Jeannette Young sounded at the end of her tether on Thursday.
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Queensland's Chief Health Officer attracted a storm of criticism after she challenged Scott Morrison's opening the door for younger people to get the AstraZeneca vaccine.
"No, I do not want under-40s to get AstraZeneca," she said on Wednesday.
"I don't want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got Covid, probably wouldn't die."
Fellow experts turned on her, as well as political figures and commentators. But Young, though sounding frazzled, stuck to her position on Thursday, and added: "People need to work out where they want to get advice from."
At the pandemic's beginning, experts (at least in Australia) were hailed as heroes and saviours, notwithstanding some differences among them. The politicians embraced them; the public asked why the leaders didn't always listen to them as they were doing now.
That gradually changed, and some - including the often hard-line Young - were singled out as the political warfare over handling the pandemic ramped up.
This week's furore raised wider questions about the nature of expertise, and the proper balance between expert advice and political decisions.
One obvious takeaway is that just because you are an expert doesn't mean you have the definitive answer - especially when the question is AstraZeneca.
A 20-something listening to Young might shy away from AstraZeneca. If she listened to former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth, however, she might reckon the doomsayers were being paternalistic and an AZ jab was probably worth the risk.
At the centre of the argument is the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation's advice, which prefers Pfizer for people under 60 but doesn't rule out AstraZeneca for them.
ATAGI's co-chair, Chris Blyth, on Thursday told the ABC he did not believe "young people should be receiving AstraZeneca at this stage unless their circumstances press for that. There are some situations where that would be warranted, but they are quite small."
That seemed to give broad support to Young's position, but with more nuance. But Morrison, at his news conference after Friday's national cabinet, denied he'd been at all inconsistent with official advice.
Morrison on Monday seized on the "let-out" in ATAGI's position, for practical and political reasons. He's desperate to speed up the rollout. Lockdowns and shut borders will continue while we're not adequately vaccinated, and an outbreak could easily go wild.
The PM's own fortunes are tied to getting the wheels moving faster. Added to this is an excess supply of AstraZeneca.
Young is not the only embattled health official.
Brendan Murphy, federal Health Department secretary, this week came under strong and personal attack from the Pharmacy Guild head, Trent Twomey.
The pharmacists have been frustrated the government is so late in bringing them into the rollout. They are just now starting to be used. Twomey said Murphy should "take responsibility for this bungled rollout".
Early last year Morrison had Murphy on the highest of pedestals, when he was chief medical officer and in waiting to be departmental secretary. Now Murphy finds the department's role in charge of the rollout has been given to a military supremo.
The government's new "fave", Lieutenant-General JJ Frewen, is not just top dog running the vaccination operation, but has an increasing public profile.
On Wednesday, following Monday's national cabinet meeting and Morrison's statement, Frewen sent a message to the states. In it he said "the Commonwealth will be opening access at primary care sites to people aged 18 to 39 who are interested in receiving AstraZeneca".
On Thursday Frewen appeared on two breakfast TV shows, speaking about AstraZeneca and the number of under-40s who'd "chosen, with informed consent, to have AstraZeneca" after Morrison's statement.
In an interview with Nine media, Frewen said Morrison saw what "military-style command-and-control structure can deliver in the way it can cut through" the process.
What even the military man can't do, however, is get enough of the Pfizer vaccine quickly. This dilemma goes back to 2020, when there was misplaced hope in the UQ vaccine, and priority was given to "sovereignty" - Australia's ability to locally produce AstraZeneca. This became a serious problem when the medical issues arose around AZ, highlighting that Australia should have had a bigger, more diverse basket of vaccines from overseas.
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Malcolm Turnbull is a professional critic of the government but his assessment of the rollout is widely shared. "I can't think of a bigger black-and-white failure of public administration than this," he told the ABC.
"The reason we are so far behind is because the government last year didn't buy enough vaccines, they didn't buy nearly enough Pfizer and they didn't buy any Moderna ... It is a comprehensive failure of administration ... You can't put a gloss on it."
All you can do, if you are Morrison, is to be seen to be acting, and holding out hope for a better future. So on Friday, he announced a four-stage "transition plan", which the national cabinet had agreed to "in principle" to get us from Covid-crisis territory to the time we treat Covid like flu.
But it's gossamer-vague. We're presently in stage one - "vaccinate, prepare and pilot" - where the priority is to suppress the virus. We won't reach the "post-vaccination" second phase - when the aim will be to minimise hospitalisation and deaths - until next year.
Even then, measures aren't firmly locked in, and the states would retain the final say.
Most immediately, the plan contains one nasty for people wanting to return home - international arrival caps are slashed.
For those concerned about experts' part in the plan: Morrison stressed their role in determining the thresholds for progress: "The thresholds ... are not going to be set by political deals and decisions or what people ... might opine on."
Of course, the experts will themselves have a range of opinions.
- Michelle Grattan is a press gallery journalist and former editor of The Canberra Times. She is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra and writes for The Conversation, where her columns also appear.