country.

Many of them, he said, were mates of the Prime Minister from the big end of town.

Really? Aircraft crammed with fat cats washing down buckets of caviar with magnums of champagne? Grow up, for God’s sake.

If we’re going to talk about mates, how about the view from my study, which looks out on to a high-rise apartment construction site.

While a large percentage of the state’s workforce was locked down last week and many people took a financial hit, the construction workers didn’t lose a cent.

To suggest that building an apartment block is an essential industry is a joke. It may be essential for the unionists and developers to make money, but that’s about it.

There comes a point beyond which credibility cannot be restored, one at which we have now arrived.