Matthew Abraham: The government has made a nation scared of being vaccinated against a life-threatening virus

The “roll your sleeves down” campaign has achieved in a few short weeks what the loopy anti-vaxxers have failed to do for decades, writes Mattew Abraham.

The “roll your sleeves down” COVID vaccination campaign is going along swimmingly.

The campaign has achieved in a few short weeks what the loopy anti-vaxxer brigade has tried and failed to do in decades of peddling paranoia and lies.

Yes, our governments and their armies of health bureaucrats have pulled off mission impossible – they’ve made a nation scared of being vaccinated against a life-threatening virus.

The turning point in shattering public confidence in a miracle COVID-19 vaccine came in a strange midnight media conference on April 8. It was called by Prime Minister Scott Morrison just 15 minutes after receiving advice from the nation’s top health experts about the extremely rare risks of blood clotting caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Acting out of “an abundance of caution”, he pulled the pin on giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to those aged under 50, who’ll instead get the Pfizer vaccine.

Australia’s chief medical officer Paul Kelly, who really should have been snuggled in bed with the leccy blanket dialled up to five, explained the decision was “based both on the increased risk of complications from COVID-19 with increasing age and thus increased benefit of the vaccination and the potentially lower but not zero risk of this rare event with increasing age”.

Run that by us again, Paul?

I think he meant to say if you’re over 50 you have less but not zero risk of blood clots from AstraZeneca but a higher risk of getting really sick or dying from COVID-19 so the benefits outweigh the rare risks and, besides, right now we don’t have enough of the Pfizer good gear to go around, so suck it up Boomers.

“It has not been our practice to jump at shadows,” the PM said, as he did just that.

Talk about wake in fright – after midnight is the time for jumping at shadows, real and imaginary.

Nothing good ever comes from big decisions made in the wee hours. The pattern on the pandemic wallpaper is that Australia is the lucky country when it comes to COVID infections and can afford the luxury of stooging around on vaccinations.

“But even now to say it’s in this country would be an overstatement,” the PM said as he waxed lyrical about the almost non-existent cases of community transmission.

Tell that to Victorians, once again being treated like they’re living in a leper colony. To say the PM’s overstatement was seriously dopey is an understatement. It’s the same sloppy thinking that’s seen South Australia’s vaccination program lurch along like a zombie in a bureaucratic swamp.

With these signals flagged freely from the top down, why are they so puzzled that so many Australians are reluctant, complacent or just plain too scared to roll up their sleeves for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

It’s no mystery. The commonwealth has deftly created two classes of citizens with the dividing line at 50 years of age. The more you deny consumers something, the more they want it. And the more you yell at them, the less they listen. This may sound perverse but it’s the way society works.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison poses for photographs in a CSL vaccine lab in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Instead of a slick, positive marketing campaign about AstraZeneca’s life-saving benefits, the feds are running small newspaper ads that look like they’ve been knocked up on Microsoft Paint.

For good measure, they’re actually threatening the worried over-50s that they’ll be at the end of the queue if they choose to wait for the Pfizer vaccine later in the year. What on earth is the point of that?

In a recent online ABC article exploring why people are holding out, social scientist Professor Julie Leask, a specialist in immunisation uptake, says she believes the real issue is people are waiting on more information, specifically those over 50 with a history of blood clots. People want clarity and “not for it to be just brushed off”.

“Give people time to get their planets aligned,” she says.

And here’s the kicker – Professor Leask thinks constant reminders from politicians could be a turn-off.

Fancy that.

Stop telling people you’ve got more chance of being hit by lightning than getting blood clots from the jab because in Australia you’ve also got less chance of catching COVID than being fritzed by a bolt from the blue. Our PM as good as says so.

And can we in the media stop screening vision of big needles being plunged into arms? It’s not helping. I’m booked to get my AstraZeneca jab next Friday. I’ll let you know how it goes.