Coronavirus: What’s to protest when there’s nothing left to protest?

A protester is detained by police in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

Here we are. Freedom Day has arrived in NSW.

Unlike the hysteria in the UK in July, where Freedom Day was one big party, more by media contrivance than government edict, the people of NSW have woken to their own Freedom Day and will be going quietly about their business with the state’s pandemic management measures largely gone.

Proof of vaccination – the so-called vaccination passport — is no longer required for a trip to the pub or a restaurant, or specialised retail outlets although they may be required at the discretion of individual businesses.

QR code check-ins are no longer required for entry into most places except for hospitals, aged and disability care facilities, at funerals and close contact outlets like hairdressers and gymnasiums.

Anti-vax campaigner Monica Smit.

Masks are no longer required in retail outlets. They still must be worn on public transport and on planes and at airports. Unvaxxed waiters in restaurants and cafes must still wear them when serving customers.

People will be allowed to dance, sing, and eat or drink at the bar in any venue at any event.

In NSW, vaccine mandates have been limited to teachers and education workers, aged care workers, disability care providers, health care workers, emergency and law enforcement workers, airport workers and transport workers who have contact with airports and/or quarantine services.

I doubt too many reasonable people would argue with those requirements in those particular industries. Some have argued and have found out at their considerable expense in the courts that their arguments have no legal basis.

In NSW, 93 per cent of the population aged 16 or more is double vaxxed. That figure puts the state in rarefied vaccinated air. On top of the world with Singapore and the UAE.

So, I guess protesters can stop protesting now, right? Well, no.

Going unvaccinated during a pandemic is the ultimate act of selfishness. Those who shunned the needle are saying they hold their own fears, rational and irrational, higher than mutual responsibilities to family, friends, and the community in general.

Protesters in Sydney's CBD. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

But of course, they can’t concede that. So, they have couched their rationale for going unvaccinated as a matter of choice, a matter of individual freedom. But not their freedom. They’re not fighting for themselves, they say, but for their children and their children’s children and for everyone’s children really.

In a video to her followers last week Reignite Democracy Australia founder Monica Smit conceded that Covid-19 was not only real but lethal amid a babble that infected and ill patients being treated in ICU were being denied ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine (remember that?) treatments and vitamin supplements.

Another protest organiser who fell ill after a rally acknowledged he was infected with Covid-19 and surmised the government must have sprayed some sort of Covid mist over protesters. “The sky tasted strange,” he said on a live video while looking as crook as Rookwood.

Acknowledging the reality of Covid-19 is a big step but there must be distractions, dissembling and disinformation otherwise it would raise awkward ethical questions of protest organisers. If this highly infectious disease really does exist then why on Earth would they exhort people who by definition are unlikely to be vaccinated and even less likely to be tested when symptoms arise, to gather on the streets in groups of approximately three to five persons per square metre, shouting and singing, spittle flying to all points of the compass?

Those questions are not easily answered without accepting prophylactic measures to reduce the transmissibility of an infectious disease include mask wearing, social distancing and ultimately, vaccination.

And if it’s lockdowns you want to rail against, does anyone seriously want to argue that the transmissibility of an infectious disease is reduced by having more human interaction rather than less. Anyone? Hmm?

The reality is, protest organisers in NSW have probably set back NSW’s Freedom Day by as much as a month or more.

Without anything left to protest, what can we expect from the movement as crowds dissipate and disappear? The organisers won’t go quietly. They’ve invested too much time and energy and other people’s money to meekly walk away.

What we can expect is that the more moderate like RDA will morph into political lobby groups across a range of social and cultural areas outside of vaccinations and pandemic management.

Yesterday, RDA social media was getting huffy about sex education in Victorian schools, asking followers if they would take their children out of formal education where sex education might be “face tracked” — despite the fact there’s been no announcement of a change in curriculum in sex education from Education Victoria since 2004.

RDA might have some political clout and bring diminishing support to Clive Palmer’s UAP and perhaps elsewhere, but it is being left on the roadside, outstripped by more militant protesters. People who have no wish to engage in the democratic process. People who do not seek to go through the time consuming process of registering political parties and pop their names on ballot papers to try their luck in an election.

The so-called Freedom Movement is fracturing and splintering. There are angry people in it crying treachery at movement leaders who they believe have set themselves up as celebrities. There are neo-Nazis on the make. There are SovCits who believe they are not bound by the laws of the state, issuing laughable notices of eviction to governors, premiers, and prime ministers.

There are people who lack the means and the numbers to engage in democratic processes but rant about political change in Australia by coup d’etat via death threats on social media.

In most cases, the threats are hollow but in others, dangerous. I trust our security agencies are keeping a close eye on them.

I said four months ago that we are about to find out if we are a smart country or not. As Freedom Day ticks over in NSW, the answer is most definitely yes. But we know more than that. Not only we do we know that we’re a smart country that has enjoyed a relatively light touch of a deadly pandemic by force of a sense of collective responsibility, but there remain tiny pockets of the selfish and very stupid. And we know who they are now.

These people need to answer the question, what are you going to protest about when there’s nothing left to protest?