It happens in the shower, mostly. That’s where I have conversations with the anti-vaxxers I love.
These conversations happen inside my head, and I do most of the talking.
The tone varies depending on my mood. Often, I’m furious. Sometimes, I’m pleading.
I always make many excellent points.
And it ends the same way every time, with them exclaiming: “Oh wow, I never thought about it like that. You’re right. I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been. I will go and get vaccinated immediately.”
So far, this has not happened in real life.
Ugh, where to start?
Even though only around 10 per cent of Australian adults have so far refused to get vaccinated, everyone seems to know at least one of them.
I know a few.
Thanks to social media, it’s hard to avoid knowing the vaccination opinions of others, even people who are peripheral in our lives - old workmates, ex boyfriends, mates from school, the parents of our friends, the friends of our parents - and for most of this year, the topic of the COVID vaccination has dominated in real life and online.
It’s now common to watch arguments breaking out between someone’s friends or followers in the comments below any post about COVID. That’s mostly how we’ve learned who is unvaxxed. And who is unhinged.
It has been shocking to watch people you thought you knew, people you thought were rational and sane, sprouting nonsense about conspiracies and ‘sheeple’ and the mainstream media being ‘in on it’ and governments trying to kill us. It’s been a bitch of a year for learning that people you love have been radicalised.
Not everyone who is unvaxxed is out and proud. But even if someone is trying to fly under the radar, people talk.
The vaxxed know who the unvaxxed are. And no matter what the future brings, it’s going to be really hard to forget who didn’t do their part to protect the community like the rest of us did.
Up until just a few months ago, it never occurred to me that I would know any anti-vaxxers. Let alone that I would discover some I’m extremely close to and how that would test me in ways I never thought possible.
And yet here we are.
***
I can pinpoint the exact moment I went from being someone who simply had vaccinations and vaccinated her children, to a passionate advocate for it.
It was 2010 and I was sitting in my lounge room interviewing the weeping parents of a baby girl called Dana McCaffrey who died after catching whooping cough from someone in her community near Byron Bay.
She was just four weeks old. When she was born the previous year into a fully vaxxed family, Dana was too young to be vaccinated and most people weren’t aware that a childhood disease could kill you. People were a little complacent.
Thanks to the very brave work by Dana’s parents, Toni and Dave, who spoke out to raise awareness about the dangers of whooping cough and the importance of vaccination in kids and boosters in adults who were around newborns, many other babies have lived.
And I say brave, because the anti-vaxxers hounded those poor grieving parents in an organised, heartless and vicious way.
They attacked them privately and publicly, preposterously claiming that little Dana didn’t actually die of whooping cough and that the McCaffreys were tools of Big Pharma, being paid to scare people into getting vaccinated.
Dear god, I thought at the time (and still do). These people are unhinged.
I was shocked to learn that some people didn’t “believe” in vaccinations. As though science were the same as Santa.
Who were these crazy people and what on earth was their motivation in spreading dangerous misinformation?
From that day, when Mamamia was still a blog written by just me, I wrote about how important it was to get vaccinated. And I wrote. And I wrote.
And that’s when they started coming for me too.
There were Facebook groups set up called Mia Freedman Is A Pharma Whore where anti-vaxxers would post digitally altered images of me as a zombie and accuse me of being paid by pharmaceutical companies, just like the parents of children who had died from vaccine-preventable diseases.
I was bemused. I wasn’t a grieving parent. I would willingly cop their pathetic trolling and keep speaking out about something I so strongly believed in. I f**king hate bullies.
And so my education in the toxic world of anti-vaxxers began.
A few years later I was invited to be a UNICEF ambassador on a trip to Papua New Guinea to see the vaccination program over there which was trying to reduce the number of babies and children dying of pneumonia caused by measles.
Image: Supplied.
We drove in medical trucks to tiny villages in the mountains and I watched the UNICEF nurses set up mobile clinics.
The women came in a trickle that swelled to a river. Some had traveled for days with their children on their backs and their babies strapped to their chests so they could all be vaccinated.
Image: Supplied.
The joy on the faces of these women and the excitement among the children was a reminder of how grateful we should be that there are vaccines that can prevent and even eliminate untreatable and often fatal diseases like whooping cough, polio and measles.
Image: Supplied.
It goes back even further for me. My grandfather, a doctor, was responsible for helping to introduce the measles vaccine into Australia back in the 1960s.
I’ve grown up understanding how vaccines save lives even before I had to look indirectly into the anguished eyes of grieving parents with empty arms who never had the opportunity to save their babies from a vaccine preventable disease.
Image: Supplied.
So, COVID.
