I’ll park the articles question for a minute, while we explore the reason for the disparate spread of the virus between the Western suburbs and the Eastern suburbs of Sydney.

The reason for this disparity is truly a human rights issue: Unaffordable housing, income inequality and a desperate need to continue in servile work through the COVID crisis and lock downs.

In the Wealthy Eastern Suburbs, life was portrayed in its unequal starkness with media reporting unchanged daily events of leisure and ease, highlighted by crowds flocking to Bondi Beach.

No hovering helicopters at 1am enforcing curfews, no military presence on their streets,
No police roadblocks ringing the perimeters of lockdowns, no severe entry restrictions to local hospitals,
cafes brimming with happy patrons, sunning on crowded footpaths.
Special privileges afforded the wealthy to travel to regional areas to view and buy real estate, and promote the fastest growing real estate bubble on the Eastern seaboard in history. (Prices have doubled in my area in fifteen months: A house on the beach valued at $750k then, and now valued above two million).

These are genuine human rights issues which have caused incalculable damage through stark inequalities in housing affordability and disproportionate rents to income, and an unfair need to continue travelling and working during a pandemic.

Back to the question that doesn’t in my opinion warrant an answer, due to its relevant insignificance by comparison to the disproportionate suffering lockdowns have caused to sections of our communities completely outside the care factor of our grubby political class.
Yes, vaccination should be compulsory for everybody irrespective of whether living in isolated comfort or crowded into the poorer Western Suburbs of Sydney for example.
In my view it’s a community obligation.

Dan

My opinion on compulsory vaccination rates balances upon two competing concepts. Whereas I would normally agree that governments in free, democratic societies should not compel citizens to undergo medical procedures against their will, this is not the position the populations of democratic countries have accepted in the past, when entire populations have been endangered by highly infectious diseases, and the carriers of these diseases. The US example of "Typhoid Mary" is a case in point, where a female typhoid carrier was effectively imprisoned for many years for being a 'carrier" of Typhoid, even though she had committed no crime, other than infecting many people which had led to their deaths.

So too, I lived thorough a time where it was compulsory for every member of the Australian population to undergo TB testing and (I think) compulsory treatment if found to have TB, in order to eradicate this horrible disease from the entire population. In addition, I remember being vaccinated against polio at school and if my memory serves me well, that too was compulsory. Australia and all of the modern world went from thousands of permanently crippled children every year, to countries which today are polio free.

I have no time for anti vaccers, and I had always thought of them as an insignificant minority of kooks. But I have to admit that with this present pandemic, a significant minority, probably 10 to 15 percent of people are vehemently against vaccination. When a significant minority are vehemently against a government policy so much that they will brave arrest, police beatings, capsicum spray, and rubber bullets, then perhaps our governments should alow them to give themselves a Darwin Award.

The problem with that though, is that they will unnecessarily clog our hospital system thereby denying those who have been vaccinated the chance to get life saving treatment in hospital. It seems to me that the best way handle this situation is for anti vaccers to accept, that if they do get so sick that they need hospitalisation, they will be triaged to the back of the queue.

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Dear Graham,

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“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That is the most familiar version of the golden rule, highlighting its helpful and proactive gold standard. Its corollary, the so-called “silver rule,” focuses on restraint and non-harm: “do nothing to others you would not have done to you.”

There is a certain legalism in the way the “do not” corollary follows its proactive “do unto” partner.

The golden rule and its corollary are often, unavoidably, incompatible with what some consider to be the legitimate exercise of their individual freedoms.

In such cases, it is the role and duty of democratically elected governments to arbitrate the conflicting individual freedoms in the best interests of all.

Mandatory vaccination against Covid 19 is one such case.

At the time of writing, we are all free to decide if we wish to be vaccinated or not. As of today, 4 October 2021, 56.9% of people 16 and over are double-vaccinated and 79.6% have had at least one dose.

This would seem to indicate that a large majority of Australians are in favour of vaccination.

There also seems to be ample evidence now that vaccination offers reasonably effective protection against the virus. And it not only protects each vaccinated individual, but also reduces the risk of vaccinated individuals passing the virus on to many other people : members of the family, friends, and the community at large.

Hence the relevance of the corollary of the golden rule, the so-called “silver rule” : “do nothing to others you would not have done to you.”. In other words : “if you become infected, do not pass the deadly Covid 19 virus on to them as well”.

Some Australians do, of course, place a higher value on their own individual freedoms than on the individual freedoms of others, and decide against vaccination.

As I see it, in that case, it is the responsibility of the state and federal governments to arbitrate between the two conflicting individual freedoms – in the best interests of all.

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As someone who grew up during the time when smallpox was being eradicated by vaccination, when the discoverers of polio vaccines were hailed as great heroes, when we as schoolkids lined up for our BCG shots against tuberculosis and as parents gratefully participated in routine vaccination of our offspring against killer diseases, I guess I have lost all antagonism to the idea of enforced vaccinations. So the only part of Graham's case that got me thinking was the claim that this Covid vaccine is "experimental", part of a "clinical trial". Perhaps that's true technically but I’ve decided it's nit-picking in the context of the fairly successful global vaccination of billions. As a breach it's at the bottom end of the spectrum. And it pales into insignificance against the other ghastly attacks to which we are subjected daily by our dictatorial state premiers and their "advisors" – trying to terrify us into obedience, patting us on the head when we're good, etc. The after effects of this infantilising treatment will last electorally for decades.

Whether intentional or not, anyone that is not vaccinated is a health risk to everyone else. While the unvaccinated should not be locked out of everything, some activities carry far more risks than others and for these activities, either the unvaccinated are excluded or required to don sufficient PPE to reduce the risk to acceptable levels.

This is classic balance between two often competing freedoms, freedom of and freedom from.

The imposition of higher taxes to ensure universal health coverage is an example. Less freedom to direct your money where you want vs the freedom from Australians having to sell their houses to pay for medical bills.

The ethic of social responsibility against a hyper individualism can be seen reflected in the vaccination rates between England with its robust public health coverage and the US, one of the few western countries without.

England – 90% first dose 82% second dose

USA - 66% first dose 57% second dose

Australia unsurprisingly sits between the two but there is no doubt we are gradually moving to the American model, especially when we see articles like Graham's foisted with American style language around freedoms rather than responsibilities. I submit this would be a far cry from the language used even by a Menzies of old.

Australia – 79.6% first dose 56.9% second dose

The economic rationalist speak which I first heard in political discussions 30 years ago has really infested the right in this country. Our move away from more British sensibilities and values saddens me.