The media — either due to laziness or a belief that Australians prefer to be scared rather than relieved — has appeared to ignore a critical element of the COVID vaccines’ effectiveness.
Early data on the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines indicates that not only do they almost entirely prevent death, they significantly slow the spread of the virus. According to Dr Anthony Fauci, anyway.
Fauci’s comments were based on a study which appeared in The Lancet in February and a (not-yet-peer-reviewed) Israeli study which found “the viral load is reduced four-fold for infections occurring 12-28 days after the first dose of vaccine. These reduced viral loads hint to lower infectiousness, further contributing to vaccine impact on virus spread”.
An Oxford study, also not yet peer-reviewed, had earlier found that the AstraZeneca vaccine could cut transmission by 67%.
If these findings are confirmed, the narrative on vaccines is completely changed. The apparent view of the anti-vax and vaccine-cautious in the community is essentially this: the vaccine is riskier to me than COVID, so I won’t take the vaccine. That response is not completely unexpected — many people act purely in their own self-interest.
The problem with such a hyper-rational position is that — like smoking or carbon pollution or drink-driving — it ignores the externalities of one’s actions. For example, if a fit, non-vaccinated 30-year-old has COVID (and may be asymptomatic) they could pass COVID to a far more at-risk grandparent.
If the early data is correct, the vaccines not only help prevent infection but transmission, so refusing to get one causes a negative externality to others (by potentially making them sick) and to the community as a whole (extending COVID measures increases the financial burden that eventually needs to be repaid by future generations).
The way we usually deal with externalities is by creating laws. For example, we don’t allow people to smoke inside an aeroplane or drive a car while drunk.
One way to reduce the anti-vax externalities is to force people to be vaccinated, although that is widely criticised as a tactic and tends to cause even more opposition. A marginally less drastic measure is to create an anti-vax economic cost, like a higher Medicare levy — the argument being there is a cost for the incremental healthcare resulting from COVID. Or a “no jab, no play” rule, although that is potentially unfair on children.
An approach favoured by economists is to provide incentives rather than disincentives. For example, the government could simply pay people $500 each to take the vaccine, but that is generally frowned upon given the vaccines, although appearing to be very safe, are still new. Plus this is very costly in the short term.
But there is another solution. The government could allow businesses to use vaccinations as a customer acquisition tool — Australian businesses could directly market incentives to a vaccinated person.
For example, Qantas could offer a $250 discount for someone who has been vaccinated and wants to travel internationally, or the Commonwealth Bank could offer a discounted home loan rate for people who have been vaccinated.
Businesses would essentially use the discounts to acquire customers instead of, say, paying Facebook, News Corp or Google for marketing. Meanwhile, the government gets a free way to incentivise people to take the vaccine.
Not everyone would use or even care about the bundle of discounts, but some would.
The problem? Any business that offers such an incentive risks jail for its directors. It is illegal to offer a reward for taking a vaccine, even if the person or business offering the reward is not linked to the pharmaceutical company making the vaccine.
Interestingly, while you can’t offer an incentive to take a vaccine, billionaire Clive Palmer is perfectly able to place full-page advertisements in national newspapers encouraging people not to take vaccines, leading to the strange situation where encouraging people to not take a vaccine is perfectly legal, but encouraging a TGA-approved vaccine would send you to jail.
Adam Schwab is a director of Private Media (publisher of Crikey), and the co-founder of Luxury Travel Escapes, a Melbourne-based travel company.
Adam Schwab is a director of Private Media (publisher of Crikey)…..
Well that explains a lot *lol*
The new disclaimer (“Schwab is a director of Private Media”) made me laugh too… For almost a year now, ever since Schwab swapped from being an early lockdown zealot to one of that destructive policy’s most vocal critics, his Crikey column have produced an avalanche of comments – nearly all of them negative.
Many in the Crikey army have spend a huge amount of effort furiously and repeatedly denouncing Schwab’s (freely disclaimed) “conflict of interest”, demanding he be sacked as a Crikey contributor and/or alternatively, lecturing him on “the error of his views”. The more pompous of them have claimed they have been motivated by trying to “educate” the poor ignorant man.
Hopefully that same army, the one that made his articles the most clicked-on on the Crikey site, can now reflect on how usefully they spent their time… PM were so impressed with their efforts they’ve asked the man the “come on board” and help lead Crikey’s future.
