[erklik]

> Australia knows it can just... get vaccines right? They are sitting at 27.1% fully vaccinated vs 52% in the US. What's their excuse?

Ahh. This one is good old pure utter incompetence plus possibly some good old corruption thrown in to the mix as well.

As much as a I understand, the gov decided not to buy Pfizer early in the pandemic since they could produce AstraZeneca plus an early vaccine candidate developed at University of Queensland at CSL (Australian BioTech company).

Instead of placing multiple orders with multiple providers, they put all their faith into CSL and it's trials.

Turns out, the vaccine at University of Queensland returned false positives of HIV cases. Stage 2/3 trials never occurred.

AstraZeneca later turned out to have side effects that quickly led to vaccine-hesitancy. By that time, Pfizer had supply issues since the US went full swing in to the vaccination drive.

There were some reports that the PM's mates were high up in CSL. I am not entirely sure of that bit but it doesn't seem unlikely.