Andrew Bolt: Scrapping the Grand Prix is high-octane madness

Banning the Australian Grand Prix while instilling fear over the AstraZeneca vaccine proves the country is being run by panic merchants who’ve forgotten how to take an acceptable risk.

Banning the Australian Grand Prix is so embarrassing. It shows the world that Australia really is run by health fascists and hypochondriacs.

Here we are, hiding under our doonas from a virus that has not killed one Australian all year through community transmission.

And there is Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, pandering to this pathetic panic by declaring the Formula One travelling circus may not come in – not even in November, when almost every Australian who wants a vaccine should have got one.

Anyone who watches F1 will know how crazy we look.

They’ve seen the International Automobile Federation run 26 of these F1 races in the past 52 weeks all over Europe and the Middle East, including France, Italy, Azerbaijan, Monaco, Spain, Portugal and Bahrain.

At first the cars raced without fans at the track. But TV coverage of the Austrian Grand Prix last Sunday showed the cars screaming past stands bursting with fans, including Dutch ones going wild in clouds of orange smoke as Max Verstappen won again.

Our grand prix had been delayed to November. Are our leaders really saying they can’t get most Australians fully vaccinated in four more months? Picture: AAP

Yes, Austria – like many European countries – now lets in tourists who are vaccinated. It reckons that’s safe enough, now that Austria has fully vaccinated a third of its people, including most of the very old and frail.

To rub in how weird we are, on Monday week the British Grand Prix will also be run in front of capacity crowds.

True, all these countries that hosted a grand prix have fully vaccinated between one third and two thirds of their people, when we’ve managed just under 10 per cent.

So you might say it’s fair enough for Andrews and the Morrison government to say it’s too dangerous to let 2000 people fly in and run a grand prix in Melbourne, particularly when the teams can’t spend two weeks in quarantine, with races two weeks apart.

But hang on. Don’t be snowed by these panic merchants.

Our grand prix had been delayed to November. Are our leaders really saying they can’t get most Australians fully vaccinated in four more months? In fact, we’re already given 70 per cent of our over-70s their first jab, and this is overwhelmingly the group that this virus most kills. No wonder no one has died this year.

Besides, is it really necessary – as our premiers claim – to vaccinate 80 per cent of us all before we, too, can open our borders to vaccinated travellers? France, Italy, Croatia and Greece opened up with just a third of their people vaccinated, but after protecting most of the old.

What’s more, FIA F1 race director Michael Masi says 90 per cent of the F1 travelling party are already fully vaccinated, and that could rise to 100 per cent by year’s end. The teams also planned to stay in hubs. What more could we want?

This depressing farce shows that our leaders – and too many of the public – think it’s not enough that we’ve stopped the dying by protecting the vulnerable.

FIA F1 race director Michael Masi says 90 per cent of the F1 travelling party are already fully vaccinated, and that could rise to 100 per cent by year’s end. Picture: David Caird

It’s now their job to stop us from just getting sick, even if it means shutting down our cities, closing our schools and locking us in our homes.

It’s so manic. Do we do this for the flu, that every year kills around 1000 or 2000 Australians?

Even wilder is that we have people so terrified of the virus that we can’t have the Grand Prix, yet just as terrified of the AstraZeneca vaccine that could protect them, because two of the four million people who got the jab died of blood clots.

We’ve totally forgotten how to calculate an acceptable risk.

Will we now ban swimming in the sea because eight Australians last year died of shark bites? Will we ban Panadol because about 20 Australians a year die of paracetamol overdoses? Will we ban cars because more than 1000 Australians die each year on our roads?

Just ask freelance artist Hayden Williams how completely we’ve lost our sense of proportion.

Williams was arrested in Alice Springs last week and fined $5000 for not wearing a face mask as he walked down the street, drinking coffee.

Here’s how insane this is. There’s never been a single case of community transmission of this coronavirus in Alice Springs.

What’s more, there hasn’t been a single case of transmission of this virus in the open air in any of the outbreaks in Australia this year. This virus is almost always spread indoors.

Risk factor: zero. Fine: $5000. High-octane madness in the land too scared for F1.