Andrew Bolt: Why stalled virus vaccine was never the answer
Scott Morrison promised us this vaccine could save us but now its trials have stalled. Can we finally snap out of our virus delusion and realise we can’t just sit here waiting to be rescued, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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What a reality check. Trials of the vaccine that the Prime Minister claimed could save us “early next year” have been frozen.
One of the human guinea pigs got sick. So can we finally snap out of our virus delusion that we can just sit tight and wait for rescue?
We cannot freeze life until we’re magically saved by a vaccine. We must instead learn to live with a coronavirus that’s much less deadly than we were told.
So enough with the spin of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who last month announced a “day of hope” — he’d signed a deal with British-based AstraZeneca to make 25 million doses of Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine for Australia.
All being well, “we would hope that this would be made available early next year”.
In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews last Sunday also claimed a vaccine would save us from his crippling bans: “My concern is to ... find a COVID-normal and lock it in until a vaccine arrives.”
But just days later, the phase-three trial of Oxford’s candidate vaccine — which Morrison hailed as the world’s most promising in — was suspended.
A British participant seems to have had a serious reaction to the drug, and AstraZeneca said the pause was a “routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness”.
This does not mean the death of the Oxford vaccine. The sick participant is just one of thousands who were injected, and the reaction may not be directly related to the vaccine.
What’s more, there are eight other candidate vaccines now in phase three trials.
So we can’t lose hope yet in a vaccine. But nor should we bet everything on being saved by a medical miracle.
After all, no vaccine has yet been discovered for any coronavirus, and this one — if it works — may still not work perfectly. Flu vaccines can be just 20 per cent effective.
So let’s hope for the best, but plan for disappointment. Let’s get realistic.
The idea that we can live like this until a vaccine finally comes — state borders shut, international travel banned, business crippled — is preposterous.
This is particularly true for Victoria, locked down by its delusional and incompetent Premier.
Daniel Andrews says most shops won’t be allowed to open before November 23, and then only if there are no new infections for two weeks — a result for which he’d probably need a vaccine.
Not even Queensland can manage zero infections. It had another eight new cases on Wednesday, but stays relatively open.
So if a vaccine is not coming soon, what then?
First, we must wake up and realise the dangers of this virus have been grossly exaggerated by our experts and their fabled “modelling”.
Australian National University experts in March warned at least 21,000 Australians would be killed by the virus, whatever we did.
One of the Morrison government’s deputy chief medical officers was even more alarmist, tipping that between 50,000 and 150,000 of us would die.
Our death toll so far, even after the lethal incompetence of the Victorian government: fewer than 800.
Second, we must realise that there’s a better bet than a vaccine: it’s better treatment for the sick, better tracing and tougher protection of the elderly.
Look at this “second wave” of infections in France, Spain, Italy, Japan and the United States. Infections soared again, but deaths did not — or rose much less than they did in the first wave.
France is particularly interesting. Its second wave of inflections is much bigger than its first, which killed around 30,000 people.
But its daily death toll in the past two months has been kept to between zero and 38, and without the severe Victoria-style lockdown of the first wave.
It is too early for any studies to explain this. Perhaps doctors now treat this virus better.
Or perhaps more young people are going out and getting sick as bans are lifted, but, being young, they almost all recover, while the old are meanwhile better protected.
This must be our future, too.
Australia must reject the Victorian model — of crippling shutdowns that cause misery and destruction.
We must reject Victorian methods — slow contract tracing, and poor protection of aged-care homes.
We must reject Victoria’s scornful incuriosity about promising treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, both taken early with zinc.
And we must reject any waiting for a miracle vaccine.
That cavalry may never come. So let’s climb out of our bunkers, look to ourselves and get on with living.