Damn it Australia, go get vaccinated

It’s crazy Melbourne is once again teetering on the edge of another devastating lockdown after just 15 people got infected. It should be a wake up call for Australians - and the PM.

Melbourne’s latest virus outbreak should send Australians a message: damn it, go get vaccinated.

It should also send a message to the Morrison government: get off your backside.

It’s crazy that Melbourne is once again teetering on the edge of yet another devastating city lockdown, after 15 people got infected.

Shutting down Melbourne for the fourth time would represent another massive failure of public policy, this time caused by politicians too complacent about keeping Australians in their golden cage.

Look around the world.

Countries smashed by the virus – Britain and the US – are opening up after a huge campaign of vaccinations.

But Australia, which was barely touched, looks close to shutting down its second biggest city.

Blame this on the fact that just one in eight Australians have had a Covid injection, making any breakout a much bigger threat than it needs to be.

In Britain, more than half the population has had at least one injection. In the US, half the population is fully vaccinated.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison gets the jab. Picture: AFP

They can now open up. Here, we’re terrified by just 15 people in a city of more than five million getting infected.

I get it – we’ve had trouble getting some vaccine supplies from overseas.

But blame also that exaggerated fear felt by Australians in this pandemic panic, and the politicians who profit from it.

That fear of even the slightest danger now has a third of Australians telling pollsters they’ve got no plans to get vaccinated.

Many seem scared of the tiny risk – about one in a million – of getting blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine that 20 million Britons happily accepted.

I hear many people say they’ll wait for the Pfizer vaccine, not realising that comes with a very tiny risk, too.

And if blood clots so scare them, then check out this coronavirus fact.

A new Oxford University study reckons the risk of blood clots from the virus is at least eight times worse than from any vaccine.

And don’t forget all the other ways this virus kills.

Where’s the government’s advertising campaign to reassure us?

But that’s not its only failure.

I hear people say: why take even the tiniest risk with the vaccine when the chance of dying in Australia from the virus is now close to zero?

The borders are up, our cage is comfy.

Well, now we’ve been reminded: we can’t count on our quarantine hotels always keeping the virus locked out.

And as Virgin airlines boss Jayne Hrdlicka correctly noted, when our borders come down – and we’re free again to travel overseas – “people will die”.

Die, like they do every year from the flu that we fly back to Australia.

Which is exactly why the Morrison government is keeping those borders shut.

But what a Catch-22.

The government won’t open the border because not many of us are vaccinated, but many of us won’t get vaccinated because the borders are shut.

Mass vaccination hub at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Picture: AAP

This is where the government has failed.

The Prime Minister is reportedly planning to go to an election some time in the first half of next year, so there is zero chance he will open the borders before then.

Scott Morrison is intensely poll-driven.

He knows the most popular premiers are those who love lockdowns.

There is no way he’ll take the risk of opening the borders and having even one extra Australian infected this side of an election.

Most voters will sense his lack of urgency.

Morrison won’t even announce a date for reopening Australia.

If he did – nominating, say, March 1 – that would make Australians think they’d better get vaccinated before then – either so they can travel, or be protected from returning travellers.

But Morrison won’t give that date because that would rule out his freedom to delay the election after that if the polls turn sour.

So we are frozen in a political limbo – and it hurts.

Cutting ourselves off robs the eight million Australians born overseas of the chance to go back and see their relatives.

It stops a generation of young Australians from broadening their minds with travel.

It also infantilises us.

And makes us poorer.

We’re shutting out foreigners who can make us richer: tourists, students, investors.

Meanwhile, what we’re seeing in Melbourne will be repeated.

Every breakout will send us into a panic. Around Australia, people will be too scared to go interstate.

Is that really how we must live? Wouldn’t it be great to live like adults again, bold and free? And vaccinated, of course.