Louise Roberts: Covid vaccination rates must increase for a return to normal life

While the Government maintains a steady-as-you-go approach to Covid and our vaccination rate remains low, Australians will be no closer to a return to normal life, writes Louise Roberts.

If you are fully vaccinated against Covid, then the logic is that you should be able to travel throughout Australia and overseas.

You have earned the right to see your family and friends, even those trapped behind a closed border, as long as you return a negative Covid test.

But it’s a bit hard to offer incentives when our vaccination rate is abysmal, internationally humiliating in fact.

According to the Oxford-based analysts Our World in Data, 43.6 per cent of the eligible US population is fully vaccinated. In the UK that figure is 44.2 per cent.

The NSW Health Vaccination hub in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

In Israel it is 56.8 per cent.

And here in Australia it is 2.7 per cent, said a Google search on Monday.

But when will the international borders really open? When can we travel overseas? When can someone who is fully vaccinated and from Britain or America or Europe or Asia travel here to see a precious family member?

It’s the same answer – “not until it’s safe” – so if you feel like actor Bill Murray on a never-ending search for Punxsutawney Phil then you’re not alone.

We know there’s a federal election next year and no Prime Minister wants a coronavirus death spiral blotting their legacy. So Scott Morrison is adamant that Australia won’t open borders until mid-2022

But it’s the F word – freedom – and we’re not getting it any time soon.

A return to a normal life as quickly as possible should be the carrot that is dangled before us.

Bill Murray in the hit film Groundhog Day.

It is not enough to rely on our cultural commonsense which tells us that rolling up a sleeve and getting two jabs is the right thing to do.

We are becoming global pariahs and, in our efforts to crush the virus, when really all we can do is learn to live with it, we are now the curmudgeons of the southern hemisphere.

Oh no, I won’t be a guinea pig for ­AstraZeneca. Oh no, I don’t want desperate families returning from Covid nuclear spots because I might get it.

Oh yes, I want us to go full Alcatraz, roll out the psychological barbed wire while our travel industry and others are gasping for our help and dollars.

The more people get vaccinated, the more distant that travel mirage seems to become, shimmering and taunting us. And that is grossly unfair.

So creates a vacuum of doubt, allowing conspiracy theories and panic over blood clots.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison does not want a Covid death spike before the next election. Picture: PMO

Yes we’ve managed our rate of Covid spread but we have got too comfortable with trigger happy lockdowns as the Covid cure when there are vaccinations, social distancing, personal hygiene and effective, ­professionally-run quarantine to focus on.

Freedom is what US citizens have with no mandatory quarantine even if it is established that they’ve been ­directly exposed to the virus.

There’s also no requirement for them to self-isolate after travelling ­interstate or overseas.

We are not all in this together.

Sure we don’t want to die en masse but we can certainly vaccinate en masse.

The Department of Health says 5.2 million doses have been given out to date. It is not enough.

We were, to use the vernacular, dying for a vaccine to be rolled out. It was top of our Christmas list since the government slammed shut the international gate in March 2020.

Doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccine coming off an aeroplane. Picture: AFP

There are thousands of ex-pat Brits living here – yes it is their choice – but speak to them and they’ll tell you something like this: The rest of the world is opening up, we are shutting down.

Celebrities can come here to do podcasts and meanwhile people back home in the UK can’t wait to get their hands on a vaccine.

They are not trawling for reasons to avoid it.

Last week we were told that Australia is unlikely to achieve herd immunity because of the current level of vaccine hesitancy plus the highly infectious nature of new Covid variants, according to a study by the Burnet Institute.

As Murdoch University professor of immunology Cassandra Berry said in a report: “I’m not convinced everybody can see the benefit of being vaccinated. Fully vaccinated people don’t need to quarantine in the US.”

“So, if people (in Australia) got that message, if they were fully vaccinated, they may still have their freedom and not need to go into isolation.”

Look how we react when there is a natural disaster — fire, flood or drought we glue together and help each other.

We are not pulling the way we usually do because we have not seen the full effect of Covid in our own backyard and so we’ve become more insular as a result.

It is the It Will Never Happen Here mentality on steroids.

Accounting firm Ernst and Young says closed borders are costing Australia’s economy $7.6 billion a month.

But, really, what is lost by living in isolation is incalculable.

Open the gates Fortress Australia.

We need to get vaccinated and out into the world again.