Bouncing off the walls, unravelling the thread

[dolorosa_12]

Yesterday I tried and failed to write a post about how angry and heartbroken I was about the Australian federal government's handling of the pandemic. Today I woke up and found someone else had done it for me.

On a slight tangent, for at least six months, I've been saying that Australians have been getting disproportionately outraged about breaches in hotel quarantine, compared to how upset they should have been at the botched vaccine rollout. (Australian friends here on Dreamwidth, as always, if you don't recognise yourself/your attitudes, assume that I am not complaining about you.) I literally had an argument about this with my mother yesterday. I have also long maintained that the botched rollout has led to unacceptably high levels of vaccine refusal and complacency. Every time I've said this, various Australian friends and family members have shouted me down and said that of course everyone wants to be vaccinated, they just can't get the appointments. Now the Australian Bureau of Statistics has released findings that one in four unvaccinated Australians aged over 70 say they haven't been vaccinated because they are 'waiting for a different vaccine' (i.e. they want Pfizer even though AstraZeneca is available). I feel vindicated, and I feel no joy from it.

My mood, at this point, is basically this women heckling at a Dan Andrews presser:

Watch on YouTube

As to the UK, I'm trying to bring the same energy as this carriage full of Spanish people shouting an unmasked fellow passener off the train to my fraught commute on Monday.

Comments

[corvidology]

There's a lot of the same sort of 'energy' in the US where there's a ridiculous amount of resistance to getting the vaccine.

Even now, when old enough to know better, I still keep expecting people to do the right thing just because it's the right thing.

[dolorosa_12]

In the US, the whole vaccine issue appears to have been politicised, so that refusing it (and refusing all other public health measures) are a way of signalling one's right-wing tribal affiliation.

In Australia (although there is a toxic Murdoch press and similar unhinged far-right tabloid views), this whole thing seems driven much more by complacency than political tribalism. (For example, one of my aunts, who — like my entire maternal family — only votes for leftwing parties was briefly considering not getting vaccinated at all because it felt like too much of a hassle.) No one I know in Australia knows a single person who has caught Covid, whereas I — living in the UK and with friends all over Europe and in the US — know many people who have had it. That distance from the consequences of catching the disease has made far too many Australians far too complacent about it.

In some ways I find the motivations for vaccine refusal in Australia more unforgiveable, even though the result is the same. Much as I deplore far-right anti-science indoctrination, it's basically like being in a cult, and I don't expect people with cult-like attitudes to be able to think rationally about anything. But people who are refusing available vaccinations because they might be inconvenient, or the vaccine is perceived to be inferior to another one which isn't yet available are behaving in a hugely self-centred manner.

[lirazel]

In the US, the whole vaccine issue appears to have been politicised, so that refusing it (and refusing all other public health measures) are a way of signalling one's right-wing tribal affiliation.

This is completely accurate.

That distance from the consequences of catching the disease has made far too many Australians far too complacent about it.

Why are human beings so terrible at learning from each other? It should take one look at the rest of the world to realize that, actually, it's important to get vaccinated!

[chestnut_pod]

<3 <3 <3

[dolorosa_12]

<3

[naye]

*supportive hugs*

[dolorosa_12]

<3