NT government’s Darwin lockout a good reward for vaccinated Territorians

The Northern Territory officially has coronavirus and the NT government made a commendable decision which unvaccinated Territorians should take note of … writes MATT CUNNINGHAM.

WELL, that escalated quickly. There we were on Thursday enjoying our Covid-free bliss, then, in the blink of a 10pm press conference, community transmission had arrived.

We’ve been warned for 18 months it would get here eventually, although I suspect many doubted that would happen. But today, the Northern Territory officially has coronavirus.

What was less expected than the virus’s arrival, was the government’s reaction to its presence. The Territory has taken an ultra-cautious approach to Covid. We were the first jurisdiction to close our borders and we’ve gone straight into short, hard lockdowns on the two occasions cases have been found outside quarantine, even when their source has been known.

Yet when the first case of community transmission was reported – and even though we knew he’d been at one of the city’s busiest pubs while possibly infectious – our government made the commendable decision to avoid a hard lockdown in Darwin.

The decision to allow fully vaccinated residents to essentially go about their business as normal is recognition of a few things.

First, the virus is with us and we will have to learn to live with it. We’ll never be the Comeback Capital ™ if every business in town has to shut every time we have a single Covid case.

We can’t continue to close our borders and shut ourselves off when the rest of the world has opened up. But this is also recognition that the onus for protecting us from the virus sits not with the government but with us. We as individuals now have the power to greatly reduce the chances of dying or becoming seriously ill from Covid-19. We have the ability to limit its transmission and prevent our hospital system from becoming overwhelmed. That power lies in a couple of simple little pricks and the wonder of modern medicine.

If you were hesitant about getting the vaccine, surely the time for that hesitancy has passed. As Acting Chief Health Officer Dr Charles Pain said on Thursday night: “It’s absolutely perplexing that people think that they should delay that decision. We have almost 100 per cent certainty in Australia now, with this Delta variant that you will be exposed to it at some time. And so delaying means you’re making that decision to be trading off being vaccinated versus getting the disease. I think we all know that getting the disease is far, far worse than any possible risk associated with the vaccine.”

Acting Chief Health Officer Dr Charles Pain at Thursday night’s press conference. Picture: Amanda Parkinson

What the past few days have also shown us is that vaccination is the key to our freedom. Sure, there are a few deluded souls who don’t believe the pandemic is real, just as there are those who think man never landed on the moon and Harold Holt is still alive. But for most of us, we realise there’s a deadly disease that has killed millions across the globe and that without the vaccine we’d now be spending our days as prisoners in our own homes, as Melburnians have for the best part of two years.

In case we were in any doubt about the freedom offered by vaccination, the government drew a very deep line in the sand on Thursday night. If you’re vaccinated, you can carry on life as normal. If you’re not, you’re in lockdown. Some will cry foul but the Chief Minister warned us 52 days ago that the government would take this approach and if there was no vaccine we’d all be in lockdown. While there’s been much outcry about the government’s vaccine mandate for workers and its impingement on people’s liberty, this latest measure is not punishment for those who refused to get vaccinated. It’s reward for those who did. And for those who just hadn’t gotten around to it yet, it’s a handy reminder of why they need to hurry up.