ttbn. Ys mate, exactly! If we want to travel anywhere we like, as before? We need to get to 95% vaccinated and that number has to include the super spreaders, i.e., the kids!

And we need to get the horse before the cart, i.e., vaccines for all who want them! Not like today where a very limited supply is dribbled out! After all the pollies have had a double dose!

Bet your bottom dollar, if the pollies were last on the list? There'd be no shortage of supply!
Alan B.

Most of you don't appear to read the article. So, in bare terms, the question is, if a vaccine does not provide protection against a disease, why should anyone be coerced into using it?

Don't forget Alan, that bakers were denied the right to refuse to make weeding cakes for poofter, is that somehow different?

I guess I'm lucky. I won't be getting vaccinated & I have acquired my supply of Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin & Quercetin, zinc, & vitamin D, but will be unlikely to need them. You see I get my groceries home delivered, with only the occasional shopping trip to get some good steak, a half leg of ham, things you need to actually inspect to chose a good one, or a bar-b-qued chock. I hate restaurants & spectating at anything including pop music or protests, so am not in dangerous places very often.

If shopping centers want to ban me, there are plenty of internet businesses chasing my custom, who will supply my every other need.

So roll on the genetic experiment without me. In the unlikely event they develop a true vaccine at least as effective as the flu vaccine, & as safe, come & see me then.

Dear GrahamY,

You ask: "So, in bare terms, the question is, if a vaccine does not provide protection against a disease, why should anyone be coerced into using it?"

Well with respect that really isn't the question you are asking.

The vaccines obviously do provide protection from the disease and certainly reduces the risk of both catching it and of passing it on to others.

What you are putting is whether there should be discrimination based on vaccinated status, and with all being equal no there shouldn't, as much as I think the unvaccinated are mostly deluded.

I don't think surgeons should refuse to operate on grossly overweight people and I don't think a cake making business should be refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

So it comes down to the risks posed by unvaccinated people. In my opinion if someone gets Covid and their bodies natural immunity protects both them and others around them it really shouldn't matter. Aa a simple antibody test could ascertained that a person had caught and survived the virus they should get a passport like all the others.

I feel a little bemused by the fact that many of those from the Christian right who are carrying on about vaccine discrimination were happy to vote against same sex marriage and support businesses discriminating against gay people.

It has been clear, for the better part of 18 months, to anyone prepared to dispassionately examine the data, that the lockdown was/is a disaster for the economy and large sections of the community while being essentially unnecessary. For that reason I agree with Graham's conclusion that the various governments are pushing the vaccine in order to get them out of the corner they painted themselves into over the period. Indeed I've mentioned it here previously.

The whole thing became a competition with the media calling the game. Oh this state is winning, now this. League tables are prepared. Each day's number are breathlessly reported as though they are the latest game scores.

State leaders are terrified to raise the lockdowns for the reasons Graham mentions - fear that they'll be admitting past errors. But also because they know that any future deaths would be slated to them by the media.

The various governments are so anxious to get vaccine rates up to a level they can use to justify a lockdown retreat that they are now fudging the vaccine data and willingly endangering citizen lives. A-Z was found to be suitable for only over-60s. But now it's being promoted to younger groups because that's all they've got. Equally 12 weeks were needed to maximise its efficacy, but that's now been reduced to 6 weeks to shorten the time they can unlock society. There is no science to justify those changes.

Society will be paying for these errors for generations to come.

The constituency in favour of lockdowns is a powerful coalition of those with the most to lose and those who have not lost anything.Those making the decisions have lost not a thing during the enforced closure. The media has piled on, helping the government to terrify the rest.

We now have near hysteria over the threat to kids, when they are all but immune to it. Playgrounds closed. Pre-schoolers in masks. Wow!

A vaccine mandate is utterly illiberal but is pushed because the government needs to pressure the fence-sitters into giving it a justification to open society. We cannot allow vaccine apartheid because, as with all such things, it won't stop there. Have you notied that, when you get your vaccine certificate, the programme wants to store it on your telephones payment programme - Apple Pay etc. The possible ramifications are enormous.

South Australia is now trialling a system for people to prove their present location to the government via their phone. You have to send them a selfie within 15 minutes of them demanding it. How can this be happening in Australia?

I have a digital vaccine passport but will be endeavouring to not use it where-ever possible once the government enforces it.

That much of this is being done while the nation's two biggest governments are Liberal is telling. I think the nation has crossed a threshold from which it cannot return