The carrot and the stick are needed to be used in equal measure to kick those sceptical of COVID-19 vaccines into gear for the health and freedom of us all.
In addition to hand washing, masks and distance between us helping on the outside, vaccination is the only hope we have to fight from within.
So many prevalent ‘facts’ about this virus could not be further from the truth.
The scuttlebutt – about the vaccine being loaded with a tracker, being primed to knock us all off one by one and even that the virus does not exist – has morphed otherwise-sensible people into crazy talkers, presumably because of the ubiquitousness of the false claims on social media and that very human tendency to believe something is true if you hear it often enough.
Restrictions and lockdowns, economic losses and isolation sadnesses are mounting, so let’s bring in the stick.
Give the vaccinated the freedom to move around, eat at a café, book a holiday. Set a date when the vaccinated can be free from the threat of quarantine, tests and lockdowns.
And let the unvaccinated remain constrained.
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Incentivise the heck out of vaccination, I say.
Immunisations of any kind are not mandated by law in our country.
But our governments can and do incentivise us to do certain things. Take, for example, the voluntary nature of providing your tax file number to your employer. Don’t do it and you get taxed at 50 per cent. Do it and the tax taken from your pay will be scaled to your income.
Or that government-supported childcare is not available to tots who have not had the standard childhood immunisations: Don’t get vaxes and the kid can’t go into care.
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The precedent is set in Queensland too, with a new rule that essential workers crossing from the NSW border must show proof of having had at least one shot in the arm. No jab, no work here.
I say grab hold of the incentive idea and let it rip.
Make life a bit tough for those who cling to their dangerous, debunked ideas that put others at risk. Watch them quickly see the light.
The only reason there are so many naysayers on the Sunshine Coast is because we have so far gotten off lightly. Infections are something that happens in the states below us or to people overseas. Barely anyone knows a coast person who has ridden the waves of the illness.
How blessed are we?
In addition, so many of those who have not yet begun the two-part process of being vaccinated claim they have no need for it because they do not desire to travel overseas.
They ignore the fact that COVID-19 will come to them. Nothing is more certain, because once we open the state and international borders – and this is soon – we will all be exposed to the virus.
COVID-19 is as indiscriminate as it is dangerous and there will be no borough or bomb shelter in our region that will be untouched.
In Europe, a vaccine passport is already needed to get around.
People must show it to get a table at a restaurant in France, a booking with a hairdresser in Austria, or to buy a ticket to the football in Lithuania. Contracted workers must show their vaccine passports to their employer to get a job.
Of course, there was bleating and moaning when those nations brought the vaccination passport in, but that was quickly followed by a surge in immunisation bookings.
Bring in such standards here and the unjabbed will soon realise what they are missing out on.
Let’s get a wriggle on with it so we can get on with freedom and living our lives.
Jane Stephens is a USC journalism lecturer, media commentator and writer. The views expressed are her own.
