NATIONAL Cabinet participants may wish to claim otherwise but the extraordinary surge in COVID cases spreading from NSW and Victoria into other jurisdictions is a direct consequence of last month's decision to stick with national reopening plans despite knowing the omicron variant had been on our shores since late November.
It was early September when Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australians to "make plans for Christmas".
On December 10, Mr Morrison said after the final scheduled National Cabinet meeting for the year that "significant progress" had been made in the transition of Australian COVID policy.
Despite public incredulity and increasingly outspoken warnings from health experts, the message remained that we could - and would have to - "live with COVID".
Only Western Australia - less criticised lately as "the Hermit Kingdom" - has stuck to its guns and avoided the present situation.
If it's not a catastrophe, it's headed that way, the omicron surge unlikely to peak for another fortnight at least, according to NSW government modelling.
Australia is now a global COVID hotspot.
For hospitality, tourism and other industries hit hardest by COVID, a public reluctance to risk exposure is creating a lockdown-like loss of business without the financial assistance of JobKeeper.
Yesterday, the Tamworth Country Music Festival joined the COVID casualty list, postponed from Friday until April. For now.
Then there's the troubles with rapid antigen tests.
Repeated tests will be a substantial cost burden to many, especially families.
That's if they're available.
In an effort to maintain a notion of accuracy about our national COVID case tallies, state governments now say individuals should report their own positives, with self-reporting websites being hastily set up.
Governments might want to focus on hospitalisations, but case numbers are the basic measure of this pandemic.
Accurate figures matter.
In the past few days the mishandling of the Novak Djokovic affair has provided some light relief, along with a regrettable measure of national embarrassment.
But the NSW ban on "singing and dancing" in hospitality venues until after Australia Day (although not for weddings) smacks of a government, driven by Mr Perrottet's "let it rip" mentality, needing to "do something".
It might be too little. It's certainly too late.
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