Schwarten’s 'Covid logic' cruelly divides Queenslanders

Most unvaccinated people I know are not anti-vaccination, and they're not stupid, but they do have a preference for which vaccines they use and are knowledgeable about the science involved. Many like me are waiting for Novavax, although that position may become moot if we catch Covid before it becomes available.

That is because natural immunity remains superior to vaccine-induced immunity. This makes sense, as the vaccine only switches on part of the body's alarm system to the spike protein. Natural immunity trains the body to react to a whole range of other viral characteristics through broad-based protection.

On Schwarten's logic, if we are going to punish the unvaccinated, we should give special privileges to those who have recovered.

The effectiveness of the vaccines fades over time, with the recommendation for a third shot coming just three months after the second dose. This leads to an easy deduction that there are going to be people who have been double-jabbed whose immunity is similar to, or less than, many who haven't. So, where is the basis for the blanket preferment of one group over the other? If this discussion was purely based in science, there would be an allowance for the recovered.

Schwarten conjures up visions of ICUs overloaded with the unvaccinated to guilt trip the population – if you're unvaccinated you're killing someone else who might need the hospital bed you're needlessly occupying.

If you are young and healthy, there is little chance you will need to be hospitalised. Plenty of people are in hospital across the world as a result of the vaccination itself, as shown by this recent British study of over forty-two million shows more people with myocarditis from vaccination than infection. The effect was particularly pronounced in men under 40.

It is clear from the data that vaccination is not a risk-free proposition, and individuals ought to be able to assess their own risks and benefits in taking one, especially if it doesn't protect others. There is certainly no way healthy young sportsmen should be coerced into vaccination.

The idea that the unvaccinated ought to pay for their hospital care creates a new category – the 'undeserving sick'. It appears the ALP is looking to ameliorate its neglect of the hospital system (which it had 18 months to modify for Covid) by implementing a neo-liberal 'user-pays' system.

Let's apply that to lifestyle illnesses like obesity or lung cancer as well, or the casualties of risky sports.

If I go to hospital with Covid, do I also get credit for my exercise and diet regimen which has made my hospitalisation footprint very light over the years?

In my experience, the unvaccinated aren't reckless. They're using other methods to stay healthy, spending their own money ensuring they are as fit and healthy as possible and investing in prophylactics.

Unlike many of the fully vaccinated, they're not arrogantly (mistakenly and dangerously) believing they are invulnerable.

We've seen where tactics like Schwarten's have led in the past. You don't have to go to 1930s Berlin to see where it leads, just look at Capalaba in 2022 where a crowd hassled police for ejecting an unvaccinated patron from a coffee shop. It wasn't fair on the police, but the public know an unjust law when they see it.

This won't be the last incident on the way to riots. Pitting citizen against citizen is no way to run a state, but it appears the totalitarian impulse runs deep through the generations of Queensland ALP.