"Qantas set a dangerous precedent on Monday when it announced its “No Jab No Fly” policy for mandatory vaccination for Qantas customers." Said Tracy Livingston, the NZ Outdoors Party spokesperson on health.

Tracy added "Many of us are shocked that an airline has put itself in the position of making public health decisions that can have serious consequences. Even our own government is unable to insist on mandatory medication such as vaccination. We call on all New Zealanders to boycott Qantas flights to show them that kiwis will not be used as a pawns to promote vaccination and to boost profits for the pharmaceutical industry.

Since well over half the New Zealanders voting in an online poll, and around half Americans asked the same question, had declared their intention to decline a Sars-Cov2 vaccine, discriminating against non-vaccinating individuals means that hundreds of thousands of people will choose not to fly with Qantas anyway. Many UK travel agents have already declared they won’t book their clients on to Qantas flights. This announcement just doesn’t make sense for an airline that needs all the customers that it can get.

Any of the vaccines that Qantas is wanting its passengers to have, will essentially be an experimental vaccine with no research into long term safety or side effects. The Outdoors Party like to know if Qantas will be liable for the vaccine injuries caused by enforcing their “no jab no fly” policy? Vaccine injuries in New Zealand are covered under the Accident Compensation Commission Act which indemnifies the manufacturer against being sued. However, in our experience ACC seldom pays enough to cover all the problems associated with medical misadventure and the perpetrator gets away with slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket. Kiwis need to know who will be liable.

Qantas is insisting travellers get a vaccine whose trials have not even been designed to discover if they have any value. Peter Doshi, Associate Editor of the BMJ analysed the trials and concluded:

“None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.”

If these new mRNA vaccines do not prevent transfer of infection, not only will the vaccine as be pointless as a travel vaccine, vaccine recipients will have a false sense of security believing themselves to not be infectious. This means Alan Joyce will be getting the complete opposite of what he is attempting to achieve, actually increasing the spread of infections on Qantas flights and around the world. If Covid-19 is as dangerous as we are led to believe, then Qantas is further risking people’s health – both by risking vaccines adverse events AND by giving people a false sense of security.

Researchers are already saying that vaccine antibody protection may only last a year, whereas immunity gained by having and fighting SARS-COV2 (and its relative corona viruses) probably lasts a lifetime. The important question that needs to be answered is “does having vaccine immunity prevent you from developing natural immunity to COVID-19 when you come in contact with it?” If it doesn’t, that means the Qantas policy may ensure that whole population immunity takes much longer to achieve, again showing how short sighted and ridiculous they are.

The silliest part of the whole “no jab, no fly” mandate is that by the time a vaccination has been created, properly tested and distributed, most of us will have created our own natural immunity to SARS-COV2. Italian researchers have established that Italy had Sars-Cov2 far earlier than they realised and there is little doubt that New Zealand, with its close ties to China, had also been experiencing a novel infectious agent for many months before quarantine was instigated. Overseas researchers have found more than half their test subjects had already acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Another group found that COVID patients had cellular immunity for at least six months post infection. Tracy Livingston says that it’s likely that if we had antibody testing at least half of us would show acquired immunity.

The Outdoors Party urges the New Zealand Government to support and subsidise the import and use of antibody tests to discover what percentage of the population already has immunity to COVID. This will allow us to assess local COVID data correctly. Without proper data, the country (and Qantas) are ‘flying blind’. This would have the double benefit of reassuring our population that we are all ‘not going to die of COVID’, and reduce the necessity for vaccines which will save the country millions of dollars. Hundreds of doctors around the world have found effective, low-cost treatments for COVID-19 that both save lives, reduce medical costs and obviate the need for vaccination.

"The Outdoors Party is not unsympathetic to the struggles of the airlines with the down turn in international travel but says that forcing vaccination on travellers is not the answer to getting people back on planes. Instead the government should be using those treatments that have been found to be effective as well as figuring out who is already immune, and use that information to not just save lives but save airlines.

The Outdoors Party would like to reassure New Zealanders that the legislation around our Bill of Rights and The Health and Disability Commission Act is very clear that the government can not enforce mandatory or experimental medication on its population. Any medical treatment must always be with individual consent otherwise it would be considered assault and may be resisted." Said Tracy Livingston.

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