Peter Hartcher: Omicron threatens to tip Morrison’s path to victory over a cliff
Scott Morrison said that his government was “building a bridge to get Australia to the other side of the pandemic”.
Morrison’s re-election plan demands that voters look “through the windscreen” to the future and not “in the rear-vision mirror”, as he’s fond of saying. But if the future is as bleak as the past? “We’ve always benefited from the fact that we see their experience in the northern hemisphere first, and we are in the same position now.”
All of which is interesting and indicative, but still tentative. And, once again, these officials’ comments point to the fact that their experiences aren’t fully comparable with ours. For one, Australia is in summer while the north is in winter. Cold weather aggravates coronavirus epidemics. Doherty’s advice to Australia: “Get your booster shot.” This is the advice that the medical authorities are giving worldwide. “The early in vitro and clinical studies,” said Anthony Fauci on Thursday, “indicate that boosters reconstitute the antibody titers and enhance the vaccine protection against Omicron. Our booster vaccine regimens work against Omicron. At this point, there is no need for a variant-specific booster.
Yet, it must also be Frydenberg’s heartfelt hope. Because his MYEFO revealed the national finances to be a hopeless mess after just the first two years of COVID-19.
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