The Daily Tele calls it “the true cost of a blight on business”, with the number of loan deferrals screaming Aussies in trouble, as lockdowns take away the ability of borrowers, especially business ones, to make their payments.

On one hand you have to blame this on lockdowns, which then makes you ponder the role of the NSW and Victorian Premiers and their anti-Coronavirus strategies. Then you have to throw in the Federal Government and its gamble on AstraZeneca.

And then you have the Queensland chief medical officer, Jeanette Young, who KO’d AstraZeneca’s popularity, with her suggestion that effectively said she wouldn’t want the death of a young person who took the vaccine on her conscience.

Yet in NSW more people are dying because they haven’t taken AstraZeneca, while the UK experience shows that the clot problem from the vaccine is miles less of a threat compared to the grim reaper’s virus!

OK, that’s one side of the blame game. What about those who choose to make all this worse by not wanting to get vaccinated? That’s their decision in a ‘free’ world, but we don’t live on an isolated island. We’re a collective called a country, where individual rights compete with the group’s rights. In the old days, if you had a disease that could infect and kill others, you were locked up or at least quarantined/isolated.

The great philosopher J.S. Mill explained our relationship with the rest of the inhabitants of our country and planet in a brilliantly simple way. When doing my Masters of Commerce at the University of New South Wales, I bumped into his writings and took this away from them: you’re as free as you want to be as long as in exercising your freedom, you don’t impinge on the freedom of others.

A blunt person might sum it up as: “If you want to be a selfish prat, the majority should tell you to sod off!”

A tough politician in the old days would simply have said: “No jab, no job, no cafes, no flights, etc.”

Of course, the AstraZeneca problem and the lack of other vaccines makes it difficult to play hardball now but the question has to be asked: “Why must others suffer for those who don’t want to play ball, get jabbed and end lockdowns?”

This “too hard basket” question that politicians seem scared to ask and answer has consequences, such as these:

1. The Australian Banking Association shows the number of home loans in deferral lifted by almost 20% in the week prior to August 15.
2. More than 18,106 home loans are now in deferral across the big four banks. NSW accounts for 13,256 of the total loan deferrals. This was followed by Victoria, with 2,813 and Queensland with 1,140.
3. 37,477 bank customers have been granted assistance, with NSW the worst-affected state, with 23,001 bank customers granted hardship assistance.
4. Business loans in deferral also grew by 28% in a week, with 1,392 now non-paying due to the Covid-19 disruptions gripping the economy. NSW accounts for 1,132 deferred business loans, with the latest week of data showing an increase of 279 new businesses seeking relief, as lockdown restrictions bite.
5. Next month the unemployment rate will spike and show us how many people are jobless because of lockdowns. Until we have a lot of vaccinations, those numbers will get worse.

And while you have to feel for those in a Delta debt drama, it’s right to say that it doesn’t compare in total to what we endured last year, with the total national lockdown.

In the period late February to June, there were 485,063 mortgages and 216,372 business loans deferred! The ABA valued those deferred loans at, wait for it, $266 billion!

However, the fact that the current lockdowns are nothing in terms of totals compared to those of 2020 doesn’t mean individual homeowners/families and business owners as well as their staff aren’t actually doing it tougher this year.

We’re told the NSW lockdown is costing the economy $1 billion a day, but behind those losses are bankrupted or loss-making business owners, sacked or hours-reduced workers and there are knock-on effects onto their loved ones and how all these people are mentally coping with this Delta-created disaster.

If the stubborn or the scared aren’t prepared to get vaccinated, then they should pay a price.

They’re entitled to ignore the implications on the majority, who will be vaccinated and who want to get out, live and spend, which will create economic opportunities for others and KO these loan dramas I’ve talked about.

But they should pay the price of not being allowed to fly, go to hospitality venues and so on until it’s safe for them to do so.

That might sound unfair to a minority but it’s fair to a majority. And that’s what democracies are founded on. I’m only hoping we have leaders who one day play the responsible parents and tell the minority how it’s going to be.

And even though you might not be fans of banks, most of us invest in them via our super funds. If they have to be charitable to borrowers in trouble for the sake of the economy, it will hit their share prices and our funds. This is a potential cost of anti-vaxxers holding out too long.