Are You Double-Dosed?
The Conversation provides tips on how to ascertain whether your friends have been double-jabbed against Covid
Need your blood pressure raised a bit? Well, Are you double dosed?’ How to ask friends and family if they’re vaccinated, and how to handle it if they say no from the Oz version of The Conversation, the public outreach organ for university academics, would be just the ticket. Always a reliable barometer of Covid hysteria, The Conversation has excelled itself with this absolute pearler from two academics (Professor Julie Leask and Research Fellow, Jessica Kaufman) who, by the way, have funding links to the lockdown-enthusiastic Department of Health in Victoria, land of the never-ending lockdown and militarised police, and to the China-controlled, in-hock-to-Big-Pharma World Health Organisation whose role in stoking Covid mania has well and truly trashed its brand.
The authors look at New South Wales where the state government’s ‘Roadmap to Freedom’ (and aren’t they all the rage these days) plods along the lockdown road with the New South Welsh set to receive their latest ‘treat’ of picnics of up to five people being allowed – but only for the fully-vaxxed. No unjabbed friends or family can attend, and they will be fined if they do so. Families are expected to self-police the new picnic rules by not inviting the unvaxxed. Here are our learned academics’ tips on how the righteously jabbed can ascertain the vaxx status of potential vaxx heretics amongst the would-be picnic attendees. Their tips are accompanied by my exegesis (in italics) on their proposals for handling this particular area of ‘New Normal’ Covid etiquette.
1. Don’t leave it to the time of the picnic, they suggest. Ask for your friends’ vaxx status beforehand to avoid the moral disgrace of going along with “something that doesn’t feel right to you or end up in an argument” once the unvaxxed picnickers are in your midst and tucking into the dips. [For the good little Covid citizen, loyalty to the Covid regime is more important than loyalty to friends, so best to find out their private medical details in advance, to avoid placing you under awkward ethical stress at the picnic and displeasing the regime. Disinviting your unvaxxed friends up-front, however, will surely preserve the friendship – yeah, right!.]
2. “Keep the question casual”, they advise, a question like “FYI, I got my second dose last month. These new rules mean everyone coming will have to be vaccinated. Have you had both doses? I want to make sure we’re OK to go ahead”. [How very reasonable and politely phrased, and it puts the onus on the unvaxxed for potentially ruining the picnic and not on the vaxxed for vetting their friends].
3. “If they say No, then be ready to listen” - be patient and “let them share all their concerns before you jump in and try to answer or correct them.” [Correcting the misinformed fools can wait until after they have displayed their ignorance, when you can “help them weigh up the risks and benefits of the vaccines, share some facts about safety and effectiveness”. Once you enlighten them with The Facts, they will be set on the straight path to Vaxx truth].
4. “Talking about your own experience can help normalise vaccination” [which, of course, is the goal with getting the experimental, fast-tracked, novel gene therapies accepted – it’s just another vaccine like the flu, MMR or DPT vaccines. But probably best not talk about your personal experience with any unusual adverse reactions which might imply that the Covid vaxx isn’t all that normal.]
5. If your unjabbed friends/family remain recalcitrant in their cautious or negative views on the Covid vaxx, however, then abandon any attempt at persuasion and just say that we agree to differ but, nevertheless, “we have to follow the rules”. [Even if those ‘rules’ are bat-droppings crazy, designed to coerce uptake of a vaxx which the unvaxxed don’t want or need and are socially divisive, hammer the point that rules are rules and must be followed.]
6. If you still meet a brick wall of scepticism and/or rule-breaking resistance, stress that the unvaxxed’s exclusion from picnics “is only a temporary thing — we should all be able to get back to normal in a few more weeks”. [If your vaxx-free friend cynically mutters something about ‘temporary, like two weeks to flatten the curve was only temporary’, then you may have a problem, however. Definitely do try and forget the (former) NSW state premier’s statement that ‘Life for the unvaccinated will be very difficult indefinitely’.]
7. Continuing to argue the toss over the merits of the vaxx with stubborn ‘anti-vaxxers’ “is rarely - if ever - effective, and it could ruin your relationship”, they advise [unlike how insisting that they be vaxxed, or that they exclude themselves from the picnic because the rules say so, is not a relationship breaker].
8. Even if you are making no headway at all, remember that “it’s not necessary to cut someone out of your life because they aren’t vaccinated” [just don’t invite them to picnics, or a night out or anything else that friends, real friends, did BC (Before Covid)].
9. The danger of totally unfriending the unjabbed, they warn, is that “social exclusion leads to more conspiratorial thinking - in other words, cutting people off when they believe in conspiracy theories often leaves them to go further down the rabbit hole, unchallenged by alternative views”. [So, they are conspiracy nuts, or victims of conspiracy nuts, to start with, not people who have done their intellectual due diligence and sought a second opinion on a potentially life-changing (or ending) medical procedure from reputable scientists and lay scholars who dissent from the propaganda of the Covid hysterics who have gotten everything so monumentally wrong but who must stick to their narrative rather than admit error, including on the vaccines. If your unvaxxed friend starts to talk about the Kafkaesque situation of it being permissible to entertain a vaccinated but sniffly person who can transmit the virus at your picnic but unlawful to invite a healthy unvaccinated person, then clearly they are off with the moon-landing-was-faked crowd and thus their anti-Covid-vaxx arguments can be summarily dismissed].
10. If, despite all your cajoling and efforts at enlightenment, your unvaxxed friends remain unrepentant on vaxx-only picnics, there may come a time when you simply have to say, let’s call the whole thing off and ‘cancel the picnic’ [so, go all passive-aggressive: ‘well, that means no picnic for anyone, then’ or ‘you are neither welcome nor allowed to come along’ – making it clear that, in either case, it’s all their fault for being unvaxxed, for not being an obedient Covid citizen.]
Our credentialed Covid Agony Aunts conclude by urging the double-jabbed not to give up on their friendship with the unvaxxed: “For these sensitive social negotiations around vaccines, masks and other measures, we will need to communicate with care to keep connecting with each other as safely as possible”. Welcome to the era of ‘Covid-Safe friendships’ – if that isn’t an oxymoron then ‘military intelligence’ and ‘business ethics’ are not a cause for derision. If the unvaxxed have to obey all the Covid theatre, and its more dangerous off-shoots like mandatory experimental Covid vaccination, as the basis for a friendship, then is that friendship really worth keeping?