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Mike Hosking: Is the vaccine worth risking your career for?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 16 Nov 2021, 9:16AM
(Photo / Supplied)
(Photo / Supplied)

Mike Hosking: Is the vaccine worth risking your career for?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 16 Nov 2021, 9:16AM

The great mystery for me of the vaccine mandate is, just what is it about the vaccine that would lead you to voluntarily want to quit your job? 

I get it if you're 22, your job sucks, you're on minimum wage, you don’t really know what you want to do in life, and the benefit still offers an element of appeal. But the mandates around teaching and healthcare are different, aren't they? 

Firstly, you are qualified and you studied. To study you had to dedicate yourself, you clearly wanted to do this. And yet a jab is the difference between you following your dream and being unemployed? You are not going on welfare, it's a world away from where you were financially. 

So, what is it about the vaccine that is so all consuming you'd run yourself into financial difficulty to avoid it? 

There, I assume, remain the two groups. The flat out anti-vaxxer and the ones who are yet to be convinced. 

How is it in a place like New South Wales, a place not dissimilar to us, has gone from a resistance level of about 29 percent down to 4 percent? They're closing in 95 percent first doses, that's not a lot of resistance left. Yet here we seem stuck at about twice that. 

Is the mandate being overplayed? Is it possible that by the end of this week we will actually find out the numbers of teachers, nurses, and midwives quitting isn't actually that big at all? Will there be a few last-minute hold outs that, when push came to shove, acquiesced? 

For those who are in the "I don't like getting told what to do “ camp, I fully get it. But in life there all sorts of judgement calls you make. 

There are lots of things we don’t like to do. A lot of us don't like change, a government, or new rules, but we put up with it. We accept that picking your fights is a skill. We give things the weight they deserve. 

Sometimes we'll quit work, but it's mainly when we have options, an out, or an alternative.  

What alternative do the unvaccinated have? What was the point of years of training for a job you’ve just quit so you can be unemployed and unvaccinated in a world that, rightly or wrongly, has decided your view is wrong? 

How many restaurants do you want to be banned from? How many flights do you want to miss? How many shops do want to banned from? How many jobs won't you have? 

That's a hell of a hassle for a point of view. 

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