Sunshine Coast Covid-19: Time to end the armchair research

The end of 2021 is nigh, thankfully, and all I want for Christmas is an end to conspiracy theories and a return of common sense.

Cover testing sites on the Sunshine Coast.

The farewell to 2021 couldn’t come soon enough.

Like the eventual departure of an annoying door-to-door salesman, the clicking over of the calendar will be met with some significant sighs of relief this year.

I still don’t know what the hell happened to be honest.

We’ve had Kelly Slater turn into an expert in public health, we’ve had lockdowns, rage about lockdowns, then rage about vaccines to try and put a stop to lockdowns.

So much rage.

I’ve not met many people who genuinely like being told what to do, fewer still who like governments, and none that like being told what to do by governments.

But sometimes in life it’s best to just take your medicine, pardon the pun.

I’ve heard it all this year.

Tech giants are microchipping us via the jab.

Regular party drug users suddenly concerned about the ingredients of something going into their body.

That countries, many of whom cannot get two states to agree on anything, have come together in unison to blow up their own economies as some sort of bizarre re-election strategy.

And all the while the death toll has continued to tick over.

I’m a pretty average gambler, the odd pokie success aside, but I reckon I’ll take my chances with a whole bunch of scientists who agree that vaccination is probably our best bet at reducing the severity of this virus and getting our lives back to some sort of normal, than an artist, yoga instructor or free-spirited tradie who have suddenly decided they are experts in immunology.

I don’t question a mechanic when my car breaks down.

I don’t grill a pilot on the science of flight before I jump on a Jetstar and funnily enough I don’t see many of these armchair experts doing the same.

So why this?

To turn what is, let’s be clear here, a selfish approach (those unable to be jabbed for medical reasons aside) whereby anti-vaxxers are happy for the rest of the population to take on all the ‘risk’ of a (not a live virus) vaccination into some bizarre re-enactment of the heroics of our war veterans is laughable.

Brave soldiers fought and died against a threat to this country and its people.

Covid-19 is a threat now.

Refusal to put your trust in science and get a jab because of some half-baked YouTube ‘research’ you’ve done is not freedom, it’s idiocy.

And all it’s doing is ensuring these lockdowns some are raging about which absolutely devastate so many small businesses will likely continue.

Our hospitals will not cope with an outbreak and I reckon I know who will be the first to complain when they don’t have the ‘freedom’ of access to basic healthcare.

Originally published as Sunshine Coast Covid-19: Time to end the armchair research