Amazingly in record time, safe and effective vaccines were developed and at this time about 45% …
of the global population has received a single vaccine doses (~3.6 billion doses), and about a third of population is fully vaccinated. However, it sad to see the inequity – we have affluent countries with vaccination levels approaching “herd immunity”, and have some of the less affluent counties with vaccination rates well under 10%.
In Australia, we are still in lockdown in the major cities – Sydney and Melbourne – and international borders still closed. In Melbourne, we are consistently reporting over 1000 new COVID-19 cases per day, and we are anticipating a “spike” due AFL (our national sport), illegal gatherings during the Grand final last weekend. Also, we did have significant demonstrations last week and anticipated to continue this week. Demonstrations are against vaccines in particular against vaccine mandates. The arguments anti-vaxxers make are a bit stupid like … vaccines are not natural; some are willing to take “natural” chemicals J … most drive “natural cars” …. GTFOH! It’s not about natural – if anything vaccines are more natural than chemicals (including hyper-doses of vitamins) – they just kick start the immune system to give us the upper hand when we get the real infection.
Of course, the vaccines (particularly) these current COVID-19 ones are not perfect – they do have some side effects (typically very benign in most people; but some people do have severe side effects), and they do not give us absolute protection from the virus – it is clear that there are “breakthrough infections”, and it is clear that vaccinated people are like incubators that might ultimately drive a vaccine-resistant variant. The other issue is waning immunity with time and of course, when there is a massive global vaccination drive there are bound to be some errors – some serious and some not so serious. For example, there were the contaminated vials in Japan and in Melbourne we have reports that some “vaccinated” people were indeed not vaccinated because they were given an injection of saline instead – by error.
Given these facts, immunity passports would be much more reasonable than vaccine passports – it is more important that people have immunity – it is a better measure. In the meantime YouTube are cancelling channels that are presenting vaccine misinformation – not sure – some censorship (moderation) is important but who decides what is misinformation in this case? We have safe vaccines, they kind of work, it is important that people get vaccinated so we can have some “normality”, but some people don’t want to – can suggest, recommend, advise, but I don’t think we can / should force people. Let’s say we “force” someone to get vaccinated – they get vaccinated and something goes wrong? Who’s at fault? Would the “enforcer” be responsible / get punished? [BTW mandating is forcing].
Anyway massive vaccination drive is cheaper and more efficient than measuring “immunity in people” and in Australia and Melbourne we are approaching levels of vaccination that will enable “opening up” soon. Around the country 64% of the population has received a first dose (~44% fully vaccinated); in Victoria the numbers are: ~80% first dose and ~50% fully vaccinated.
To make things worse there are already warning that we might be in for a “nightmare Christmas” – shortages of turkey, beer and presents are on the table !!! Not sure about shortages … but everything is getting too expensive and with people in tricky employment situations due to the pandemic – many people won’t be able to afford stuff!
Until next time …