20 February

It should be a matter of deep shame to all Australians that we’re one of the only developed countries in the world where millions of people have to pay for their own pandemic testing. Not even the libertarians in the UK and US went that far. And those self-tests (if people even do them) provide almost no useful epidemiological data for us to map where we’re at, with Covid, we’re literally flying blind. No idea how much Covid is out there, or where it is, or whether there are variants emerging or arrived from overseas - nothing. Governments are relying solely upon people turning up half-dead at hospital, as the only warning trigger.