Vaccine passport opens the door to ugly segregation

’The case is closed – Covid is more comparable to influenza and nothing like smallpox.’

Recent polls suggest most Australians support vaccine passports. History, however, is littered with examples of a temporary popular opinion being dead wrong.

Our great-grandparents lived in a world where smallpox outbreaks occurred in Australia. If we had a smallpox-like outbreak now with 30 per cent of infections resulting in a fatality (and younger people overly represented) there’d be little need for a debate about the worth of a vaccine passport; if government didn’t mandate one the people rightly would.

At the other end of the spectrum is regular flu. It’s forgotten now but 2017 and 2019 were relatively bad flu seasons in Australia and there was zero discussion about the need for a flu vaccine passport. If we had introduced a flu vaccine passport then, yes, there would have been a small reduction in flu fatalities, but it’s also true there would be fewer fatalities if we banned motor vehicles. Both are absurd suggestions because it would have been self-evident that the collateral economic and societal damage was too high a price.

The question facing Australia today is this: if a smallpox-like virus would justify a vaccine passport but a bad flu season does not, then what rate of fatalities justifies their introduction in a liberal society and suspension of our hard-earned liberties? That is not a question for health bureaucrats; it’s a question to be answered by political leaders in consultation with a range of experts.

Covid is worse than regular flu but it’s also true Covid is closer to regular flu than smallpox.

Here are the undisputed facts. The average lifespan of an Australian is 82.6 years. The average age of Covid fatalities in Australia is 85. Since the pandemic began, the Covid fatality rate for Australians under 50 is four in 12,000. Sixty-six per cent of Covid deaths have been in nursing homes. Seventy-three per cent of Covid deaths involved pre-existing chronic health conditions and a higher number involved non-chronic but somewhat serious health complications.

The case is closed – Covid is more comparable to influenza and nothing like smallpox. If we had no lockdowns then our overall fatalities would have risen but these statistical ratios would have held. Covid is serious, but these facts do not justify societal upheaval. They do not justify a Jim Crow-style Covid segregation and that is precisely what a Covid vaccine passport will do for many.

There is so much conflicting Covid data flying around it’s hard to be certain, but an international consensus has emerged – the vaccinated are largely protected from hospitalisation and death but they still catch and transmit Covid. There is debate as to whether the infectious are equally as likely to transmit Covid, but the mere fact there is a debate on that point means it would be wrong to marginalise millions of our citizens on uncertain data.

Before we rush headlong into a two-tiered society, with perhaps one in five Australians condemned to perpetual lockdown and excluded from many aspects of life, let’s pause and think through the practicalities.

Workplaces will be torn apart; many of those who would prefer not to have a Covid vaccine will be forced to resign or undertake a medical procedure in which they are doing so only because their livelihood depends on it. That inevitably is going to create tension between employees and employers and between fellow employees. The same can be said for churches, sporting groups, social groups and so on.

What about kids’ birthday parties? When parents send an invitation, are they going to have to stipulate that only the vaccinated can attend? Will the host demand to see the vaccinated status of parents as they enter the party? It would convert a happy, innocent event into one with tension.

There will be millions of vaccinated Australians who are typically citizens of goodwill who, if vaccine passports are mandated, will continue to have an overly alarmist view of the Covid threat. These people will falsely, but in a real way, consider many they know to be unclean and dangerous. That will be a very ugly Australia, and reprehensible for our leaders to legislate that outcome.

Last weekend Prime Minister Boris Johnson backed down from implementing Covid vaccine passports in England. Johnson has been disappointing in many ways but this was a relief. The credit belongs to Tory backbenchers who in significant numbers voiced their concerns about legislating a two-tier society and the marginalisation of millions. The fact so few backbenchers in Australian parliaments have taken a similar stand is shameful.

We do, however, want to pay credit to the Chief Minister of the ACT, Labor’s Andrew Barr, who told The Australian Financial Review last week he was opposed to vaccine passports because of “privacy, the potential for fraud, legal liability and even exposure to a human rights challenge”.

Judging from the recent comments of our woeful state and federal leaders it appears vaccine passports are coming at us like a freight train. At some point they inevitably will be discarded, but how much damage will be done between now and then?

Campbell Newman is a Senate candidate for the Liberal Democrats.