Edwina Bartholomew: Why I’ll get the vaccine as soon as I can

Vaccine hesitancy is helping tear families apart and many more people will miss important milestones if we don’t all get the jab soon, says Edwina Bartholomew.

I haven’t seen my sister for 18 months. She is stuck in London while we are here in Fortress Australia.

She has only met my daughter a handful of times and only knows my nephew through FaceTime.

Boo hoo, I hear some of you say. It’s a global pandemic and it’s her choice to live overseas.

Fair enough. But it should also be her choice to come home … once she is vaccinated and so are we.

So what the hell are we waiting for? My Channel 7 colleagues rolled up their sleeves a few weeks ago to get the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Guess what? They are still alive, they haven’t found a microchip in their arm directly connected to Bill Gates, their DNA has not been altered and they have not miraculously spread the virus to the rest of us.

Edwina Bartholomew’s sister in the UK has only met her daughter a handful of times.

All of these scenarios are absolute bupkis, of course, conspiracy theories doing the rounds on social media.

If you had cancer would you go to Facebook for health advice? If you lost a limb, would you check Twitter to see if you need to go to the hospital? Absolutely not.

So why rely on strangers on social media for medical advice on a pandemic?

Remember when we were desperate to get a vaccine so we could all return to normal? Well, now it’s here and we are suddenly on the go slow.

We started our vaccine rollout in February with the promise that every adult Australian would be vaccinated by the end of October. That was very quickly ruled out due to supply issues.

Now, we have vaccinated close to four million Australians. At this rate of 430,000 doses a week, we won’t be fully vaccinated until December NEXT YEAR.

By then, families will have missed entire lifetimes, businesses will have collapsed due to lack of overseas visitors, our university sector will suffer further with no international students.

My situation is not a matter of life and death, it’s just breaking my heart that my sister is missing so many milestones.

Soon, she will get her vaccination in the UK. As of this week, 61 million doses have been administered there.

People are lining up for the jab because they know how much is at stake. The same should happen here.

So, send me the hate mail, accuse me of being selfish or “poisoning my body”, I don’t care.

The minute I’m eligible, I’ll get the vaccine in the hope of meeting my sister at the airport, giving her a massive hug and sharing those everyday moments so many families are missing out on.

Originally published as Edwina Bartholomew: Why I’ll get the vaccine as soon as I can