THE WEIRDNESS OF SOME.
I remember a scene from a movie where a white redneck was sitting in a cafeteria in the USA, when a small Black American guy walked inside. He was too little to attend school, and the American redneck demanded that the guy’s father publicly whip him for entering the cafeteria. Towards the end, the guy, now an adult, and his father attend the same cafeteria and talk of a “terrible cup of coffee” once the rules were changed to allow Non-Whites to enter.
Today, I was doing my shopping, and masks are mandatory in the shops, when I encountered a man and his wife and I stood back to let them past. He was not wearing a mask and told me that he wasn’t contagious and that I was contributing to government segregation. Had the police been there, he would have been fined, and deservedly so, too.
So, why have I had my vaccine and why do I wear a mask? Well, I’ve had my vaccine because I don’t want to contract COVID19, and I wear a mask because, a) I don’t want to breathe onto others or inhale their germs, and, b) I don’t want to get fined.
Just the same as I wear a seatbelt when I drive my car not because I am an automaton, but because the law says I have to. And the law for not wearing a seatbelt is, that, if you are driving or riding in a car, you must wear a seatbelt, unless you have a medical exemption (okay, if you’ve had open heart surgery, you might have to have a folded jumper between your chest and the seatbelt to stop it rubbing) or, if you are stopped by the police, or caught on camera, you will be fined. Okay, three demerit points and a hefty fine might be better than having your head hit the windscreen and breaking your nose.
I remember a guy who used to be in the Army telling a story of how two guys were in a staff car with ABS and they wanted to see how it worked and crashed it into the back of a truck. One of the allegedly remarked, as the car was a Falcon, that he wished it had been a Commodore so he could see the airbag being deployed!
Wearing a seatbelt in a car is no more segregation than wearing a mask. You cannot, if stopped by the police, say, “Oh, this is segregation.”
Segregation applies to circumstances that you cannot control, such as skin colour or ethnicity (let’s not also forget that when China was carved up like a melon, in some parks, signs were erected saying that the parks were for foreigners only!). I remember a foolish right-wing politician (apart from Malcolm Turnbull and Tim Fischer I am yet to see a clever one. Malcolm Fraser wasn’t great, BUT, his establishment of the Special Broadcasting Service, and acceptance of refugees who came by boat from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were achievements) saying that if they had a say as to who came into their house they should have a say as to who came into their country (false equivalence). Yet, this politician is opposed to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, to which I say, it is hypocritical of a politician to say that they should have a say as to who enters their country yet a business owner has no right to know if someone has been vaccinated and require proof before admitting them. Let us not forget that the business owners, whom this politician purports to be concerned about, if a COVID positive person enters their premises, has to close to allow deep cleaning, which, in turn, causes them to lose money! So just who is this stupid politician concerned about?!
Compliance with the law is not segregation and let’s not forget that there is the sting of a fine, and I don’t mean $10, I mean $500, for not complying with the law.