Proof Covid anti-vaxxers have totally missed the point

Rage from anti-vaxxers has merely served to prove their ultimate hypocrisy — and highlighted the message they just can’t seem to understand.

OPINION

Amid all the debate about the impact of Covid-19, there has been little mention of its most common symptom: Insanity.

And the extraordinary thing about this particular side-effect is that you don’t even have to contract the disease to exhibit it.

Last week I wrote about the hysterical over-reaction to the Omicron wave and the absurd responses it generated, such as the reintroduction of QR check-ins that nobody was monitoring and mandatory rapid antigen testing of perfectly healthy schoolkids. Both ludicrous measures have now been scrapped, having achieved precisely nothing.

It also came as the Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures showing Covid accounted for just one per cent of deaths in Australia throughout the pandemic and of those the overwhelming majority of cases had underlying health problems.

Sadly, although unsurprisingly, this was seized on by the anti-vax brigade as proof that they were right all along, so imagine their shock and anger when they came across a previous article I’d written championing vaccination and condemning the so-called “vaccine hesitant” as selfish.

Anti-vaxxers say they were right all along. They weren't. Picture: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

Fortunately, I myself do not have to imagine as I was privileged to witness it first hand and the only illuminating piece of information in all of this correspondence was that apparently some refer to themselves as “purebloods”. Where have I heard that before?

Needless to say, the greatest irony in all of this is that the only reason that Australia’s eastern seaboard has been able to weather the Omicron wave is BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE GOT VACCINATED. But irony is clearly not an appreciated commodity in the anti-vax world.

Likewise, it is also worth noting that were it not for the disproportionately huge number of unvaccinated or undervaccinated people swamping hospitals and intensive care units at Omicron’s peak the nation would have fared even better still.

I am the first to condemn scaremongering but what the anti-vaxxers can’t seem to grasp is that their actions give the fearmongerers more legitimacy, not less. They have made the health impacts of Covid — and their accompanying statistics which spook so many — far far worse than they needed to be.

Anti-vaxxers have refused to do the easiest and most effective thing they could do to reduce the impact of the virus — not to mention pandemic restrictions. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

It is therefore bizarre, but again not surprising, that my piece last week condemning the hysteria — as I have done loudly and constantly over the past two years — was circulated with my piece of a few months ago saying we were approaching a point where those who refuse to get vaccinated can no longer consider themselves decent members of society, alongside the accusation that the two were somehow incompatible.

In fact it was only because people did get vaccinated that onerous and often excessive restrictions were able to be lifted and it was our high vaccination rate that made the latest wave of hysteria all the more absurd.

Instead it is the anti-vaxxers’ position that is fundamentally based on the ultimate hypocrisy: That they should be able to refuse to do the single easiest and most effective thing they can to reduce the impact of Covid while at the same time decrying any other measures that others have to implement because of their recalcitrance. In other words, they hate lockdowns and yet won’t do the one thing necessary to end them.

They also accused me of fearmongering myself, based on that piece of several months ago. For the record gang, that wasn’t spreading fear, that was just calling you a bunch of selfish arseholes.

Restrictions have lifted after the Omicron wave, largely thanks to people who went out and got vaccinated. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Simon Bullard

But perhaps the biggest irony is that the piece wasn’t primarily directed towards the hard line rump of anti-vaxxers who are still holding out today. Rather it was those “vaccine hesitant” — the insufferably precious souls who were often pro-lockdown and scared of Astra Zeneca because they were so petrified of even the most minuscule risk to their health — whom I was attempting to put the cattle prod to. Those people who often fancied themselves as community minded and yet were effectively holding the community hostage because of their selfishness.

Again, eventually they all went out and did it and that is the only reason we are belatedly casting off the last of the Covid restrictions today. The anti-Covid vaxxers are now around the same number — and probably the same people — as the common garden-variety anti-vaxxers who have always been around.

Having said all that, I do not support making vaccinations mandatory — even though the unvaccinated will inevitably face restrictions in some settings.

Ultimately people ought to be free, and that includes the freedom to endanger themselves.

People have the right to be wrong. And of course other people have the freedom to choose who they associate with — or refuse to.

As it happens some of my best friends are still not vaccinated and I’m more than happy to hang out with them. But that’s only possible because everybody else is.

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