Well done, all you pompous, know-it-alls… (you know who you are).
Well, I suppose he must have skills other than opposing lockdowns… not that any recent readers would have known it.
No, he’s been on the board for years. Crikey just conveniently forget to declare it until I started pointing it out in the comments.
In the comments section there was some inference that he was doing some type of advertorial in conjunction with Cky, if I remember rightly. But it was never spelled out that he was a director of Private Media the publisher of Cky…and for quite some time apparently.
All I remember is a vague inference to some type of travel industry advertorial in conjunction with Cky that he was doing. But it was never spelled out that he was in fact a director of PM the publisher of Cky.
Adam, you appear to have drafted a way for the private sector to exploit a public health necessity, and nothing more.
The guaranteed benefit would be to private sector companies, who’d piggyback on free government publicity for targeted campaigning, for which they would otherwise have had to pay.
Meanwhile, any benefit to vaccine recipients would only be prospective (e.g. discounts on stuff they may not want.)
And this is your best idea for public health good?
If companies want to contribute to public good, why not do so at their own expense, rather than by milking government communications? There’s nothing wrong with self-funding promotions encouraging people to vaccinate, having staff wear badges saying ‘I vaccinated’ and so on.
I want to say it’s not your best idea in this space but I’m not even sure that’s true…
And like other readers I think your declaration of Private Media directorship is likely overdue, and now explains a lot.
(having staff wear badges saying ‘I vaccinated’ and so on.)
Your over all comment is quite relevant except the bit about wearing a vaccination badge. It’s far too reminicent of the Nazi’s forcing the Jewish people to wear the yellow star of identification 1935 – 1945. Or, is this the new mantra of the pro vax brigade?
(having staff wear badges saying ‘I vaccinated’ and so on.)
Your over all comment is quite relevant except the bit about wearing a vaccination badge. It’s far too reminicent of the Na-i’s forcing the J-wish people to wear the yellow star of identification 1935 – 1945. Or, is this the new mantra of the pro vax brigade?
Craig, as you might have realised the badge was just an alternative idea for comparison to taxpayer-funded business marketing. You could replace it with anything else and I wouldn’t mind.
But since you’ve made an issue of badges, from curiosity may I ask: are you opposed in principle to all health-promotional badges, like ‘I gave blood today’? Breast cancer awareness ribbons? Brain cancer daffodils?
Do you object to organisations promoting anything that is voluntary but which experts have pronounced to be in the health interest, or is there a special time when the paranoid Godwin rhetoric should come out?
If so, what determines that time?
Oh look, after I’ve been pointing it out in the comments for weeks, now we finally get the disclaimer that should have been there all along.
It’s amazing how easy it is to get published when you’re a director on the board of the owners.
Certainly for many years, up till the 70s, most international travel required a jab for a number of diseases. That was mandated, not voluntary.
I got a jab for my first or second visit to India in the 80s, that was recommended, not mandated.
So there are legal principles for airlines to require a jab, if they want to implement them, as Joyce has argued for Qantas. Certainly I won’t be flying with any airline that doesn’t require a Covid passport, i.e. one showing that you have had a jab.
That’s my choice, airlines can decide for themselves. Other countries can demand a jab regardless of what any airline policy is. That is their sovereign right. It seems likely that this will happen as international travel opens up. I wouldn’t have it any other way, and presume that our federal government will insist on it.
It will simply be a case of ‘back to the future’ for international travellers to be fully vaccinated.
However, covid won’t be the last major change to the Gilded Age the West enjoyed in the last quarter of the 20thC.
The rise of antibiotic resistance will change a great deal more than luxury cruise sybaritism – not many people grasp how lethal bacterial infection was pre 1950 when a dental abscess or a scratch in the garden could kill.
The danger of Balinese monkey bites will probably may not register with the bogan brigade – at first – and let’s not forget TB.
Boomers were Blessed in so many ways which will not recur in the foreseeable future.
I
I actually really truly had a shocking vax experience. Not a bogus one as some commenters here claim to have had. I will post soon the exact circumstances and how I nearly died. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So many readers, for so long, wondered why this failed luxury cruise spruiker was allowed to publish his “let ‘er rip” ratbaggery that.
His board position has only now been disclosed since a commenter outed him last week – a further example of the negotiable integrity of this flaccid organ.
As shameful as this was, he is now allowed to advocate co-ercion to help his failed business model.
Can this go any lower?