In this ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’, it’s the rollout that really matters

For Australia’s media, we’re in the “three bears” lockdown: is it too hard, too soft, too hot, too cold? As a result, we’re trapped in a Freudian fixation on the narcissism of small differences in the latest round in the pandemic wars for attention.

Finely delineated policy options to make people stay home turn into existential threats as the debate lights up across divides old and new: left vs right, Twitter vs Facebook, News/Seven vs Nine/ABC, AstraZeneca vs Pfizer, Melbourne vs Sydney and, of course, WA vs the rest.

As premiers and senior health officials have taken on the job of news reporters, journalists have turned to “accountability” with a forensic drilling into the intricacies of the efficacy of state-by-state variations of stay-at-home orders.

Each premier sets aside an hour a day to answer over and over: why this? Why not that? Why now? Why not then? And each day, each premier takes the opportunity to advance their talking points with the same Goldilocks response: it’s “just right” (and on health advice, too!).

Sure, little things can make a difference — “for want of a nail, a shoe was lost” and all that. And maybe one premier or another is going to make a stumble that truly matters.

But all are operating within a narrow test-and-trace to stay-at-home continuum. State-by-state differences of speed and emphasis are a sign of a federation working well, not poorly. Sometimes, differences are a distraction.

While the media was gnawing away at fleeting interactions in small-scale retail (powered by the imagery of an apparently dangerously open Louis Vuitton store), the bigger story was disrupting transmission through interacting networks in extended families and enclosed workplaces in south-western Sydney.

The battle for attention rewards the certainty that catastrophism brings. Experts who bring “toughness” juxtaposed with the sure alternative of disaster are inherently more newsworthy than those talking with the fuzziness of “smarter lockdowns”. 

Yet, the polling evidence suggests that in each state, voters trust what their particular government is doing. That’s the theory of rational ignorance in practice: sometimes you’re better off assuming the public health bureaucrats know more than you and trust that they know what they’re doing.

But each lockdown hurts, stripping states of voter confidence in how they’re managing the pandemic. The differences are more rhetorical, reflecting how the past 18 months’ experiences demand they message their audience: the Victorian government with a “there is no alternative” toughness; NSW with its hand-wringing caution; (and the federal government opts for its not-my-problem sniping.)

All states agree on one thing: it’s the bungled vaccine rollout that matters. That’s why Morrison is huddling largely off-screen while we talk about lockdown minutiae.

It matters more than we thought: Australia’s outbreak is an echo of a global crisis, as Delta outpaces worldwide vaccine take-up. As US President Biden said on the weekend, it’s now a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Umm, sounds like us.

Domestically, Australia’s journalists have been ahead of governments, like Norman Swan’s reporting on last year’s rejected Pfizer offer and Laura Tingle on the Rudd intervention. Journalists at The Guardian and The New Daily have worked the data to give important context. 

International reporting shows that there’s more trouble coming: misinformation driving vaccine resistance, coupled with hesitancy and procrastination making the disease a continued drag on any return to normality.

The Australian government has resisted a target number to reopen, although Berejiklian has talked about 10 million doses in NSW and, on Insiders yesterday, Barnaby Joyce made a guesstimated target of 75% of Australia’s adult population. Trouble is, the right-now global example is that those figures are hard to reach.

In the US, Biden has called out Facebook for misinformation, accusing it of killing people, with just 12 sources producing two-thirds of anti-vax shares. (The platform’s defence was, well, “not all people”.) Others have pointed the finger at Murdoch-owned Fox News as a prime vector for anti-vax propaganda. Expect those talking points to pop up on Sky, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, as Australia is debating mandatory vaccination in health and aged care, France is tackling hesitancy head-on, requiring proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to enter cafes, restaurants, cinemas, high-speed trains or shopping malls. Expect that debate, too, to explode in Australia as doses become widely available and the vaccinated lose patience with future lockdowns to protect those slow on the uptake.