Here we go again: hotels fail to contain Covid

There is a mouse plague in NSW and Queensland but if you lift the blanket here in Victoria there is a dangerous plague of another kind — one of bureaucratic incompetence that clearly demonstrates the hotel quarantine system is surviving on a wing and a prayer with regular bewildering examples of bad judgment, waste of taxpayer funds, poor management, no accountability at any level and a lax oversight by the government authorities charged with our safety.

This whole Covid-19 experience has shown Victorians, and the rest of Australia, that the Andrews regime would struggle with a local pub chook raffle. Lockdown 4.0 makes it clear that this mob needs to go at the next election as it has had more starts than Phar Lap yet failed to finish every race. Enough is enough.

Tom Moylan, Melbourne, Vic

Little can be said about this latest Melbourne outbreak except to commiserate with the inhabitants as they disappear behind closed doors yet again. The sad fact is that federal and state governments have refused to grasp the nettle that is the absurd notion that an open hotel can contain any virus at all.

State governments have had 18 months to access vacant accommodation sites and not one has bothered to look into it. They know that all the time, with no effort or expense on their parts, they can close us off from society for as long as they please.

It can only end in tears as the virus won’t go away, but we may all go around the bend.

Margaret Downie, Armadale, WA

Here we go again. Covid escapes from a quarantine hotel and Victoria gets locked down. Rather than using these outbreaks to justify building dedicated quarantine villages, which hopefully at some time in the not-too-distant future would be sitting empty, ready for the next one-in-a-100-year pandemic, why not invest in the existing hotel system?

It has to be possible to re-engineer the ventilation, access and other operating systems and facilities to make them fit for purpose as a quarantine facility. For the taxpayer to fund the conversions of privately owned and run hotels would be much more cost effective and quicker than building whole new dedicated facilities. And when they are no longer needed, they can revert to being profitable hotels rather than white elephants.

Tim Smallwood, Echuca, Vic

All the debate about the slow vaccine rollout and the general public’s reluctance to get the jab is failing to address one key issue. For the majority of Australians who lead a healthy lifestyle through regular exercise and maintaining a balanced diet, and who also have had no pre-existing health conditions, there is little need for them to get a vaccination. They are in a low-risk category and would most likely be unaware they even had Covid if they caught it (apparently this is one of the most dangerous aspects of the virus, having it and not even being aware you have it).

Why can’t the public be given the responsibility to manage their own risk regarding the virus and whether they actually require a vaccination or not, much the same as we manage our own risk daily on numerous other matters?

It should be a case of we have a vaccine available for all, with a clear breakdown of people who are most at risk, whether through age or poor health, as well as those who want to be vaccinated regardless. The general public is not forced to take up the flu jab every year, which takes the lives of thousands and no one is in outrage at the loss of these lives simply because they chose to manage their own risk and are the ones solely responsible for the outcome.

Giving the Government responsibility to manage our health risks and therefore being responsible for the results is a dangerous precedent

Andrew Clark, Rivervale, WA

My vaccine hesitancy is not Scott Morrison’s fault. It is not due to a lack of clinics or vaccines in my area. It is not due to a lack of promotion or funding by the government. It is not due to the incidence of blood clots, no matter how many scare stories some sections of the press publish.

It is simply due to the lack of Covid in my state, which makes me reluctant to have a very new drug. Paradoxically, my vaccine hesitancy is actually due to the huge success of Australia’s handling of this crisis, not any failure.

Louise Trinkle, Hahndorf, SA