Perhaps now, far too late, it’s finally obvious that Morrison never intended to use or follow the Doherty modelling in any meaningful fashion.
At the very beginning of the pandemic he made his political and ideological preferences clear—go to the footy, let it rip—but such was the overwhelming pressure for a medical, scientifically sound path forward he was forced to abandon his preference for one that was predominantly shaped by actual medical advice, and what’s more, advice to which the public also had access, so there was no question of cheating.
For months and months he chafed under the life-saving strictures that kept us safe and the economy in better shape than covid-ravaged countries overseas, but despite his desires, science kept him and Berejiklian in check.
Until Doherty.
Doherty was his talisman, his holy grail, it was blessed by science and hence untarnished by politics, it was his protection against any claims of ideology, but he knew from the start that it was simply the cargo for a cult, the cult of The Number.
The model was sophisticated, complex, and constrained by assumptions that needed to be obeyed and constantly compared with reality.
Morrison wanted none of that. He just wanted The Number.
Mediocre marketer that he is he nevertheless recognised the simplistic appeal of a single figure of merit, a way to strip away all the bothersome reality of the model and reduce it to a marketer’s dream. Expedient politician that he is, he also wanted none of the bothersome obligations and effort that the actual model implied.
Once he had The Number the way was clear for him to ignore each and every assumption and constraint in the model, particularly all of those that might change The Number, or those that required him to do anything else, such as Testing, Tracing, or Quarantine. All of the model could be abandoned, and eventually was except for the holy quest for The Number.
The media signed up to the quest with gusto. Evening news bulletins gained a second, daily slot, a companion number to the other holy number—the ASX200—the vaccination percentage. Endless hours of TV time and endless column metres of media were devoted to faithfully tracking The Number, and absolutely no attention was paid to any of the other constraints or assumptions in the the Doherty model.
As usual, blame must ultimately go equally to the corrupt Morrison administration and to its partner in crime, the mainstream media. While we can’t prevent the lawful operations of government, we can bring significant pressure to bear on them if we’re aware of mistakes or malfeasance on their part. For that, we rely on the media. If the media are silent, or worse, supportive of the government’s actions, then we’re lost. The endless barracking for “80%” allowed Morrison to hide his complete abandonment, almost from day one, of the necessary other conditions of the model, but that essentially criminal negligence—in my opinion—was allowed to fade invisibly away, out of the glare of attention to The Number.
Once The Number was reached—and don’t misunderstand me, getting the population vaccinated was crucial, just not the only thing we needed to do—then Morrison and cohorts could claim victory, throw off the scientific shackles—or rather, pretend still to be bound by The Number—and do what they liked.
They did. They Let It Rip.
All of this was painfully obvious last August, or at least so it seemed to me. It apparently escaped the mainstream media, unfortunately. For months. It’s only now that all the violated assumptions are coming home to roost that, finally, far too late, it’s being noticed that we’ve been had.
Hopefully there will be a political price to pay for Morrison and the LNP. It won’t in any way recompense Australia for lives lost and hardships endured, but there will be some reckoning.
Not so for the media. Sadly they have, and will escape unscathed from their complicit partnership in this grand deception.
Below is a sequence of twitter rants from me, starting in early August 2021, where I pointed out what seemed to me obvious about Morrison’s intent. I simply can’t believe that there wasn’t a single competent journalist who couldn’t see what I could see, because I’m no expert, but for whatever reason nobody in the MSM rang any alarm bells. Instead they just obsessed over The Number, as intended.
And here we are, Omicron raging, hospitals overwhelmed, transport paralysed, whole industry sectors shut down, the economy in free-fall because we reached The Number and Morrison and Co. opened up, in complete defiance of all the other requirements in the model.
August 2, 2021
[Twitter threads that are more than a few months in the past can’t be exported by the API, so I have to present them here as individual tweets]
The SON OF THE NUMBER, 50%, blessed progeny of THE NUMBER which is what will lead NSW out of the desert.
Will the media enthusiastically adopt this cult?
You bet they will
ALL HAIL THE NUMBER. The only metric Morrison has committed to (or maybe something smaller). I wonder why?
Originally tweeted by Peter Barnes (@infinite8horizo) on 2021/08/01.
August 21, 2021
Originally tweeted by Peter Barnes (@infinite8horizo) on 2021/08/21.
infinite8horizon - peter d barnes 