How to spot an anti-vaxxer: the most dangerous people on the planet

Jack the Insider says anti-vaxxers are the most dangerous people on the planet right now. Picture: Getty Images

I got the jab yesterday. I’ll receive the second jab of the AstraZeneca vaccine on 30 June.

Before you ask, no I did not emit a 5G signal that can only be picked up by Chinese submarines. I did not rouse this morning in a Kafkaesque nightmare, having shape-shifted to a hexapod. As far as I can tell, my DNA has not been altered into lizard form. I have not felt the need to melt the credit card purchasing Microsoft products. I’m using MS Word now. It’s OK. Not great. I really don’t need another copy.

I wrote about this last week, pre-jab. There was some confusion about it that I need to clarify. I believed I was scheduled to receive the first jab because I was 50 or more. But that was incorrect. I was in category 1b – either 70 years or older which I’m not, or presenting with an underlying health condition, which I have.

I had cancer surgery last year and while the surgeons are confident that the nasty little carcinomas have been removed, the diagnosis remains for at least another four years provided scans are clear and I present with no symptoms.

The roll out for people 50 or more without underlying health conditions is stage 2a and according to the federal health department website that will take place “in the middle of the year”.

I can’t fault the vaccination process. There was a short queue at my clinic. It was all over in 20 minutes.

Just received Astra Zeneca jab #1. Thought it was for anyone 50 plus but it's 70 plus and/or immune system suppressed. FWIW I could punch up anyone in the waiting room.

— Jack the Insider (@JacktheInsider) March 29, 2021

I am astonished and feel a little guilty that I received the vaccine while frontline health workers in Queensland, some treating COVID-19 infectious patients, are yet to receive theirs.

According to AMA President Omar Karshid, only half of Queensland’s frontline health workers had been vaccinated last week and while that figure is closer to 90 per cent as of Tuesday, it is an unacceptable situation by any measure.

The problem in this case seems to have stemmed from the Queensland Health Department who decided for some reason to stockpile the vaccine. It took federal Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly to wag his finger at the states and Queensland in particular.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has questions to answer but social media was full of blame for the federal government as well.

Certainly, there are political costs to getting the vaccination roll out wrong. The Morrison government is acutely aware of this. Under siege over the treatment of women within the political sphere and elsewhere, the Prime Minister and his Health Minister, Greg Hunt, know that if the roll out is littered with problems and COVID-19 outbreaks occur forcing further restrictions on the population with all the associated economic costs, they can pretty much pack their bags.

Perhaps we should appreciate there will be teething problems, bureaucratic fumbling, and shortcomings from a lack of communication.

What we can say thus far, is the roll out has been slow but given our health system is one of the world’s best and we have the capacity to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine under licence in the country, there should not be any issues with supply as we move forward.

Great care needs to be taken at this stage of the roll out. Where problems arise, they will be quickly snaffled by anti-vaxxers and ruthlessly exaggerated and conflated.

They are the most dangerous people on the planet right now. If that sounds like hyperbole, remember these are the same people who through their recklessness have allowed diseases such as measles to rise again in western populations. Imagine for a moment the morality of a person who allows an infant to die of measles, in blindness, in acute pain and suffering just to give a one finger salute to medical science.

Picture: Getty Images

I have watched these people closely and I know how they operate. For the most part, they don’t babble about 5G hook-ups with the Rothschilds or DNA mutations. Well, they do but only when they are chatting among themselves in one of the wretched social media platforms that still permit their nonsense.

What they are engaged in with the rest of the community is a psy-op and psy-ops won’t work if they try to sell complicated conspiracies.

They have to ease people in by planting seeds of doubt. It’s easy enough because this is the first time in living memory where communitywide vaccinations are required, where everyone is offered the vaccine regardless of age or geographical location. COVID-19 vaccines have been subject to accelerated clinical testing. That doesn’t mean the testing has been inadequate but anti-vaxxers will play on these forms of community anxiety.

Picture: Getty Images

When they’re presented with hard evidence, data from a stage 3 clinical trial of the vaccine, for example, they’re ignorance of process and desperately weak arguments come to the fore. Anti-vaxxers hate scientific reasoning. They hate hard data.

The most common refrain from an anti-vaxxer is, “I’m not anti-vaccine but…”. When you hear that phrase, you can be confident you are in their company.

They know enough about the dissemination of misinformation not to go too far. Not at first anyway.

Most of the anti-vaccination folk hail from what we might loosely call the wellness community – the sorts of people who think they can cure cancer with a diet heavy in brussels sprouts. Trust me, as someone who has jumped through cancer hoops, these people will offer their advice uninvited and unwelcome and always with a price tag attached.

Picture: AFP

What they have in common is an innate cynicism with officialdom. There’s nothing wrong with being a little cynical but when it is paired with an intrinsic belief in their own methods and ersatz treatments, it becomes a major problem.

Why do they do this? Unsurprisingly, it’s about money from sales of products they’re inevitably flogging.

That’s their con. It’s not about ideology or freedoms of association or freedoms of speech, although they demand the right to spread lies and misinformation. It is first and foremost a grift. “Don’t get vaccinated. Buy our herbal oils, our vitamins, our organic this and that. Buy our lamps that make pretty colours.”

And they’ll keep going, latching onto every mistake, every misstep, every failure of the roll out.