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Charles Wooley: Shame there’s no jab for stupidity

Science tells us when inevitably the borders reopen, the vaccinated will be more likely to survive than the anti-vaxxers. Might we then predict a proportionate rise in the national IQ as the crackpots checkout? Asks Charles Wooley

SPRING with its blossom, birdsong and promise of sunnier days is never the time to leave our island. In Tasmania we are lucky in any season but for now, until we are suitably vaccinated, travelling in our own state is the only sensible strategy. That way fewer people will die.

A challenge lies ahead. On Sunday, Tasmania will accept 150 Australians returning from the United Kingdom. Acting Premier Jeremy Rockliff told parliament, “This will free up hotel space in other jurisdictions for incoming Afghan people.”

He conceded that this grand gesture is “not without risk.” And rightly so.

The 150 will be quarantined in a hotel in the heart of Hobart. As we have seen repeatedly the temptations of the city are hard to resist and quarantine is no sure defence against selfish stupidity.

The government had more than a year to build a suitably remote, fit for purpose quarantine centre. The Ibis Hotel is a compromise that doesn’t really fit the bill, so it can only be hoped the guests will be grateful and behave reasonably during their stay.

Recently Tasmanians were much annoyed by the whining from our own foolhardy and feckless travellers who had come home to compulsory quarantine.

What did they expect? Selfish, self-centred hand-wringing over a temporary confinement in a hotel room gets little sympathy from any of us.

Can I recommend a hotel room in Kabul?

Or try the Port-au-Prince Marriott in Haiti (if it is still standing) after the earthquake which killed more than 2000 people and left 30,000 homeless and hungry.

Best Western Hobart - one of the state’s many hotel quarantine facilities. Photograph Eddie Safarik
Best Western Hobart - one of the state’s many hotel quarantine facilities. Photograph Eddie Safarik

Sorry, remind me again. What is so bad about a brief detention in a Tasmanian hotel?

Is it the takeaway food? If you are less than delighted with your hotel room, here’s a tip. Read the papers and watch the world news. And then order-in a slice of humble pie. It is said to be a nutritious and instructive diet.

And another thing, while on about stupidity: it was some reassurance this week when ScoMo congratulated Tasmanians for becoming Australia’s “vaccination capital” with the nation’s highest two-dose rate of inoculation.

Clearly not all of us are stupid but exactly how many are, will not be known until after everyone has been offered their jabs. Then we can do a headcount of the wilfully unvaccinated.

There are of course people for whom the vaccination is not recommended for medical reasons.

Aside from them it is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of Australians will refuse the jab for all manner of loopy reasons, most of them spread like a virus by social media.

Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein at vaccination centre in Bridgewater speaking with bothwell couple Judith and Richard Bowden and later getting his jab from nurse, Leah.
Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein at vaccination centre in Bridgewater speaking with bothwell couple Judith and Richard Bowden and later getting his jab from nurse, Leah.

Some don’t believe the vaccine is safe and others say the government is lying to us that there is even a plague.

When did the government ever lie to us? Well, apart from weapons of mass destruction and children overboard; but this time our medical experts are in charge. I think we can trust them.

Some cranks believe each injection contains a microchip which will control the brain (of those who have one). I must admit since my second jab of AstraZeneca I have been thinking ScoMo is looking a little better than Anthony (“the Gummint had only two things to do”) Albanese.

Is it a mixed blessing that the effects of these jabs might wear off before the next election? Should I try to vote early, before I get the booster?

Somehow the process of democratic government everywhere has lost the trust of the most gullible, uneducated and vulnerable citizens. Crowded demonstrations and a pointed refusal to wear masks as the pandemic spirals out of control are crazy. But worse is the crackpot refusal to accept (or understand) the protection conferred by the proven science of vaccination.

Like unnecessary travel during a plague, this is just another form of the present affliction of rampant madness and stupidity. Against which, sadly there is no vaccination.

A time of reckoning for superstitious needle-fearing conspiracy theorists might be just down the track, when at least 80 per cent of us are fully vaccinated and we open our borders. Then Covid will be more their problem than ours.

Anti-vaccine rally protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas in the wake of full US approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech anti-Covid vaccine . (Photo by Mark Felix / AFP)
Anti-vaccine rally protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas in the wake of full US approval for the Pfizer/BioNTech anti-Covid vaccine . (Photo by Mark Felix / AFP)

So far in the US about 2000 people a week are dying from the delta strain of Covid-19 and almost 99pc of them are unvaccinated. Despite intensive clinical trials on more than a hundred thousand people demonstrating that Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson were statistically safer than driving to the medical clinic, millions of Americans still refuse to get jabbed. Many of them are the same people who think Donald Trump won the last election and of course you can’t argue with conspiracy-paranoia and stupidity. Well, you can but you would be stupid to bother.

My medical friend Dr Syntax is obliged to argue the rational case because as a doctor he is committed to saving all patients no matter how daft their opinions.

“Doctors have an obligation to their patients to dispel the bullshit,” he told me. “It’s frustrating but when it becomes clear that the vast majority of people who die are unvaccinated then I think things might turn around.”

But not yet. This week many protesters arrested by police in Victoria, NSW and Queensland were singing from that same social media song book. “Covid is not real. It’s manufactured,” one protester arrested and handcuffed on the steps of Federal Parliament told television cameras. Everywhere the cranks are saying the same. They ‘research’ and chatter online in an echo-chamber that only amplifies their bigotry.

A man is detained by members of Victoria Police during a protest near Government House on August 31, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
A man is detained by members of Victoria Police during a protest near Government House on August 31, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

It’s not just the anti-vax madness. There’s the crazy QAnon conspiracy (I’m not even going there). There’s also the theory that aliens built the pyramids, while the Creationists reckon Darwin was wrong and all life was fashioned as it now is, one Saturday afternoon in 4000BC. The Royal Family took out a hit on Diana. The Holocaust didn’t happen. The Port Arthur killer didn’t act alone. JFK was killed by the CIA. The earth is flat, and the moon landing was faked.

Don’t google this stuff. It is endless and infectious.

Social media is the ultimate weapon of mass distraction. You can choose your own mental poison and feed your addiction. Unfortunately, you can’t keep it to yourself. Mostly the stupidities, while often offensive, are just dumb time-wasters.

But the anti-vaxxers are not just a menace to themselves. The handcuffed Canberra nutter protesting on the steps of Federal Parliament was accompanied by his wife and young daughter. What hope is there for the poor kid?

While Dr Syntax has a duty to argue with the anti-vaxxers, the rest of us needn’t bother.

Instead, we might wonder if Darwin’s principle of natural selection comes into play here.

In any animal population differences in genes and environment will mean that some individuals are better able to draw the right conclusions about the world around them and will be more likely to survive, breed and hopefully pass on their wisdom.

Science tells us when inevitably the borders reopen, the vaccinated will be more likely to survive than the anti-vaxxers.

Might we then predict a proportionate rise in the national IQ as the crackpots checkout?

Probably not until we can inoculate our whole population against social media. Failing that, at least like tobacco, make sure social media comes with a compulsory health warning.

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Original URL: https://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/charles-wooley-shame-theres-no-jab-for-stupidity/news-story/fbc7f8bb70186e5a16bf291900a21e31