Meanwhile in the real world of regional australia ... life moves on. Nth NSW is the anti-vazzer / hippy / alt lifestyle capital of australia. I love the place.
quoting news article - ‘It sucks’: how parts of NSW’s northern rivers reluctantly got vaccinated
It’s fair to say the people in the northern rivers of New South Wales generally do not like being told what to do by the government.
In a region with a free-thinking, anti-authoritarian reputation, and a long history of anti-vaccination sentiment, the requirement to get the Covid jab for work or leisure purposes was never going to find a warm welcome.
“I’ve never been vaccinated in my life but I decided I needed to do it because I’m a film-maker and I need to travel a lot,” Jahvis Loveday says. “I just feel it sucks that we have to be forced to do it, but it’s a different world.”
There is simmering anger and a sense of weary resignation as people submit to the vaccination. The issue continues to divide families and strain friendships. Finding locals willing to openly declare they have been vaccinated is a challenge.
Yet despite the antipathy, the drive to get the population vaccinated is gathering momentum. As of 7 November, 85.5% of Byron shire residents had received their first dose and 75% their second. The numbers are similar in the Tweed shire where first-dose vaccination stands at 89.8% and second dose at 80.1%.
Dr Robyn O’Grady, who has been working as a GP in Byron Bay and Suffolk Park since 2017, hopes people are thinking about the vulnerable in the community and the lack of hospital beds in the region.
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“Coercion. All the reasons they are making you get it: travel, work, trying to get interstate”, he says through his well-fitted mask.
“I don’t really have any faith in [the government] running anything and I don’t feel they’re being fair. It seems quite tyrannical. If they’d just explained things better, people would have done it. Now they’re just forcing people and there’s confusion that goes along with everything. Nothing has been clear from the get-go.”
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Edan Agarom, who has spent time in lockdown in Melbourne, has a more prosaic reason.
“I just want to go to the pub,” he says. “It’s been months – I just want a beer. I know that for a lot of people it’s a difficult decision and a tough dilemma [to get vaccinated] but the way that things are looking right now, we’re living in a new world and it’s a tough sacrifice.”
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read the rest interesting dte report about life .... and it's simple pleasures and people's realistic approach to what is, is.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/14/it-sucks-how-parts-of-nsws-northern-rivers-reluctantly-got-vaccinated
The bottom line?
A clear majority of people in the world simply don't care .... if they need to have a vaccine they will get it so they can be Free to get on with their lives. aka shit happens.
Socially accepted norms, and rules define all our lives. Most we simply take for granted and never question evne those that are irrational and archaic and freedom infringing.
Just a few thoughts.