Australia’s politicians continue to cling to the disproven myth that vaccination rates will unlock the nation and return our lives to normal. This is becoming downright delusional given the evidence. Instead of a grand reopening to the world, expect lockdown roulette to continue in 2022.
No doubt you’ve noticed the words ‘high vaccination rate’, ‘record COVID cases’, and ‘reimpose lockdown’ have been combined in a rather large number of news headlines for most of 2021.
Back in May, I pointed out that the first nation to base their reopening on vaccination rates was having a little trouble…
‘The nation with the highest per cent of vaccinations in the world is seeing a Covid-19 surge.
‘Read that again.
‘And the island nation in question is implementing lockdown-like restrictions.’
Israel came next, where things have been downright bizarre ever since.
‘It took just two days for the Singapore government to retreat from its foray into a brave new world of living with the virus,’ reported the Australian Financial Review in July.
Bloomberg last week pointed out that:
‘Denmark, which has one of Europe’s highest vaccination rates, plans to re-introduce some restrictions to halt a recent spike in Covid-19 contamination cases.’
Remarkably, governments even ignored the evidence from within their own borders.
The Irish Times explained on 21 October that ‘Waterford city district has State’s highest rate of Covid-19 infections’ but the ‘County also has highest rate of vaccination take-up in the Republic’.
Since then, in anticipation of what was to come next, I have been singing the old ABBA song about how vaccinations lose the battle against COVID restrictions…
‘My, my — at Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender
‘Oh, yeah — and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way‘The history book on the shelf
‘Is always repeating itself‘Waterford, I was defeated, you won the war
‘Waterford, promise to jab you forevermore
‘Waterford, couldn’t escape if I wanted to
‘Waterford, knowing my fate is to be with you
‘Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa- Waterford
‘Finally facing my Waterford’
After ignoring the evidence from places like Seychelles and presuming that vaccinations would allow an end to lockdown restrictions, the rest of Ireland is now facing its own Waterford.
‘Ireland Reimposes Some Virus Restrictions as Cases Surge,’ reports Bloomberg. And the word ‘some’ is the key here with ‘Covid passes to be required at cinemas, theaters, not at gyms’. This is odd given you can exercise outside, but let’s not go there.
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‘If the number of Covid infections and hospitalizations continues to grow at the rate we are currently seeing, no health system anywhere in the world would be able to cope,’ Ireland’s Prime Minister Martin said.
The thing is, they don’t continue to grow, as the UK’s pandemic professor Neil Ferguson now found out the hard way with his infamous extrapolations and predictions…
Cases eventually peak, regardless of lockdowns or vaccinations. And so, making policy decisions on some sort of never-ending exponential rise is just plain stupid. Almost as stupid as claiming that vaccinations would prevent cases from returning and triggering more lockdowns again.
Strangely enough, vaccination rates in many nations have hit the targets espoused by Australian politicians, but those rates failed to prevent the virus from making another ‘surprise’ resurgence in those countries, and now the focus is on locking down the unvaccinated.
The vaccinations will continue until the data improves, is it? Or is this punishment?
If so, take care. The few governments who have acknowledged that the vaccinations don’t stop COVID cases nor lockdowns have declared people who have received both jabs as ‘unvaccinated’ over time. As in Israel, you need a third jab to be classed as ‘vaccinated’. And why stop there?
But back to our vaccination rates and the reopening of Australia. What level of vaccination is sufficient to escape lockdown policies? 80%? 90%? How about 140%?
The Evening Standard points out that ‘Christmas cancelled in Gibraltar — the “most vaccinated” place in the world’, which has a vaccination rate around 140% (thanks to the Spanish workforce getting jabbed). Despite this, cases are rising exponentially in Gibraltar.
Look, if vaccination rates of 140% don’t prevent lockdown policies from being imposed, and you’re waiting for vaccination rates to unlock the nation from the lockdown cycle, you’re dreaming.
Of course, we have also managed to escape lockdowns since vaccination became widespread. In fact, we’ve done it quite a few times. And we did it a few times before vaccination, too…ergo, vaccination and the end of lockdowns are unlikely to be particularly well related.
I went on a narrow boat holiday after the UK’s first wave, so I don’t think the absence of lockdowns for a short time proves anything. The question is whether lockdowns come back at all in a vaccinated nation. If they do, the vaccines won’t stop them in the future. And they have, to put it mildly.
But if the vaccines don’t work well enough to stop you from getting COVID, from passing it on, nor from having to impose lockdowns, then they’re not very good, are they?
So while we now know that even 140% vaccination rates don’t prevent pandemic restrictions, the big question remains the same: when will this reality finally hit financial markets?
What’ll happen to airline stocks and tourism businesses if vaccines don’t reopen the world? I think we’re going to find out.
Until next time,
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Nickolai Hubble,
Editor, The Daily Reckoning Australia
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