Christopher Pyne: What are we to do with the anti-vaxxers come November/December?

Opponents of vaccines are already a problem now, writes Christopher Pyne. What happens when the rest of us are vaccinated by we still can’t open the country?

On Friday, I get my second AstraZeneca vaccine jab.

I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had two blood clots in my life, in my leg and in my lung. I asked my GP for his advice and he gave me the green light.

On Friday, I will be as protected as I can be from what we know right now about this accursed virus.

There are a lot of people in my situation. I’ve no doubt that August and September will see a big leap in the percentage of vaccinated Aus­tralians, because the clinics were chockers in May and June for the first jab and the second is happening about now.

I didn’t wait. What’s the point? I believe in taking advantage of every medical capability we have and both improving and prolonging my life. I don’t sit on the internet reading ill-informed dirge and then assume I have better knowledge than the experts.

Can you imagine if social media had been around when penicillin was invented by a team including Nobel prize-winner Howard Florey from Adelaide? Countless people would have died unnecessarily from ignorance.

Ignorance is the most preventable disease of all but seems the hardest to eradicate.

What are we to do with the anti-vaxxers come November/December?

By then, 70-80 per cent of the population will be vaccinated. I’m sure there will be plenty who are then having booster shots for new strains that are developing seemingly all the time. Yet there will be a group, which if it is 20-30 per cent will number millions, who will not be vaccinated.

This puts us all on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, I agree that everyone should choose whether they get vaccinated. On the other hand, why should anti-vaxxers put me at risk of contracting Covid and having possibly no ill effects, or a lifetime of lung disease and impairment, or even dying? Because while the vaccine is as good as it can be, there is a one in 10 possibility that it will not stop me ­contracting Covid from someone else who has it.

It’s not as though society hasn’t, through the social contract with government, signed over many of its rights to the state for the greater good and often our own individual good.

We have had compulsory seat belt wearing in vehicles since the 1970s. We don’t tolerate boozed-up partygoers getting in their cars and driving home from their revelries.

Indeed, if they kill someone in the process, the driver goes to prison. Back in 1996, the Howard government came to power when child immunisation rates were down as low as 50 per cent.

A rally in Adelaide protesting against vaccinations. Picture: Keryn Stevens

The Australian government introduced the “No Jab, No Pay” policy that dictated if parents didn’t have their children immunised, they couldn’t access certain social security payments. I don’t remember any ­outcry, particularly from parents of immunised children in childcare centres exposed to non-immunised children.

The rate of vaccination of children soared. It wasn’t the carrot-and-the stick approach, it was a very clear stick. If you didn’t protect your own children in order to protect others around them, you couldn’t expect to be treated the same way by the ­Australian government.

Just last week, the city of New York announced that restaurants, cafes, bars and other places would be free to deny entry to anyone who could not prove they had been vaccinated. Australian company SPC announced that it would require its workforce to be vaccinated or, I assume, they aren’t welcome at work.

The French parliament approved a Bill in July that requires a health pass for access to restaurants, bars, trains and planes from the beginning of ­August. The Italian government ­announced in July that it would require proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test before its citizens would be allowed to take part in indoor dining, visiting museums and galleries or attending shows.

Here in Australia, the national cabinet received advice last Friday from the solicitor-general that as long as employers acted “reasonably”, they could take precautions that they deemed necessary to protect their workers, their businesses and their customers from the unvaccinated.

No doubt that will be tested in court and we shall see just how far people can go in protecting themselves from the unvaccinated.

I can’t see there being a lot of sympathy for the unvaccinated in the general populace.

Tolerance for those who refuse vaccination will dry up pretty quickly if by December and into 2022, we ­experience lockdowns, restricted interstate and overseas travel, our economy continues to be hit by the pandemic, and our higher education institutions and schools that rely on internationals students remain closed. The same can be said if our ­hotels, restaurants and bars remain uneconomic, our live performers, ­festivals and shows continue to be cancelled, all because of the minority who believe misinformation on the internet rather than the medical experts and leaders who tell us that the vaccinations are safe and will allow the reopening of our society and a ­return to normality.

The rest of the world is learning to live with Covid because they are reaching a critical mass of vaccinated people. We have managed the ­pandemic in Australia better than any other country in the world.

But when our vaccination rates hit 70-80 per cent, the calls for opening up will be deafening.

If the unvaccinated stop that happening, it will change the debate about vaccines overnight.