Category Archives: Politics – Australian

Covid ethics-such a cute concept

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From the Australian Spectator reprinted here.

What is even more concerning is that, as alerted to by the Doctors for Covid Ethics, a Freedom of Information request to the Australian drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration that granted provisional approval to the Pfizer vaccine, confirms that it has never seen the study data.

In other words, the TGA never saw or requested the patient data from Pfizer and simply accepted their reporting of their study as true. This means that when the head of the TGA John Skerritt said that “the safety evidence is pretty thorough” on February 6, his words would ring hollow to most Australians who have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the TGA had actually looked at the patient data before granting any such approval. As noted by Doctors for Covid Ethics on its website, it is currently not known whether any of the major government agencies around the globe (FDA, MHRA or EMA) has independently verified, or attempted to verify, Pfizer’s data, before proceeding with provisional/emergency authorisation of Pfizer’s mRNA therapy vaccine.

For any government, either by itself or via corporate proxy, to attempt to mandate vaccines in circumstances where there has not been adequate testing and analysis of risks as well as benefits would constitute not only a violation of the principle of informed consent (which Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated he believes in – see this press conference as an example) — but a violation of Australia’s obligations under international law with respect to medical experimentation. 

Indeed, after National Cabinet on August 6, Scott Morrison indicated that mandatory vaccination could breach privacy laws, discrimination laws, and Australia’s policy remained that vaccines should be voluntary and free. In particular, he declared: “In our country, everyone has choices and they have choices that are supported by the rule of law and simply making the point that those choices have to be exercised, are consistent with the rule of law.”

Let’s just see if these will simply be more hollow words from the hollow man.

There was then this comment by Mud Crab replying to another comment by DJ. Is he lying? What if it’s true?

DJ mentions:

“They rolled out the Moderna mRNA experimental injections at his facility, and he says:

‘I’ve seen 32 elderly people pass away immediately after taking the Moderna vaccine. None of that is being talked about on the News. It doesn’t fit their narrative.’”

Correct. The Narrative must be protected.

Here in Oz on the tga.gov.au they publish weekly reports into what the Jab is doing. They were admitting for a while that there were people who had died with a short period of receiving a jab. The numbers were increasing at 15 to 20 per week. The report then devoted an entire sentence to say (paraphrasing from memory) that “we compared these death rates to the expected seasonal death rates and since they are more or less the same then nothing to worry about”.

Australian Government report on vaccination side effects effectively says “People die all the time, get over it.”

Interestingly these weekly reports stopped listing the current totals of recent jab deaths two reports ago, only referring to them in general terms. I understand after some careful reading that these deaths are about 430 now (c.f. total number of claimed Covid deaths in Australia of roughly 950, all of which were, apparently, outside the seasonal expected death rates and therefore Very Important, apparently).

Using some very rough modelling based on the amount of Australians that have taken the Jab so far we could be looking at over 1200 deaths post jab that are all, apparently, completely normal cause hey, people die all the time, okay?

To the TGA reports ‘credit’ they do admit that at least 7 (reports are weekly, I am behind) people have died from jab related blood clot complications. Of these 6 are of people below the age of 52 and 5 are people in 30s and 40s.

When you compare those numbers to the ‘Covid Deaths’ in the same age groups here in Australia, while the numbers are fortunately still very low, there are actually slightly more Jab deaths than Covid.

The numbers are complicated by the recent death of a 33 year ‘healthy’ woman in NSW who had Covid and die… and… umm… also had a Rare Heart Condition… but totally died from Covid which is why NSW is completely justified in employed the army against it’s on civilian population now. Prior to this death (which had clearly nothing to do with her rare heart condition) there were no deaths in Australia for women under 50.

(also, Sharks kill on average 5 people per year in Australia. If you are not part of the ‘old people’ demographic in Australia you are more likely to be killed by a shark then die from/with Covid. Stats don’t lie.)

So we have nearly equal Jab related blood clot deaths to ‘Covid Deaths’ in the below 50s age group. These numbers should be taken with the understanding that only about a third of Australians have taken at least one jab and the jab roll out started with ‘old people’ and worked down.

So with more people possibly getting the jab and with the jab expanding into the below 50s age demograph is might be of concern to some that Jab related deaths in this younger age group are likely to increase.

AND, as it has been shown, the Jab will NOT stop you from catching Covid and is only claimed to reduce the symptoms.

Now 30 or so deaths in a population of 26 or so million may seem like a small number, but try allowing 30 people to die in ANY other context.

(and from my risk reduction training in my Day Job, the best way to reduce risk is to remove the original cause. If Jabs are known to kill people [you] can prevent those deaths by stopping the Jab. It is how we are training (repeatedly) to think in the real world.)

But yeah, The Narrative.

We needed to destroy that village in order to save it… I mean those burning buildings were there when we got there!

Are camps for the unvaxxed coming next?

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Now there’s a thought:

Australia builds massive quarantine CAMPS for Covid… camps for unvaxxed coming next? 

