Yes, at the beginning, 'we' were comfortable with the fact that we were down the urgency list. We were fortunate that we had the control measures under control and could wait. But eventually we have to get it going.RTH10260 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:59 pmConsidering that Australia has been able to contain and localize covid outbreaks with quarantine measures I can understand that vaccination efforts were kept minimal.As a result they were not the first to queue up for vaccines at the few producers. Though I would say, technology wise Australia would be predestinated to produce locally with the option to supply outside, like N.Zealand the South Pacific region.
The original plan, and it was a good one at the time, was to invest in producing an Australian vaccine. The government dumped loads of money into a vaccine being developed in Queensland and early trials looked really good, it would have been one of the best available. Problem was, the technology used some HIV virus proteins and the vaccine MIGHT show up as a FALSE positive in SOME HIV test procedures. The 'optics' of that were just way to unpalatable for anybody to approve further trials, so they had to pivot to Plan B.
The only vaccine that was available in quantity was the Astra-Zeneca, and we had plants that could be adapted to make the AZ fairly quickly - so its all good.
Except that the distribution plan, with the priorities about who gets it first, started out just fine, then got totally ignored. So they went on to Priority 2 before Priority 1a or 1b were close to complete - and they still aren't. The roll out has been completely botched by the Feds, who have no interest in taking responsibility for their duties, only in keeping 'on message'. The PM's background is in Public Relations/Marketing and he was lousy at his job. He did learn about the importance of 'keeping on message', but he clearly never learned about changing the message when the facts change or the message falls flat.
Then the blood clot reports in AZ side effects robbed people of confidence in vaccines. So we've had to shift to Phizer, which may not be as effective against Delta or other developing mutations.
The further irony is, of course, that the Aussie researchers successfully swapped out the HIV virus proteins it was using for something more benign with in a couple of months. Too late now, that horse has bolted.