Victoria has announced an Australian first $190million package to roll out air purifiers in public schools as children finally return to the classroom in Term 4.
But there also appear to be other, more subtle, factors at work.
One is that a media stereotype has developed about Victoria’s COVID response. The stereotype is that the government is incompetent in the way it handles the pandemic. Initial failures in hotel quarantine and contact-tracing have tainted perceptions of the entire government response, regardless of the improvements that have since been made. The fact the most recent outbreak occurred as a result of a hotel quarantine breach in South Australia was conveniently ignored by some media outlets.
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Media stereotypes are generally founded on fact, and initially there were plenty of facts to support this one, as the hotel quarantine inquiry report showed.