‘This is why we should get vaccinated’: What the experts want us to take away from Sydney’s lockdown

As Sydney plunges into its first lockdown since December, experts say they hope the harsh restrictions may encourage Australians who are hesitant about vaccinations to roll up their sleeves.

Residents across Greater Sydney – including the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast, Wollongong, and Shellharbour – have been placed under stay-at-home orders expected to be lifted on July 9.

The new restrictions come as Darwin, Palmerston, and Litchfield go into complete lockdown for 48 hours after there were four new cases linked to the Northern Territory mine cluster; and as new lockdown restrictions are imposed on the Perth and Peel regions for three days after a traveler returned from Sydney with COVID-19.

Earlier this month, Melbourne emerged from its lockdown that, like Sydney’s, was implemented to combat the highly-contagious Delta variant. Vice President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr. Chris Moy, said people in NSW and Sydney “are going through a lot of pain at the moment, and they’re going to struggle for a while”. But he hopes the hardships will “transfer into the higher vaccination rates” needed to combat the virus.

“We’ve been the victims of our success so far because, to some degree, there’s been a level of complacency, and we’ve been living in a very gilded cage, a Truman Show, Jim Carrey-type world where we’ve been very disconnected,” Dr. Moy told SBS News, referencing the 1990s film where a man lives in a fake, disconnected world. “It’s been said we’ve been sitting ducks, and we have – it’s been proven true.”

Dr. Moy said he believes attitudes in Australia around vaccination have become “very insular”.

“It’s been very much about individuals – why would I do it, why not let other people have it first, let them protect me – but really, we need to understand that the community spirit that we need to get through this lockdown also needs to transfer to people; seeing as a community the need to get vaccinated.

“I don’t think the communication has been adequate regarding what it means for you as an individual to get vaccinated and what it means for the community as well.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese once again criticized the federal government’s sluggish vaccination program on Sunday. “More than a year after the pandemic began, two capital cities are in lockdown, and restrictions are being reimposed in two others,” Mr. Albanese said on Sunday.

This is why we need more vaccines and national quarantine.

“This is a race until Scott Morrison realizes that lockdowns will keep happening.”

Australia has given 7,326,320 doses, amounting to around 3 percent of the adult population, while NSW has administered nearly 780,000 vaccinations, trailing only Victoria, which has given almost 1,021,000 doses.

On Sunday, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the challenge in NSW was not complacency but vaccine supply. “We have millions of people in NSW wanting the vaccine. The NSW government cannot control how many doses we get (and) I want to assure the community whenever we get doses, we get them in arms,” she told reporters. Ms. Berejiklian said vaccination hubs were exceeding about 100,000 jabs a week, which she expected to hold up or increase in the coming weeks.

Angela Webster, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Sydney, said she hoped the Greater Sydney lockdown would show those complacent about vaccination how urgent the rollout is.  “The community has been a bit complacent because while there’s been no COVID around, they haven’t seen why they should bother to get vaccinated,” she told SBS News.