Andrew Bolt: Scott Morrison is not to blame for Covid-19 deaths

It is wrong to blame Scott Morrison for the deaths of people who didn’t protect themselves and get a Covid vaccine, despite being eligible.

Almost everyone likes blaming Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the lockdowns that are meant to stop people dying. But Sydney’s last three virus deaths show that’s too lazy.

Those deaths were of a man in his 80s, a woman in her 90s and a man in his 60s who died at home.

Like all 14 people who’ve died in this outbreak, all were unvaccinated.

For the oldest, this is extraordinary. Morrison begged the elderly for months to get vaccinated, and had plenty of vaccines for them.

They also desperately needed to get vaccinated. Government figures from last year show a man in his 80s has a 30 per cent chance of dying if infected, and a woman in her 90s has a 27 per cent chance.

For men in their 90s, that risk shoots up to nearly 40 per cent.

So why blame Morrison for the deaths of people who wouldn’t protect themselves?

Nor blame him for the death of the man in his 60s. He was the second person in this outbreak who died at home, failing to get the help in hospital that could have saved them.

Prime Minister Scott begged the elderly for months to get vaccinated — but some didn’t listen and died.

Both were from migrant families, and the NSW Health Minister hints that the dead man did not get help because family members did not want officials to stop them working.

Strange priorities from people who seemed to know the rules.

But what of the claim that Morrison’s real failure – and the real cause of these lockdowns – is that he didn’t get us enough vaccines?

True, Morrison was slow and made a bad call early in this pandemic. One vaccine – from Queensland – that his government backed proved a dud, and he hadn’t arranged enough back-up, leaving us with just the AstraZeneca vaccine until recently.

But, again, this is too simple.

Here’s an astonishing fact: We now have more than three million AstraZeneca spare doses sitting on shelves – enough to give every unvaccinated adult in Sydney at least one shot.

But few Australians now dare take AstraZeneca, and that, too, is not the fault of Morrison, who’s pleaded that they do.

Don’t just blame anti-vaxxers, either. Blame also every journalist and health official – including Queensland’s chief health officer – who demonised AstraZeneca by playing up its one-in-a-million chance of fatal blood clots.

They should be shamed by every death in this outbreak.