John Maynard Keynes famously said that when the facts change, he changed his mind. Your average politician would say, instead: “When the polls change, I change my mind.”
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has changed his mind. Clearly, the polls have changed.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has largely backed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s goal of having state and international borders reopened in time for Christmas.
As reported on The BFD, despite claiming to be guided solely by the magical, mythical “The Science™”, Andrews has relied mostly on secret polling of key electorates. Andrews’ odious twin in the Far North, the repellent Annastacia Palaszczuk, has done likewise. As long as the middle-class mummy-bloggers were happily chirping that they would “StandWithDan”, it was lockdowns as far as the eye could see.
Clearly, though, even the masochistic Victorians have had enough.
Mr Morrison told the Sunday Herald Sun he hopes life will have returned to normal by the end of the year, with more than 80 per cent of the nation vaccinated, allowing people able to enjoy a large family Christmas meal, nights out with friends, a New Year’s Eve party and proper summer holidays.
“Without getting into a debate about who’s responsible for what in our federation, I think the most important thing is that surely we could all agree with that, we could all work as hard as we can to make that real,” Mr Andrews said on Sunday.
Don’t think that “Dictator Dan” is planning on letting his new-found absolute power slip from his fingers, though. The caveats and weasel-words in Andrews’ statements speak louder than a rubber bullet hitting a protester.
However, he cautioned that with only 37.2 per cent of Victorians double dose vaccinated, the task of keeping Covid case numbers low remains crucial.
“Even though we are not chasing zero any more, we are chasing the lowest number of new cases every day,” Mr Andrews said.
“Every 10 cases that are avoided is a hospital admission avoided, or put it the other way: every 10 cases that we stand here and report, that means one extra person, at least, is finishing up in hospital.
The Australian
Which is an exaggeration, of course. The ratio of hospitalisations to cases is about 1:15. Which means that Andrews has inflated the numbers by 50%.
It must also be asked: what does Andrews mean by “as close to normal as possible”? Actually “normal”, where Victorians can celebrate Christmas however they please? Or “new normal”, whatever that means?
The only certainty in all this is that Dan’s poll numbers are tanking. Otherwise, he’d never have even pretended to change his mind.
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