Australian government’s COVID vaccine message is already failing

If our leaders want us to get the jab, they need to make good on their promise it will get Australia out from under the doona, writes James Morrow.

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit, Australia’s leaders have told us that the key to getting out of this mess would be the mass ­uptake of a vaccine.

So why then, with jabs rolling out across the world and countries like ­Israel even beginning to show signs of herd immunity, do our governments now seem to be reneging on their promise?

I say this, for the record, as someone who is entirely pro-vaccine. For one thing, I want to travel again (and want overseas friends and relatives to be able to come visit).

An Israeli healthcare worker prepares a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine for people queuing at the Kupat Holim Clalit clinic in Jerusalem, on January 14. Picture: Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

Like most of us, I’m also tired of social distancing, QR codes, masks in shops and not seeing my bartender’s face.

But I also know that not everyone is as ready to roll up their sleeves, for reasons ranging from a healthy caution over a brand-new medicine to more off-the-wall concerns about Bill Gates and microchips and the like.

And the fact is, if Australia is going to get enough people vaccinated to get us back to some sort of normal, these are the people who will need to be convinced to get the jab, with good and positive messages about why it is important that they do so.

Yet so far every level of government’s vaccine push has been all stick, no carrot.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian set the tone earlier this week when she said that she wanted to “incentivise” vaccine uptake but then did so by floating the possibility of making vaccination a condition of entry into various workplaces and hospitality venues.

Sorry Premier, but making our rights to work and play even more conditional doesn’t sound like very much of an incentive.

Wasn’t the point of getting the vaccine supposed to be that the ­government would stop micromanaging our lives?

Australians need incentives — like the possibility of international travel resuming — to ensure high vaccination targets are reached. Picture: Kena Betancur / AFP

Now though, governments seem addicted to exactly this, in their de facto pursuit of an elimination strategy that will only see our rights fully returned once there is never, ever another case of COVID anywhere, for all time.

There’s no better example of this than Berejiklian’s regular insistence not just on nil community transmission, but high testing numbers as well — even in the height of summer, when all those symptom-causing ­respiratory diseases traditionally bottom out.

In the same depressing spirit of “get the jab but don’t get your hopes up” was health bureaucrat Brendan Murphy’s assessment on Monday that international travel was pretty much off the cards at least for the rest of the year, whether or not there is wide uptake of the vaccine.

“Even if we have a lot of the ­population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus, and it’s likely that quarantine will continue for some time,” he said.

Really?

How long then is Australia — a ­famously outward-looking nation — supposed to hide under the quarantine hotel doona? Throw us a bone here, Professor Murphy.

Because if you and the rest of the public health establishment don’t, people outside high risk groups, for whom there is very little chance of catching  coronavirus  and  just as ­little chance it will be a serious problem for them if they do, will simply say: “Why bother?”

Last month the federal Government announced a $23.9 million ­information campaign to convince Australians to get the vaccine.

But they could save a lot of money if, instead of running focus groups to finetune their messaging, they ­simply  started telling what we will be able to do, rather than what we won’t.

Our leaders, and even our infamously worst-case public health boffins, need to start telling us some of the good news, and showing us that there is indeed a light at the end of this tunnel.

Like,  for  example, the news out of Israel (which has, by the way, already vaccinated more than 20 per cent of its population) that after  a second dose of the Pfizer jab, 98 per cent of patients had enough antibodies to prevent infection and transmitting the virus to other people.

They could even, in the spirit of programs such as NSW’s Dine & Discover program, offer travel vouchers or incentives to encourage people to get the vaccine and get moving again.

Of course for any of this to happen, our leaders will also have to be honest with us and treat us like adults who can handle some level of risk.

COVID-19 will, most likely, always be with us one way or another.

The key is to pursue a strategy that protects the vulnerable but understands that even vaccinated people will occasionally get sick and — as with other transmissible diseases — we don’t need to shut down our lives or cancel our liberties to deal with it.

To put it another way, with a mortality rate the envy of virtually every developed nation and an economy that is still ticking over, Australia may well win the war against coronavirus.

The  danger  is that by getting stuck in our pursuit of an impossible infinity of zeros, we then go on to lose the peace.