By Dominique Tassell
Another week, another edition, another angry Mini.
And about Covid again, too.
This morning (Tuesday 18 January) we recorded our highest number of deaths in Queensland so far in the pandemic. In today’s press conference, Health Minister Yvette D’Ath urged Queenslanders to get their boosters, stating only one of the people who has died so far has received one.
The problem? No one can get their hands on a bloody booster. Just like no one can get their hands on a bloody Rapid Antigen Test.
Oh wait, apparently Council can. Weird how that works.
It is incredibly frustrating feeling this helpless. I want to be able to write an article listing where locals can get their boosters and find RATs, but I can’t. It seems to be a running theme; politicians seem to forget that Brisbane does not encompass the entirety of Queensland and our needs get forgotten.
I’ve considered going to Brisbane on a weekend and trying to get into one of their walk-in clinics. That seems to be the only way I might be able to get one.
But then I feel like I shouldn’t take that booster away from someone in the city, from someone who is elderly and more at risk of suffering severe symptoms from the virus.
Darling Downs Health states that they have no plans to hold another vaccine clinic in the region, effectively abandoning us in my opinion.
The federal government is responsible for providing vaccines to GPs, and who knows what’s going on there.
As we lay out in an article this week, boosters are basically unavailable in the region for the next few months.
Yet everyone is talking about the peak we’re going to see at the end of this month.
So what do we do with that?
We can’t get boosters, can’t get RATs, and the government is doing a bang-up job of dissuading people from going to get a PCR test.
People should not be made to feel like a burden for wanting to do the right thing by going to get a test.
It’s similar to what we saw last year, when huge campaigns were running to get young people vaccinated…when we weren’t allowed to get the right vaccine yet.
It is, FRANKLY, ridiculous.
It’s acting as if the public is doing the wrong thing when we all know it’s the mess behind the scenes that’s the problem. It’s the different levels of government refusing to take accountability and take action to help the community.
People are trying to do the right thing, and they’re being blocked at every turn. But don’t worry, the government’s made damn sure everyone is as scared as possible.
Again, I’m pissed off.
