Yes, we're learning quite a bit of new medical information together with some old stuff, like the fact a virus will mutate and it won't just, poof, somehow go away (as Trump insisted early on, before the US lost 600,000 people from Covid).

What we haven't learned, or perhaps didn't quite believe, is our government is verging on incompetent. It's not deliberate. The problem was after the initial challenge was overcome, everyone relaxed and went back to doing what they'd always done.

Scott Morrison returned to focusing on winning the next election. Those at the top of the health response congratulated themselves. Routines became ingrained, urgency disappeared, and laziness triumphed.

The rot always spreads from the top and it's happening again. The PM is seeking to camouflage his failure by calling on the military, just as he did during the fires. His problem is back then camera footage of ships and helicopters made it look as if something was happening; today it's not, for one very simple reason. Lieutenant General John Frewen's business roundtable successfully busted the faux problem of how to deliver the vaccine. The trouble is no number of smartly-dressed soldiers hosting talks can overcome the real issue - there just aren't enough Pfizer vaccines to go round.

The blame for this needs to be placed on complacent politicians and a bureaucracy that's proved itself lethargic and inflexible.

Similarly, health officials are serving as a shield for state premiers by allowing them to pretend their advice is the only option for dealing with the virus, simply because it's been provided by doctors. The truth is exactly the people who allowed Corona to dock with the Ruby Princess are the same people who are engaged in the flawed attempt to bottle up the outbreak today. Perhaps that's why we are seeing exactly the same issues emerging with the response: belated recognition of the seriousness of the explosion and a failure to plan ahead.

This is the critical issue. The government's reticent to say when the vital doses of Pfizer will be delivered because it knows doing so will expose its incompetence. That's why Morrison vanished from the airwaves at the beginning of last week. He realised no amount of spin could weave a net large enough to cover the government's failure to prepare for a continually mutating threat.

We've reached K now, but there are still a lot of letters of the alphabet to go.