The Project came for blood and took no prisoners last night as they absolutely roasted The Federal Government for its piss-poor handling of the coronavirus outbreak in Victoria.
Starting with pretty much the saltiest intro ever, Waleed Aly let viewers know that Scott Morrison and his ministers were suddenly too busy to talk to them.
As midnight approaches, Victorians are bracing for a new week-long COVID lockdown. With 12 new cases and 10,000 close contacts, a blame game’s erupted over what got us here. #TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/vh8HcQDcAr
— The Project (@theprojecttv) May 27, 2021
“We did try to get some answers from the Prime Minister, also many of his ministers tonight, but they didn’t want to step up with any answers. At a moment like this, they couldn’t find a single person to speak to us,” Waleed said as the The Project segment opened. Woof.
“Fortunately, epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely is more forthcoming, and he joins us now.”
Professor Blakely, while not as blood thirsty as our dear The Project panelists, criticised the government’s handling of vaccines and hotel quarantine, saying that vaccinations should’ve been a priority.
He mentioned that only around 1% (!!!) of the Australian population had been vaccinated, when it would actually take 15%-30% of the population getting vaxxed to limit the spread and prevent lockdowns.
“Then when we get up to 80 per cent (vaccination rate) or so, that may be enough that we have herd immunity and we’re pretty resilient and we can open our borders. We’ve got a long way to go to 80 per cent, but just getting to 20-30 per cent will really dampen things down and help with controlling these outbreaks,” he said.
Melbourne introduces lockdown restrictions yet again after just 9 new corona cases. It never ends.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) May 25, 2021
The panel then asked Blakely if Victorians should be blaming the Federal Government for the clownery that’s led to another lockdown, and the man (for obvious reasons), shit himself.
“Let’s put the blame side of it away and talk about responsibility,” he said diplomatically.
“Myself and others have been saying this for 12 months: in our textbooks in public health medicine, it doesn’t say ‘Use CBD hotels for quarantine’. We’ve been saying you need purpose-built facilities for 12 months; we need to crack on and do it.
“And then we need to stratify, so the people coming in from Sri Lanka, India, UK, countries with high infection rates, they go to those facilities, and we only use the CBD hotels for those coming from low-risk environments like Taiwan, South Korea, that sort of place.”
Waleed, in the exasperated tone that only comes when you’re done with everyone’s shit, said “That almost sounds like a plan, Tony.”
Kate Langbroek, on the other hand, had the fire of a thousand suns raging in her and honestly, fair.
“How annoying to live in the most overgoverned country in the world – or one of – and that when you need government, they just can’t do what they need to do,” she said with a barely concealed rage that I, personally, identify with.
“It’s infuriating.”
Lisa Wilkinson, who lives in Sydney, was equally pissed.
“Every Victorian has the right to feel angry tonight … four lockdowns in the space of 12 months is just untenable,” she told the Melbourne-based panel.
“Especially when the federal government has been sitting on its hands on this for so long. The confusing messages over the vaccine rollout, the fact they’re not setting up properly to do the mRNA vaccine here in Australia … just one thing after another, and here we are again.”
Victoria’s 7-day-long circuit breaker lockdown started last night. You can read about the restrictions here.
