(Image: AAP/Joel Carrett)

More than a year and a half into the pandemic, Australians are no strangers to lockdowns: Sydney is going through its worst COVID-19 outbreak yet with a snap lockdown announced for Dubbo; south-east Queensland’s lockdown ended just as a three-day lockdown in the north was announced; Victoria is in its sixth lockdown which has just been extended — their fourth lockdown this year. 

But lockdowns this year feel harsher than in previous years, and there are a number of reasons why. We have lingering emotional and financial trauma from last year. There’s no clear path to freedom from the federal government, with its post-vaccination transition plan lacking key details. Financial aid is still a shambles, vaccines are out of reach for many, and any novelty of the pandemic has worn off.

Our sacrifices last year were for nothing as cases continue to grow and regions get shuttered again.

Looking abroad doesn’t help

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in Parliament yesterday: “No government has got anything right, whether here in Australia or anywhere else around the world.”

But there’s little solidarity with other wealthy Western nations. The UK celebrated Freedom Day; international news websites are littered with ads for airline deals; the White House has announced lockdowns were no longer a solution to high COVID cases in the US. As White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week:

This is not March 2020 or even January 2021. We’re not going to lock down our economy or our schools because our country is in a much stronger place than when we took office.

But for Australia, life is pretty much the same as it was seven months ago. Watching other countries celebrate freedom after we spent a year feeling superior for having avoided high deaths and hospitalisations (largely thanks to our geography) is tough. Any guilty sense of schadenfreude has since been reversed.

Fear has not subsided

“I remember the fears of that time [in March 2020],” Morrison continued in Parliament. “Of what this could do to our most vulnerable communities.” 

Those fears have not subsided. The vulnerable populations Morrison was talking about were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Many regional areas avoided infection thanks to community-led health initiatives, although there are still concerns for cities. While Indigenous Australians have been prioritised for the Pfizer vaccine, the Health Department doesn’t provide data on how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have received the vaccine in its vaccine rollout updates. Rhetoric has largely focused on regional communities, and there are concerns many Aboriginal medical services don’t offer the vaccine, potentially inhibiting uptake in metropolitan areas. 

While about 80% of those over 70 are vaccinated with at least one shot, recent deaths and outbreaks in aged care homes have shown the risk has not gone away. This constant feeling of risk fuels pandemic fatigue — especially, one Australian-based study found — in cities that had a relatively easy time last year. 

Economic outlook is bleak

Morrison went on to spruik Australia’s economic recovery — a recovery that is now in danger as NSW is at risk of a recession (not to mention most of our economic recovery was geared towards male-dominated industries, with women in NSW losing jobs at a faster rate than men). 

Financial support is not as simple as it should be 18 months into a pandemic. Support payments still exclude many businesses and workers, and the lack of JobKeeper presents the risk that for those forced to skip their shift, their job won’t be there when they get back. 

Even though for NSW this lockdown is already longer than last, JobSeeker hasn’t been given the same boost as it was last year and JobKeeper has been axed, with hundreds of thousands relying on the second-lowest welfare payments among OECD nations to stay afloat. Thousands have been asked to return their JobKeeper payments while businesses that made a profit get to keep their cash. 

Business confidence has suffered its second-biggest hit since the global financial crisis. 

Vaccinations are out of reach for many

Vaccinations have long been lauded as the key to freedom. While last year we excitedly checked updates on vaccine clinical trials, this year we’re instead watching the rollout happen at a snail’s pace.

Australia’s bungled vaccine rollout — from the University of Queensland abandoning its vaccine over false HIV-positive readings, to not securing enough Pfizer or enough Moderna early on, to the rare risks of blood clots linked to AstraZeneca and the subsequent mixed messaging around who is eligible to get it — has made it tough to get enough of the population vaccinated to avoid lockdowns. 

Worse, young Australians were insulted with an ad showing a young woman gasping for air — an ad nurses took offence to as they wouldn’t let a patient suffer like that without intervention — urging ineligible Australians to get vaccinated. 

Little to look forward to in the transition plan

The final straw is the lack of a pathway out. The government’s four-phase plan for a vaccinated Australia — the modelling of which was released only last week — is, like most COVID-19 messaging from the government, vague as hell. The Doherty modelling that guided the response plan doesn’t even go into the fourth phase of the plan, or even much into the third. 

When we hit 70% vaccination rates for the adult population — which, in one silver lining, is likely to happen sooner than the government is saying — international border caps will be implemented. Whether these will be lifted to the same level as earlier in the year is unknown. There will be eased restrictions on vaccinated residents — although these restrictions have yet to be determined. 

What we need is clear goals to determine when we’ll be able to visit our families interstate or abroad and time frames to give people something to look forward to.

These clear goals, including providing details on when extra government powers will be walked back, could also drive vaccination rates, providing a light at the end of the tunnel for those of us stuck in the gloomy cycle of lockdowns and pandemic fatigue.