Politics

Everyone Wants To Know Where The Fuck Scott Morrison Is During This Vaccine Clusterfuck

ScoMo, where the bloody hell are ya?

by Michelle Rennex  1 July 2021
Scott Morrison astrazeneca vaccine missing

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Three days after Scott Morrison caused an absolute frenzy with his bombshell announcement that under 40s could now access the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from their GPs, Australia’s Prime Minister has been missing in action.

Following a National Cabinet emergency meeting on Monday, Scott Morrison held a late-night press conference to update the nation on how the government planned to manage the new wave of COVID-19 hitting Australia.

Spending the majority of the press conference sharing a list of things that should’ve been put in motion long ago — like mandatory vaccinations for aged care and quarantine workers — the Prime Minister also unexpectedly dropped the news that doctors would be indemnified from any legal risk if they allowed under 40s to access the AZ vaccine. In fact, the PM said under 40s were now allowed to get AstraZeneca from their GPs, despite health advice from federal regulators suggesting otherwise.

“To get access to AstraZeneca, if [under 40s are] willing to take on that risk, if they wish to go and speak to their job or their doctor and have access to the AstraZeneca vaccine, they can do so,” the Prime Minister announced.

However, this decision sent Australia into a spin with state premiers and chief health officers around the country quickly contradicting the Prime Minister’s comments, and general practitioners left boggled as to what to do when they received an influx of calls from young people suddenly keen to get vaccinated with absolutely “no warning”.

The messaging given out to the public since Monday night has caused mass confusion as young people are stuck trying to understand whether they should or shouldn’t take the AstraZeneca vaccine.

After Scott Morrison’s comments, Australia’s own Federal Health Minister and Chief Health Officer both said that the medical advice that Pfizer was the preferred vaccine for people under 60 hadn’t changed.

And yesterday, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk even urged Queensland to follow the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and Australia Medical Association (AMA) advice on vaccines, and Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young even explicitly said she did not want under-40s to get AstraZeneca over “increased risk of getting the rare clotting syndrome”.

“I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got COVID, probably wouldn’t die,” Dr Young said. “We’ve had very few deaths due to COVID-19 in Australia in people under the age of 50.”

“Wouldn’t it be terrible that our first 18-year-old in Queensland who dies related to this pandemic died because of the vaccine?”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian even shared that the National Cabinet had never made any decisions regarding under-40s being able to access AstraZeneca on Monday.

Instead, Berejiklian explained that the National Cabinet had agreed that GPs shouldn’t face legal consequences for any side effects a vaccine may bring, which implies that Scott Morrison went a little rogue during his Monday night press conference.

The issue now is that with the public being left super confused due to politicians and health officers sharing mixed messages contradicting the Prime Minister’s statements, Australians have been left wondering where the fuck Scott Morrison is to guide the nation.

Aussies are noticing that Scott Morrison has, yet again, disappeared from a mess he should be dealing with as the Prime Minister of the country. Much like his infamous cheeky Hawaii vacation in the middle of Australia’s bushfire crisis over the summer of 2019 and 2020, Australians are fed up with Scott Morrison running from problems that he’s literally paid to control.

With so much conflicting health advice confusing Australians who are desperate to be vaccinated while we all sit in lockdown 18 months into a pandemic, it’s embarrassing that Scott Morrison hasn’t said anything.

Even if ScoMo happens to be in quarantine, there’s nothing stopping the literal Prime Minister of Australia from hopping on Zoom to hold a press conference to fix the mass confusion he has caused. Just like there is nothing stopping the Prime Minister from releasing a statement or posting something on Facebook to help the public try and understand the mess he’s made.

So ScoMo, where the bloody hell are ya?