If Qld and WA don’t want to get vaccinated, give Victoria and NSW their doses

NSW and Victoria are getting on with the only thing that can finally get us through the pandemic. There’s one way to get WA and Qld on board.

OPINION

Dan Andrews is angry. And no wonder.

The nation’s most evangelical eliminationist has just had to face up to the fact that Victoria is not going to get to Covid zero. Not now, not ever.

In fact there are some predictions that the southern state might hit daily case numbers even higher than NSW and exit lockdown even later despite locking down both harder and faster.

And just to rub salt in the wound it even locked down twice — those being lockdowns five and six for those keeping count.

To be fair, this isn’t the Victorian Premier’s fault, it’s Delta’s fault. This latest hyper-contagious Covid variant cares as little for lockdowns as it does for contact tracers. It overwhelms them all.

And Andrews, to his credit, has been man enough to admit defeat. Just as NSW declared long ago that there was no crushing this Hydra-like monster, the Victorian Premier has now also acknowledged that vaccination is the only way out of lockdown.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has admitted defeat, and he’s not happy about it. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie

Andrews might be stubborn but he is also rational. And it has been heartening to see that his particular brand of tough talk has now pivoted from punishing people in lockdown to punishing idiotic anti-vaxxers as well as the reluctant and recalcitrant so-called “vaccine hesitant” who are content to let their communities languish in lockdown while they hold out for their personally preferred brand of jab. No doubt the Germans have a word for such grotesque self-indulgent entitlement.

But for the rest of us normal folk it’s nice to see Angry Dan on the side of the angels again, his righteous fury directed at those who really deserve it rather than those who have already suffered enough.

It is also great to see his self-appointed hashtag apparatchiks become increasingly marginalised and isolated by Andrews’ new pragmatic positioning. Long may they tweet #IstandwithDan but Dan left the party in an Uber while they were waiting in line for the toilet.

The latest focus of Andrews’ angry gaze is the federal government and its delivery of more per-capita doses of vaccine to NSW than to Victoria.

It is worth noting here that:

A) NSW has much higher Covid case numbers than Victoria and so obviously vaccines are more urgently required; and

B) We are really just talking about the ridiculously over-hyped Pfizer vaccine when both states are awash with AstraZeneca for anyone who wants it — and which may even turn out to be a more effective jab in fighting off the Delta strain.

But leaving that aside, it is still a righteous rage. Any state that has had a Damascene conversion to the vaccination solution, and is ramping up efforts to roll out those vaccinations on a mass scale, should automatically be sent straight to the front of the queue. This is something your average seven-year-old could figure out.

At the moment only our two biggest states have reached that point — NSW and Victoria — while the next two largest — Queensland and WA — seem to be busy trying to rewrite the constitution in crayon.

Their vaccination rates are pitifully low and lagging while virus-stricken Sydney and Melbourne surge ahead.

Be it a sense of civic duty or just plain old self-interest amid the most oppressive restrictions, the citizens of Victoria and NSW deserve as many doses of the Commonwealth’s vaccine supply as needed to meet demand. Rewards belong only to the willing.

The Queensland and WA approach see the states living freely, but with pitifully low vaccination rates. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

The shutdown states, by contrast, have chosen another path. The Queensland and WA approach has been to lock out half the country in an effort to preserve a pristine Covid-free lifestyle for those lucky enough to be caught north of the Tweed and west of the Nullarbor.

It’s a high-stakes bet and an obviously unsustainable strategy but good luck to them. If that is their approach let them stick to it.

The numbers alone tell a stark story. As of yesterday almost 77 per cent of eligible NSW residents had received their first jab. Queensland and WA were hovering around a pathetic 55 per cent — barely two-thirds of that figure. What an embarrassment.

Clearly they don’t want the vaccine — an analysis by WA Today this week found more than 18,500 vacant Pfizer appointments at state-run clinics — or simply figure they don’t need it, given their premiers show no signs of opening borders.

So why give it to them? Dig into their share and deliver the doses to Victoria — where almost 64 per cent have rolled up their sleeves — and of course keep it coming to NSW, which has the dubious honour of both the highest case rate and highest first vax rate in the nation.

Maybe this will finally spur the secessionist states to rejoin the nation once more. Maybe taking away their needles is the shot in the arm they really need.