Courtesy of Scott Morrison’s disastrous rollout, it’s premature to discuss vaccination mandates outside very specific requirements. But it’s an issue that will require careful consideration by governments and employers from late in the year when Australia finally starts to catch up with most other advanced economies in vaccinating a substantial proportion of its population.
So far no one seems to have had a problem with a mandate for aged care workers to be vaccinated — except that the government hasn’t been able to come even close to vaccinating all of them, despite promising to do so by the end of March. Health care unions have been vocal in their support for the aged care mandate, reserving their criticism for the government’s failure to make vaccines available.
The same mandate logic will eventually apply — once enough vaccines are actually available — to healthcare workers, who spend their working day around the ill, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. The rollout by state governments to frontline healthcare workers was far more successful than the Commonwealth’s debacle; the question will be whether governments impose a mandate to ensure uniformity across medical workplaces or leave it to individual service providers.
But the problems start mounting rapidly once you move out of workplaces where vaccination is a key safety tool for protecting the vulnerable and into the kinds of workplaces most of us work in or for.
A vaccine mandate (with appropriate medical exemptions) for an ordinary workplace — an office, a shop, a building site, a factory — is about lowering the risk to work colleagues, rather than especially vulnerable groups. For many employers — especially those eager to have staff back in the office rather than working from home — mandating a vaccination will be highly attractive. We already accept a range of restrictions on our behaviour in the workplace, and often extensive regulation around clothing and protective equipment, to meet workplace safety requirements. But a vaccination is something altogether more invasive.
In the US, where the debate is necessarily far more advanced, divisions are already apparent. Some healthcare workers are suing healthcare employers over vaccination mandates. Trade unions are divided over likely Biden administration plans to extend the new Department of Veterans’ Affairs vaccine-or-be-regularly-tested mandate across the whole federal government. That’s before you get to the growing divide between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
We’re likely to see arguments here that mandating vaccinations for ordinary workplaces is overreach, while employer groups call for certainty from government. Whether unions join in by undertaking cases on behalf of workers objecting to being required to be vaccinated might be a deciding factor: the Transport Workers Union, for example, has singlehandedly changed the employment landscape for gig economy workers with a series of cases against major companies on behalf of workers.
Given the slow rollout, the government has some months yet to work out what its position on workplace mandates will be. But it had plenty of time to get the rollout right, and quarantine right, and it botched both of those. It still doesn’t have a position on issues like the employment status of gig economy workers years on from the first cases being brought.
Beyond workplace mandates — mandating vaccinations not just in workplaces but as a condition of participating in society in various ways — it gets nasty politically. We already have vaccination requirements relating to access to childcare subsidies and income support, introduced by the current government, but they are aimed at wingnuts who endanger their children by refusing to vaccinate them. Imposing such requirements on people making decisions about their own health is quite different.
A more general mandate for both government and private services is already an obsession of right-wingers and the horse-punching freedom brigade, including the troglodytes of Sky News. There’s a long history on the right of objections to governments requiring things to go into bodies (although the argument that it’s all about choice strangely hasn’t extended to support for abortion). Now that has fused with the disease-is-beautiful-and-natural-Big-Pharma-is-evil delusions found on the left to produce warnings of police issuing Nazi-style demands for vaccination papers, please.
And in the US — of course — there are already laws from a number of Republican-controlled legislatures banning the private imposition of vaccine passports, such as businesses requiring vaccination as a condition of providing services.
But there’ll also be pressure from the rest of the community to impose mandates so that something like a pre-pandemic normal can return. Who’ll want to sit next to an unvaccinated person on a plane? Eat at a restaurant next to one? Who wants to face lockdown because a spike in COVID cases has sprung from a third of people being unwilling to get a jab?
Health workplaces — not much of a problem. Other workplaces — more of a problem. Everywhere else — very nasty. It will require leadership and good communication from both the federal and state governments. Good luck with finding that in Canberra.
