Booster hesitancy, for which there is anecdotal evidence, may expand this number dramatically.

If Australia goes down the path of, say Israel, in mandating the booster, the vaccination percentages will immediately plummet, then, quite possibly, only slowly rise, for there is emerging anecdotal evidence that those who have had the double shot are not that happy about making the jab a regular event in their lives.

MANDATES

The number of people for whom the argument for vaccine mandates is considered a con is also likely to be growing.

Hang on, 70.2 per cent seems to be a very low figure, you might be thinking. Isn’t the figure 83 per cent for Australia?

Yes and no. It depends how you do the counting. The 70.2 per cent figure is an international one, and is picked up by media outlets such as The Guardian.

The 83 per cent figure is an Australian Department of Health one, and includes everyone over 16 years of age.

Not just adults being counted, then. What with all the nudging of youngsters going on, it is not a great surprise that the percentage is so high on this count.

No wonder politicians are so keen to get children jabbed. It is not about health. We know that children by and large never get COVID. It sure boosts the percentages, though.

There is massive vaccine numbers inflation going on here, and with purpose.

Gaslighting by numbers, you might say. And the higher figures are constantly reinforced by the local corporate media which acts mostly these days as a propaganda arm of government.

There is almost a competition afoot among the big three players, Nine/Fairfax, the ABC and the rabidly pro-vaxx Murdoch press led by Jack the (Low Information) Insider and now minus Alan Jones, to see who can be the most vigorous gaslighters.

Spruikers for the COVID State can only get away with calling protesters and vaccine dissidents mad, selfish, stupid, conspiracy theorists and cranks while they believe they are a tiny minority.

Calling one third of the population such things looks a little risky, politically. Thus, the relentless reporting of what appear to be very high vaccination numbers has a strategic purpose.

ARGUMENTS

These numbers allow the COVID State to claim momentum – a magic thing in politics – and spout “right side of history” type arguments.

But it is also illusory, if politicians are led to believe that the anger is confined to an insignificant rump.

This is why it is so important for the dissidents to connect, combine and make loud noise. Doing so will reveal the true scale of the opposition to vaccine mandates and change perceptions in the political class. And so change outcomes.

But it isn’t only the unvaccinated who are the victims of this political equivalent of domestic abuse, delivered with all the tactics typical of an abuser, it is also the families and the friends of the unvaccinated, who do not get to see them anymore, and, beyond these, all those – and there are many – who are vaccinated but think the very idea of vaccine passports stinks.

Many of these are now as ashamed to be an Australian as are the unvaccinated.

And let us not forget all those businesses, especially in regional areas, that have chosen, in a principled way, to remain closed rather than become arms of the COVID State. A minority, perhaps, still, but an angry minority. (For some reason, the COVID State has shunned the opportunity to do a poll on vaccine mandates).

Once upon a time, it would have been considered political folly to even once insult a constituency, even a single voter.

Many regarded Hillary Clinton’s suicide moment in 2016, the effective end to her chances of becoming President, as her infamous insult of America’s “deplorables”, for example.

Politicians and others in the media spotlight issue routine craven apologies when it transpires that they have insulted someone (typically one who is homosexual, female, of colour or disabled).

CONSPIRACY

They freeze in the social media headlights. Not any more.

Now, it is open season for the entire political class when it comes to the so-called anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists and their fellow-travellers.  (The website of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission makes it abundantly clear that the unvaccinated cannot automatically claim discrimination in the same way as the other groups who endlessly claim to be suffering discrimination.)

The gaslighting class knows it can get away with the discrimination and the insults, endlessly. Whether the inflation of vaccine numbers that allows the bullying to go on is intentional or merely an added bonus hardly matters.

The latest attack by the Queensland President of the Australian Medical Association, in equal measure shameful, offensive and embarrassingly ignorant of the science related to vaccines, suggested the unvaccinated will have a “very, very lonely life”.

