Victoria’s case numbers prove Dan’s team got it wrong

Daniel Andrews openly mocked NSW’s rapidly rising case numbers but Victoria’s own shock infection rate makes the Premier and his team look foolish.

Now would be a good time for Premier Dan Andrews, and his media fan club, to eat some humble pie.

How they must be regretting the ill-judged hubris and mocking of NSW.

It’s likely that folks in Sydney will be having their freedoms restored before Melburnians who have already endured more than 220 days of lockdown.

Gladys Berejiklian’s plan to reopen NSW may be imperfect but at least she has a plan.

Meanwhile, Victorian families and businesses are living in limbo with no idea when crippling restrictions including curfews, travel limits and strict stay-at-home orders will lift.

At the current rate of vaccination NSW will reach that all important 70 per cent double jabbed target on October 18, which will see restrictions dramatically eased in Sydney.

With a definitive plan released the vaccination rate may accelerate and the 70 per cent target may be reached even sooner.

Illogical rules including the outdoor mask mandates remain in place but there is hope and a clear path to normalcy.

Today a number of minor restrictions were lifted for double vaccinated Sydneysiders allowing them to have a picnic and enjoy outdoor recreation with others.

I have been highly critical of Premier Berejiklian and her flip-flopping but credit where it’s due, she has shown great leadership and backbone in standing up to the health bureaucracy who wanted the lockdown to continue beyond the 80 per cent vaccination target being met.

Indeed NSW health officials told the state’s crisis cabinet to wait until vaccination levels were closer to 85 per cent before lifting lockdown provisions, but thankfully sanity prevailed and the bureaucrats were overruled.

We have seen throughout this crisis our leaders relinquish their power entirely to unelected bureaucrats who have a very narrow view of what constitutes success.

Their laser focus on Covid-19 numbers has seen other health issues neglected as well as the grave impact lockdowns have on the economy and society.

Middle ranking bureaucrats like chief health officer Brett Sutton should not be granted unprecedented powers.

It was Sutton who assured Victorians in August 2020 that we would never see daily case numbers north of 300.

“We’re not going to see, you know, 300s and 400s again in Victoria, not under my watch at least,” Sutton told reporters on August 23, 2020.

Well we reached 300-plus last week and on Saturday the state recorded 400-plus, all under Sutton’s watch.

Locking down hard and early has not seen virus numbers suppressed.

On Monday Victoria recorded its highest daily case number for more than a year with 473 cases from just 49,037 tests.

NSW is regularly more than doubling Victoria’s test numbers. On Monday NSW reported 1257 cases from 137,668 tests.

If Victoria was replicating NSW’s test numbers and the positivity rate held then we’d have 1327 cases.

The only positive consequence of the current outbreak is that Premier Andrews, after extending Lockdown Six twice, has belatedly abandoned his absurd zero-Covid fantasy and acknowledged the scientific reality that Covid-19 will be endemic.