James Morrow: We will never return to normal life until we agree on what that is

Our return to normal life following COVID vaccinations may not be possible, because the definition of whatever “normal” is keeps being altered, writes James Morrow.

As the world prepares to close the books on year one of the coronavirus pandemic — no kissing at midnight, and stay five champagne bottles apart — our hopes that 2021 would be the year we put this all behind us are fading fast.

This is not because of the small but growing cluster in Sydney (18 cases reported on Wednesday) and the ­government’s slow ratcheting up of restrictions on local life.

No, it is because politicians and public health officials in Australia and around the world appear determined to move the goalposts on what “normal” might look like, and seemingly drag this thing out forever.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has developed a cult following arounmd the world. Picture: Al Drago/AFP

Let’s put aside for the moment the federal government’s slowly-slowly approach to the vaccine, which Treasury’s numbers rely on to save the economy yet which may or may not only start to hit Australian arms around March.

Instead, have a look at the US. There, Dr Anthony Fauci, who developed a cult-like following for his ­opposition to the Trump administration’s pandemic management, last week admitted that he’d been lying to the American people about a vaccine.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 per cent,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and ­Infectious Diseases told the New York Times.

“Then, when newer surveys said 60 per cent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Patrons at the Boxing Day Test between Australia and India observe social distancing. Picture: David Caird

It barely needs to be stated that this sort of “noble lie” does not do a lot to help hose down scepticism around the vaccine that was promised as the ticket to getting us out of this mess.

Because “normal” is suddenly no longer to be anticipated, at least not for a long time, according to Soumya Swaminathan of the World Health Organisation.

Speaking to a virtual press conference this week, Swaminathan said: “We need to assume that people who have been vaccinated also need to take the same precautions till there’s a certain level of herd immunity. This is a dynamic in an evolving field.”

In other words: distancing, quarantining, calls for mask mandates and everything else beloved of the public health lobby will still be on the table even after the vaccine is rolled out.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants everyone to take the COVID vaccine. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

Closer to home, before Christmas NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian suggested that the state would still be under its current stop-start restrictions until everyone — yes, everyone — got the jab.

“Until everyone has the vaccine we have to live in a COVID-19 safe way,” she said at the time.

Everyone? Really?

This despite federal Health Minister Greg Hunt saying he expected an uptake of around 80 per cent, once we finally do start getting the vaccine here. Will we be QR coding into bars and waiting to find out how many people we are allowed to have over to dinner in NSW until every last man, woman, and child is vaccinated?

There  are  two takeaways  from  all of this.

One, if even a small outbreak like the one Sydney is currently experiencing can put the last remaining ­engine room of the Australian economy on a knife’s edge, we should be getting the vaccine sooner, not in March, as promised.

And two, by carefully prioritising who gets it, we can get back to normal a lot quicker.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumped the line to get her COVID-19 vaccine. Picture: Tom Williams/AFP

This means making sure the old and the vulnerable are first in line, and avoiding the political grandstanding we have seen in the US where the likes of radical leftist ­Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have gratuitously jumped the queue for photo ops.

For all the worry about the Avalon cluster, it has led to zero deaths and zero ICU admissions. That’s because it hasn’t spread to aged care homes, whose residents — and those who work with them — should be at the head of the queue, along with other over-70s.

With about 2.1 million Australians in this age group who would eat up much of our initial order of five million vaccine doses.

But it would also mean that coronavirus would cease to be a deadly threat in Australia.

Of the more than 900 deaths in Australia due to COVID-19 this year, all but 58 of them were among those 70 and older.

To put that in perspective, in 2018, pneumonia and influenza carried off 911 people in NSW alone, 65 of them under the age of 65.

Hard borders, as practiced by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, are not sustainable in the long-term. Picture: Steve Pohlner

By vaccinating older Australians immediately, we would make coronavirus less deadly than pneumonia and the ’flu which, though unpleasant, we have learned to live with — and which will likely be less of a problem in years to come assuming we learn a few positive lessons from all this about hand-washing and not going into work when sick.

It would also mean that we could do away with the onerous hotel quarantine system and let people in and out freely, knowing that even if they brought back the virus, it wouldn’t cause any more trouble than the ’flu.

Hard borders may have saved lives but will be impossible for an outward-looking nation like Australia to maintain for much longer without doing ourselves serious damage: There is only so long we can keep ourselves cut off from the world.

And, of course, as the vaccine is rolled out into the broader population, the virus would have fewer ­places  to go, and would eventually die out.

Of course, there is a third thing we will need too.

Namely, begin to understand risk and reward and the economic consequences of states continuing to ­pursue an impossible elimination strategy while the federal Government picks up the bill.

And that may be the hardest thing of all.