Like the Marvel franchise, with its unlimited instalments and spin-offs, a new Covid scare campaign is underway in Australia.

Like the Marvel franchise, the entertainment content exists largely to sell merchandise.

Unlike most Marvel films, this latest virus fear-mongering drive is turning out to be a massive flop.

The hook: There’s a new “highly contagious” Covid Omicron subvariant in town, catchily named NB.1.8.1.

Sticking with time-tested tradition, health authorities, experts, and media are playing the ‘cases, cases, cases’ angle, as the latest variant “sweeps the nation” with what I calculate to be Australia’s twelfth Covid wave since the pandemic scare series kicked off in 2020.

Exposition: “According to Griffith University, the NB.1.8.1 variant makes up more than 40 per cent of total COVID cases tested in Victoria, around 25 per cent in Western Australia and New South Wales, around 20 per cent in Queensland and less than 10 per cent in South Australia,” reports ABC.

“There are hundreds of different strains of Omicron, and the new subvariant NB.1.8.1 is driving up infections and hospitalisations, particularly in Asia and Western Australia,” reports the Daily Mail.

Narrator’s aside: Case counts and hospitalisations are well within the normal range in Western Australia (WA) and no one has been admitted to ICU with Covid for months, according to the latest WA Health reporting.

However, we mustn’t let this contextualising information get in the way of the narrative arc.

Climactic build up: Back to cases, cases, cases. It’s “pretty much everywhere,” according to ABC. “Doctors are expecting a further spike in cases,” so “experts are urging people to get their COVID booster jab.”

New COVID-19 variant NB.1.8.1 'pretty
much everywhere' in Australia



Endless vaccination is the only way out!

Climactic escalation: But experts are furious that Australians are not vaccinating enough. You naughty, naughty Australians. In the past six months, only 6.6% of adults have received a Covid vaccine, according to recent federal figures, despite the vaccines being “free,” i.e.: already paid for with your taxes.

Health expert furious as Aussies avoid getting the Covid-19 vaccine: 'We have
dropped the ball' 

Crisis response: Our protagonist takes action to meet the threat head-on. After all, the government has product to shift, so the vaccine advertorial must keep pumping.

Health Minister Mark Butler bravely does the media rounds, imploring anyone who can get a booster to “have a serious think” about following through.