Anti-vaxxers and travel

Anti small pox vaccination poster. Love the cow coming out of the behind!

You may well ask - what have anti-vaxxers and travel got to do with each other. Why I am going to do a blog - which will basically be an anti-vaxxers rant - as a travel blog? The answer is quite simple. The sooner everyone gets vaccinated the sooner things will go back to normal and the sooner we can all start to travel again. 

One of the requirements that many countries now have is that you need to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 to get entry to a country. Is this fair? Is this acceptable? Is this optional? Are other vaccines needed to travel? 

Typical yellow fever vaccination card

 

Let’s start with the last one first - yes -  there are some vaccine requirements when traveling to certain parts of the world. The most well know if the yellow fever vaccination. Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes in the tropical regions of the world. If you want to visit these places - you need your yellow fever vaccine and you get you little yellow fever vaccination book. You are not allowed onto the plane unless you can show proof of yellow fever vaccination. So, it is actually all quite simple - you want to or need to travel to countries where yellow fever vaccination is required - you get vaccinated and you travel. No problem. If you do not want the vaccine - you cannot travel. This is not very difficult to understand - but I guess if your claim to fame is you hit a poor defenceless tennis ball around - this might prove too difficult to understand. I guess you can see the direction that my rant is heading towards! I guess the above paragraph also addresses the question of if getting the required vaccination is optional. If there is a requirement to get vaccinated, then there is a requirement to get vaccinated! If you do not want the vaccine - do not travel. The choice is that simple. 

 

No vaccine - no entry. I hope that Australia stand their ground.
 

 Is it fair and acceptable to require vaccination? Let’s do these in one. People who are far better educated then a random tennis player or some housewife sitting in Poffadder who has discovered social media, look at the situation and make a decision on if vaccination should be a requirement. This is not done to make the life of an individual difficult - it is to protect the lives and well being of the many. If you do not like it, then do not get vaccinated and do not travel. It is your choice. So yes - it is fair and it is acceptable. I have to stand in front of a class of 80 odd people and come into close contact with them when they are doing their practical sessions. If all of the people are vaccinated, the risks to everyone is far less. 

 

World number 1 on vaccines? - No - just a tennis player

Many of the active antivaxxers are also the people who are shouting the loudest when there is a lockdown and their businesses get closed down. Yes - I understand that the lockdown requirements devastated many businesses - but if everyone gets the vaccine (which is offered for free) we can all return to normal much faster. 

It is also your choice not to get medial help when the pawpaw hits the fan!

 

Are antivaxxers something new? Most definitely not. There have been antivaxxers since Sir Edward Jenner started with the smallpox vaccine. Have the antivaxxers become more vocal? Most definitely. Social media - for all of the benefits it can provide - is also the ideal place to spread miss information, conspiracy theories and other fake news - and these spread like wildfire. I do not want to go into trying to debug all of the fake information about the vaccines on social media as this will take up way too many blogs and I want to get back to writing about my travel experience (I still have quite a few past trips, which I have not covered). The final point I want to raise is should there be a choice related to getting the vaccine or not. I have a few points on this. If you choice not to make use of the vaccine - which is provided free of charge and which has now been injected into the arms of some 9 558 675 135 people with no MAJOR adverse effects - you should then have the courage of your conviction and not rush off to hospital if you contract the disease. There are some 90% of all people in hospitals in the USA with Covid-19 that have not been vaccinated. It was their choice not to vaccinate - now they are depriving other people with other medical issues the right to get treatment in hospitals because the hospitals are all full of idiots who did not vaccinate. If you do not take the free preventative measures provided – do not seek medial help when the pawpaw hits the fan!

Keep your kids away from other kids!

If is a mother right not to want to vaccinate her child against measles, then other mothers have the right to insist that the unvaccinated child cannot be in the same classroom as their children! Measles have an R0 value of 18 (oh yes – I guess that this is a bit too technical for all of the other antivaxxers). So what is an R0 value. This is the number of people who one infected individual can infect. So is it fair to have an unvaccinated child in a classroom with other children – I think not! Measles is the most highly transmissible of all diseases, and can easily be prevented through vaccination - yet there are people who are not vaccinating their children. Is this not a form of abuse? 

Enough on Covid and vaccines - new blog will be on travel again.