Australia is already on its way to being a failed state by now. Police and military patrol the streets to enforce rules, “papers please” tyranny is required to live, and soon they’ll demand complete surveillance and control in your own house.
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They are even now trying to limit how many people you can have over in your own home. It is a failed state. Wake up before you are enslaved.
If you think you need a vaccine for a disease with a median age of death that's 84 you've badly failed at basic risk analysis and you've been massaged by the machine.
The government is moving to vaccinate younger and younger kids even though the risk to them from covid is much much less than the risks from the vaccines.
In the UK the scientists specifically came out against vaccinating kids because the evidence is not there, but the UK govt is 'ignoring The Science' and moving ahead anyway.
Not only is the evidence not there, but there is new evidence as of a few days ago that it may actually be riskier for them to get the Pfizer jab than to get covid.
To be fair, the UK government is not ignoring the scientific consensus that children are more likely to be harmed than benefit from the vaccine, as it knows full well the consequences of its policy. Instead, the government is ignoring the ethics of coercing the young (who can't vote for them) into undergoing a medical procedure which mostly protects the old (who do vote for them).
> I would rather anti-vaxers leave the country than continue to hang around, yes
Those supposed 'anti-vaxers' are more or less guaranteed to be vaccinated for nearly all diseases just like I assume you (and others who insist on calling anyone who is not toeing the party line by that epithet) are.
Some people have natural immunity from having had SARS2.
Some people are being advised by their doctors not to take the current crop of vaccines.
Some people deem their risk from contracting SARS2 lower than the risk of side-effects from the current crop of vaccines.
Bodily autonomy is an essential part of a liberal democracy.
If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated? They run a higher risk of contracting SARS2, they have a higher risk of ending up in a hospital, they run a higher risk of needing intensive care and they have a higher risk of succumbing to the disease compared to vaccinated people in their own age and risk group. These are all risks to their own health, something you might find stupid and unreasonable but... it is their own choice. The only possible argument you might have in a country with socialised health care (like Oz) is that they may run up health care costs due to their refusal to take the vaccine. Those same people might respond that they do not want the vaccines because they fear potential side effects somewhere down the line. Given the limited amount of long-time experience with mRNA vaccines in humans this is not an unfounded risk, although most side effects seem to occur within 6 months of vaccination and as such should have already become visible.
Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? Do you remember how the sheep in that movie called anything which they deemed to be a threat a 'wolf', leading to a field full of sheep bleating 'wolf' in sheep-speak to each other and to the supposed wolf? Calling anyone who shows the slightest hesitancy towards these rather new vaccines 'anti-vaxxers' (the word seems to be mostly spelled with two 'x'-es) is comparable to how those sheep reacted.
Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
Approximately no one in Australia has 'natural immunity', because approximately no one here has had COVID.
Those people who are advised by their docotrs not to get vaccinated are few and far between, but it turns out the current vaccine push takes those figures into account.
The people who deem the risk of COVID lower than the vaccine are just straight up incorrect. They're either misled or just deliberately contrarian, and I don't care what they think.
All autonomy is important, except where that autonomy would endanger others in society.
> If you are vaccinated you are mostly protected so why worry over those who do not get vaccinated?
If they also opt-out of taking up hospital care necessary for treating those people who didn't refuse a vaccine, honestly, I'd be okay with it. But we both know that won't happen. It'll end up like the US where there are people dying in the ER because there's no room due to COVID cases, and I do not want Australia to end up like the US.
> Have you seen the movie 'Babe', the one about the pig which acted like a dog? [...] Don't be a sheep, Australia has enough of them already.
All of this is very ironic, given that the group you are implying are the wolves are the ones taking livestock medication.
Do you drink, smoke, drive a car, are you overweight, do you participate in high-risk sports, eat a lot of processed food, red meat, fatty fish from polluted waters, drink sugared carbonated water, keep dangerous pets? If so, do you voluntarily opt out of any hospital care related to these activities or habits? The list can be made much longer.
On the subject of people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really? I assume you mean those people are taking Ivermectin [1], a popular antihelmintic which also happens to demonstrate antiviral activity, preparations containing it being used both in veterinary as well as human applications? Are those people eating horse dewormers or taking Ivermectin tablets (Stromectol [2] et al)? If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Stop labelling people who happen to disagree with 'your' opinion. Just accept that not everybody agrees with 'your' standpoint or before you know it you'll find 'your' opinion to be in the crosshairs of the authoritarians - and then what do you do?
[1] As to the efficacy of Ivermectin for SARS2 prophylaxis or treatment the verdict is still out. It is unfortunate that this subject has been politicised to such an extreme that it has become a black/white issue, 'either you are with us or against us'.
> people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really?
Yes. Really. And then apparently shitting their pants in the supermarket. Appalling, I know.
> If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?
Because a lot of them are not, they are taking livestock medication bought from agricultural stores, because their doctor won't prescribe them what they want. You and I both know this is the case, so please don't bother pretending it isn't.
And to be clear. the people who are taking literal horse dewormer as opposed to getting vaccinated are doing a stupid thing. It is the wrong answer to COVID, no matter which way you look at it. Even if Ivermectin -- formulated for humans, qua Stromectol -- is actually a useful treatment against COVID, there's another more useful prophylactic against COVID: A vaccine.