That’s from the website, Revolver.com. But at the link there is nothing about who they are going to put into the camps, other than returning travelers, or why they need so many spots for quarantine camps that won’t even be opening until next year. The suggestion is only in the headline, but it is worth thinking about. This is what you do find at the link.

Construction is under way at Melbourne’s Centre for National Resilience – the unwieldy name given to the new quarantine facility in Mickleham – with the camp set to open by the end of the year.

A community engagement session was held earlier this week on progress of the fast-tracked 1000-bed accommodation site for returning travellers, however residents were told that builders would not be delayed by any consultation process.

Earthworks have begun at an empty paddock in Melbourne’s north, which sits next to the federal government’s pet quarantine facility and is about 300 metres from homes.

This entire covid-hysteria is here for the long-term. Not cheap to build but no doubt will cover its costs with everyone who travels back from overseas forced to stay for at least two weeks.

And then there are the unvaxxinated! What are these madmen going to do with them? The modern gulag for the modern dissident.

The Victorian government has provided renders of what the new quarantine facility could look like.
The Victorian government has provided renders of what the new quarantine facility could look like.

Could look like. Doesn’t look like it’s designed for couples either.

Covid is just a pretext for doing things the left has had in mind for quite a long time

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Someone I am on a five-way chat with about Covid has just written:

Looks like vaccines won’t get us out of this mess.

To which I have replied:

And exactly what mess is it that we are in? Covid is just a pretext for doing all kinds of things that the left has had in mind for quite a long time. Every politician who has had a conservative bent has tried to walk away from this entire episode, no masks, no vaccines, no lockdowns, but between the pressures from the left – which include every major media organisation in the world with no exception – and the terror stricken populations everywhere, who in spite of all the evidence believe they will die within the week unless the most stringent approach is taken to dealing with this covid – we are being pushed farther and farther towards a series of stricter measures that will, if their plans work out, leave our Western civilisation looking like it’s being managed by the CCP. Only a handful in public places have seen through the political manoeuvering but everywhere, even on “the right” we take the Chinese Flu seriously without any real evidence that it is all that lethal. I find Gerard’s posts interesting because virtually every one of them underscores and emphasises that we are no more in danger from Covid than the people of Salem were in danger of witchcraft.
 
Not that you cannot die from Covid; but you are very very unlikely to. It is now no more than a bad cold, specially if you keep Ivermectin in the house with a plentiful supply of zinc.
 
Hope to see you all eventually.
 
As for why he wrote what he wrote, he attached this: Effectiveness of Some COVID-19 Vaccines Has Dropped Significantly: Study. As if any of that will matter.
 
Anyone waiting for the Covid to disappear is going to be waiting a very very long time if it’s up to those who have locked us down. Two stories about Australia. First this: Coronavirus: Australia Locks Down 431,000+ People in Capital over 4 Cases.
 
Canberra ordered the entire Australian Capital Territory (ACT), home to over 431,000 people, into total lockdown Thursday for seven days to contain four new cases of the Chinese coronavirus, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.
 
And then there’s this: Australia is paralysed by fear with the sub-head: “The land of Crocodile Dundee wants to hide under the blanket forever.”
 

Inserting a word like ‘only’ before the number of coronavirus deaths has become a mark of callousness in this sentimental age. Yet the coronavirus death toll in Australia demands to be put into perspective given the draconian restrictions to economic and social life now in force.

There have been around 30 deaths in Australia since cases began to rise at the start of July. In Britain, around 2,000 people died of Covid-19 in that same period, but Britons have not been incarcerated in their own homes and the army is not manning border checkpoints between Surrey and Kent.

The meek acceptance of some of the harshest lockdowns in the world in the land of Crocodile Dundee cries out for an explanation. Why do the Brits have the courage to wander around freely after recording 188,000 positive tests in a week? Why aren’t they being kept at home for their own safety? Why aren’t their movements controlled by a list of regulations 27 pages long, as they are in Melbourne after a mere 50 locally acquired cases were discovered in the same period? Why is it okay for Brits to stand maskless to order two pints of lager and a packet of crisps when the picnic police are fining people in Sydney a thousand bucks for the crime of eating a sandwich in the park?

Since the odds of having caught the virus in Australia so far is tiny, as are the chances of it killing healthy people under the age of 70, one would have thought Australians would have collectively told the public-health nags to pull their bloody heads in. Not so. Many people want them to go harder. The premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, for instance, is constantly badgered at her press conferences for being too soft, for not locking down harder and sooner, and for not extending the indoor mask rule to everywhere outside the home.

The simple explanation is that Australians are behaving this way because most are scared witless. The July edition of Ipsos’s regular report, What Worries the World, found that Australians fret about Covid more than people in 25 of the 28 countries surveyed.

