Congratulations to Highlands for offering free entry to those who could show their vaccination certificates during the school holidays. This is a great initiative to reward people who make the choice to protect themselves and everyone else from the harms of the disease that has thrown the world out of kilter over the last 18 months.
I see Highlands took a bit of heat for doing this, which strikes me as just bizarre. Inviting vaccinated people in for free is a world away from denying people who haven’t been vaccinated entry and yet some are feeling like they are being picked on because others are getting something they are not.
That isn’t to say that the very difficult decision of not admitting people who haven’t been vaccinated isn’t around the corner for government and many businesses. The uptake of vaccines has hit a wall in recent times. As at Wednesday last week 37.9% of the country was fully vaccinated with 66.4% having had at least one dose. Its probably safe to presume most of those who have had their first dose will get there second, but with the curve of people getting the shot flattening, being in the mid 60 percentile of people being vaccinated is nowhere near where we need to be if we want to stop using lockdowns.
So where does that leave the Government? Three choices as I see it. 1. Keep using lockdowns to control the spread of the disease, with consequential economic and social consequences; 2. give up the fight and let the disease overrun us, with consequential deaths, illness and over run hospitals or 3. Force or coerce people to get vaccinated.
