Andrew Bolt: Daniel Andrews has finally woken up to what Gladys Berejiklian was preaching all along

It may have been too late and too slow, but Daniel Andrews has finally learnt a lesson from Gladys Berejiklian on how we can live with the virus.

Daniel Andrews has totally surrendered to Gladys Berejiklian. But too late, and still too slow.

The Victorian Premier has given up at last on his destructive crusade for zero Covid.

Like the NSW Premier, he on Wednesday admitted this virus cannot be eliminated.

Like Berejiklian, he is now preparing us for the day that he ends his lockdowns and lets infections and deaths rise.

Freedom will have its cost. Like Berejiklian, Andrews has even set a date – his is September 23 – when, come what may, he will start to ease his lockdown of his capital.

Meanwhile, he has finally softened his most pointless ban, realising that he must now balance his virus bans against the shocking damage done to children, above all.

The ban on playgrounds he decreed on August 16, when there were just 22 new infections, will now be scrapped, when there are 120.

Premier Daniel Andrews finally announced the state’s roadmap out of lockdown. Picture: Getty Images

This alone shows Andrews imposes bans that are pure virus theatre. No Australian child is known to have caught this mainly indoor-transmitted virus at a playground. Nor has any been killed by the virus.

But Andrews has now seen the light. From now on, like Berejiklian, he will balance deaths from the virus against the devastation of his lockdowns, which for Melburnians by September 23, will have totalled 223 days.

True, Andrews surrenders with bad grace. Unlike Berejiklian, he won’t lift his largely pointless curfew on suburbs with few infections. His whole state remains in lockdown, including towns that have never known an infection. Children will miss weeks more of in-school teaching.

So Andrews hasn’t done enough. But his surrender does contain one huge concession to reality. Andrews declared that “the threshold that matters now ... is the 70 per cent first dose by on or about (September 23)”.

That’s his new target – 70 per cent of people with just one jab, not fully vaccinated with two?

This is a huge concession from a man who was dangerously obsessed with having not one infection, not one death, no matter if he drove his state into the ground.

That’s changed, so very late. It’s not hard to see why.

The virus has spoken, and so have the polls that show the public is now sick of the horrific price of this mad hypochondria.

Andrews should apologise for causing so much pain on his fool’s mission. And now other recalcitrant premiers – Palaszczuk, McGowan and Marshall – should fall in behind Berejiklian and her new disciple, Daniel Andrews.