Louise Roberts: Anti-vaccine mums driving the rest of us crazy

Many vaccine-hesitant women look and sound completely normal, right up until they start talking about coronavirus conspiracies and the menace of blood clots, writes Louise Roberts.

There’s a group of mums who seem to be the acceptable face of the pandemic.

Law-abiding, crisp in ­appearance and outlook, fastidious with keeping a hospital-grade clean home and washing their hands so routinely that the gel manicure barely has time to set.

All the kids’ vaccinations are up to date – that letter from Medicare says so – and there are fresh packets of masks stuffed in every reusable shopping bag and car side pocket.

The straighty one-eighties, we like to think of them as – except that they in fact present a threat to the rest of us pro-vaccine, community-minded Aussies.

Some of us, like those inside the Vaccination Hub at Sydney Olympic Park, are sensible. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

They are otherwise intelligent people buoyed by internet gibberish and whatsapp updates, from a woman whose neighbour once met a nurse for example, and who now flirt with becoming a pandemic statistic.

They look normal until, as they are about to justify their hypocritical and selfish position, they announce most sincerely:

“You know, I’m not an anti-vaxxer but there’s no way I’ll be a guinea pig for this vaccine. It’s all a conspiracy and we’re talking nothing worse than the flu.

“No way are you experimenting on me,” they trill, with another slug of organic sauv blanc.

Stupid, heartless and blithely ignoring the fact that Victoria went into lockdown for the fourth time because not enough people were vaccinated.

Tell these refuseniks you’ve had the Covid-19 jab at your peril.

But there are others who won’t listen. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Scott Powick

The confusion and horror will ­astound you from these Sensible ­Susans, masquerading as responsible people who get indignant at anyone who filters ahead in traffic but never waves a “thank you” in their rear ­vision mirror.

To them, the research and efficacy of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others has been “rushed”. (It hasn’t. Thank God for modern medicine.)

To them, AstraZeneca will undoubtedly give you blot clots with no family history of this issue. (The science says the risk of dying from Covid-19 is 35 times more than death from a blood clot, but hey.) And to them, the pandemic is an overhyped flu. (Easy to say from the cosy safety of Down Under thousands of kilometres from killer hotspots such as Brazil and India.)

They are the Covid martyrs.

A recent online survey of 2006 people by the Growth Intelligence Centre says among women aged 35-44, vaccine hesitancy jumped from 40 per cent in January to 44 per cent in May.

A Covid patient in intensive care in India. Picture: Getty Images

News that in just five months, the resistance to rolling up a sleeve and getting the needle has skyrocketed is a terrible but inevitable result of choice and ignorance.

Choice because we are relying on people to do the right thing and get vaccinated so we can reach a level of herd immunity.

That’s been the unwavering mission since our world was up-ended in 2020 when we could only fantasise about one day having an accessible vaccine.

Ignorance because the anger brewing from repeat lockdowns and adjusting to a pandemic life is now being directed at the vaccine rather than the coronavirus itself, which is the real enemy.

They are seething in the suburbs and the problem for us is they are, by nature, community influencers.

As household CEOs, they will typically take care of the medical appointments, so their hesitancy will naturally spread to husbands and partners – thus presenting a much bigger problem.

Very privileged people in a very safe country with ample access to vaccines, they’re choosing not only to ignore the science but argue against it with eerily familiar tones of the deluded anti-vaxxer.

The trickle-down effect means hesitancy has also spiked among younger women, single mums and parents with young children.

The data says mums raising kids on their own had the biggest increase in hesitancy – soaring from 43 per cent in January to 61 per cent by May.

At least a crackpot anti-vaxxer, who says the jab is all about Orwellian mind control, is easy to spot and dismiss. These ordinary mums, who are often professional-level employees too, are less so.

Suburban mums are proving to be vaccine hypocrites and holdouts when it comes to lining up for the AstraZeneca jab. Artwork: Terry Pontikos

Meanwhile, we’re told 58 per cent of unvaccinated Australians are concerned about side effects.

Because we haven’t seen the horrors of other countries, including the UK, a comfortable groove has developed where the vaccine is reimagined as a conspiracy. It just blows my mind.

They have no concept of what an evolving, menacing virus can do even to someone who lives in squeaky-clean suburbia. It becomes a human rights issue, but not about our right to be Covid-free.

We are now fighting a new war – us versus the ones we thought were smart but who are in fact very dumb.

And how shall history judge us?

“Yes, we lived through the pandemic of 2020-21 – but some of us ­said no to a vaccine because we knew better than the epidemiologists.”