#auspol #covid19aus we have to challenge the ridiculous idea that Australia is now (apparently) lagging the…

#auspol #covid19aus we have to challenge the ridiculous idea that Australia is now (apparently) lagging the rest of the world. The extreme narrowing of public health strategy towards speed vaccination as the metric of success. /1 https://t.co/QUJt7SJXoh

Take a look. You'll struggle to differentiate the Australian line from the X-axis. Laughable to see places like the US and UK seriously described as now ahead of us, unless nearly a million deaths between them is a footnote in your thinking. /2 https://t.co/sJHb5e2Y0r

Australia's vaccination is slow, mostly because of lack of supply. Like most of the rest of the world, struggling to get vaccine doses from the great vaccine-hogging pigs in the UK and US. /3

The countries who will 'win' here will do two things. Control transmission, and vaccinate. In that order of priority. The US and UK are entirely reliant upon vaccines ending their outbreaks. That's already failing, the UK in a 3rd wave, vaccination stalling in the US. /4

If that mono-dimensional strategy of using vaccines as treatments rather than preventative measures fails for them, they have nothing to fall back on. No appetite for basic public health measures, populations whipped into a frenzy of lockdown-hatred. Screwed. /5

Politicians encouraged people to think that vaccines will end the pandemic, and articles like this are written with that assumption. It was a lie, and makes all of this catastrophism about Australia's position ridiculous. /6

Take a reality check. Don't read national assessments of how everybody is going, read what the WHO say. There's none of this developed world's wet dream of a couple of quick jabs and then back to Ibiza. /end