Last week, a woman in her 20s died in NSW. She died unvaccinated. She was a resident of a disability group home. Her death was broadcast in a simple tweet - a statement of fact, by the NSW Department of Health. What was missing from that announcement is that she was in group 1a for COVID vaccines.
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Remember that plan? The one that prioritised Australians at risk, but evaporated somewhere between the ever-changing vaccine recommendations and the Prime Minister's failure to acquire vaccines (or implement the rollout of the ones he did purchase)?
When Scott Morrison or Glady Berejiklian talk about "opening back up", or that ''you have nothing to fear about this disease ... if you are vaccinated", they happily gloss over the stories about the individuals hurt, or killed, by the slow rollout and the coming decision to reopen.
I am one of the people who had an adverse reaction to a COVID vaccination due to an autoimmune condition. I don't regret my decision to get vaccinated - it was the right one given my COVID risk profile. But the reaction I experienced means I cannot have another.
The stories I hear about the damage done to others who have gone through similar experiences hit me in a place so deep and personal I struggle to describe it.
Those stories make me cry. They make me look at my own hands, which haven't worked properly in four months now. They make me furious at the injustice for the woman who died last week, and the others that will follow. We don't know the name of this woman, and we don't know if she was ever given the chance to be vaccinated. Given the documented struggle of families to have their relatives living in disability group homes protected from COVID-19, there is a good chance she wasn't.
I spent the day I wrote this piece talking to friends still struggling to access vaccines as part of the groups who should have had priority. I talked to people like me, who had a vaccine where things went wrong, so cannot be fully vaccinated.
If I were to put a name to the feelings they expressed, it would be terror.
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For those who have family members who are in group 1a yet remain unvaccinated, as vaccines open to every other group, they are terrified their family members will die.
Then there are those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons, or tried and it went wrong (like me). There are those who do not know if their vaccines are effective because they are immune-suppressed. They, we, also feel terror. Terror that we will be left behind, that no one in the places of power cares.
As we see federal and state governments talk about "opening up through vaccine passports" and "living with Delta", our lives don't open up. They get smaller.
The more those who are vaccinated "live with COVID" in the community, the more people left out of the vaccination program - by poor policy or by poor circumstance - are pushed out of the community.
I am a public health policy researcher. What is happening in Australia right now is not good policy. It is not good public health. It is a mad dash to make up for past mistakes.
After hearing the stories of those who fear the death of loved ones - of people like me who fear our houses will become prisons for years to come - I ask one thing.
I ask that our public policymakers think of the whole community. That they understand that getting it right is more important than getting things open.
I ask that our country's policymakers not make second-class citizens of those of us who were already marginalised, risking our lives, our health, and our future.
- Professor Gemma Carey is an author and researcher at the University of NSW.
