Anti-vax mob not biggest threat
COVID-19 has lots of symptoms. Headaches, shortness of breath, a loss of taste and smell. The pandemic has also seen the spread of another nausea-inducing, but curable problem – an outbreak of selfishness.
In the maelstrom of online debate in the last week, as anti-vaxxers on the Gold Coast mount their futile last stand, one contribution in particular caught this columnist’s eye.
“If you get vaccinated, that is your choice and if you don’t, that is your choice,” the person wrote. “We are all individuals.”
That, of course, is the nub of the problem.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, there have been people making choices as individuals, for themselves, without regard to the outcomes for the community at large.
It’s not just anti-vaxxers who are guilty of this affliction. Not by any means.
The selfishness started with the hoarding of toilet rolls. And more seriously, it’s finishing with the hoarding of vaccines themselves.
The Omicron variant may never have emerged from southern Africa had the western world, Australia included, not been selfishly stockpiling jabs.
According to the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organisation, Australia now has enough shots reserved to vaccinate the whole population almost five times over.
In contrast, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance pressure group, Sub-Saharan Africa has only received enough doses to vaccinate one in eight people. No wonder it was the source of new variants.
“With the new threat of the Omicron variant, it is clear that we cannot just booster our way out of the pandemic while leaving much of the developing world behind,” Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager Anna Marriott said.
“Unless all countries are vaccinated as soon as possible we could see wave after wave of variants.
“What is the point in developing new vaccines in 100 days if they are then only sold in limited amounts to the highest bidder, once again leaving poor nations at the back of the queue?”
There’s worse. Astonishingly, as Queensland edges past the 80 per cent double dosed milestone, the equivalent figure for Papua New Guinea is 2.2 per cent. The next Omicron could form right on our doorstep.
A small number of clued-in Australians have spotted the danger.
In a letter to Scott Morrison last week, a number of prominent scientists, doctors and business leaders, including Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott, implored the Prime Minister to do more.
The letter said “urgent action” was needed by Australia “to commit its fair share to vaccinate the world”.
The problem is that selfishness is ultimately counter-productive. Hoarding goods at the start of the pandemic caused a run on supermarkets that affected everyone.
Hoarding vaccines could also come back to bite us – by allowing a variant to form that evades their protection.
If that happens, we could be back to lockdowns and border closures, no matter what anyone thinks their individual rights are.
The Omicron variant is something the western world has brought on itself.
Like all Covid-19 variants it induces many symptoms in sufferers. But it is itself a symptom of a wider malaise: the outbreak of selfishness we have witnessed in the last two years.