‘Illiberal’ vax passports hurting pro-jab stance

NSW will give jabbed and unjabbed equal freedoms on December 1, but Dan Andrews wants to maintain vaccine passports well into 2022.

The media has been guilty of deliberately conflating opposition to vaccine passports with opposition to vaccines.

These are two vastly different issues and presenting them as interchangeable is at best lazy reporting, at worst deeply dishonest.

There are plenty of pro-vax folk, both here and overseas, who are vehemently opposed to long-term use of vaccine passports.

They don’t want to see a two-tier system where some are afforded rights denied to others or to have people coerced who, for whatever reason, do not want to be jabbed.

Covid-19 jabs are not like the measles vaccine where you have close to 100 per cent immunity. Its effectiveness is closer to the flu jab.

With the exception of certain high-risk settings, such as health and aged care, there are strong arguments against mandating Covid-19 vaccines.

NSW will give everyone, jabbed and unjabbed, equal access on December 1 when the state is expected to reach 90 per cent vaccinated.

In contrast, the Victorian government is looking at maintaining vaccine passports well into 2022 with Dan Andrews saying that only the vaccinated would be permitted entry into next year’s F1 Grand Prix.

Denmark and the UK have ditched vaccine passes, while many other European countries, including Italy and France, have embraced them.

There have been widespread protests in those countries with massive numbers — sometimes more than 150,000 — marching against the passes, though you’d be hard pressed to find any coverage in the Australian media.

It can be argued that those who are terrified of the unvaccinated are undermining Covid-19 vaccines.

After all, if you’re jabbed and protected, why should you care if someone in the pub or at the Grand Prix isn’t?

That fear is all the more irrational when you consider that the vaccinated can catch and transmit Covid-19.

Infectious disease physician Clay Golledge explained to me recently the virus will be endemic, meaning we are all going to be exposed to it at some stage.

“Over the next 12 to 18 months it’s likely that we will all be exposed to Covid-19, often on multiple occasions and that despite vaccine protection we will likely get infected,” he said.

“Vaccines will protect against significant disease and in conjunction with new therapies it will only be a small minority of us that will require hospitalisation.”

As someone who offered to be vaccinated on air back in January I am very much pro-jab but that doesn’t mean I back illiberal vaccine passes.

Nor do I care if the person next to me on the plane, cinema or the cafe is double jabbed.

If you’ve protected yourself and your family then you should learn to mind your own business about other people’s medical choices.

OUR CHILDREN MUST BE UNMASKED

It’s absurd to force healthy children as young as eight into masks at school when from tonight, adults, no matter how perilous their health or vaccination status, can gather indoors in private homes where the virus is most likely to spread.

Forcing kids from grade three and above to be masked, indoors and outdoors, for seven hours a day, and strongly recommending masking five-year-old preppies is not evidence based, it’s a hysterical anti-science stance opposed by a plethora of renowned experts both here and overseas.

Read the full opinion piece here.