Mandatory vaccination is not a conflict between individual rights and societal needs. It’s a clash between some individuals’ views of their rights (whatever they are!) and the rights of all other individuals to security of the person, the right to life, the right to health etc etc. Those who refuse vaccination might just be doing the rest of us a big favour by naturally selecting themselves off this mortal coil!!
The only problem with allowing the process of natural selection to accelerate, is that the grossly unfit to survive will take a fair few innocents with them.
Inflicting your illness purposely on others needs to be made a form of assault, which is what it is, with appropriate penalties and criminal records, plus ongoing surveillance if you are part of an assault network of any kind.
Natural selection isn’t relevant for humans today, science has allowed the dim to survive as well as the bright.
As is demostrated here constantly.
With such a low mortality rate, their wouldn’t be enough people “impacted” for the natural selection to have statistical relevance.
The statistics aren’t in globally yet. We don’t really know the mortality rate for any defined groups as yet.
ABS says 0.04 and 0.1 % mortality rate for females and males respectively under 60 and that 74% of all people who died whilst also having covid had co-morbidities.
As noted on RN this morning, the Greek alphabet only has 22 letters so is inadequate for naming the exciting new variants, up to kappa already.
“The idea of naming them after Greek gods was rejected as too scary.”
Why would anyone find Nemesis, Thanatos or Hades unsettling?
Unfortunately, Darwinian selection is a bit too slow for the current situation.
Up until 1960s all adults in Australia had to have a chest X-Ray every 2 years or every year from age 16
Choosing whether to be vaccinated against a scourge is a very modern entitled phenomena. Failure to vaccinate allows the virus to circulate through the community and mutate to something more virulent.
We have had vaccination passports for decades. They’re called International Certificates of Vaccination. Mine has a evidence of yellow fever vaccination in it and I often had to show it when entering the country. Without it I would have spent a mandatory time in quarantine and had to pay for the pleasure (if I had been one of our ‘non-citizens’ I would have been on the next flight out).
The same principle can apply within national boundaries. Medical exemptions allowing, businesses have every right to demand proof of vaccination for entry (it increases their chances of remaining open). It is legitimate to require people working with our most vulnerable to be vaccinated (again medical exemption allowing), and it should be provided free during work hours. It is a contribution to the well-being of society.
Regardless of how strong or weak Australia’s vaccination guidelines are, you can bet that international destinations will set their own vaccination policies, and that would-be Australian tourists will need to follow them. And I also think the appetite for unvaccinated non-Australian arrivals to this country will be far less than that of mandating COVID-19 vaxes for our own people.
Sure, but my main point is vaccination certificates have been around for a long time.
Exactly, e.g. the ‘Brussels effect’ and EU Vaccination Certificate (with phone app), or equivalent.
Workers in many industries already have mandatory regulations on health and safety issues. Go on a construction site and you must wear a hard hat and steel capped safety shoes.
Similarly proof of vaccination would be a requirement of employment in all areas where there is contact with the public or vulnerable.
I recall that in the past when travelling to certain countries, specific vaccinations were required as a condition of travel ( and insurance)
Yep – I think the problem here is it’s called a pandemic. Other diseases were endemic to an area of specification. That has changed everything.
Its mostly a political opportunity, however, yes, it’s also a pandemic, but that’s not the relevant bit going forward. Your thinking makes you vulnerable to coercion.
Once upon a time long long ago
I guess Australia could do what Gladys does in NSW. Let all the other countries mandate the vaccine first as a provision of getting on any transport that crosses international boundaries either into or out of a country.
That should afix the responsibility of vaccination to everyone else. Gladys by not closing boarders has afixed responsibility to every other State and territory and picked on them for doing so to try to keep smelling like a flower.
I could see Scott Morrison doing the same.
I think the Feds will leave it up to society to choose what to do based on restriction of the unvaccinated.
Peer and consumer pressure in various settings within Australia and globally will sort the choice for Governments.
Smell like flowers.