Agreed Macca. Here's an article on the abc.net.au site which documents the efforts of anti-vaxxers to promote social cohesion:COVID vaccine letters target GPs and pharmacists demanding they 'cease and desist' or face 'punishment'.
Let's not forget about the time they threw urine at staff at either a vaccination or Covid testing site and ripped down marquees they were using. Charming folk.
They've been busy unleashing a firehose of lies and disinformation on the public through social media. The Age (through AP) reports they have an unlikely ally in their efforts (the article mostly discusses the US experience). It appears a subset of chiropracters are the Scientologists of the medical world as they're scornful of the efforts of mainstream medical practitioners:
Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of COVID-jab misinformation
So what is the appropriate public policy response? How do we counter outright lies and intimidation? Unsurpisingly, the anti-vaxxers are worked into a frenzy by vaccine mandates. Just imagine if everyone bar the anti-vaxxers gets vaccinated and this helps bring an end to the pandemic. Not great for the anti-vax movement and in the short-term it kills a nice little earner they've got going with the sales of miracle cures and fundraising.
So they promote a PR campaign that we should be compassionate to those they turn into anti-vaxxers or vaccine-hesistants. We shouldn't expect everyone to do their bit in an effort to staunch the Covid onslaught, we're told. And we should be prepared to foot the bill for them when a predictable portion of them need expensive medical treatment and lengthy hospital stays which muscle out others who need those services. We should treat them as a religion or race unto themselves: in other words, it's SEGREGATION or APARTHEID just as in the Deep South of the US before the Civil Rights Movement or in South Africa! That PR campaign is disgusting, Sam Frost tried this on for size when she posted a sobbing video bemoaning this segregation and thankfully the backlash was so immediate and strong she took the video down and disabled her account.
Mandates and vaccine passports are effective in pushing the disinformation-affected hesitants over the line. Quite apart from encouraging people to do something which will benefit them and the community, they're also defensible on the basis that they simply acknowledge that the unvaccinated are more likely to spread a deadly disease than the fully vaccinated.
In particular, a mandate in the healthcare setting means we force the wingnuts out of the system. Not having a nurse or chiropracter terrorising parents about vaccinating themselves and their kids is a win in itself.
Let's not forget about the time they threw urine at staff at either a vaccination or Covid testing site and ripped down marquees they were using. Charming folk.
They've been busy unleashing a firehose of lies and disinformation on the public through social media. The Age (through AP) reports they have an unlikely ally in their efforts (the article mostly discusses the US experience). It appears a subset of chiropracters are the Scientologists of the medical world as they're scornful of the efforts of mainstream medical practitioners:
Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of COVID-jab misinformation
Quote:At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalising on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines.
They have touted their supplements as alternatives to vaccines, written doctor’s notes to allow patients to get out of mask and immunisation mandates, donated large sums of money to anti-vaccine organisations and sold anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, the AP discovered. One chiropractor gave thousands of dollars to a Super PAC that hosted an anti-vaccine, pro-Donald Trump rally near the US Capitol on January 6.
...
Public health advocates are alarmed by the number of chiropractors who have hitched themselves to the anti-vaccine movement and used their public prominence and sheen of medical expertise to undermine the nation’s response to a COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 700,000 Americans.
Australia has not been immune from the trend either, with one Melbourne chiropractor suspended for spouting anti-vax claims.
...
But the pandemic gave a new platform to chiropractors who had been stirring up anti-vaccine misinformation long before COVID-19 arrived, driven by interpretations of 19th century chiropractic beliefs that medicine interferes with the body’s natural flow of energy.
Chiropractic was founded in 1895 by D.D. Palmer, a “magnetic healer” who argued that most disease was a result of misaligned vertebrae. Its early leaders rejected the use of surgery and drugs, as well as the idea that germs cause disease. Instead, they believed the body has an innate intelligence, and the power to heal itself if it is functioning properly, and that chiropractic care can help it do that.
This led many to reject vaccines – even though vaccines are not within their scope of practice. Instead, they treat conditions through spine and musculoskeletal adjustments, as well as exercise and nutritional counselling. A 2015 Gallup survey found an estimated 33.5 million adults had seen a chiropractor in the previous 12 months.
Even before the pandemic, many chiropractors became active in the so-called “health freedom” movement, advocating in state legislatures from Massachusetts to South Dakota to allow more people to skip vaccinations.
...
AP could find no national numbers of vaccination rates among chiropractors, but Oregon tracks vaccine uptake among all licensed health providers, and the numbers show chiropractors and their assistants are by far the least likely to be vaccinated – and far less than the general public.
So what is the appropriate public policy response? How do we counter outright lies and intimidation? Unsurpisingly, the anti-vaxxers are worked into a frenzy by vaccine mandates. Just imagine if everyone bar the anti-vaxxers gets vaccinated and this helps bring an end to the pandemic. Not great for the anti-vax movement and in the short-term it kills a nice little earner they've got going with the sales of miracle cures and fundraising.
So they promote a PR campaign that we should be compassionate to those they turn into anti-vaxxers or vaccine-hesistants. We shouldn't expect everyone to do their bit in an effort to staunch the Covid onslaught, we're told. And we should be prepared to foot the bill for them when a predictable portion of them need expensive medical treatment and lengthy hospital stays which muscle out others who need those services. We should treat them as a religion or race unto themselves: in other words, it's SEGREGATION or APARTHEID just as in the Deep South of the US before the Civil Rights Movement or in South Africa! That PR campaign is disgusting, Sam Frost tried this on for size when she posted a sobbing video bemoaning this segregation and thankfully the backlash was so immediate and strong she took the video down and disabled her account.
Mandates and vaccine passports are effective in pushing the disinformation-affected hesitants over the line. Quite apart from encouraging people to do something which will benefit them and the community, they're also defensible on the basis that they simply acknowledge that the unvaccinated are more likely to spread a deadly disease than the fully vaccinated.
In particular, a mandate in the healthcare setting means we force the wingnuts out of the system. Not having a nurse or chiropracter terrorising parents about vaccinating themselves and their kids is a win in itself.