Australia’s former deputy chief health officer Dr Nick Coatsworth says it is time for corporations to give unvaccinated Aussies back their jobs.
The outspoken critic of many of the harsher pandemic measures took to the pages of the Australian Financial Review to argue that punishing those who had not taken a jab was now morally dubious, scientifically ineffective and could be open to legal challenge.
Some of the nation’s biggest employers such as Coles, Woolworths, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank and SPC have an open ‘no jab, no work’ policy.
Dr Coatsworth (pictured in 2020) has argued that employers should drop vaccine mandates as they are no longer necessary and ethically questionable
And while official jab requirements have mostly been abolished for all but ‘high risk’ settings, many companies and organisations are enforcing ‘shadow’ mandates by simply refusing to hire un-jabbed workers.
Dr Coatsworth said that while he had supported the mandates initially to overcome the ‘natural human inertia towards getting vaccinated’ that period had passed.
‘The Covid-19 environment has changed and the time for corporate vaccine mandates has changed,’ he wrote.
Dr Coatsworth says that natural immunity and mass immunisation have over-ridden the public health reasons for employers to demand vaccinations
He cited a quote from Monash University bioethicist Zeb Jamrozik: ‘There are worrying signs that current vaccine policies, rather than being science-based, are being driven by socio-political attitudes that reinforce segregation, stigmatisation and polarisation …’
Dr Coatsworth gave two main reasons to argue that the public health rationale for mandates no longer outweighed ethical concerns.
He said it was now accepted that vaccines ‘do not reduce transmission’ because the Omicron variant was more infectious.
Dr Coatsworth was appointed one of three new deputy chief medical officers under Dr Brendan Murphy in March 2020 during the early days of the pandemic
The second reason was that high vaccination rates had already reduced the impact on the healthcare system and working age Australians were not the ones needing hospital care.
‘If companies could previously claim that their mandates were an exercise of corporate social responsibility to limit the burden of disease, that argument is now discordant with reality,’ Dr Coatsworth wrote.
He then argued an employee who contracted Covid and then was fired for not getting the jab might be able to sue because recovering from the disease conferred a natural level of immunity.
‘Immunity acquired through infection provides at least equivalent and probably more long-lasting immunity than primary vaccination alone,’ he wrote.
Although Dr Coatsworth said most experts thought it was best to have ‘hybrid immunity’- both natural and vaccine conferred antibodies – but obviously that wasn’t something employers could insist on.
So if an employee who had contracted Covid was fired for not having the vaccine they could potentially sue.
‘Immunity can be easily tested for and an employee seeking redress for unfair dismissal could easily demonstrate equivalent antibody response from their natural infection with a simple blood test,’ he wrote.
Thousands of people have lost their jobs under official and unofficial jab mandates.
A Sydney lawyer representing those affected in a class action suit in being fought out in the Federal Court, told Daily Mail Australia he’s been inundated with ‘calls from people telling me ‘I’m going to kill myself, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t cope”.
Peter Maatouks said while most of the Covid vaccine mandates have been abolished – apart from a few high-risk sectors – state governments across the country have simply pushed the power onto bosses or industry associations.
Pictured: Sydney lawyer Peter Maatouks
Many organisations who sacked workers when state-ordered vaccine mandates were legislated in 2021, have now adopted their own unofficial ban of the un-jabbed since the laws were eased.
According to Mr Maatouks it can be legally dubious to implement a Covid mandate for staff.
But businesses are able to get around the dilemma by imposing and informal ban on those who aren’t double-dosed.
‘Some states like NSW are pushing the power onto the employers or the individual sectors,’ he said.
‘So all the health departments have done is shift the vaccine mandate from the power of the state to the bosses.
He estimates that ‘tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people’ across the country have lost work or been affected by employee Covid jab mandates.
‘It’s astronomical. On a daily basis I’m getting calls from people telling me ‘I’m going to kill myself, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t cope’, it’s absolute heartbreak and chaos.’
Dr Coatsworth has long called for a more balanced approach to Covid risks and the potential harms of restrictions.
During a surge in Omicron cases in January, he criticised doctors who said students should remain home as the first weeks of the school year approached.
In a lengthy interview with Daily Mail Australia earlier this year, Dr Coatsworth said restrictions should be removed as soon as they are not demonstrably necessary.
‘My preference was always to look at the benefits and consequences of whatever restriction was brought in,’ he says.
‘I’ve thought in general that we were too slow to realise the negative consequences of most of the restrictions.’
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