Obviously, I was vaccinated as soon as I could be and trampled several senior citizens in my rush to the vax hub.
I’m joking. I waited my turn but was among the earliest to be vaxxed.
So were my husband and my children who are aged 13-24.
We are extremely vaxxed in our house.
We love a jab.
My family and my friends were all the same. Everyone I love went as soon as they could. Or so I thought.
I first became aware something was wrong when a couple of people I’m close to went quiet in various group chats I’m part of. Everyone was discussing which vaccination to get, depending on their age and availability.
There was much trading of intel - where can you could get a booking? How soon? Which jab are you getting?
We all excitedly shared screenshots when we got confirmation of our appointments and then posted post-vax selfies, our relieved grins hidden by our masks.
We compared notes about sore arms or post-vax-symptoms as though we were proud fighters who had returned from battle - even though the most we had to do was a bit of online admin and maybe drive a few suburbs to queue at a hub.
After more than a year of feeling helpless and hopeless and powerless, we felt invigorated.
Finally, we could take action to protect ourselves and our loved ones and the community.
Finally, we could switch our minds from the despair of watching daily COVID numbers rise to the pride of watching daily vax numbers rise.
It was such a powerful and satisfying shift in focus.
We felt galvanised and like we were part of something bigger. Something good. Something helpful.
We all felt such kinship and solidarity with our communities and our country as everyone lined up for jabs so that life could resume, kids could go back to school, borders could reopen, families could be reunited and businesses could rebuild.
And yet.
Not all of us.
A couple of people in my life remained quiet. To the point where it became obvious.
I can’t remember how I found out.
I know that I didn’t want to ask directly because I wanted to delay knowing something that would so profoundly change my opinion of these people.
Word filtered back to me that they “weren’t ready yet”. They were “worried about the long-term effects”. They “wanted to do more research”.
I was aghast as were all our mutual loved ones.
And yet I still felt unable to broach it with them directly because I didn’t trust myself not to start shouting in ALL CAPS.
This is when my shower conversations began.
Me: More research? Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realise you were an immunologist! Or a doctor! Are you a doctor? A scientist? No? Then what makes you think you’re qualified to research something as complex as a vaccine?
Them: Now that you put it like that…….
Me: Do you also research aeronautics before you get on a plane? Or do you trust that all the regulatory bodies and the airline have all made sure the aircraft is safe to fly?
Them: That’s such a good analogy. You’ve changed my mind. I’m getting vaxxed.
There was one other reason I kept my conversations to the shower and not in real life.
I knew that if they confirmed to me that they weren’t getting vaccinated, I would have to re-think what my relationship with them would be in the future. Would I even be prepared to see them?
Was this a deal-breaker for me and what did that even look like?
***
During the second lockdown, I interviewed an immunologist for No Filter about vaccine hesitancy and she explained that some people just take a bit longer to make decisions than others and that usually that would be OK.
With COVID, however, we didn’t have the luxury of time. Not if we wanted to get out of lockdown.
Ok, I thought. So maybe they just need a bit more time. They’ll come around. Surely. Other people close to them started to broach it and we began to back channel amongst ourselves.
Back then, we were still convinced they’d come to their senses.
Meanwhile, I considered my own position. It didn’t take long. Would I knowingly see unvaccinated people? No.
Back to the shower:
Them: Why does it matter to you if I’m vaccinated or not? I don’t care if you’re vaccinated. And your vaccination should protect you if it works.
Me: This isn’t just about me or even just about catching COVID. I cannot believe how selfish you are. What about the poor doctors and nurses and healthcare workers who will have to take care of you when you get sick? And yes, you’ll invariably get sick because it’s going to become the pandemic of the unvaccinated in Australia just like it has in every other country. I know vaccinated people can still get it but we’re unlikely to end up in hospital and put a strain on the healthcare system. And we’re much less likely to spread it.
Them: Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. It does seem selfish now that I think about it.
Me: And what about the prospect of spreading it to people who are vulnerable? What if you gave it to my parents or your parents? They could still die or get really sick even though they’re vaxxed. And what about everyone else in the community? The elderly. The vulnerable. Kids. Babies. Have you thought about that?
Them: No, I hadn’t thought about that. Wow, it does seem like kind of a dick move. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow.
This is around when I started sending some texts.
They were pretty long and pretty emotional and the texts I got back were similar. We were at an impasse. They spoke of the “risks” associated with the vaccines and how they simply weren’t willing to take them.
“The risks are incredibly small but yes, they exist, just like with any other medical procedure or medicine,” I countered.
“We all assessed those risks and weighed up the benefits for ourselves and for the community and we did it. More than 90% of us. Why are you so special that you get to benefit from what we’ve all done to protect each other without doing your part to help?”