This isn't an opinion, it's a bald-faced fact. You don't need to be given Ivermectin to treat severe COVID if you never end up with severe COVID in the first place.
Should hospitals be administering Ivermectin clinically? I dunno, jury is still out and I'm not a doctor, but an alternative to the vaccine it is not.
Looks like you fell for it. In many countries blaming that covid still exists is an easy scapegoat. So many people are falling for this line of thinking because everyone needs to blame someome.
With two doses you can go out 3 times to every 1 time someone with no shots can.
Blame the foolish who think because they are 2 dose vaxxed that they can continue their lives as normal. You can't.. stay home.
The equation has changed. Basically everybody is going to get COVID sooner or later, the vaccine just makes it much less likely that you'll get seriously ill from it.
Do you believe covid is dangerous enough to justify turning Australia into a totalitarian regime where you need to show papers to go anywhere and have constant surveillance even in your own home? Did you know they’re even dangling how many people can visit your home as a carrot?
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
Wake up now before it is too late. You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
That reminds me of an old web-based puzzle game, where you had to carry around CCTV cameras to make sure you are always being recorded.
At one point, the protagonist, in a moment of self-awareness, says something very profound that has stuck with me ever since: "If I am complicit in my own surveillance, does that mean I'm hiding from myself?"
> Do you consider people with immunity from past infections to be antivaxers?
In Australia, for all intents and purposes, yes.
Thanks to the terrible "totalitarian regime", less than one percent of our population has yet to catch COVID. We've had even less deaths! It's fuckin' awesome that we've managed to come out of this so well, almost entirely thanks to lockdown.
The route out of lockdown, without massively increasing the numbers of preventable deaths, is vaccination.
It's simpler and more expedient for me, and the government, to treat all Australians who refuse to get vaccinated (as opposed to being unable to get vaccinated, of course) as either idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality.
Either way, I appreciate that the carrot & sometimes the stick is necessary to force people to abide by the laws of their society. Just like it's not your choice to drink and drive, it's not really your choice not to get vaccinated while participating in Australian society. These are the norms that the majority of our country believe in.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, don't participate. Go find a community of like-minded rugged individualists somewhere. Move to Texas, maybe. (Sorry, Texans.)
> You’re falling for their us-them division tactic where they get you to hate the “anti vax” until you build the systems of your own enslavement.
Nah, I already harboured a great deal of spite for anti-vax idiots prior to COVID, didn't need any help from the government.
...
And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet.
The law of gravity isn't different in Australia, and neither is 2+2. People with immunity from past covid have excellent protection, maybe even better than that from vaccination. To treat them as "antivaxers"..."in Australia, for all intents and purposes" and to then later label these people as "idiots, petulant children, or misled and out of touch with reality" is one hop and a skip away from dehumanizing them and justifying even worse.
You need to say what you are typing out loud because you are caught up in the feel-good tribalism of debating partisan issues online. When in reality, there are multiple legitimate reasons to not bend the knee including past infection.
It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection as mentioned by that source I gave you in the parent post.
But in any case, the very last sentence of your post is both refreshing AND alarming. You said:
"And all that said, if the government doesn't remove restrictions once we reach 80% vaccinated and more, I will be fighting those governments tooth and nail. But we're not there yet."
Refreshing because at least you still seem to have some amount of reason left, but alarming because you don't seem to realize that by then, it's going to be too late. You'll end up enslaved because you fell for the "hate the antivaxers" ploy and picked it as your tribal narrative of choice so you could feel good while arguing with people online. Even though the science is unequivocal that immunity from past infection is excellent.
You may also be interested in this information that is emerging:
"US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid"
What now? You really think people reading this information are petulant children for choosing caution and simultaneously not wanting a totalitarian regime monitoring them and building systems of enslavement?
Realize that power consolidates. They will not need to remove these restrictions once you reach some threshold. Who will make them and how? By then more people will be trained to hate others and defend more. Realize that giving a government that kind of power is dangerous.
The entire first half of your comment is hilariously uninformed. You have absolutely no idea about the impacts of COVID on Australia and it bleeds out of everything you're saying. You arguing that past infections should mean something to me is the "out of touch with reality" bit.
> It's interesting that you chide others for being out of touch with reality and yet you ignore the reality that past infection offers equal or better protection
This is completely meaningless to Australia. Just 0.002% of the Australian population has had COVID. Past-infection protection is not an area of interest to me or the government of my country, because as a cohort, those people just don't really exist here... Mostly because of our wacky policies of trying to make sure our populace doesn't get infected by doing things like hotel quarantine.
As for the second bit, about children possibly having issues with the vaccine: It might be worth pointing out here that children in that study aren't a part of the current Australian government push for vaccination. The target is for over-16s only.
Should we wait before pushing for the under-16s to get vaccinated? Absolutely! Does that prove you right in absolutely any way? Nope!
You might as well start telling me that Australia shouldn't introduce gun control.
Wake up before it is too late.
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They are even now trying to limit how many people you can have over in your own home. It is a failed state. Wake up before you are enslaved.