Tuesday, March 26

Scott Morrison’s Denial of Duty on Covid Rapid Tests Threat to Public Safety for Australians | Kevin rudd


SCott Morrison’s bloody refusal to fund rapid tests for Covid-19 is wrong, expensive and dangerous. It is just one more example of the liberal leader putting his own crude political interests before public safety.

There are no magic bullets to end a pandemic. The public understands it. Vaccines are an important weapon. But only because they allowed us to move from the blunt instrument of city-wide shutdowns to a combination of other, more specific and intertwined public health measures.

This includes an effective testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine regime. All of these elements must work together.

Morrison’s abandonment of leadership responsibility for Australia’s testing regime, with queues snaking through city streets and rapid antigen tests sold online at exorbitant prices, is yet another addition to the many mistakes that have been presented before.

At each stage of the pandemic, Morrison has had to be drawn into half-hearted action, with catastrophic consequences.

Morrison has been obsessed with choosing political fights over his core government responsibilities, such as quarantine and elder care. Almost 1,000 Australians have now died in Commonwealth-regulated nursing homes that were meant to keep them safe.

At this critical stage of the pandemic, it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that all Australians, regardless of income, have access to free rapid antigen test kits at home. This is because each time a positive case is identified, it provides the opportunity to stop a chain of infection and continue to bend the curve so that our hospitals are not saturated.

Morrison’s myriad arguments against free rapid tests range from hypocritical to obscene.

First, Morrison insists that the Treasury cannot pay it. This is obviously ridiculous. Let’s not forget how Morrison spent $ 40 billion on JobKeeper payments to companies that didn’t need it – enough to buy every Australian household a dozen tests each month through 2024!

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Morrison’s position on rapid testing is ultimately a false economy because mass testing saves money in the long run. Public hospitals can easily spend more than $ 100,000 invasively ventilating an intensive care patient, or the chain of infection can be detected and stopped weeks earlier by a cheap rapid test.

Second, Morrison points to conventional PCR lab testing as a fully subsidized alternative. Aside from the huge lines to access a PCR test, these tests are much more expensive for taxpayers. For each PCR test performed by a private laboratory, Medicare is charged $ 85; by comparison, rapid tests generally cost around $ 10 (even less when the government buys millions of units in bulk). In other words, for every rapid test that replaces a PCR test, taxpayers would save at least $ 70.

Third, Morrison draws a distinction between medicine, which he says should be funded, and testing, which he says shouldn’t. This is a bullshit.

Since 1991, successive federal governments have funded free breast and cervical cancer screenings. John Howard expanded these programs to include home bowel cancer testing. The fact that the Morrison government itself is conducting a feasibility study on free lung cancer screenings suggests it has no objection.

Australia’s leading global response to HIV / AIDS also depended on providing vulnerable groups with free testing, treatment, condoms and clean needles.

Fourth, the government warns that it cannot satisfy Australians’ insatiable appetite for free tests, a statement that draws on a deeply elitist perspective on the public health behaviors of low-income Australians.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and Morrison mock Australians as hypochondriacs addicted to sticking cotton swabs up their noses or charlatans determined to fool government programs. Suddenly they insist on price signals to make sure people don’t seek help unless they are really desperate.

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Morrison may find this difficult to imagine, but not all households have an extra $ 25 saved for a quick test when they need it. This is a recipe for an undetected mass spread among Australians least able to pay.

Finally, Morrison says it will not “undermine” companies that try to profit from these tests. This is a total abrogation of responsibility, leaving public health at the mercy of companies that increase prices and that, unlike Morrison, heeded the warnings of experts about an imminent increase in demand.

The fundamental principle of Medicare is that Australians deserve access to health care based on their needs, not their ability to meet market needs.

If Morrison wants to make sure Australians can find rapid tests in their local stores, that’s a good thing; it should involve those companies in the delivery of publicly funded test kits. But since Morrison’s stated motivation is to avoid “undermining” his earnings, he seems to have forgotten who he works for.

One of the few things that unites most Australians is our revulsion at the horrific inequalities in the American healthcare system; Morrison’s apparent fondness for mixing business with healthcare suggests he doesn’t share that view.

Why, then, has Morrison taken this hypocritical and untenable position? I suspect there are three reasons.

Morrison may be trying to ease fears ahead of the election. Australians are watching the growing number of cases with concern and the rising rates of positive tests, now more than 20% in most states, suggest that there are many more cases lurking below the surface.

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If Morrison can’t actually reduce the numbers, he can reduce the numbers that are advertised in the media each day. As Donald Trump once stated, “If you don’t try, you won’t have a case.”

Morrison also knows that voters have now seen through the myth that liberals are superior economic stewards. Morrison is now the highest-spending postwar prime minister with a record deficit and debt.

The national debt is projected to reach $ 1.3 trillion, more than seven times the Labor government’s alleged “debt bomb” of $ 189 billion in 2013, equivalent to 55% of GDP, compared to 12 % when we leave the position. Morrison’s performative austerity in rapid tests is a feeble attempt to regain some fiscal credibility.

Finally, Morrison is now betting on this public position in a naked ideology of “personal responsibility.” He has borrowed this from his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, who thought he could politically skate through the latest UK debacle. But it is also a political code language for a Darwinian contest for the survival of the fittest in which the weak, the poor and the vulnerable are sidelined.

Maybe that’s what Morrison really meant when he said about rapid tests, “Someone is always going to pay for them, and it will be you.” Once we had Medicare. We now have MorrisonCare.


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