Out of the blue

By July 25, 2021Australian Politics

Two days ago, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said it was time the government “refocused” its rollout plan, and consider prioritising Pfizer doses for young people in Sydney’s hardest-hit areas. She also said: “I will be taking to National Cabinet … [asking] … that consideration be given to at least having more people having at least one dose of the vaccine, which reduces transmission.”1

At the time, Covid-19 Vaccination task force head, Lieutenant General John Frewen said he had not yet received a formal request for extra Pfizer doses from NSW, nor was he aware of it petitioning other states. He also said that the Commonwealth did not have Pfizer doses to reallocate, as current supplies had already been sent out to the states.2

Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the bid by Berejiklian for Pfizer doses to be re-allocated from other states. The other states also knocked back the request2, just as Berejiklian did when she received a request from Victoria when they were locked down in early June3. However, the federal government has now allocated an extra 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from an as yet unallocated supply from the ‘national stockpile’. This will increase the allocation of Pfizer doses to NSW from 150,000 to 200,0004. Did Frewen not know about this national stockpile? NSW Health Minister, Brad Hazzard certainly didn’t seem to know about it, or if NSW was getting any of it. Berejiklian seems not to have known about it, because she asked the states to send some of their allocations to NSW.

Why is there an unallocated national stockpile of Pfizer vaccine when many younger people are unable to book in for vaccinations because of a lack of supply? If this is an ‘emergency’ supply, then why wait until the number of cases in Sydney is well over 100 per day before it is allocated? Is 50,000 doses the entirety of the ‘national stockpile’? If not, how many more doses remain in it?

Some of the more cynical among those who understand what Scott Morrison is like5, believe it possible that his stockpile is not so much a national stockpile, but an election stockpile.

Sources

  1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-23/tga-approval-moderna-august-refocus-pfizer-sydney/100317264
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/23/nsw-covid-update-premier-declares-sydney-outbreak-a-national-emergency-and-asks-for-vaccines-to-be-redirected
  3. https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/rachel-withers/2021/23/2021/1627020422/dose-her-own-medicine
  4. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/nsw-will-receive-50-000-additional-pfizer-doses-from-national-stockpile
  5. https://blotreport.com/2021/07/24/the-appalling-morrison/

2 Comments

  • Russell says:

    There is something rotten about this clumsy, secretive rollout process of vaccines. And what’s worse, people have not been clearly told by good journalism that the fault, the enormous fault for the latest huge expansion of infections/cases of the Delta variant sheets right back to one G. Berejiklian and her hopeless, hapless – let’s admit, useless – pompous Health Hazzard Minister. All this horror started with the arrival of a plane, with unvaccinated staff and a limousine driver who caught the virus. If the foolish Premier and the upper medical echelon advising her had acted fast (within three or so days of the Bondi Junction outbreak) it’s highly likely they could have traced and isolated all possible infected people at that stage. The cost of that tardiness, the slack and slowcoach attitude to the virus being spread in the inner Sydney region, has led to our present monumental mess. The only loud voice I have noted criticising Gladdy over the disaster forcing massive lock-down, has been a Sydney City councillor, Angela Vithoulkas, who made her response angrily clear early in July. And she was spot on. Sloppy reaction time occurred and it was Berejiklian’s fault ultimately. She’s a dill – witness her foolish liaison with criminal Maguire -but then she’s also another disgusting Liberal manipulator of public opinion. Mother Gladys indeed!

    No doubt she’ll never apologise for her monumental error, in which lives have been lost, billions of business dollars destroyed, and chaos made across greater Sydney. Not to mention the mental health cost of a severe extended lockdown. I have a sentence directly for the premier, one of three words, and the first letter of the first word is F !!

    • admin says:

      Russell,
      The deeper and deeper I have looked into politics since I started this blog, the more amazed I am at the lack of understanding of how things work, the lack of understanding of the concept of evidence, and the concomitant mind-blowing adherence to ideology which has been shown not to work. Not only that, but the extraordinary inability to think even to the next election, let alone beyond it has staggered me. These morons just flail around, hopeless and hapless trying to put out little fires on their lawn as the whole forest behind them burns to the ground.

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