Covid-19: Dan’s day but ScoMo’s big warning

Daniel Andrews has always presented as a member of the Covid-zero club even if he had his own interpretation of waht that meant. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Lius Ascui

It was Daniel Andrews’s big day out but Scott Morrison won’t like the detail in the road map modelling.

It shows anywhere between 1455 and 3152 virus deaths in Victoria in the last half of the year and that number potentially soaring by the end of January 31.

These estimates exclude the 820 who died in Victoria in the 2020 second wave.

Let’s assume the Burnet Institute’s most conservative estimate of 1455 fatalities by December 31 is right rather than the more pessimistic 3152.

Either way, you would still have a lot of people checking out two years into a pandemic that has witnessed mixed policy responses federally and from the states.

Remember, a federal election is due by May 2022 and the last thing the Prime Minister needs is to saddle up for a campaign lined with coffins.

While Morrison will like the fact Victoria is welded on to opening up, he will be quietly hoping the Burnet Institute’s case and fatality numbers are wildly inflated.

Which they may prove to be.

Although the Burnet numbers overshadowed his road map launch, the Victorian Premier had a Road to Damascus moment on Sunday.

Not only is he now sold on progressively ending the lockdown, he’s denying he ever was a Covid-zero zealot.

Andrews has always presented as a member of the Covid-zero club even if he had his own interpretation of what that meant.

The important development to start the week is that even suppressing the virus to nominal numbers is out of the question.

This is, and has been for a while, a commonsense position.

It left Andrews insisting: “We are opening this place up.”

This is a big step forward from where the Victorian government has been throughout the pandemic and Andrews was emphatic in his warnings to the unvaccinated.

Indeed, he is blunt about the prospects of those who avoid the vaccine, making clear that failing to get the jabs will expose people to the strong possibility of illness.

Only 1 per cent of people in hospital in Victoria with the virus is fully vaccinated, the rest having no protection or just the one dose.

By vowing to open up, Andrews has given the Victorian community an opportunity to breathe and plan for the future.

It is not too much to say that the community has been choking under the weight of hundreds of days of lockdowns, which lost their sheen roughly five days in.

The road map, while not binding, offers millions of people the opportunity to dream of a largely normal Christmas.

We will see, of course … and we will remind the Burnet Institute if it has got things right or wrong.

The slow pace of reopening has outraged the hospitality sectors and there will be many others who will feel the same way.

You can’t blame businesses for wanting a decent run at Christmas or for being victim of the pandemic’s whims.

Unfortunately, like everywhere else in the world, it is Delta that has won.