With an Aussie populace almost fully vaccinated by Christmas 2021 and similar occurring in the UK and the USA there is no way the public will put up with an additional 12 months of quarantine
I hope I’m wrong but I disagree with this statement entirely. Scomo has realised he has a problem. His language around the “risk matrix” after national cabinet last Friday, and the appointment of the Secretary of Dept of PM and Cabinet to plot a way forward post vaccination, confirms it. The problem is this. COVID has been demonised in Australia to the point - rightly or wrongly - that the Australian public now demand zero cases. Australians have repeatedly shown a remarkable willingness to comply with whatever has been demanded of them to drive cases (cases, not deaths or hospitalisations) to zero. Election results in QLD and (soon to be, probably) WA will confirm it. It’s the post 9/11 “who do you trust to keep you safe?” environment all over again.
If border restrictions are lifted post vaccination, and infected people introduced in to the broader community, case numbers will increase. People will get sick. Some will go to hospital and some will probably die. Governments will need to change the narrative around COVID so that people are willing to accept some illness and sadly, probably, some deaths.
Are state governments willing to do that? How will they do that? Damned if I know. In the US and UK their populations have become so immune to daily deaths in the thousands that they won’t blink if people are dying in the hundreds. It will be considered a triumph. How would Australians handle perhaps tens of deaths a day?
It’s a dastardly conundrum and one the federal and state governments will need to navigate if we are any chance of ever getting state, let alone international, borders open again.
QANTAS’s language around domestic ops is now that flying in the 2nd half of the year to “almost” pre-COVID block hours. That means 737 pilots might be back at work some time before Christmas. I seem to remember a base manager telling me in June 2020 I’d be back at work by September, yet here I am. 2nd half of the year, best case July = 16 months stand down. December = 22 months, assuming they’re right this time, which they haven’t been yet.