James Morrow: Let’s all get the vaccine and end the pandemic

Now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, why are so many on both the left and right doing their best to spread doubt about a vaccine, asks James Morrow.

Hallelujah.

We finally have a vaccine that promises to get us out of this damn pandemic.

On Tuesday a 90-year-old grandmother in the UK got the first Pfizer jab outside of a clinical trial, and all I can say is, I’d happily be among the first to roll up my sleeve in Australia.

Yes, I know the arguments against getting it, which seem to be growing louder by the day. That there is no need, because I am unlikely to get it, and that if I do, it probably won’t be a big deal.

Margaret Keenan, 90, is applauded by staff as she returns to her ward after becoming the first person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine. Picture: Getty

All that is true, though I could pick it up and pass it on to someone not so lucky.

I also know that the pandemic is crippling the West, that it is mortgaging all of our childrens’ futures to prevent a slightly increased mortality amongst the very old, and that China is using this thing to race ahead.

Frankly the prospect of what the world might look like after five more years of debt and distancing and mental health crises and ruined businesses and empowering society’s snitches and curtain twitchers to sit in moral judgment upon us is too depressing to bear.

If it takes an injection, the most likely side effect of which is to make me feel crook for a couple of days to end this thing once and for all, bring it on.

But for whatever reason, there are a lot of people who say, no, not just yet.

I’m not talking about how the Morrison government seems to be slow-walking this thing – though that is bad enough given their rosy economic projections rely on these shots working as promised.

Instead, I’m talking about how now, with the light at the end of the tunnel, it seems people on both sides of politics want to turn back into the darkness.

Medical staff at the Vaccination Hub at Croydon University Hospital in south London on December 8 where the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is being administered. Picture: AFP

Because like everything else in our society the pandemic has become addictively tribal, for both left and right.

It’s a cycle that was kicked off, broadly speaking, by the left. And it is no surprise that they might want to see this drag out.

By turning coronavirus from a medical issue into a moral one, the left was able to find a moral and cultural high ground from which to attack their enemies as knuckle-dragging, greedy, and suicidally dangerous morons in MAGA hats.

America’s early failures were largely the fault of Democrat governors, but the temptation to lay all the blame at President Donald Trump’s doorstep was too great.

Then there were the leftist politicians who fell in love with the control (Exhibit A: Dan Andrews) and their constituents who fell in love with being controlled (Exhibit B: Dan Andrews’ fans).

And Big Tech, which tipped buckets of money into helping defeat Trump in November, was and remains happy for us all to stay at home videoconferencing and squabbling on social media and getting everything delivered.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit on December 8, 2020 in Washington, DC.

But what is more surprising is that this tendency is increasingly seen on the right, which despite being the side of politics that has broadly speaking been against lockdowns and letting this dreary “new normal” become set in stone, has elements that are sounding as anti-vax as a Byron Bay earth mother.

Let me be really clear here: No one should be forced to take the vaccine, though it might reasonably be made a requirement to, say, work in aged care.

Qantas absolutely over-reached when it suggested that the airline might impose a no jab, no fly rule, and it was good to see the head of the International Air Transport Association quickly and diplomatically shoot the idea down.

But if you think that the response of most governments to the pandemic has resulted in a catastrophic mortgaging of our future and destruction of our freedoms, it’s hard to see how a vaccine is anything but a good thing.

Which is why those who like the “new normal” are so against it.

Note how in October when, in the US, the fiercely Trump-hating governors of California and New York each declared that they would appoint their own panels to evaluate the safety of any vaccine before allowing them to be administered to their residents.

A close-up of a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Picture: Getty

Or how the New York Times, which is basically Pravda for the privileged, seriously entertained a debate about whether white people should go to the back of the queue in the name of social justice.

And if the vaccine were really some ploy to usher in — as the darker corners of the internet have it — a new globalist regime where we are all microchipped like boutique spaniels, why was it pushed so hard by the Trump administration, which stood for four years as a bulwark against the machinations of the Davos Class?

So, my friends on the right: If we must turn this into a culture war, let’s do it by acknowledging that this really is moon shot stuff, and that the US versions represent a great triumph of the Trump administration and American ingenuity.

Get the jab and stick it to the lockdown-loving left, who won’t have an excuse to keep people locked at home fighting with each other on Facebook and ordering their goods and chattels from Amazon - which is the real “new world order” people need to be afraid of.