Excuse me? Excuse me? What did Queensland’s poobah of public health (and governor to be) Jeannette Young say today? Really say.
There’s her headline remarks — that healthy young people under 40 should not receive the AstraZeneca vaccine because of the risk of blood clots but instead wait until Pfizer shots are available:
We are not in a position that I need to ask young, fit, healthy people to put their health on the line getting a vaccine that could potentially significantly harm them … I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, even if they got Covid, probably wouldn’t die.
But isn’t there also a tacit admission here that coronavirus isn’t like a suicide bomber about to detonate an explosive vest; that it’s not going to mow everyone down in its proximity?
And if a state chief public health officer, particularly one to such a lockdown happy Premier as Annastacia Palaszczuk, is making that admission, how can the states defend the dogmatism and the harshness of their Covid regimes?
There’s been some suggestion that a tired Scott Morrison may have “misspoken”, to use the modish euphemism, when he offered AstraZeneca to anyone on Monday night and has been too stubborn, silly and self-conscious (as he always is) to admit he erred.
What Young has said — presumably as a result of a little more thought than the PM’s slip of the tongue — is far more significant for pandemic management.
The cat is out of the bag.
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