Andrew Bolt: Time to count our blessings and open up

Not one Australian has died this year from catching Covid here and more vaccines are on the way. It’s time we treated this as a serious infection, not the plague.

Now the good news that many people refuse to believe. We’re actually just weeks from opening up, if we just started counting our blessings.

Our four blessings.

ONE: We’ve stopped the dying.

Not one Australian has died so far this year from catching this virus here. We’re much better at saving ourselves, and finding and treating the infected.

We can now treat this a serious infection, not the plague.

TWO: We’ve protected most of the vulnerable.

The great thing about this coronavirus is that – unlike the flu – it is very selective in the kind of people it kills.

More than two thirds of the 910 Australians who were killed last year were in nursing homes, and 852 were aged over 70, often with other health conditions.

That makes it much easier to stop most of the dying, by first protecting the very old and frail.

Good signs: more than 70 per cent of people over 70 have had at least one jab (others are still refusing), and will soon be ready for their second. Almost every resident in nursing homes has now had or been offered two vaccinations.

THREE: Vaccines work.

I know, they are not perfect protection. But three aged-care residents in their 90s – one 99 – were infected in the last Melbourne outbreak, but all were vaccinated and none felt sick.

In Sydney, 24 people at a birthday party who were not vaccinated got infected; the six who were vaccinated did not.

FOUR: More vaccines are coming fast.

Yes, the rollout has been slow, but we’re due to get 93 million doses of Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax before year’s end, and we also have lots of AstraZeneca – the vaccine that saved Britain – if only people got over their fear of it.

But how many Australians must be vaccinated before we open up? Yes, the new Delta variant is infecting more young people, but must we really vaccinate all young Australians against a virus that’s so far killed just three people aged under 40, apparently with other health issues?

Tourism magnets like Italy, France and Croatia are now open to vaccinated tourists after fully vaccinating just a third of their people. We’ve already fully vaccinated nearly 10 per cent of our own.

By August, we should be as free as they are to open up. Just stop panicking.