QLD Health condemns Rocky anti-vax adherents
A MEETING held this morning at Kershaw Gardens by the Informed Medical Options Party, which is against a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine and “mandatory or coerced vaccination” in general, was criticised by Queensland Health as “nonsense”.
At the Rockhampton stop of the party’s pre-election tour, Nicklin candidate Allona Lahn and other IMOP members mingled with about 20 people, mostly mothers and many with children.
Ms Lahn said she was in favour of “no coerced or forced vaccination”.
“We are about fully informed consent,” she said, “and we say no to mandatory vaccination.
“We just want to defend people’s right to choose: that’s predominantly the party.”
A Queensland Health spokesman replied “vaccinations are a global phenomenon that have saved countless lives around the world”.
“Like the overwhelming majority of parents, we believe in protecting kids through vaccination because it’s the normal, safe and sensible thing to do,” she said.
“Vaccination rates for Queensland kids are increasing because mums and dads believe the science which shows they are the safest, most effective way to prevent serious and life-threatening illness.”
The IMOP meeting at Kershaw Gardens this morning.
IMOP’s policies were varied, and included removing fluoride from Queensland water, banning 5G networks pending safety studies, legalising medicinal cannabis, investigating the environmental effects of mining and fracking, and ending foreign ownership of Australian assets.
Nevertheless, the Kershaw Gardens meeting was mostly about vaccines.
An attending Rockhampton mother said she stopped vaccinating her four children because one of them went into a coma after an injection.
“That’s what woke me up,” she said.
“I then looked at the ingredients; I then realised what I did to my child.”
She said she supported IMOP because “they live and breathe what they preach, and that’s very rare”.
Ms Lahn also said she wanted mandatory reporting of “adverse events” – some kind of injury or reaction to an inoculation – and for vaccines to be clearly labelled as to their contents.
She worried about a future in which a person’s right to work and travel, and a child’s day care enrolment in Queensland, would be tied to compulsory vaccinations.
She believed money, not health, motivated the government and the pharmaceutical industry, and there should be compensation for people injured by vaccines in Australia – as long as vaccines were not then made obligatory.
“We’re born with an immune system,” she said. “A really, really good immune system if you treat it right.
“Everyone should be jumping on board with what we’re doing because we’re going to protect your right to choose: if people choose a vaccine, great, good.”
Queensland Health said that “vaccinations are a global phenomenon that have saved countless lives around the world”.
On COVID-19, Ms Lahn said she was “embarrassed” by the over-reaction to the pandemic, and would have preferred Australians develop herd immunity – where people contract and recover from the virus naturally, thereby developing antibodies against future infection.
But Queensland Health said she should “tell that to the hundreds of families who have lost a loved one to COVID-19 this year”.
“Anti-vax nonsense isn’t a lifestyle choice,” the spokesman said. “For some sick kids it could literally be the difference between life and death.
“Claims that COVID-19 is a conspiracy theory are ridiculous.”
It was reported today a single participant in the trial of the Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine suffered a so-called adverse event.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in August that coronavirus vaccinations would be “as mandatory as you can possibly make it”, but later said it would just be “encouraged”.
IMOP has 23 registered Queensland candidates, but Ms Lahn expected the number to rise to 40.
At the moment, the party does not have a Rockhampton candidate.
