Vaccinated people should chill out

The Herald reports:

Kiwi singing legend Sir Dave Dobbyn has come out in support of the Covid vaccine – but says the fight should be against the virus, not people.

The 64-year-old has taken to Facebook to express his views and to declare his own vaccination status.

“I am double vaccinated. I encourage it for everyone. But I call out the unkindness directed at those who haven’t yet taken the step.”‌

He ended the post, shared late this morning, with the hashtag: “Fight Covid not humanity.” …

Responding to a tweet by writer Hamish Keith, saying the unvaccinated will feel isolated and picked on and “so they bloody well should”, Dobbyn said: “I thought we’re fighting Covid, not humanity.”

To which Keith replied: “I hope you missed my point. There are a number of people for reasons against reason putting the health of the rest of us at risk – that is I believe a dangerous and possibly lethal point of few – should we simply shrug it off?”

Hamish Keith is wrong, as well as nasty. And poor old Dave Dobbyn had to endure a Twitter lynch mob because he dared suggest we be kind to people.

As I have said many times I regard the vaccines as great, and I have been fully vaccinated. I’ll be keen on the inevitable booster shots next year also.

Those who seem to get most angry at the unvaccinated are the vaccinated, and that is actually pretty stupid as the vaccinated have little to fear from the unvaccinated. If you are vaccinated you are less likely to get Covid-19, more likely to not get any symptoms from it, less likely to be hospitalized and far less likely to die.

The people who should worry about the unvaccinated are the, well, unvaccinated. They are the ones far more likely to get Covid-19, be hospitalised with it, and die from it.

So vaccinated people should chill out a bit. No need to treat the unvaccinated as some sort of mortal threat to you – they’re mainly a threat to themselves.

Sure I want as many people to get vaccinated as possible, but that is more about lifting lockdown restrictions. The notion that any of us will not be exposed to Covid-19 in the next few years is farcical. It is when, not if. Look up the word endemic.

Again I want as many as possible vaccinated to stop lockdowns and to reduce the strain on the health system. But as a fully vaccinated person I do not intend to treat unvaccinated people as lepers or some sort of sub-class of humanity. It is inevitable I will be exposed to Covid-19 one day, but thanks to vaccines the chance of it hospitalising me is greatly reduced.