So, let's be honest, as we said last week, this was always a race. 

Did we get jabbed before the next case arrived or did Covid win? Well, Covid won.  

We are not only where we don’t want to be, most importantly, we are where we don't need to be. Australia, and we have watched them increasingly nervously were, in the same boat.  

Not enough vaccine and too much smugness. 

The critical error was Scott Morrison saying it's not a race, when it was. Our lot made the same mistake based on the same level of arrogance and complacency. We don’t have Covid, so we can take all year to roll out a vaccine programme. 

No, we can't. 

Once Australia fell apart you knew the Government here was starting to panic. They had seen the Morrison sheen fall away, the blame game had started, the polls were sinking, and with it has come a massive economic bombshell as yet again billions get wiped off the bottom line. 

We are where we are this morning because we have no other choice. But the critical part is we have no other choice because we dropped the ball, we failed to act in a way we needed to. Leadership was lacking. Urgency was lacking. 

The answer was the answer so much of the world has got on with. Vaccines. 

Vaccines are the passport to freedom. No, they are not a magic bullet, but they are the best we have. They are effective, they avoid the sort of lockdown and economic damage this country has favoured too many times now. They are better than where we are this morning. 

And we could have been where others are. 

Vaccination rates at a high and successful level allow cases in the community because vaccines mean you don’t die or end up on a ventilator. Vaccines aren't quite complete freedom, but they are more freedom than we have. 

They provide more choice than we have. We shouldn’t be where we are. 

But yet here we are again, 18 months on, same clumsy result. All of this in an era where we have better options. 

Why don't we have better options? Because yet again the Government has failed to move, failed to fix, and failed to deliver. 

You could almost forgive them the failure to deliver in so many other areas, if only they had been awake enough to deliver the vaccines when they should have. 

This, yet again, is on them.