Professor issues Covid warning after lockdown protest in Sydney

“The people who will die will be the unvaccinated,” says Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty as thousands of anti-lockdown protesters stormed Sydney’s inner city.

As thousands of protestors marched through the CBD rallying against the Covid-19 lockdown, Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty laid out a brutal truth to those who oppose vaccination.

“The people who will die will be the unvaccinated,” Prof Doherty said.

“While vaccinated people are more than 90 per cent protected against hospitalisation, they can still become infected and transmit. Once we open up, globally or locally, unvaccinated people will be at major risk.”

The vaccines protect against severe disease, hospitalisation and death. They reduce, but do not completely stop transmission, which means the vaccinated still pose a risk to the unvaccinated.

Prof. Peter Doherty, an immunologist and pathologist, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1996 for his work into how the body recognises virus-infected cells. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Prof Doherty told the Sunday Telegraph that currently in the USA, 97 per cent of people in hospital with Covid are the unvaccinated.

“People who are vaccinated can still get infected in their nose and can still transmit, the vaccine works really well for something that gets around in the blood, that is how measles and polio work, they grow in your nose and then get in the blood and that is when they cause the real problem and that happens with Covid too, unlike flu, flu doesn’t get into the blood, it stays in the lung, but this virus gets in the blood and goes to your kidney and heart and blood vessel walls where you get blood clot and you have long Covid problem.

“So the vaccinated can still spread. That is the risk we need to point out to the unvaccinated. You can’t rely on just sliding by because other people are vaccinated, you have to be vaccinated yourself. It is a responsibility to get vaccinated for their own sake and the sake of their families.”

New data from the UK also shows how vaccination has dramatically reduced deaths from 35.9 per 10 million to 2.1 deaths per 10 million even though case rates have grown amid the Delta strain third wave.

Taylor Winterstein encouraged her thousands of followers to break lockdown to attend Saturday’s rally.Picture Instagram.

Anti-vaccination protestor Taylor Winterstein and her husband, NRL player Frank Winterstein, both attended the anti-lockdown rally in Sydney on Saturday.

“Be prepared for all scenarios including arrests and fines,” she posted on social media.

“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

Mrs Winterstein streamed a live video from the rally in central Sydney where she joined thousands of protesters not wearing masks.

“There is more of us than there is them, they cannot arrest us all,” she said.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard said that while he appreciates the right to express views, now was not the time as the state grapples with increasing virus numbers.

“But while we are fighting an unseen virus seeking to transmit to us all, to potentially kill some of our most vulnerable, we owe it to each other to keep each other safe.
Demonstrations are potentially the playground of this dangerous virus and don’t help to keep us all safe. Quite the opposite.”

Originally published as Professor issues Covid warning after lockdown protest in Sydney