Article Image

IPFS News Link • Australia

Will Australia survive Covid?

• https://unherd.com, BY SHAHAR HAMEIRI

It wasn't so long ago that Australia was lauded globally as a rare success story in the fight against Covid. Its federal and state governments were eager to take credit for this, and Australians were eager to give it to them: for a time, the country's political leaders enjoyed levels of approval not seen in decades.

But as the pandemic inches towards its two-year anniversary, any warm feelings are but a distant memory. Today might be Australia Day, but the mood isn't one of celebration. Australia is having a bad summer, and Australians are angry with their governments, especially the federal government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

A few months ago, the Morrison government looked as though it would cruise back to power in the upcoming federal election, which must be held by May this year. This month, however, the Opposition Labor Party's primary vote climbed past the Coalition's for the first time ever. Morrison may still be leading Opposition leader Anthony Albanese as preferred Prime Minister by 7%, but he had a 23% lead in August. The trend is clear.

The immediate cause for the government's political woes is the acute shortage of rapid antigen tests (RATs) across Australia. Although the federal and most state governments were right to shift to a 'living with Covid' approach late last year, they failed to anticipate the entirely predictable surge in demand for testing as society opened up and the highly transmissible Omicron variant took hold.

To manage mounting pressure on testing and supply chains, the National Cabinet, with the notable exception of Western Australia, agreed to redefine 'close contact' more narrowly, reduce the required period of isolation for positive cases, and permit the use of RATs instead of only relying on PCR tests. However, having failed to stock up on RATs, test kits rapidly ran out and could not be found for love or money. Actually, that's not quite right. The small number of RATs that could be found cost a lot of money — in one case $500 for two tests.


www.BlackMarketFridays.com