Joe Hildebrand: The ‘stupid’ mistake that’s crippling Australia

Australia’s vaccination rollout is in shambles – and the “stupid” actions of many of our leaders has been “nothing short of unforgivable”.

OPINION

It is a sad indictment on 21st century Australian politics that we have come to expect idiocy, immaturity and opportunism from our politicians.

Yet it now appears this crippling condition is just as contagious as Covid-19 and has spread to the so-called professionals around them – the very people who are supposed to be the wise impartial counsel guiding us through the pandemic.

At the very beginning of the crisis we had Victoria’s deputy chief health officer make the moronic statement – on Twitter of course – that the arrival of Covid-19 in Australia was comparable to the arrival of Captain Cook.

One could not ask for a more perfect insight into the half-baked undergraduate woke ideology that has swept through even the highest and supposedly most scientific levels of the Victorian public service.

Then a few weeks ago we had the head-spinningly idiotic suggestion from South Australia’s chief health officer that people attending a football match should duck if the ball was kicked into the stands because it might be carrying the virus from an unknowingly infected Victorian player.

It is hard to imagine who on earth actually comes up with these thoughts, let alone says them out loud.

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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk watches chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young during a covid update press conference. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Dan Peled

But at least these priceless contributions to public debate provided some comedic relief, as well as a helpful reminder that bureaucrats should only be released from captivity under the strictest of circumstances.

This week’s spectacular intervention from Queensland’s chief health officer, however, was no laughing matter. It was disgraceful, it was dangerous and it should immediately disqualify her from public office.

Speaking after the federal government announced it would allow people under 40 to get the AstraZeneca jab if their GP approved, Dr Jeannette Young made this extraordinary public statement:

“I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got covid, probably wouldn’t die. We are not in a position that I need to ask young, fit, healthy people to put their health on the line (by) getting a vaccine that could potentially significantly harm them.”

For a public health officer to publicly raise the spectre of an innocent youngster dying from vaccination in the middle of a national vaccination campaign is probably the single most damaging thing anyone could do to derail an immunisation rollout – and in Australia that’s a highly competitive field.

There is no doubt the federal government’s vaccine strategy – or what’s left of it – has been slow, piecemeal, confused and clumsy. But these major and multiple failings pale into nothing compared to Young’s outrageously alarmist declaration, one that will likely be a touchstone to anti-vaxxers for years to come.

She also appears to have misrepresented the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation’s position on people under 40 taking AstraZeneca, which ATAGI never warned against. On the contrary, ATAGI co-chair Allen Cheng said in April: “If a younger person said that they were happy to take a one-in-200,000 risk of clotting for the benefit of getting protected from Covid-19 earlier, then as long as this was an informed decision, we should respect that choice.”

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As The Australian’s Health Editor Natasha Robinson noted: “ATAGI said the estimated incidence of blood clots among those aged between 30 and 39 was about 1.6 cases per 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca delivered.”

You can read her excellent analysis here.

That is a risk of clotting of 0.0016 per cent. By way of comparison, a US study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last year found the risk of people under 40 actually dying from coronavirus was the still minuscule but significantly higher 0.01 per cent. You can read that at the source here.

Little wonder that other medical experts’ jaws hit the floor when they heard Young’s comments.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Director Charlotte Hespe told 2GB Young was “definitely scaremongering”. You can hear her comments here.

And a conga line of other peak medical bodies and top level infectious diseases experts, including AMA president Omar Khorshid, ANU microbiologist Peter Collignon and the former deputy chief medical officer of Australia Nick Coatsworth, have also contradicted Young.

Indeed, despite some ridiculous reports trying to paint the AMA as opposing the federal government’s move, Khorshid made clear to the ABC on Wednesday: “We don’t actually have a problem with removing the restrictions on age that the Prime Minister’s done.”

Coatsworth, a key official in steering Australia’s world-beating response to the pandemic, was even more appalled.

“Nearly every medical leader distanced themselves from Dr Young’s comments yesterday … She’s unfortunately out on a very lonely limb there,” he told Sunrise.

So how on earth did a chief health officer come to make such an extraordinarily damaging and dubious statement?

Perhaps the desperate attempts by the Queensland Premier and Deputy Premier to blame every single covid failure on the federal government finally rubbed off on their supposedly apolitical adviser.

Take, for example, the case of the Queensland hospital receptionist who worked shifts outside a covid isolation ward despite not being vaccinated, and then spent 10 days up and down the state – including a holiday to Townsville and Magnetic Island – while infected.

To most of us, that might look like a pretty massive f*** up, but according to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, her Health Minister Yvette D’Ath was not to blame because “she doesn’t go out and do the vaccinations”.

Gosh, that sounds a lot like “I don’t hold a hose” doesn’t it?

Meanwhile NSW’s stellar job in tracking and driving down daily case numbers hit a major speed bump on Thursday when it emerged a trainee nurse had also been unvaccinated and worked for five days in two hospitals while infectious. She also possibly passed it on to an unvaccinated aged care worker.

Were it not for the fact that almost all of the residents at the latter’s nursing home were vaccinated, we would be bracing for a body count right about now.

Frankly, this shit has got to stop. Any frontline worker who is so reckless or ill-informed as to be offered the vaccine and not take it has no place on the frontline. If they won’t get the jab, they should get another job.

It is now time for every government in Australia to lay down one simple rule for all health care, aged care and hotel quarantine workers: Either get vaxxed or get sacked.

And their employers must also ensure they get time off to get the jab, paid leave if they have to recover from any side effects, and clear information and guidance that makes the process simple and easy.

Our vaccination of the nation is an abomination, an absolute shambles.. The messaging and management of the federal government has been hopeless but the attempts to undermine confidence in the rollout by stupid and self-interested parties is an even greater national shame and a huge mistake.

Clearly this country is crippled by too many people who are complacent about getting it, worried about getting it, confused about how to get it, think they can’t get it or think they don’t need it.

That is, to say the least, deeply unfortunate. But so-called experts and leaders fuelling those fears is nothing short of unforgivable.