Deni Varnhagen applauded by protesters she condemned as she arrives for day three of her vaccination mandate challenge

The footballer challenging the vaccination mandate has arrived at court to applause from anti-vaxxers she condemned – as her expert compared SA’s response to a leaking ship.

Nurse and AFLW footballer Deni Varnhagen has been applauded on her way into court by the very protesters whose actions she has condemned.

A much smaller group of anti-vax campaigners gathered outside the Supreme Court on Friday for the third day of Varnhagen’s challenge to SA’s vaccine mandates.

State Co-ordinator and Police Commissioner Grant Stevens is not scheduled to give evidence as he remains ill with a non-Covid virus.

The protesters held up a large banner and handed out leaflets, including one to Varnhagen herself, outlining their opposition to the mandate and to the continued state of emergency declaration.

On Thursday, protesters hurled abuse at chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier as she entered and left court.

Deni Varnhagen arrives at the Supreme Court for day three of her vaccination mandate challenge. Picture Dean Martin

Their actions prompted widespread condemnation from Varnhagen, Premier Peter Malinauskas and other politicians.

Several of the people involved in Thursday’s incident were part of Friday’s much smaller protest group.

One man wore a yellow Star of David, a reference to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, but told The Advertiser he was not Jewish.

He said he had “no problem co-opting the symbols of the Holocaust” as part of his demonstration because the Jewish people “don’t have a monopoly on suffering”.

This protester, wearing the yellow Star of David, tells me he's not Jewish but he has "no problem co-opting the symbols of the Holocaust" because "Jewish people don't have a monopoly on suffering" and he's "going through a Holocaust right now". @theTiser#auslaw#covid19pic.twitter.com/ktsTcfaAEp

— Sean Fewster (@SeanFewster) April 8, 2022

Varnhagen, fellow nurse Courtney Milligan, teacher Craig Bowyer, childcare worker Kylie Dudson and police officers Zacary Adam Cook and Rosalyn Smith are challenging the mandate.

Protesters outside the Supreme Court on Friday. Picture Dean Martin

They claim authorities failed to exclude all “obvious, alternative, compelling, reasonably practicable” alternatives that do not affect “common law rights or freedoms to bodily integrity”.

On Friday, academic Professor Nikolai Petrovsky continued his expert evidence in support of Varnhagen’s case.

Counsel for the government has suggested his evidence is “coloured” by his personal circumstances, including his work to develop an alternative vaccine.

Professor Petrovsky said the requirement for health workers to be both vaccinated and undertake Rapid Antigen Testing “gave the inference” vaccination “was not working in preventing transmission”.

“It says that vaccines themselves are not having the desired effect so RAT test have been imposed on top,” he said.

RAT tests were, he said, likely to “underestimate” infections while PCR testing was “too sensitive” and known to “throw up false positives”.

However he supported RATs as having “more utility” because they identified persons “shedding the virus” who “you want to remove from the workplace”.

Prof Petrovsky said transmission of Covid “was not a linear formula” and could not be addressed by currently-available “leaky” vaccines.

“With an infection, you can either protect an individual or you cannot – that does not apply to transmission,” he said.

SA chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier is flanked by police as anti-vaccine protesters surround her leaving Adelaide Supreme Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Morgan Sette

“If you go into a room with 20 people and there are two infected people in that room with Omicron, they will probably infect most of the people in the room.

“If you reduce the transmission by 50 per cent, by having one infected person in that room of 20, all 20 are still going to get infected … with a 50 per cent reduction in transmission, you will still have 100 per cent transmission.”

He said reductions in transmission “sound impressive” but are “often ineffective” in a health sense.

“The only way vaccination can stop transmission is if it completely shuts it down,” he said.

“The Covid vaccine’s (effectiveness) is so low that it does not change the fact everyone will still get exposed to the infection, and that’s the problem.”

He conceded that was “hard to get your head around” and compared it to “plugging holes in a sinking ship”.

“The ship is still going to sink, it’s just going to sink a little bit slower,” he said.

“You are not stopping infections, you are just spreading them out over a longer period of time.”

Prof Petrovsky said vaccines were effective “against severe disease”, not transmission.

“We have to use some other strategy at the population level, and the obvious (one) is test, identify and isolate positive people,” he said. “That stops transmission.”

The trial, before Justice Judy Hughes, continues.

Originally published as Deni Varnhagen applauded by protesters she condemned as she arrives for day three of her vaccination mandate challenge