“Oh, they’re crazy not to get vaccinated, life will be miserable without getting vaccinated.  You won’t be able to hide, you won’t be able to get a doctor to sign off that you got an exclusion because there’s quite set rules on that and doctors will be audited, every one of their exclusions will be looked at very carefully.”

Nice, just like his Victorian counterpart, who suggested that “… COVID-deniers and anti-vaxxers should opt out of the public health system and let nature run its course”.

In other words, just die!

Bob Carr wants the unvaccinated to be excluded from Medicare. A bit like Singapore.

Daniel Andrews, never wishing to be outdone, has stated that the unvaccinated would be “excluded from the economy”.

MORTALS

These paragons of virtue who inhabit a higher plane must know something that we mere mortals don’t.

Our commonsense understanding suggests that COVID vaccines are ineffective, experimental, dangerous, and, for most people, utterly unnecessary. 

Paul Nuki in The London Telegraph talks about “the rise of the unvaccinated underclass” from “Sydney to Vienna”.  Also known as the “untermenschen”.

It is good to see we are still making the international headlines as a standout COVID pariah, among truly rich competition.

Hitler’s home country has now gone in for lockdowns for the unvaccinated, and his adopted country is likely to follow shortly, according to some accounts.

 What about NSW? Nuki notes: “The situation is also tough in NSW, where unvaccinated people over the age of 16 are now barred from visiting another person’s home other than in a very limited specific set of circumstances, including emergencies. The ban extends to sharing a car and recreational facilities, including many shops, swimming pools and libraries, including in the State’s capital, Sydney. Weddings or funerals of more than 11 people are off limits.”

NSW forbids the sharing of cars between “classes”, among many other draconian restrictions, and with Qld, soon to follow (on December 17, 2021).

Not even the (correctly) reviled Daniel Andrews regime has instigated vaccine-based apartheid in Victorian public places.  (Yes, they do have workplace-based apartheid, of course).  On this question, the Premier State is best-in-show.

Under a Liberal-led government and on the watch (now) of an overtly Christian premier who has stated publicly: “Once every single person in this State has had the opportunity to be vaccinated then we should open up for everyone.  I want to see more unity and not a two-tiered society. It’s not the government’s role to provide freedom.”

OSTRACISM

Irony, indeed.  So far, the premier’s apparent personal views have counted for little.

And the insults keep pace with the ostracism and the restrictions.

Nearly one third of the country is considered fair game, apparently, by our betters.

Nuki notes: “Across the world a new crackdown is gaining pace. It’s not about mask wearing or universal restrictions. This is a crackdown on the rights and freedoms of what, in the developed world at least, is a minority. The unvaccinated. The speed and scale of the policy swing is staggering, and is being felt across the west, including here in the UK. Paradoxically, it comes just as many countries are reopening. Some fear it may become a permanent part of life.”

Indeed, we do. It is all enough to make a New Zealand prime minister snigger. (Like Andrews, Jacindarella is seemingly quite unashamed of her government’s division of society into two classes.)

There are some defenders of freedom for everyone among Australia’s political class.  Not many, alas.

A brave cohort of minor-party politicians and would-be politicians have dared to oppose the COVID cult and the imposition of vaccine mandates.

These include Mark Latham, Pauline Hanson, David Limbrick, Craig Kelly, George Christensen, Fred Nile, Campbell Newman and Malcolm Roberts.

Only four voices from within the major parties have dared to suggest there is something seriously wrong with dividing society according to whether one has succumbed to a COVID State injectable.

These are Senator Gerard Rennick (Qld), Bernie Finn (Vic) Tanya Davies and, most significantly, Dominic Perrottet.

Davies and Perrottet, both NSW Liberals and one a Premier, show every sign of succumbing to what might be termed “Barnaby’s Law”. This is the tendency for politicians to shed their principles, like the vaccinated shed COVID, the closer their proximity to ministerial office.