What do you think of Australia's vaccine policy?

Fairly simple - the government of the time sets rules around it. Not sure how else you expect a mandate to work? I mean, seat belts and airbags carry risks too, but they have been mandated.

I was in WA for COVID. They never made vaccination mandatory, but did make it so you couldn't buy alcohol without showing your certificate. Given the relationship of sand gropers to their beer, vaccination rates shot up...

I am pro-vaccine if they didn't add so many extra things into the vaccine, but they do. - a wee drop of heroine maybe?

Deary me.

If vaccinated, you are protected. Yes, everyone knows that. As well as this, and because your immune system recognises it, you are much less likely to pass that disease on to someone who actually has got a good reason for not being vaccinated (such as transplant recipients, patients who are immunocompromised etc.
The more people that are vaccinated, the lower the transmission. This is what's meant by herd immunity. You're not just protecting yourself, but also the vulnerable who aren't able to be vaccinated and so are much more likely to become seriously ill.

There's always a small percentage in whom the vaccine does not "take" properly.

Plus of course concern for the most vulnerable in society (those who cannot receive eg all live vaccines tend to be those with fairy severe immune system issues)

I suppose it all boils down to whether you want there to be such a thing as society, or if you're a Thatcherite who sees instead a bunch of individuals

I think people should have the choice not to vaccinate, BUT I agree that children should not be allowed to to attend nursery/school without immunisation.

With rights comes responsibility and we all surely understand there needs to be some sort of idea of what behaviours help to support a functioning society.

I think Australia has got it about right.

I don't think DC should have their educations limited by a ban on state schooling during the Compulsory School Age years for the unvaccinated, but have no difficulty with providers outside CSA requiring vaccines.

Exemptions should be only for those whose doctors attest there is a medical need to avoid some/all (but they should still be required to have the ones that are not contraindicated). And for those who have recently arrived from overseas, whose GP can attest that they have embarked on a catch-up programme.

The religions which eschew all medical intervention are very few and small in number, so wouldn't make any real difference to the herd, so I'd be inclined to let that be an exemption too, but it would have to be an established religion (no Jedi Warriors of convenience) with an annual certificate of observance/attendance from a specified leader of that religion.

I have no problem with a two-tier rate of family-related benefits, because the path to access the higher level is free and available to all.

If your vaccine works, how exactly are you being 'put at risk' by those choosing not to have it? You're personally protected from your own vaccine, no?

I can’t believe how many people are so happy to give up their rights, and more importantly those of their children, to the State!

Tell me you don’t understand science without telling me you don’t understand science.

The vaccines don’t need to be tested against placebo - the placebo is not vaccinating - and look how well that’s going with measles and whooping cough outbreaks killing children.

Since all medical procedures carry risks, I don't see how a vaccine - that goes into a person's body - can be 'mandated'.

If a parent wants their own child to be vaccinated to protect THAT child, they should go right ahead. And if that child is protected by said vaccine, whether others then vaccinate or not is largely irrelevant. It either protects...or it doesn't!

Vaccine damage payment schemes exist for a reason. It's for that reason it should never be mandated.

@Annabmt I am in process of getting a nursing degree, some of them are useful, others can be extremely harmful

Can you expand on this. It’s a bit odd as basically scaremongering. I have a medical degree and have practiced for several decades and want you to tell us, in your nursing course, what they have told you is extremely harmful. You can’t just say things like that with no qualification, it’s quite disingenuous.

We are pretty lucky here where I am (Australia), in that the vast majority of our ‘native’ population (by that I mean people born and permanently living here, as opposed to indigenous by definition) have been vaccinated. The man problem I faced over the decades were blow in’s from countries where this was not standard and they passed through A&E as their first pass.

The other fact is, while there are people who genuinely cannot be vaccinated, which is fine, for those who can but are not, they are relying on herd immunity. That is parents who simply choose not to do it without cause, are relying on everyone else to keep their kids safe. That’s piss poor.

What do you mean by “social contract” exactly?

Could you expand on your "careful risk assessment" please?

In which journals did you find the relevant statistics? How did differing risk profiles affect your choices for the vaccines that are available? How did you weigh / compare the risks of vaccine-related illness against the likelihood of either contracting or spreading each disease?

A "careful risk assessment" requires a broad approach that covers the above questions. YouTube and Facebook are not scientific publications.

Why? Picking and choosing which bits of the social contract you want to engage in seems selfish.

Same with this nonsense about mandatory Covid vaccines - they weren’t mandatory at all. You want to travel and enter certain communal spaces, then get a vaccine. If you don’t want to vaccinate, why should everyone else be put at risk through your personal decision?

