With much of the world vaccinating children against Covid already has the Morrison government found a new queue for us to be at the back of?

If we know one thing about Scott Morrison and those in his government it’s that they don’t like to plan ahead.

They plan about as far ahead as the next round of polling or the next election campaign. We’ve seen this time and time again. We have seen it in their rorting and pork-barrelling. We’ve seen it in their attitude towards coal and carbon emissions. We witnessed it in their promotion of a budget surplus before it existed. Now we are seeing it with their dismal failure of a covid vaccine rollout.

I’ll kick this off by saying I’m not an epidemiologist or doctor of any kind, nor am I related to Nostradamus.

I think it’s worth remembering that Morrison went to great lengths early in the covid crisis to tell us all that schools were safe. No kids should be pulled out of schools.

Time has proven him wrong. Today we have schools in lockdown, infected students and teachers.

Of course there are those who will say that this is a new variant, and of course that is correct.

However, the Delta variant isn’t the first variant we have come across, nor is it the second, or third. New variants have been appearing every few months. Covid itself is a variant of the SARS virus.

With new variants appearing so often you would hope that something is being done to prepare the nation for the next hurdle we will have to leap over. Given the way our government has dealt with things thus far however, you could be forgiven for having concerns.

Nobody knows how the next variant will behave, how contagious it will be or what age group will be the hardest hit.

It is worth noting that so far the Morrison government has given no indication it is willing to vaccinate children.

Is this gambling with the health of our kids?

There are many Australians worried that the next variant could be one that has a greater impact on children.

We have seen the Morrison government’s attitude to the future of Australian children when students took it upon themselves to rally and march in support of real action on climate change. After all, they are the generation that will be left to pick up the pieces. To label his attitude as dismissive would be to put a positive spin on it.

Image – ABC

One certainly hopes that there won’t be a variant that emerges that targets children, but it would appear the only effort being put into preparing for this possibility in perhaps thoughts and prayers. Certainly we aren’t seeing any action in terms of vaccinations, he’s having enough trouble vaccinating adults.

I’ll say one thing for Morrison, he has been pretty consistent, mind you last place in the vaccination rankings isn’t a hard position to maintain.

When it comes to looking out for the interests of our children we find Morrison has put us in what is a  familiar position with his government.

Those already vaccinating children include countries such as those below.

We vaccinate our children for a multitude of diseases that they have virtually no chance of ever catching in Australia, yet vaccinating to protect against a deadly disease that is already infecting children is hardly discussed?

Not for you kids…

On a brighter note, today I was finally able to book an appointment for the next available jab in my area, my first, for mid next month. I wonder if I was 16 how long I’d be waiting to be vaccinated against what has so far been the plague of the century.

Till we have a new government is my best guess.

Leave a Reply