Expert Advice?

It's been a long fucking 15 months and the bullshit we have to listen to isn't going away.

The one thing that has got many people through this COVID time is the calm and reassuring words from experts. Here in Victoria, we had the very switched on Brett Sutton and Allen Cheng fronting the almost daily Press Conferences held by Premier Dan Andrews. The Premier would give us the stats and then discuss the current situation before turning the questions and "details" over to either Professor Sutton or Cheng to be the expert in the room. It was reassuring and they didn't talk down to us as can be the trap many politicians fall in to. In spite of the odd bit of criticism, Premier Andrews was steering the ship, but he wasn't performing all the roles of the crew.

So then we look at the Federal Government and the balls up of the vaccine rollout. 

Now sure, keeping in mind that Australia is spatially isolated from the rest of the world and so our numbers of infected residents are low, even zero, so the urgency for all 25+ million of us to get a vaccine is not quite the same as literally everywhere else! However, the problem now is that the advice that is being given to the public about the safety of various vaccines and their distribution and delivery is coming from people who are NOT experts. It's coming from the politicians again!

Why?

Because at this stage of the pandemic, it's no longer about leadership and good health advice from experts, it's about politics and campaigning.

Most of us, indeed some from about a year ago, were predicting that Scott Morrison would jump early to an election based on one of two things;

        a - Not wanting to produce another shocker of a budget.

        b- Taking advantage of the good public mood on being vaccinated from the virus that royally
             screwed up their 2020.

ScottyFromMarketing was going to go into his election campaign as the saviour on the white horse. But then a few unanticipated things happened. His political party was revealed to be full of sex-crazed sleazebags, alleged criminals, Ministers with offensive attitudes towards women, staffers with no respect for their workplace or employers property, the roll-out of the vaccines was not so suddenly extremely slow and unreliable, some vaccines were rerouted away from Australia, the timeline for the rollout changed and changed again, a vaccine was called out as having an unsatisfactory possible side-effect, the list goes on...

But, who came out to address the crowd on each of those occasions?
Scott Morrison.

And what level of expertise does Scott Morrison have with respect to each of those issues?
None.

Not an expert

Rather than having an expert in whatever the hell the topic was appear before the media, we had Scotty From Marketing. Area of expertise? Spin and politics.

Scott Morrison is not an expert on anything he is talking to us about. He is simply a man who has spent his entire career spinning situations to suit himself, with varying degrees of success. However, he is losing the battle, because when you are directly connected/implicated with so many negative stories, some of the mud has to stick...and it is!

Now sure, I have never trusted Scott Morrison, so I'm unlikely to say anything positive about him, but the average Australian doesn't like what's been going on in his Government with respect to rape allegations, sexual misconduct and his own personal ignorance and apathy about the whole fucking thing! They also don't like that they were promised a position at the head of the line for vaccines, but have been let down by there being 25% of what was promised. They particularly don't like the stories about blood clots being caused by one vaccine (even at very small probabilities). But most of all, they don't trust this Prime Minister or this government to accurately tell us what's going on or how to resolve the problem.

Scott Morrison is out campaigning for his political survival at the expense of us getting good and properly informed information from reliable and trustworthy experts. He's trying to win your vote. He's in damage control to save his government and their paper thin majority. It's why the likes of Andrew Laming remain, despite allegedly taking photos up a lady's skirt. It's why the likes of Christian Porter remain, despite an alleged rape. It's why the likes of Linda Reynolds remains, despite her conduct and attitude toward the victim of an alleged rape in her office!

It's all politics, all the time and it's unsurprising when we have a government comprised of non-experts and a Prime Minister whose single focus is his own re-election.

llama
@SirWonderLlama