I think it's the same here in Cayman, my kids had to be fully vaxxed before they started school.
I didn't think anything of it honestly, I think the only thing they've not been vaxxed against is Men B because we don't have it here.

Why not? Chicken pox vaccine is a core vaccine in most developed countries. HPV prevents cancer.
Covid perhaps fair enough if they don't have any particular risk factors. I probably wouldn't bother with that myself but I will when I'm older.

Eh - how about driving licenses? Shouldn't we all have the right to drive? The government needs to intervene when someone's autonomy and human rights infringes on some one else. I.e. unvaxx'ed people put others at risk, same as unlicensed drivers.

@Annabmt

A nursing degree has no relevance on your understanding of how the biochemistry of the drugs works; you'd need to be doing a biochemistry or pharmacology to actually understand whether the additives are harmful or not. And nursing does not cover that- although you can read the effects from the info pack.

Reading ingredients doesn't really show understanding.

Yes some will have adverse reactions but statistically they are a very small percentage.

Oh no, not chemicals?! Maybe it's full of things such as quercetin-3-glucoside, quercetin-3-rhamnoside, catechin, epicatechin, procyanidin, cyanidin-3-galactoside, coumaric acid, chlorogenic acid, gallic acid, and phloridzin.

Those are some of the specific compounds found in an apple.

We are in Italy, where the rules are essentially the same. We home educate, and there are so many clubs, groups and events that can be joined without needing vaccination, it seems a bit unlikely their kids cant find friends. They dont need to send their kids to school just find them friends.

actually most of them don't - for example there's no porcine DNA in the flu nasal spray, it's just used in the manufacturing process. Kashrut and muslim authorities say it is fine as it's medicine.

It doesn't need to be compulsory if you are living on a secluded island.

If you want to be in touch with other people and live within society, the society have some additional rules to protect itself.
One of the protections is vaccination, which can be very very effective when high proportion of the society is vaccinated. If we want to reach that proportion, we can afford only a limited number of exceptions, and it just makes sense to allocate them based on proven medical reasons, not hurt feelings.

I understand somewhat on the school one, there is an increased risk with so many kids in one place. Similarish with childcare. Not sure on the child benefit - that comes in before vaccinations and something about that feels off to me. All of them though are punishing the child for their parents choices, but that one particularly to me gives me pause.

It is interesting how different countries handle the issue. Growing up in the US, I had all my jabs, and when I got into university, I didn't have access to my vaccination card - my mother had it, but had no custody & wasn't talking to me at that point - so to confirm my acceptance, I had to get many of the vaccines again. In the UK, I found out at my DDs teen boosters that one of their childhood jabs was missing and were just told for them to make an appointment for it when they are 19. Even though one of them now works in a school as an apprentice TA, no one has really cared about her vaccines.

You say 'the medical community has lost trust' etc. and 'they need to work hard to regain that trust'. This is sheer bollocks. The science of vaccination is very well established and proven.

IME, the discussions around trust has little to do with the vaccines themselves. Some of it is lack of understanding on how they and the components in them work, but a lot of this comes from the experiences elsewhere with medical professionals. There is a reason why women during pregnancy and shortly after giving birth are drawn into anti-vaxing at a significant rate. They are one of the groups most at risk for experiencing medical abuse, and are commonly blamed and dismissed for any medical abuse experienced. This transfers to the concern that if something goes wrong with the vaccines, that they will get the blame, they will get dismissed, they will once again be out of control and at the mercy of an institution that has already shown that 'do no harm' doesn't apply to them.

While it's popular on these types of threads and other media to just dismiss these people as stupid, it's rarely helpful, only further supports the dismissiveness they've already experienced, and I've yet to see it change anyone's mind. Acknowledging medical abuse, the impact it has and how it leads to legitimate concerns, where needed discussing the science and processes with respect, and offering alternatives like having the jabs at a location with more observation or alternative schedules like 1 jab at a time or greater spacing. These I've seen move people from anti-vax to catching up and willingly paying for optional vaccines.

I agree with the policy. Anti-vaxxers have done a lot of damage in that UK. We shouldn't be having measles outbreaks.

Happy to have the odd medical exemption.

What are these religious grounds people are talking about? Which religion is against vaccination and why?

Yes, it was hugely damaging. There had actually been some rebuilding of trust toward vaccination that seemed to be occurring in the few years before COVID, after that idiot Wakefield got into it, and now it's really gone to shit again, much worse than before IMO.

The other issues is that in the US, where a lot of this comes from, they are just so interventionist. They have a very heavy vaccine schedule at very young ages compared to a lot of other places.