David Penberthy: It is time for those who oppose vaccinations or are still dithering to reflect

If you’re still dithering about doing your bit, ask if you really want to occupy the same selfish place in society as Melbourne’s protesting morons, writes David Penberthy.

One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic is it has given us the clearest possible insight into who the idiots are.

Make no mistake. There are single-cell organisms blobbing around in the Mariana Trench, in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, that are smarter than the anti-vax and anti-lockdown protesters in Melbourne.

We should no longer make any bones about it. These people are rolled-gold, card-carrying morons.

They are an example of how in a few unfortunate cases humans have not so much evolved as devolved, as they are clearly too stupid to realise their actions will have the precise effect of prolonging and worsening a set of circumstances they claim to abhor.

It is hard to find the words to describe the unprecedented combination of stupidity and tastelessness that has defined these dark days over the border in Victoria.

Tuesday brought comedy in the form of spontaneous street theatre with flare-waving protesters gathering on the West Gate Bridge to belt out a stirring rendition of that iconic protest song, The Horses, by Daryl Braithwaite.

Protesters climb on Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance Picture: Jason Edwards

The protesters take to the streets of Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel.

On Wednesday, just hours after Victoria had been rattled by an earthquake that damaged many businesses that have already been smashed by the world’s longest lockdown, these geniuses decided to compound the workload for police by protesting again.

And of all the venues to pick, it was Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, the holy monument to Australians who sacrificed their lives in war.

Given that most Australians are smart, decent and sensible, the reaction to the scenes in Victoria has been one of near uniform condemnation.

What interests me are those people who, while opposed to the violence and upset by the offence caused to ex-servicemen and women, are still trying to argue the protest has some kind of basis in common sense.

At its worst, and stupidest, I have heard people attempt to argue all this violence is simply an understandable reaction to a draconian lockdown and a state-sponsored push to force people to get vaccinated.

These people really need to reflect on the gaping logical hole in their position. It is logically impossible to be anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine, as the one thing that will get us out of this mess is the near-universal take-up of vaccinations.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Byron Bay mung bean muncher who says no to big pharma, a tongue-speaking holy-roller who believes they are protected by the blood of Jesus, or some deluded CFMEU member whose mind is filled with crap their mates have posted on Facebook.

Anti Lockdown protesters rally at the Shrined of Remeberence. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

A Melbourne Freedom Rally protester at the Shine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel.

The combined conduct of all these people will result in lengthier and more onerous lockdowns, greater hospitalisations, more cases of long Covid and many hundreds more deaths.

It is time for those who oppose vaccinations – and those still dithering about getting them – to reflect on their thinking and behaviour. These people should really ask themselves if they want to occupy the same place in society as these Melbourne ratbags in terms of the impact their ambivalence or hostility to immunisation has on everyone else.

What we are ultimately talking about here is selfishness. The CFMEU/anti-vaxxer protest was selfishness writ large, as the state’s nurses’ union demonstrated so well with its leaders angrily demanding an end to the kind of behaviour that is seeing its members work long and harrowing hours dealing with sick people facing avoidable deaths.

Imagine also those businesses along Chapel St and Toorak Rd that have been shut for almost a year, and were hit by Wednesday’s earthquake, seeing all these buffoons protesting with many of them from an industry in construction which has remained open for most of the past 18 months.

The minority of CFMEU members who have joined forces with anti-vaxxers hail from an industry that was still operating until this week, with its closure only being forced by the refusal of many construction workers to get vaccinated.

They are protesting against a set of circumstances their own conduct helped create. Their refusal to co-operate is only making the freedoms they yearn for more distant.

And you have a situation where most people who run a business have been vaccinated twice or are awaiting their second shot, hoping and praying their customers do the same. Yet they are standing by helplessly, watching their city get turned into a war zone by those who have allowed their brains to be addled with the sort of nonsense conspiracy theories that in a less politically correct era would probably have seen you committed to a lunatic asylum for repeating them in public.

In a broader sense, the most powerful call for everyone to act and book their jabs is being played out in the miserable numbers of intensive care unit cases and deaths in Sydney and Melbourne.

Almost everyone who has died from Covid, almost everyone who has required a respirator, has not had their Covid shots. The answer is so obvious that refusal is maddening.

The best way to make sure you do not get Covid badly, or so badly you drop dead, is to get vaccinated. The numbers are so staggering and so clear it is beyond belief anyone would reject the offer of a vaccine.

Everyone in Australia is just two shots away from extended lockdowns, two shots away from intensive care, two shots away from a hole in the ground. It is incomprehensible that people don’t get it.

Although, again, Melbourne does remind us there are a lot of idiots out there.