It would be a brave premier or chief minister, prime minister even, to go off half cocked and ruin all that before the facts were known. As chief medical officer Paul Kelly said on Monday, “as of Thursday, we’d never heard of this”.
Early reports, said Kelly, are that the variant causes mild symptoms in the vaccinated. The two known cases in Sydney were asymptomatic.
Still, right now, more people are concerned whether their travel plans are about to go belly up than whether we will see the legislation his week for an anti-corruption commission.
For Morrison, the seriousness with which the world is treating the new variant demonstrates the power of incumbency in a crisis, enabling him and his government, for a short while at least, to rise above the travails of recent weeks.
His call for governments to withdraw for people’s lives is popular but at the same time, if the variant does prove to be serious, the public will accept caution, such as delaying the December 1 arrival date for foreign students and skilled migrants.
Labor will use any opportunity to try to remind people of the vaccine and quarantine failures of the last 12 months. On the former at least, the government does not intend to make the same mistake twice.
Even before omicron came along, it made sure there was a good stockpile of vaccines for booster shots, more so given they would largely be due in the run-up to the election.
Greg Hunt said Australia’s booster program was second only to that of Israel which, by the way, has shut its borders to all international arrivals. Australia has no plans for that — yet.
Regardless of how this plays out, it is a reminder that COVID-19 is part of the furniture now and can intervene at any time.
