Reformed anti-vaxxer Julie Diamond can’t wait for COVID-19 vaccine

Julie Diamond was a committed anti-vaxxer who refused to immunise her two children. Then, she saw the light and now can’t wait to roll up her sleeve for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Julie Diamond cannot wait to have her COVID-19 vaccination — which is extraordinary as she used to be a diehard anti-vaxxer.

“I can’t wait to have my vaccine,” the 50-year-old mum said.

Neither of her two children were vaccinated, because 20 years ago she was deeply immersed in the alternative health world, where vaccines of all types are frowned upon. She even had her doctor sign a conscientious objector form.

“If I had a headache I wouldn‘t take a Panadol,” she said.

“I had complete natural birth with both my children. I refused any further ultrasounds. I believed that nature had all the answers and that I wanted to be as clean and healthy as I possibly could and use only natural resources to do so,” she said.

“The risk of my children being injured by vaccinations was huge, hugely fearful for me.”

Former anti-vaxxer Julie Diamond is keen to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

But it was her teenage son who changed his mother’s mind after being offered the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (dTpa) vaccine in Year 7.

“He told me I was an idiot. He said it was stupid, that I was misinformed and it was dangerous,” she said.

“I‘ve raised very tenacious, freethinking individuals. And for me to then not listen to them about advocating their own health rights and autonomy over their own health would just be really counterintuitive to everything I did in raising them,” she said.

“So I had to listen. I had to listen to him.”

In a candid interview in the upcoming Sky News documentary Big Shots, the Melbourne mother takes aim at the wellness and influencer culture that profits off anti-vaccine messaging.

“I do feel very passionate about and very angry about influence culture and the alternative health community and just the lack of ethics in that area,” she said.

“Because there‘s no peer reviews and wellness is as profitable as pharma these days.”

Julie's children, who are now aged 22 and 15, have questioned why she did not vaccinate them. Picture: Supplied

Her disentanglement from the anti-vax movement started with her children, who are now 22 and 15. It also came from her community arts group, which is stocked full of scientists who have gently swayed her with evidence-based facts over the past 10 years.

Both her son and daughter have been on a catch-up schedule and are now just one shot away from being fully vaccinated.

“I felt so anxious before my kids got their first vaccinations, but nothing happened. My daughter had a sore arm for a few days,” she said.

In hindsight, she is angry with the anti-vaccine movement for misleading her and has concerns with their reinvigorated online activities during the pandemic to undermine one of the biggest vaccination programs even to be conducted in Australia.

“I’m still really angry, I feel stupid but mainly embarrassed and angry,” she said.

“There is a toxic wellness culture that is obsessed with individual health but it’s the community health response we need to be focusing on right now, so yes, absolutely. I will be taking a COVID vaccine because it’s the right thing to do.”

BIG SHOTS: ANTI-VAXXERS EXPOSED, Sky News, premieres 8pm, Tuesday, February 23