OK let's have a think.
We have a vaccine coming that will take the steam out of the health crisis. This vaccine has been developed safely at an unprecedented speed due to the amount of resources put into development. At the start of the pandemic I read best case scenario was end of 2021, so the fact members of the public were receiving Covid vaccinations in December 2020 is a testament to the knowledge and dedication of those medical scientists. It's come so quick that our own government has been able to bring our vaccination plan start date forward to next month, but has probably been caught on the back foot because of it's speed.
In terms of priority amongst all governments now would be containment of current outbreaks in Australia, then reducing risk for inbound international travelers. Once that is done then the vaccine plan comes in to effect, thought first of all needs to be given to which order various groups will receive it, then how it will be distributed, transport, vaccination sites and staff, an knowledge campaign to educate Australians on how to get the vaccine. Along with all the other functions of government at the time. So I can forgive the government if their number one priority right now isn't loudly shouting "
Don't worry once we all get vaccinated and there's still some cases!" There's a lot of other higher priorities now, especially since the vaccine rollout is being expedited.
That type of messaging is probably best left towards the end of the vaccine program rather than the start. If people get complacent with messaging that a few cases aren't a problem then the things that are still required at the moment like hygiene, social distancing, app check ins etc may become lax. If the PM just says: "
Now we have herd immunity don't worry about low numbers of isolated cases, the consequences of that are not as bad as before when we did not have immunity" at the end of the rollout that's probably enough.
We can see some indication of what future messaging will look like when we get to this stage from this Federal Health Department document:
Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Page 45 under the Standown Stage - Public Messaging heading. Plans that will be implemented include "
Advise of the commencement of transition to normal arrangements and how this will be managed", "Coordinate public messaging through media networks", "Notify the public that services will transition to normal arrangements and the reason for this" and
"Provide the media with access to information regarding the change of the status of disease spread and the transition of the response". That last point will be crucial to ensure the media don't continue to portray low numbers of cases as a serious health threat as it is now. This messaging is the correct one but as the document states it wouldn't be prudent to start this messaging until well into the vaccine program.
As a side note there's also some information in that document about the future of borders and air travel in a Covid normal world.
It's easy to think that politicians are just playing political games for votes, and in some respects that has been true, but they all have a goal for re-opening as soon as safely possible and there's official policy out there about this if you look hard enough. I know as pilots we would want these politicians to be shouting the end game at the top of their lungs so we have the assurance our industry will be back to normal at a specific time, but that will come within time as this vaccine program is rolled out.