Safe

When Scott Morrison addressed the media after Novak Djokovic’s deportation from Australia, here is what he said:

“I welcome the decision to keep our borders strong and keep Australians safe,” Mr Morrison’s statement read.

Was Djokovic really a danger to the ‘safety’ of Australians? Really?

Here is the sign on the deli counter of the local New World supermarket:

What is a ‘safe’ distance? Half a metre? Two metres? How am I supposed to get my goods – by growing very long arms?

Hello Fresh has been under a bit of pressure from customers because they have decided to adopt vax mandates for their staff, even though they don’t need to. When questioned about this, here is a part of their reply:

There’s that word again. Safe. They say that ‘vaccination is the best way to keep our staff safe‘.

Safe from what? A disease that 99.96% of people will survive if they catch it?

When in doubt, use an emotive term. That should kill the argument stone dead.

Some families deliberately excluded their unvaccinated family members from Christmas celebrations. Is this because they want to feel ‘safe’, or are they worried about the ‘safety’ of the unvaccinated relatives? Those who oppose the idea of just letting Omicron into the community say they are worried that it would be ‘unsafe’ for the unvaccinated. I was once told, by someone who I now consider to be stark raving bonkers that the unvaccinated are ‘dangerous’, which I assume to be the antithesis of ‘safe’. So the vaccinated are ‘safe’ and everyone else is… well… not safe. Why suddenly have we become paralysed with fear? Why suddenly do we all have to be ‘safe’ all the time?

‘Safe’ is just another buzzword – like ‘team of 5 million’ or ‘Be Kind’. It is not just used during the pandemic though – now it is being bandied about everywhere.

Recognise this?

This is a still from the current Ministry of Transport advert that is trying to get us all used to the idea of reduced road speeds. How do they do it? Why, they call their campaign, ‘Safe Limits’. What else?

There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ speed limit. You can be killed travelling at 50 kph, and perfectly ‘safe’ at 110 kph. What it really comes down to is a number of factors – road conditions, vehicle safety features, driver alertness… but the newly minted Waka Kohati wants us all to slow down, and is softening us all up with its adverts as if that will fix everything.

But the real reason why the word ‘safe’ is now the buzzword-du-jour is, of course, because of the vaccine.

So there you have it. If you are vaccinated, you will be ‘safe’. I wonder how much the government paid some media contractor to come up with that?

As we are seeing overseas, though, people who are vaccinated are not ‘safe’. They are as much at risk of Omicron than those who are unvaccinated. Possibly more so. It is all lies. We were never ‘safe’. We were just as ‘safe’ when we were unvaccinated as we are now… less so for those who have suffered adverse effects from the vaccine itself.

Masks don’t keep us ‘safe’. Vaccinations don’t keep us ‘safe’. Reduced road speeds don’t keep us ‘safe’. Nothing can keep us ‘safe’. Life is full of risk. In fact, all of these measures make us less ‘safe’. I had a fall in the street last week, due to me being distracted trying to remove my blasted mask and not looking where I was going. (I’m fine. The biggest damage was to my ego.)

We need to stop worrying about being ‘safe’ and focus more on being ‘free’. That is the only thing that matters, and safety does not give us that. In fact, it makes us more shackled than we ever were.