Five words that could derail Australia

Five words that could derail Australia’s plans to get Covid fit for the future.

“I’m not anti vax, but …”

These five short words are usually followed by an elaborate answer which usually involves not getting the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccination because A) it’s too risky, B) it’s not effective, C) they’re “waiting for Pfizer”, or D), in extreme cases, because they’re all “experimental”.

An epidemiologist has said it’s a “major, huge problem” which could leave unvaccinated Australians “vulnerable” and delay plans to reopen the international border.

“People say ‘I don’t want to be that person who gets a blood clot’ but what they aren’t doing well is putting that risk in perspective,” said LaTrobe University associate professor Hassan Vally.

“It’s almost like someone who is too scared to cross the road but goes abseiling every weekend.”

RELATED: Melbourne Covid-19 outbreak spikes as lockdown fears grow

Vaccination rollout falling behind

Around 45,000 Australians are getting a jab each week with 3.7 million doses having been administered.

At that rate it would take two and half years to fully inoculate everyone.

However, the number of jabs per week is expected to rise as more shots become available.

While some vaccination centres have seen queues, there have been reports of so few people turning up at others that people outside of priority groups have been able to wander in and get a shot.

A Victorian nurse said she administered one Covid shot during an eight hour shift.

On Monday, chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly said bonuses should be considered to get people though the door.

“At the moment we know there is some hesitancy, particularly in the 50-69 year old age group,” he said.

Certainly, the misgivings also haven’t been helped by a perception the government has given muddled messages.

Last week, Health Minister Greg Hunt caused confusion when he said “there will be enough mRNA vaccines for every Australian”. Some interpreted that as a green light for over 50s not get the AstraZeneca vaccine. He later said people should get vaccinated as quickly as possible.

In Victoria, where a seven-day snap “circuit-breaker” will kick in from midnight, Acting Premier James Merlino attributed Australians’ vaccine hesitancy to the federal government’s handling of the vaccination rollout.

“As [chief health officer] Professor Sutton and other public health experts said, these vaccines are safe. And these vaccines, if people get vaccinated, it keeps our community safe,” he told reporters.

“We would not be in this position that we are today, this necessary and difficult position, that we are today, if our vaccination rates were much higher than they are right now.”

RELATED: Anti-vaxxers are now running Australia

“I’m not anti vax, but …”

On the weekend, news.com.au columnist Joe Hildebrand wrote a column in the wake of an opinion poll that stated 30 per cent of Australians would not get a jab.

“It is almost unbelievable that after our extraordinary success in beating the virus we have arrived at a place where anti-vaxxers are effectively running the country,” he wrote.

That elicited hundreds of comments, with many stating they weren’t against vaccinations, but nonetheless they wouldn’t get a shot.

“I’m not taking it. I’m also not an anti-vaxxer,” said one.

“I won’t be getting any Covid vaccine. And I’m not anti-vaccine,” said another.

One reader glibly remarked, “The biggest giveaway for an anti-vaxxer is they start their diatribe with ‘I’m not an anti-vaxxer.”

However, Prof Vally said there was a difference between those who make farfetched and ludicrous claims about 5G, microchips and so-called “vaccine shedding,” and others who have become bamboozled by a tsunami of studies and side effects.

“These are people who are not philosophically against vaccines but are hesitant.”

RELATED: QLD chief health officer to receive AstraZeneca, not Pfizer, vaccine

Vaccines are “experimental”

That the vaccines are “experimental” is a word that crops up in story comments and social media.

“This is not true – they have all been put through standard safety testing before being rolled out to the public,” stated a fact check by news agency Reuters.

The type of vaccine used by AstraZeneca is not new and has been used previously for ebola.

Pfizer and Moderna are messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines.

“While these are the first mRNA vaccines to be rolled out to the general public, the technology behind them has been developed over a number of years.”

AstraZeneca hesitancy

But Prof Vally said much of the push back against getting a shot in Australia was actually about a single vaccine.

“I would suggest there is a subtype of vaccine hesitancy which is a very specific: AstraZeneca vaccine hesitancy.”

“It’s a major problem, it’s huge. We’ve been so successful controlling transmission we are asking people to make decisions on a potential future risk. But the risk at the moment isn’t there and that’s what we’re fighting against.

“But as we’ve seen in Melbourne, things can change quickly.”

Prof Valley said much of the information being bandied around about AstraZeneca on social media was “completely wrong” and the risks of taking it were being “overweighted” by many.

One of the issues has sprung from the sheer number of vaccines potentially available.

“It might have been better to have just one vaccine because now we have this bounty of riches and it means we’re thinking about them in different way.

“There’s almost a consumerist mentality that they’re comparing one vaccine with another – AstraZeneca vs. Pfizer – in the same way they might compare LCD TVs.”

He said it “wasn’t unreasonable” to have questions about vaccines and ask questions about side effects. However, some of those concerns seemed to have taken away from the far bigger benefits.

“If you don’t understand how minuscule that risk is it’s a really hard battle. But as soon as you understand how small that risk is then you can put it into perspective.”

Risk of vaccines are being badly framed

There have been 24 cases of blood clots in Australia following two million AstraZeneca doses. Of those, one person has died. Many of the rest back to everyday life.

Prof Valley said the “health risk had fallen” from blood clots due to people being on high alert for it.

“The AstraZeneca vaccine has been given to hundreds of million people (worldwide) and there have only been a few instances of adverse effects.”

He said it also mattered how you framed those adverse effects.

“So you could say there are ‘six clotting cases in a million’; or there are ‘999,994 instances out of a million of not having anything wrong’.”

More Australians getting AstraZeneca would also help confidence in the jab rise.

“The more normalcy to what is happening, the more you see vaccinations occurring, the more likely you are to get vaccinated,” said Prof Hassan.

Numbers around the efficacy of the AstraZeneca jab are also cited by some as a reason to avoid the vaccine.

Yet recent real world data of almost 400,000 people in the UK has stated the AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs are essentially as good as each other when it came to staving off new Covid-19 infections.

They were both also “highly effective” against the so-called British and Indian variants at stopping symptomatic disease. Pfizer was slightly better than AstraZeneca in this English study but the difference could be down to the AZ jab taking longer to reach maximum effectiveness, researchers stated.

The phrase “I’m not anti vax but …” could come back to bite people if a large outbreak occurs, Prof Vally said. When that happens there won’t be the time or capacity to rush out vaccines. Vaccines that take a few weeks to ramp up to full protection anyway.

“Waiting for Pfizer is a problem. Things can change quickly, there’s so much uncertainty and the cost of waiting is leaving yourself vulnerable and people have to factor that in too.”