A retired nurse says the NSW government should promote a list of diseases that vaccines prevent to encourage vaccine-hesitant people to get inoculated against COVID-19.
Wendy Cuneo, who worked as a registered nurse from 1966 to 2000, said this type of campaign was an obvious way to convince those who were "misinformed or nervous about getting the vaccine".
She believed health authorities could put such an information package together quickly.
"You just need a table with three columns," said Mrs Cuneo, of Bonnells Bay in Lake Macquarie.
The central column would list diseases for which humanity had developed vaccines. The left and right columns would list how many people died from those diseases before and after vaccines were developed, she said.
"It's as simple as A, B, C," she said.
"If they flashed that on the television every time they go to the COVID news, it would fix a lot of problems."
She conceded some people wouldn't learn "no matter what you do".
"But that's a very small percentage of the population. The others are just confused."
She reflected on her experience of polio.
"I was between 8 and 12 at school in Western Australia when the polio epidemic hit. Two of the girls in our school died from polio.
"Then we all got the vaccine and we were so grateful."
She said vaccines had massively reduced deaths in childhood over many decades.
"Children died in practically every family when I was a young girl," she said.
She said the statistics and comments that the government was providing on the dangers of COVID-19 did not appear to be enough to encourage the high levels of vaccination needed to strive for herd immunity.
Social media misinformation was brainwashing some people into irrational beliefs about vaccines, but history showed vaccination had been the most successful public health intervention in human history.
Vaccines protect against cholera, COVID-19, diphtheria, haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus, influenza, measles, meningococcal, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), pneumonia, polio, rotavirus (gastroenteritis), rubella (German measles), Q fever, rabies, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhoid and chickenpox (varicella).
Vaccines also eliminated smallpox.
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