Mandate madness

WA’s current regime of vaccine mandates makes no sense, especially at this stage of the pandemic. By Gemma Tognini.

The first thing I want to say today is that I’ve had my booster.  Nobody’s business normally, but these are not normal times and I want to have a conversation about the inanity and inconsistency of WA’s current regime of vaccine mandates. They are a hot mess of contradiction. More on that in a second.

So, let me head some things off at the start. Like being dismissed as anti-vax. Like saying I want people to die. If that’s your response, best you increase your level of intellectual rigour.

Back to these nonsensical vaccine mandates. I could quite literally, fill three times my allotted space today with examples of their silliness but for the sake of time, I’ve narrowed it down to a choice few.

First (and my favourite when it comes to sheer, indefensible stupidity) the booze versus food mandate. On planet Perth, a person who isn’t vaccinated can walk into any supermarket that also sells alcohol.  They can pick up a tin of tuna, they can also pick up a bottle of wine. But when they get to the cash register, they’re only allowed to pay for the tin of fish (or milk, or loo paper, you get it.) They could stand next to me, for example, and I could pay for the bottle of wine and pass it straight to them. We could mingle in the store, rub shoulders at the cheese section, but only one of us can purchase a crisp Margaret River white without showing their papers. Remember how during lockdown bottle shops were apparently an essential service? Now only the vaccinated can buy booze.  

Gosh, the science it’s just so sciencey.

Kids’ outdoor swimming classes have been cancelled in the name of mandated safety. School camps, too. In the height of summer. But they can sit in a class together.

Try this one. Parents do not have to be vaccinated to drop their kids off at school every day, nor to volunteer once a week. But twice a week? Yep. They must prove they’re vaccinated. What a difference a day makes.

You can walk into a shopping mall and sit in a heaving, crowded food court without doing anything other than paying for your hot chips.  You cannot sit outside in the fresh air at a café on your own, without whipping out your papers. 

You can sit unmasked in a restaurant for hours. But to get up and walk three metres to the front door? Must wear a mask. Volunteer firefighters can’t fight to save lives, homes and property without proof of vaccination. If this alone isn’t proof of madness, I don’t know what is.

Two years and counting into this pandemic, we know so much more about the nature of the virus, and the natural weakening that has occurred with each new strain. Though more contagious, Omicron is dramatically, significantly less impacting. This is not my view. This is a medical reality supported by millions of points of real-world data from across the globe. Even the laziest, half-hearted search of credentialled publications will confirm this.

Yet here in WA? Here we have a spattering of hastily cobbled together, disproportionate, illiberal, and undemocratic restrictions and rules, the impost of which is being born by the businesses who’ve been lumped with them. Even when they don’t make sense. Even when they are contradictory. Even when there is no medical justification for them.

Professor Nick Coatsworth is the former deputy Federal chief health officer. He is an infectious diseases and respiratory specialist. He has trained Australian medical teams in Ebola preparedness and treatment. This is not his first rodeo, epidemiologically speaking.

He says WA’s medical mandates, particularly those soon to include a third dose, are not justified.

“The time of community wide vaccine mandates for Covid-19 is over,” Professor Coatsworth said.

“A third dose does reduce risk of severe disease in the most vulnerable but if you are 30, already vaccinated with two doses and have only a tiny risk already, this is no benefit to the wider community in forcing a person to have a third shot.”

Perth based, senior infectious diseases specialist Dr. Clay Golledge is blunt in his agreement.

“The only place now for any kind of mandate is in aged care and hospitals. These measures had a use early on in the pandemic, but they are no longer required as a public health measure.”

There are unintended consequences to these extreme, controlling mandates. They undermine the vaccines people have been told they can and should trust.

It is unintentionally confirming their fears and validating their conspiracies. It’s the ultimate pyrrhic victory dressed up as public health, only without any credible public health justification. 

It undermines the genuine need for mandates in certain sectors such as health and aged care.

Add to this the border backflip, the ongoing refusal to set a new date, the disrespect for a community that has overwhelmingly done its part and demands reciprocity, and all you have is broken trust.  Forcing illogical rules on a population that can see straight through them is a fool’s game.  

There is so much more to be concerned about than Covid-19 in 2022. The fracturing of our community. The division. The pandemic of fear. The trauma to families caused by cruel, ongoing separation. The damage to our national unity.  To WA’s reputation. It’s not who we are. Trust is damn near impossible to repair once it’s broken and you don’t fix it at the point of a gun.

Gemma Tognini is Executive Director of GT Communications. This op ed was first published in The West Australian and has been republished here with the author’s permission.