‘He’s wrong’: UK newspaper slams Scott Morrison’s vaccine ‘strollout’

A UK editorial has savaged Australia’s vaccine program, saying our covid response has seen us go from a “rooster to a feather duster”.

The Financial Times has published an editorial slamming Scott Morrison’s claim that the vaccine rollout “is not a race”, saying Australia’s early wins against covid have been “squandered”.

“One day a rooster, the next a feather duster,” the editorial starts and it doesn’t get anymore complimentary from there.

The Financial Times (FT) said Australia “deployed an enviable test and tracing system that has helped to keep its total Covid-19 death toll at 910. That is fewer than countries such as the UK have at times recorded in one day.

“Australia now stands as a warning to other nations, not least neighbouring New Zealand, that a fortress approach to the virus cannot succeed in the absence of an effective vaccine program.”

Just over 10 per cent of Australia’s population has been fully vaccinated.

This editorial from London’s @FinancialTimes is how the world now sees Australia. No longer Morrison’s boast as “the envy of the world”. Nope. He squandered that. He who insisted vaccination was “not a race”. Well it bloody well was. And is. pic.twitter.com/rfdaF19CZh

— Kevin Rudd (@MrKRudd) July 12, 2021

The FT took aim at the Prime Minister, saying he had been sending the wrong message on the importance of the vaccine rollout.

“It’s not a race,’ Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted in March, as concerns grew about what critics have called a vaccine ‘strollout’,” the Financial Times said.

“He was wrong. Having squandered its early victory over the virus, despite being one of the world’s wealthiest countries, Australia now faces a costly round of restrictions as it struggles to protect a largely unimmunised population from outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant.”

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is under fire.

The FT predicted that Australia would pay a high price for its vaccine failures that may eventually be unpopular at the ballot box.

“Australia’s approach has been domestically popular until now. Polls show some three-quarters of the population have backed the border closures. Yet as a panel of experts wrote in a recent report on how the country could reopen, ‘Australia cannot continue to lock itself off from the world as a hermit nation indefinitely’.

“The social and economic costs are too large, especially for younger people. The wider lesson for a world facing ever more virus variants, is that glacial vaccine rollouts spell disaster, no matter how rich or hermetically sealed a country may be.”

Meanwhile, the BBC has reported on the backlash and “graphic depiction” of a young woman suffering from covid.

The government advert shows the woman in a hospital bed gasping for air while hooked up to a ventilator.

The text reads: “Covid-19 can affect anyone … Book your vaccination.”

“Critics say the advert unfairly targets young people, considering under 40s will only be able to access the vaccines at the end of the year,” the BBC reported.

Completely offensive to run an ad like this when Australians in this age group are still waiting for their bloody vaccinations. https://t.co/4xF5hZAkqp

— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) July 11, 2021

Don’t tell me the PM’s Comms team didn’t see this coming… https://t.co/liwOs3KTtU

— Hugh Riminton (@hughriminton) July 11, 2021

The Govt really has only two approaches to health: dull adverts no one even registers, and believing that the Grim Reaper adverts were a success

— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) July 11, 2021

Australia’s Chief Health Officer Paul Kelly said the ad was “meant to be graphic” to “push the message home” about the need to stay home, get tested and book in vaccines.

“We are only doing this because of the situation in Sydney,” he said.

Authorities reported 112 new cases on Monday, taking the total to over 700 cases since the strain first emerged in mid-June.