Dear Anti-Vaxxers, Stop Comparing Jabs To Apartheid And Racial Segregation
Your personal choice is not the same as racism.
Don’t get it twisted — refusing to get vaccinated on personal grounds is not a form of apartheid, or comparable to segregation in any way.
As NSW begins to emerge from its extended lockdown, anti-vaxxers have once again come crawling out of the woodwork to voice their warped battlecry that, in their eyes, they are being discriminated against in way akin to a crime against humanity.
The latest offender is former Bachelorette and Home and Away star Sam Frost, who took to Instagram over the weekend to refer to treatment of unvaccinated as ‘segregation’.
“I feel like it’s getting to a point now in the world where there’s a lot of segregation, a lot of harsh judgement, and it’s taking a toll on my mental health,” said Frost, on her now-deleted account. Confusingly, she claims medical professionals advised her against being vaccinated for “good reasons”, but then went on to infer her decision was a personal choice tied to her opinions.
As journalist Antoinette Lattouf concisely put it on Twitter, “This isn’t 1950s Alabama. You ain’t Rosa Parks”, in reference to Frost drawing lines between her experience and civil rights.
But Frost is not alone. Last month, Liberal MP George Christensen continued spewing his anti-vax messaging with racially loaded phrasing, saying “we’re no longer in a slave relationship where you can demand certain things can be done with my body” and calling Australia’s vaccine stance “apartheid”.
Let’s get it straight here — no one is forcing any needles into anyone. It was established long ago that some people are medically exempt from immunisation, but if you aren’t getting vaxed because you’ve been fed lies and misinformation, then chuck a sook when you’re temporarily not afforded the same perks as the fully protected — you aren’t a victim, you’re a public health risk to the wider community.
The situation is no different, as many have pointed out, to banning smoking in restaurants. Comparing something you can control — like making an informed decision with healthcare experts to get jabbed if eligible and healthy — to being attacked, isolated, and even killed for something one cannot change — like skin colour — is deplorable.
Your so-called atrocities are self-inflicted, so stop crying wolf. It’s getting real old.