There were glaring errors in the state’s response – and captains’ calls by then premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Jeannette Young – but Dr Griffin is also concerned with the impact on existing and future public health outcomes.

“Hindsight’s always easy, but it was a truly new virus and we were underprepared,” he says.

“It was really clear we didn’t get that response perfectly right. I mean, you couldn’t, but I think the big omissions from my point of view were common sense and compassion.

“Dealing with people locked out across the border, prevented from seeing dying relatives, and being told they had to wear a mask by themselves in a car, and we saw people at the football wiping the ball down before they threw it back.

“I think that’s where we lost sight of just being sensible, but also actually relying on proper expertise.”

Dr Griffin, Mater’s director of infectious diseases since 2013 and an associate professor at UQ Medical School, says he and his peers were taken aback on many occasions.

“There were a lot of times when we heard the health advice, and we were all catching up regularly saying we didn’t know where it was coming from.”

Dr Griffin – who has conducted more than 150 clinical trials since 2009, including of eight Covid-19 vaccines – was troubled by Dr Young’s warning against under-40s getting the AstraZeneca jab almost immediately after Scott Morrison’s federal government announced it was available.

“I understand there were some good intentions there, but we know with the way things are shared on social media, if you make a damaging comment you can never take it away,” he says.

The 49-year-old father-of-three says mixed messaging has only fuelled the dangerous anti-vax movement.

“Finding good information around vaccines is so hard these days because even though they’re (anti-vaxxers) still the minority, they are very vocal and effective in spreading misinformation.

“The conspiracy theories still blow my mind.”

Dr Griffin doesn’t regret being one of the public faces of the pandemic, but admits it hasn’t made him “always popular”.

“I’ve had people yell things out in public – it was bad when it happened in front of my family; I was with my kids so I didn’t like that very much,” he says.

“One time I was at Burleigh and some guy came up and said, ‘You’re killing people’, and then at a burger place in Noosa, someone said, ‘You’re killing children with what you’re recommending’.

“My kids are switched on to all that stuff so it was fine, but you don’t try to engage with those people because you can’t change their opinion.

“A lot of people think they can replace decades of an education with a quick google search, and you just can’t.”

Dr Griffin, who grew up in Adelaide, always wanted to be a doctor.

“When I was really little, I was pretty sick and spent a lot of time in hospital and that’s when I decided,” he says.

“I am a type 1 diabetic, and back then it was a bit more challenging than it is now without all the technology.”

After studying science (majoring in microbiology and immunology) at the University of Adelaide, he moved to the University of Queensland and gained a Bachelor of Medicine-Bachelor of Surgery in 2002 – but microbiology had won his heart.

“I really fell in love with it – just the variety and how clever the bugs are – and it’s an area of medicine that can truly impact the whole population, as Covid showed us,” he says.

At university he also fell in love with his future wife, Salena, who was studying nursing.

“It wasn’t one of those typical ‘doctor meets nurse at work’ sort of things,” he smiles.

The couple have 14-year-old fraternal twins and a 10-year-old daughter.

On top of his Mater and UQ teaching commitments, Dr Griffin does private practice, is a director of AMA Queensland and the Immunisation Coalition, and recently co-authored the scientific book Frontiers of Covid-19.

When he does get time off, he likes playing tennis with his kids and watching the Brisbane Lions – the latter in a certain style.

Dr Griffin travels to and from games in a stretch limo, which is otherwise parked outside his home in Brisbane’s inner north.

It might sound flash, but it began as a bit of a joke.

“We were at the beach having a few drinks one day and a friend says, ‘We should buy a limo!’, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, there’s no way he’s serious’, so I say, ‘Yeah, sure’.

“Then a couple of days later he says, ‘I’ve found one!’.”

The two mates split the $25,000 for a 2004 white Ford Fairlane Ghia, which Dr Griffin sometimes uses to drop his kids to school.

To call him an avid Lions fan is an understatement. As part of an exclusive private group of professionals called the Lion Hearts – founded in 2012 by former player Jamie Charman and then-coach Michael Voss – Dr Griffin offers support for players off the field.

“There’s a few accountants, real estate agents and a good mix of people who help them and do a bit of fundraising, so I’ve been on the last two pre-season training camps and do a bit of travelling with the team, including to the grand finals,” he says.

Dr Griffin doesn’t officially provide medical advice to the Lions, but he is called on to assist the Brisbane Broncos.

This year, when the team was struck with “a nasty skin and soft tissue infection”, Broncos team doctors reached out to Dr Griffin, who administered intravenous and oral antibiotics at the Mater.

“These infections are usually spread through close physical contact but this one was a slightly more aggressive version and hard to treat,” he says.

As this newspaper has reported, among the players impacted were Adam Reynolds, Payne Haas and Jordan Riki, although Dr Griffin won’t disclose names due to patient confidentiality.

“You could see players who’d had operations getting their (surgical) wounds infected, as well as simple scrapes from playing, and this can cause big problems,” he says.

“It can happen quickly, requiring some players to pull out of games at the last minute.”

Dr Griffin says the Broncos are “all really good guys and grateful for the help”.

If only more members of the general public were as welcoming of expert advice.

Dr Griffin understands the hesitancy – it’s a hangover from the handling of Covid and will take time to cure.

As the 2024 federal Covid-19 Response Inquiry Report found, trust in governments and in science has waned.

“I actually think we are in a far worse position for the next pandemic,” he says.

“It will be worse because the loss of trust in public health is huge. You know, whatever we recommend, people will be inherently sceptical.

“We’ve got such amazing technology with vaccines and we’d be able to make a vaccine really quickly, but the harsh reality is many people wouldn’t accept it.

“Even if we asked for basic border restrictions or screening, a lot of people would probably tell us to get stuffed.”

The Crisafulli government’s appointment of Krispin Hajkowicz as chief health officer in August this year, only to then withdraw the offer – sparking a CCC investigation – has not improved public confidence.

“It was really unfortunate and has essentially set us back a bit,” Dr Griffin says.

“Personally, I don’t think an infectious diseases person like me, John (Gerrard, former CHO) or Krispin is potentially the right person.

“Someone with proper public health training – which is what we’re getting (with Dr Marianne Gale, who begins on December 1) – is probably better.”

Dr Griffin also has high hopes for the Australian Centre for Disease Control, which from January 2026 will operate as an independent agency: “It can really change our ability to prepare and respond with a uniform approach to pandemics.”

He says infectious disease outbreaks tend to come 15 years apart.

After the swine flu hit in 2009, authorities were preparing for another type of outbreak due around 2024, but Covid came earlier.

“And that was one of the biggest things – it looked like we were able to develop a vaccine quickly, as if we’d sort of just started thinking about Covid when it hit,” he says.

“But that was built on 20 years of work already – we just hadn’t finished yet, otherwise it would have been even quicker.”

In some ways, Dr Griffin says Australia has been a “victim of its own success”.

“With Covid, we didn’t see what so many other countries saw, like the US where my colleagues had their ICUs literally overflowing.

“We also had the choice of more than one vaccine, and it’s a classic paradox with vaccines – if you prevent the disease that they’re designed for, people then lose the perception of risk and think they’re not required.

“Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Breakfast Creek Hotel

Petite eye fillet with caesar salad, Idaho potato 9/10