Effective and ethical political leadership cannot avoid mandatory vaccination

There is an ethical and political failure of leadership on Australia’s COVID-19 vaccination policy. Moreover, the sensitivity on the part of some political leaders to the worries and concerns of people who are hesitant or opposed to COVID-19 vaccinations would be more understandable if similar sensitivity was shown in response to the worries and concerns of, for instance, the unemployed, including those losing their jobs and businesses due to lockdown restrictions — unemployed persons who now have to survive somehow on a contemptibly small government payment or, for holders of certain visas, no government support at all. It frankly beggars belief that some appear to argue that requiring people to have one or two vaccination jabs, even if this were to be extended to annual vaccinations in order to account for new variants, is a greater impost upon the reluctant minority than the alternative — namely, the likely recurring impost of severe restrictions due to COVID-19 and, particularly in the absence of such restrictions, the illness or death that will eventuate among many. And yet the public’s overwhelming need to feel safe, and the resulting recourse to the precautionary principle in one’s planning, is what is largely absent from relevant guidelines that have been issued so far: the WHO’s policy brief, “COVID-19 and mandatory vaccination: Ethical considerations and caveats”, and the Australian Human Rights Commission’s document, “COVID-19 vaccinations and federal discrimination law”. It is, frankly, unconscionable to use the watchwords of “individual choice” and “hesitancy” amid the COVID fog, when the real source of slow and low COVID-19 vaccination is: confusing, conflicting, and counterproductive advice; poor political and public health communication ; poor organisation of distribution and capacity for safe injections ; and the obvious shortage of the safest vaccines.