Coronavirus: Sydneysiders have every right to be frustrated

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian speaks during a COVID-19 update and press conference. Picture: Getty

This lockdown I’ve become more alert and alarmed about the Covid-19 spread than I was in 2020. The unknowns were concerning back then, but now the knowns are too.

Based in Sydney and knowing how much more transmissible (and seemingly deadly) the Delta variant is, my caution levels have risen.

It is partly driven by seeing the finish line, at least when it comes (hopefully) to becoming serious ill or dying from Covid-19. I’m due to get my second jab today, knowing that it takes upwards of seven days to start to offer the protections its designed to offer. But once they kick in, the rarity of dying from Covid-19 is comforting.

And I am one of the lucky ones. I can only imagine how Sydneysiders so far unable to access vaccines are feeling. Knowing their age grouping have been both ineligible for vaccinations, yet members of their age cohort are struggling for life in ICU.

Of course the revised advice surrounding AstraZeneca has finally and belatedly opened vaccine access up, but the point still stands.

All of which explains why people are frustrated with the slowness of the vaccine rollout. Even if there are reasons which are at least semi-understandable. Equally, Sydneysiders have every right to be frustrated by the NSW government’s slowness in locking down and hardening up restrictions. Undoubtedly failures on that front have worsened a bad situation. Even if many of us welcomed the optimism of the Premier early on that the virus might be brought under control without lockdowns.

It wasn’t to be.

The news that an otherwise healthy woman in her 30s has died from Covid-19 is an alarming sign of the risks attached to the Delta strain. It isn’t just a virus to be feared by the elderly or the sick. To be sure, neither were earlier Covid-19 strains, but Delta has driven that point home. And its significantly higher levels of contagion are even more alarming.

Adriana Midori Takara, aged in her 30s, died of Covid-19.

There are now serious question marks over whether it can be brought under control at all in Sydney. If it can’t be, the end of lockdowns requires vaccination rates to hit levels that can allowed the unsuppressed virus to be let loose.

What does that look like?

For a start it could be a long way off over the horizon, especially if supplies in other states aren’t redirected to Sydney. In my interview with the PM last night on Network 10 he made it abundantly clear that won’t be happening. Readers can agree or disagree with that decision.

Even if supplies were to be redirected, anyone finally getting vaccinations would need to wait the mandatory time it takes to have protections before lockdowns could lift. Putting them in the same mind set I’m in now, about to have my second jab, but many weeks from now.

Plus, even if Sydney got the lions share of the rollout earlier than other states so it could open up, those other states would therefore face delays, meaning that they would need to nail their borders firmly shut for longer, lest the virus got into their unvaccinated communities. This was one of the points Scott Morrison fell back on under questioning last night.

So where does all of this leave us? Nervous, apprehensive, worried about the future and the plethora of options for outcomes, none of which are particularly good or comforting.

I guess that’s why its called a pandemic. Pandemics throughout history haven’t been anything but awful. And compared to almost everywhere else in the world, ours has been a cakewalk.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.