Achieving herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, depends in part on how long the vaccines protect you against infection. If a vaccine continues to work well over a long period of time, it becomes easier to have a significant proportion of the population protected and to suppress or eliminate the virus1.
Antivaxxers (anti-vaccination activists) seem to be so deluded or gullible that they will believe anything despite it being clearly untrue and easily debunked1,2. Many of them refuse to have any Covid-19 vaccine, despite the fact that any adverse reactions to the various vaccines is miniscule compared to the risk of death or serious long-term illness from Covid-19.
Murdoch’s Sky News talking head, Peter Gleeson was outraged by the case of a three-year-boy stranded in New South Wales after he went to visit his grandparents in July. Gleeson said the boy has been denied a border exemption despite the Queensland government letting in the families of NRL players on Monday. The story was, of course, also repeated in Murdoch’s Courier Mail and Daily Bellylaugh1.
Clare Armstrong, ruperter for Sydney’s Daily Bellylaugh, tweeted: “An Afghan mother and her child were the last people Australia evacuated from Kabul, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison held the final plane for crucial extra minutes so they could board.”1
Part of this story went as follows:
We are unable to see my mother-in-law, who is safely ensconced in a nursing home and has had both doses of the Pfizer vaccine. While the nursing home is only about 800 metres away from our home, because of the lockdown, we cannot see her, which we used to do two or three times a week up until about a month ago.