It's his prerogative to avoid vaccination, and it's Australia's to say that if you're not vaccinated without good reason (i.e. a valid medical reason), then you can't come in.
That's because the science behind vaccination reducing potential transmission, hospitalisation, and death, is remarkably well established.
Unsurprisingly then, governments and scientists around the world are doing their best to encourage their citizens to get vaccinated.
Unfortunately people who post opinions as fact on twitter, Facebook, and even football forums, now seem to be given similar weight to those with actual expertise.
That's a real problem, because the irony is that many of people who shout loudest about the need to get back to normal and "learn to live with Covid", are the ones pushing back against the simplest and best way of bringing it under control - vaccination.
I’m certainly not against vaccination - I’ve had all 3 jabs. I’ve encouraged any friends and family to get their jabs when they were hesitant.
COVID will be like the flu, a new variant every year and the Government will get to a point where it’ll offer annual boosters to targeted groups.
In the UK, we have achieved mass vaccination and 93% of the vulnerable group (over 60s) have been boosted too. So the need for restrictions in this country is pretty low. After all, imposing restrictions and lockdowns isn’t cost free, the increases in suicides and mental health has killed more people in my age band then COVID would have done.
Meanwhile, in Australia, their ‘zero COVID’ policy means they still have lockdowns, restrictions and stay at home orders active. Which is pretty draconian for a country that has a 77% fully vaccinated population.
Anyway, the philosophical point here is that people should be able to make personal choices for themselves. If they don’t want to do something that will benefit them free of charge, let crack on. They’re such a minority that they’re only putting themselves at risk rather than the majority people who have been vaccinated.
Despite the initial fears, Omicron is not as dangerous as forecasters first feared and we’re well below the ‘best case scenario’ of 3,000 COVID deaths per day. Hence the Government have started to relax a lot of the isolation periods and restrictions put in place on testing and so on. Even the SNP followed suit today.
