Mandatory Vaccination for Residential Aged Care Workers

On 28 June 2021, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the COVID-19 vaccine will be mandatory for all residential aged care workers. The decision was made at an emergency National Cabinet meeting between state and territory leaders. All aged care workers are expected to have their first dose by mid-September.
 
“This is something we wanted to see and so tonight we received the advice that would enable us to go forward with that measure”, Mr Morrison said.
 
“Imposing on a person the requirement to have a vaccine or not be able to work in a particular sector is something that no government would do lightly and as a result we have been considering this matter for some time now based on the best possible medical advice.”
 
It would be interesting to know who the government received their advice from, and what evidence they have to support this decision.
 
In August 2020, Mr Morrison initially claimed that the vaccine will be “as mandatory as possible” before back tracking on his comments. He followed this with “it’s not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine”.
 
“There are no mechanisms for compulsory… I mean, we can't hold someone down and make them take it”, Mr Morrison said at the time. It appears that they will just lose their job instead.
 
Perhaps we should have seen this coming. In January 2021, Mr Morrison stated that the Australian Health Primary Protection Committee (AHPPC) are “not recommending (mandatory vaccinations for aged care staff)”. However, the Prime Minister did not rule out making the COVID-19 vaccine compulsory “in the future”. It seems that day has arrived.
 
Chief advocate for National Seniors Australia Ian Henschke said back in January that “if it turns out the vaccine does prevent transmission, I would think it would be a no-brainer to make it mandatory”.
 
Guess what Mr Henschke? It doesn’t.
 
The Prime Minister has even said so himself, claiming that there is not yet “considerable evidence that tells us transmission is preventable”. In fact, the clinical trials were not even designed to measure it.
 
According to a study in the Lancet journal, “these considerations on efficacy and effectiveness are based on studies measuring prevention of mild to moderate COVID-19 infection; they were not designed to conclude on prevention of hospitalisation, severe disease, or death, or on prevention of infection and transmission potential.”
 
One only has to look through the clinical trial data to discover this.
 
In the Pfizer clinical trial, “confirmed COVID-19 cases were determined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and required at least 1 symptom consistent with COVID-19 disease… The symptoms included: fever, new or increased cough, new or increased shortness of breath, chills, new or increased muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhoea or vomiting.”
 
Yet, we are repeatedly told that the COVID-19 vaccine reduces severe illness, hospitalisation and death. It was never measured during the clinical trials.
 
In the UK, the death rate from the ‘Delta’ variant is “six times higher among those who were fully vaccinated for two weeks or longer than those who never received a shot”.
 
“Twenty-six people died among 4,087 who were fully vaccinated 14 days or more before testing positive for the Delta COVID variant. This equates to a death rate of 0.00636 percent, which is 6.6 times higher than the rate of 0.000957 deaths – or 34 deaths among 35,521 positive Delta cases among the unvaccinated.”
 
Fully vaccinated people are also being hospitalised in the UK at a higher rate than unvaccinated people. So much for the vaccine being effective in preventing severe illness, hospitalisation and death.
 
According to the Australian Public Assessment Report for the Pfizer vaccine, the “longer term safety and duration of vaccine protection is unknown… vaccine efficacy against asymptomatic infection and viral transmission (has not yet been addressed)… a correlate of protection has yet to be established… (and) vaccine immunogenicity cannot be considered and used as a surrogate for vaccine protective efficacy at this stage”.
 
Furthermore, the vaccine still hasn’t been granted full approval by the TGA, and the clinical trials are not due for completion until 2023.
 
Given the complete lack of data on both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, how could the government mandate the vaccine for anyone, regardless of which sector they work in?
 
The Australian Immunisation Handbook states that a vaccine must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation. Forcing someone to take a vaccine, especially an experimental one, so that they can keep their job is most certainly coercion.
 
If the government mandates the vaccine for aged care workers, who will be next? Doctors and nurses? Health care practitioners? Pilots and flight attendants? Where does it end?
 
There have already been 31,641 adverse events reported to the TGA as of the time of writing, including “318 reports of death in people who have been recently vaccinated”. In the US, there have been 6,113 deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and in Europe, 15,472 deaths have been reported to EudraVigilance.
 
Leading Aged Services Australia (LASA) chief Sean Rooney said that “part of doing all we can to protect older Australians in care is to consider mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for aged care workers – assuming is it safe to do so and with appropriate exemptions”.
 
Given the data from the TGA, VAERS and EudraVigilance, it most certainly is not safe to do so.
 
Dr Maria O’Sullivan from Monash University Faculty of Law explained that the “overriding consideration is whether it necessary and whether it’s proportionate”. To date, there has been one death in Australia due to COVID-19 in the first six months of this year. How is mandating a new vaccine with no long-term safety data “proportionate”?
 
Bodily autonomy is one of our inalienable rights as a human being. We should not be pressured, coerced or manipulated into taking an experimental vaccine that has been rushed to market. We most certainly should not lose our job and our income for refusing to do so.
 
Where there is risk, there must be choice. Enough is enough. It is time to end this madness and cease the vaccine rollout immediately.

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