?Living with Covid? has turned Scott Morrison?s promise sour before the summer is out

Supermarket shelves stripped bare, hospitals straining under pressure and worried Australians unable to access tests - welcome to the reality of living with Covid.

Far from the hot vaxxed summer Australians were looking forward to, the Omicron wave has thrust the country into yet another season of uncertainty, panic and fear.

Confused and seeking assurance, the public has turned to the government for help - but lo and behold, the government was busy pursuing its strategy of getting out of everyone's lives.

Driven by a laissez-faire zeal, Scott Morrison has stressed for months that governments of all persuasions needed to extricate themselves from the lives of Australians as we all learnt to live with Covid.

The idea was simple. Once most of the population was vaccinated, let the virus run freely in the community with limited restrictions on people's movements. It was all of Craig Kelly's Christmases come at once.

"Of course we take Omicron and Covid seriously, but we also value the lifestyle and the way of life we have in Australia, and I want Australians to be able to enjoy that as much as is safely possible," Morrison said in December.

Switching the mantle of responsibility from government to individuals and the free market, Morrison stressed that Australians now needed to "make their own choices about their own health and their own lives".