Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were publicly campaigning for one. Restaurant and cafe owners were desperate, as were people who’d been cut off from friends and family for two months.
Thompson was a member of a Melbourne University research team, led by epidemiologist Tony Blakely, asked to provide scientific modelling to help inform the government’s exit strategy. The modelling didn’t tell the government what it should do but provided a series of projections about the risk of a further epidemic before Christmas.
The most important variable in the modelling – essentially a political one – was how far the government was willing to push case numbers down before it allowed things to reopen. Although Andrews didn’t say it out loud at his press conference, it was clear to Thompson as he drove from his Castlemaine home to Bendigo that the government had decided to go all-in; it planned to eliminate the virus.