As we know, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has indicated that the unvaccinated will be barred from accessing all but the most basic services until 2023:
“Whether it’s a bookshop, a shoe shop, a pub, cafe, a restaurant, the MCG, the list goes on and on. You will not be able to participate like a fully vaccinated person because you’re not a fully vaccinated person” Premier Andrews said.
Despite NSW’s COVID cases, hospital and ICU admissions all plummeting, the NSW Government also yesterday extended the timeframe by which the unvaccinated will be excluded from society until NSW reaches 95% vaccination:
Unvaccinated people had also been due to get freedoms on December 1.
However, they’ll now have to wait until December 15, or, whatever date NSW reaches 95 per cent double dose coverage for people aged 16 and above.
In NSW, 93.6 per cent of people aged 16 and up have had one jab, while 87.8 per cent are fully vaccinated.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the state would be “world leading” if it could reach the 95 per cent target.
“Everybody has done an incredible job to ensure NSW can ease restrictions in a safe and considered way earlier than we planned,” he said.
The Premier said delaying freedoms for people who hadn’t received the jab was to ensure the state could “open up safely”.
What outcome is the NSW Government trying to achieve here, other than denigrating the unvaccinated?
NSW has already “opened up safely” with hospital and ICU admissions shrinking rapidly:
This decision to delay freedom for the unvaccinated is clearly political, not based on evidence.
David Kirchhoffer, Director at Queensland Bioethics Centre, has penned an article in The Conversation explaining how maintaining vaccine segregation with such high vaccination rates is ethically bankrupt and likely to be counter-productive:
While vaccines reduce the risk of infection and more importantly the risk of severe illness, Delta transmission can still occur even among a vaccinated population.
UK research, published recently in medical journal The Lancet Infection Diseases, found vaccinated people who caught Delta were similarly likely to transmit to their household members as unvaccinated people. Each infected about a quarter of their household.
A recent Dutch pre-print, which is yet to be independently verified, found 12-13% of household members of a fully vaccinated person, who tested positive for COVID during a time of Delta dominance, also tested positive for the virus regardless of whether the contacts were vaccinated or not. This is about half of what the UK study reported, which is a discrepancy that arises from differing methodologies.
The point, however, is clear. In a shop where everyone is vaccinated, if one of those vaccinated people has the virus, these two studies suggest they’re just as likely to infect vaccinated people as they are to infect unvaccinated people.
The Dutch study also showed only 11% of vaccinated household contacts were infected from an unvaccinated index case. This means vaccinated people in a retail space don’t seem to be more at risk of contracting the virus from unvaccinated customers if they themselves are fully vaccinated…
In other words, vaccinated people in a restaurant or shop don’t seem to have anything more to fear from an unvaccinated person than a vaccinated person…
[Then there’s] the moral and emotional burden on often low-paid and young workers in retail and hospitality who would have to police people’s vaccination status…
Blocking access to retail or restaurants for unvaccinated people goes too far given the risk primarily carried in the current situation seems to be their own. If vaccination rates were very low, or the disease more deadly, such measures could be necessary. But this seems unnecessary at a rate of 90% vaccination expected soon in Victoria.
Maintaining draconian segregation of the unvaccinated beyond the 90% threshold is unnecessary and overly divisive.
Vaccination doesn’t stop the spread of the virus (just look at Israel, which is highly inoculated with Pfizer, where daily cases recently hit an all-time high – see below chart). Vaccination only protects against serious illness and death.
Those that are double vaccinated should, therefore, not fear or ostracize the unvaccinated, as they are protected.
Health policy should be based on robust evidence and expert advice, not politics.
Political leaders should seek to unite, not divide, the community.