I was livid. I am livid.
In response, they made spurious claims that were easily disproved, had no basis in fact or science and continued to insist they wanted to wait for more research.
I asked if they felt like a pariah and they said no, that there was a spectrum of feelings from their friends and family and that I was at the extreme end because I was so angry.
They insisted there were plenty of people in their life who were cool with it.
Whatever the opposite of cool is, that’s me.
Our texts were civil, I refrained from using all caps and ended with many love heart emojis even though I wanted to send the emoji with the head blowing up because that’s how I felt.
It was like these people I thought I knew had been somehow radicalised by misinformation and fear.
There’s a spectrum of radicalisation, I’ve learned - the hard way. One friend I haven’t seen in a while has been posting about censorship in the mainstream media and conspiracies to suppress important information about the dangers of vaccines and the “true” story behind COVID and the government and Big Pharma. It’s exhausting. And bizarre.
After one particularly bizarre post making absurd claims about the mainstream media, I told myself not to respond. I lasted two days.
“Hey, you’ve known me for more than 20 years and I’m part of the mainstream media. Do you honestly believe I am part of a conspiracy? To do what?”
She replied with claims that “hundreds” of doctors had had their accounts removed from Instagram as though that were proof of anything. I told myself not to reply. I lasted three minutes.
“Just because the media or social media doesn’t publish something that doesn’t mean the truth is being censored. It just means it’s not factually correct or can’t be proven.”
And then she called me a sheep.
***
With my unvaxxed loved ones, it was less black and white. They insisted they weren’t anti-vaxxers and were offended when I referred to them as such.
I replied it was semantics. Ok, they weren’t anti-vaxxers. They were anti-COVID-vaxxers. The result is the same.
As vaxxed people could once again meet, first in parks and then in homes and restaurants, the rift widened. I kept waiting for them to cave and it’s only recently that I’ve accepted that they won’t.
This is their position. And I’m devastated.
“What about if they do a rapid antigen test?”, a mutual friend asked me when I spoke to them of my anguish over them missing an important occasion. “Are you actually scared of catching COVID or is it something deeper?”
I had to think about this. I’m still thinking.
Part of me is genuinely worried about catching COVID from someone who is unvaccinated since they are far more likely to have it than someone who is vaccinated. And far more likely to pass it on.
But what about the unvaxxed people we pass in the street and the unvaxxed people who are shopping and dining beside us without us even knowing?
It’s different.
Firstly, I can’t control that. I can’t control incidental exposure unless I stay home, which I’m not prepared to do. But seeing someone I know and love means talking to them face-to-face and spending time with them in an environment that’s far higher risk than brushing past someone in a shop or sitting at a different table in the same cafe.
Sure, we could both be masked but… and this is where I have been exploring what’s deeper than my fear of actually catching COVID.
To me, what’s been so devastating about discovering the people I love are refusing to get vaccinated has been the feeling that we have different values.
Vaccination to me has always been about not just protecting myself and my immediate family but also the wider community.
There are risks inherent in every medical procedure. Every form of medication you take, every treatment, every vaccine comes with risks.
And almost 95 percent of Australians have weighed up those risks against the heavy weight not just of our own health but of people in the community we don’t even know who are vulnerable.
Who, even though they’re double vaxxed, could be in real danger if they catch COVID. Who could even die from it.
We’ve weighed up the tiny risk of the vaccine against lockdown ending and against our children being able to go back to school and businesses being able to reopen and life resuming after two horrendous years.
We’ve weighed it up and we’ve rolled up our sleeves.
For each other.
The refusers, the anti-vaxxers, they’ve made a different choice. And yet they will still benefit from all the freedoms now available to everyone due to the fact that 95 per cent of us did the right thing and followed the health advice.
I find it hard to get past the selfishness and the arrogance - of thinking they don’t need to follow health advice. That they know better than pretty much every medical body and scientist in the world.
And don’t even get me started on those refusers whose only reason for not getting vaxxed is because “I just don’t like anyone telling me what to do”.
Sir, are you a toddler?
The anguish is real. Not just for me but for millions of Australians who have been shocked or distressed or frustrated or disappointed by people they love who aren’t vaccinated.
There are empty seats at tables. Group chats that have suddenly gone quiet. Missing faces at important gatherings.
The past two years have thrown so many unexpected challenges at us, this one feels particularly hard; trying to unscramble the love you have for someone with a decision they’ve made that impacts so negatively on others.
And to try to reconcile the warped thinking about science and the world that has infected people you were once close to.
I just wish there was a vaccination for that.
Feature Image: Supplied.
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