Careful health messaging key to stop winter COVID crisis

The decision last week by the health regulator ATAGI to approve a fourth COVID-19 shot for anybody aged 30 or over is significant for two reasons.

First – if obviously – it is vital if we are to “live with COVID” successfully that Australians keep their vaccinations up to date, particularly as the efficacy of the first and second shots – now several months old for many of us – starts to decline.

Second, it is a welcome sign that with case numbers stubbornly high the authorities are finally acting with some urgency to forestall a crippling outbreak fuelled by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants and seasonal conditions that could match the worst of what we saw in January.

For it has certainly felt that COVID just dropped off the radar in recent months. It’s almost bewildering, in fact, how quickly we went from a nation baying for blood when Novak Djokovic arrived in Melbourne in January with an incomplete vaccination status to barely caring about COVID at all by the time of the May federal election, when only 1 per cent of those polled in the ABC’s Vote Compass survey rated the pandemic an important issue.

Vaccines have – rightly – made us feel safer and public messaging has increasingly told us that COVID is now a matter of personal, not government, responsibility, even if it has, ironically, made us worry less when perhaps we should have worried more.

It’s understandable that after two and a half years we just want the whole thing to go away, perhaps suffering from what the World Health Organisation calls “pandemic fatigue”, less and less motivated to follow health advice or even to stay informed about the effects of COVID.

The trouble is, as we all know when we can bear to engage with it, COVID won’t just go away. It is wily, persistent, adaptable and determined. And the numbers suggest it is more successful than ever, with 256,000 active cases across Australia on Friday, 3977 in hospital and the death toll relentlessly ticking on past the 10,000 milestone reached last week.

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Living with COVID, a realpolitik phrase once tossed around so lightly, has come to mean accepting into our lives a virus that is on track in 2022 to kill more people than anything other than heart disease. Unlike heart disease, it is contagious, which means its reach extends well beyond those who become seriously ill to affect the livelihoods of many more. Is there a school, workplace or sporting club in the land that COVID does not currently impact?

Yes, many of those who contract it have mild symptoms but an unfortunate few go down hard. Nor does catching it confer immunity, as we used to hope – reinfection is not uncommon among the 8 million Australians now estimated to have had the virus. “Long” COVID can be debilitating. Business leaders are increasingly concerned about the long-term effects on the economy caused by staff shortages and disruptions.