Media noise hides the good news on the vaccine rollout

Picture: Getty Images

There was all manner of politicised babble in the wake of the government’s vaccine announcement on Thursday night, much of it of the opportunistic look through the rearview mirror type.

The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison and Health Minister, Greg Hunt have acted on advice and recommended that those under 50 should opt for vaccines (at this stage the Pfizer vaccine but others are coming) rather than the AstraZeneca vaccine due to emerging data that younger members of the community, particularly in their 20s, faced a heightened but still extremely low risk of blood clotting and thrombotic episodes.

Cue sound and fury. It was said the Morrison government had stuffed up the rollout. The delays would curtail Australia’s economic recovery. The country would remain locked away with international travel an option only for a lucky few. Most of all, the government had put too many eggs in the AstraZeneca basket.

Well, possibly but these decisions are a damned side harder to make with foresight rather than in hindsight.

Mostly, the noise hid one salient fact. The government had only done as it should and indeed, what it has always said it would do: listen to expert advice provided by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and act accordingly without fear or favour.

The term ‘abundance of caution’ is oft-repeated these days but in a roll out of this size, it should be the abiding principle in what goes into arms.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese was working Twitter last night, saying the Opposition had urged the government to order a mix of available COVID-19 vaccines as long as nine months ago when all the vaccines were in various stages of clinical trials.

Again, it’s Monday morning quarterback stuff.

Since last year, Labor has been calling on the Morrison Government to get five or six vaccine deals – for a situation exactly like this.

Scott Morrison dismissed these concerns.

How much longer will Australians wait to be vaccinated because of Scott Morrison’s arrogance?

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) April 8, 2021

For all the caution, the actuarial analysis remains heavily stacked in favour of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Adam Finn is a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol and head of the Bristol Children’s Vaccine Centre. He told the BBC Breakfast show yesterday, “Both of the vaccines (AstraZeneca and Pfizer) are highly effective and the risks of getting sick or dying of Covid for all the people currently being offered first or second doses are far and away greater than any small theoretical risk that may exist relating to these cases which are extremely rare.”

A person in their mid-twenties faces the likelihood of a rare thrombotic event at perhaps as low as 1:20,000 (at ages 70 or older it is more than 1:1,000,000). The chances of a severe adverse reaction from receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine are the same as a sort of breakfast table calamity, a weird an unlikely event where possibly a sliver of grapefruit is propelled into an eyeball, leaving the victim to stagger around the house before slumping over a roaring upturned chainsaw and being eaten by the dog.

In terms of probabilities, we are talking somewhere between shark bite and being hit by a meteorite while wandering down Pitt, Collins, Liverpool and Queen Streets or St George’s Terrace but obviously not Rundle Mall which I maintain is the most dangerous place on Earth.

The fact remains the chances of getting ill or worse from COVID far outweigh any health problem that might arise from the AstraZeneca vaccine. People of all age groups should consider the available options in discussion with their medical practitioners.

Before we join the moaners and the opportunists, let’s get one thing straight. Australia has enjoyed a very light touch from the pandemic, compared to Europe, to the United States, the UK, Canada – you name it, it has experienced. On the numbers alone, Latin America is the worst hit region on the planet.

Brazil recorded 3829 COVID-19 deaths on Thursday. More than 341,000 Brazilians have died from COVID-19. In the US more than 2500 died of COVID-19 over the same 24-hour period with total fatalities now at more than half a million. In Germany 167 people died of COVID-19 yesterday bringing their national death toll to 77,755. In Sweden 45 people died of COVID-19 yesterday with 13,578 having died overall. Canada added 32 deaths yesterday to its national COVID-19 death toll of 23,211.

In Australia we have gone weeks and sometimes months without community transmission. The national COVID-19 death toll stands at 909, the last of which was a joint UK-Papua New Guinea national airlifted to Brisbane on March 28. It was the first COVID-19 related fatality recorded in Queensland in more than a year.

It could be said some of these nations or conglomerates have been more successful in their vaccine rollouts and that might be right but then they had to be, because their populations, especially at the upper age levels were dying in such number and their economies were suffering from long lockdowns that for the most part, continue to this day.

It’s not just those with political agendas that are critical of the cautionary approach adopted by the government over the vaccine rollout. Predictably, despicably, the anti-vaxxers are lapping it up.

Pete Evans posted a screenshot from a SMH headline yesterday which reported the government was reviewing the evidence around the AstraZeneca vaccine. At the bottom of the image, he included his own message: “Which word is best to describe this whole thing created by these sick pedo clowns … shitshow or clusterf..k?” Evans’ message was artfully followed by some clown emojis. He later removed the word ‘pedo’ from his post.

Who are the sick pedos according to Evans? The government? Health experts? ATAGI? Maybe all of the above. It’s hard to say, but there’s nothing like a QAnon reference to wash down the anti-vax message.

Amusingly, and with no apparent hint of irony, this idiot wants to be a senator.

It is possible vaccine hesitancy (rather than the anti-vaxxer nonsense) will grow in the wake of the government’s announcement but rather than a blow to public confidence, the government’s announcement should give Australians more faith in the vaccine rollout. What we have seen in the last 24 hours is an evidence-based conservative, risk-averse approach to a mass vaccination process the likes of which the world and this country has never seen before.

But you wouldn’t know that with all the noise in parts of the media today.