Australia’s good fortune in controlling the spread of earlier Covid-19 variants is rapidly becoming a curse with the arrival of the far more infectious Delta variant. One reason for its early success was the prompt closure of external borders and a dogged commitment to keep them that way. The number of passengers on inbound international flights has been restricted for 16 months, making it devilishly difficult for Australian citizens to come home, let alone for others to visit. The compulsory-detention rule used to apply only to those arriving without a visa. In a grim irony, today everyone is arrested the moment they step off the plane, frog-marched on to a bus by armed police, driven to a quarantine hotel with a police motorcycle escort and forbidden from stepping out of their room for a fortnight. In the spirit of the Magna Carta, no one is exempt. As I write, our 28th prime minister is incarcerated in a 4.5 star tourist hotel that has seen better days following his return from official duties in London and India.

In addition to lockable borders and first-class universal healthcare, Australia possesses a greater strength that has, regretfully, been largely untapped: a tolerant, liberal democracy where the rules are willingly obeyed by consent, not coercion. Australia’s strong social fabric and spirit of volunteerism – usually manifested in networks of community institutions like surf life-saving clubs, ‘flying doctors’ and rural fire brigades – has not been called on to help.

Instead, the instruments of public-health compliance are the police, supplemented by the army, and so-called ‘authorised officers’ – petty officials with extraordinary powers who can order you to stand in line, or board a bus, and can even compel you to enter a hotel room where your alcohol consumption will be monitored and restricted for the next 14 days.

There must have been a saner, more reasonable approach we could have adopted – one that wasn’t built on the nutty idea that Australia and New Zealand could eliminate the coronavirus altogether, and then use magical powers to keep it out. Reason, however, has been an ineffective weapon in responding to the many public-policy absurdities that have perplexed us since coronavirus entered our lives. Policy is largely being driven by the heart, not the head. Our response to the pandemic is sentimental, and the predominant emotion is fear. Combine that with the modern culture of safetyism and you end up with a real conundrum. How can we come out from under the blanket knowing there is a risk that someone might get sick and die? How can we ensure we’re safe against every known danger, let alone those we might not even know about? Every granny’s life is sacred after all.

Australia’s Zero Covid dystopia

 

The deification of chief government health officers, who have risen from obscurity to become minor celebrities, has been one of the biggest mistakes so far. It has allowed politicians to outsource responsibility and avoid doing a key part of their job, which is to decide the proper balance between competing policy imperatives and to test their judgement in parliament. Instead, the authority of parliament and a thousand years of history that lies behind it has been usurped by ‘The Science’. It is an odd kind of ‘science’ that denies us the right to dispute its findings, that ignores discordant evidence, that remains rigid in the face of new facts, that keeps its data close to its chest and that cancels dissenting voices. In other words, it is not science at all. It is a form of superstition.

It is as if the world has been gripped by a kind of trembling disease, an epidemic of twitching like the one that swept through European schools in the late 19th century. We are fighting not one, but two pandemics, as Niall Ferguson observes in Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. There is a contagion of the body and a contagion of the mind, spreading with equal rapidity on two social networks, one physical and one virtual. Coronavirus is an unwelcome visitor to be sure, but the severity of the measures and the costs incurred – both financial and human – can hardly be said to be proportionate to the risk anymore.

With hindsight, the die was cast early last year by the extravagant modelling that wildly overstated the deadliness of what we then called the novel coronavirus. The fear that escaped from the Imperial College laboratory back then has proved resistant to new evidence. The political class was infected all at once by the early, extravagant assumptions, and the media were using their licence to exaggerate still further – because that’s what the media do.

Fear has been amplified in a feedback loop, circling back to the public where it has become entrenched, altering judgements of reality. In early June, when this year’s death toll in Australia was precisely one, a survey asked people to mark on a sliding scale the number of people who they thought had died. The average response was 256.

It’s by Nick Cater – that’s his picture – one of the very few sane commentators left in the country. And everything he has written is exactly as he has described it. 

This is just what needs to be said and is not a “rant”

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They choose to describe this as a rant but to me it is just what needs to be said given all the fools who feel we can lock ourselves away, masked and cowering behind doors, forever. The notion that we are trying to “defeat covid” is such stupidity that there are almost no words to describe how dumb such people are, and badly informed as well.

The rest of the world thinks Australian state governments are run by idiots

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And they’re right. Australia is Under Dystopian, Military-Enforced Lockdown Despite Less Than 5 COVID Deaths a Day. Obviously whoever wrote this thinks Australian governments are exaggerating our problems and over-reacting in an hysterical way to threats from the Chinese flu.

Melbourne, a major Australian city, just entered its 6th lockdown. (Yes, you read that correctly). It joins many of the nation’s other major metropolises, such as Sydney and Brisbane, in once again restricting its economy and social life. According to the BBC, the lockdown will be in place until at least August 28 and “bars people from leaving their home except for essential exercise, shopping, caregiving and other reasons.”

“Our people are [poor and]  they already feel picked on and marginalised,” Cumberland Mayor Steve Christou told the BBC. “They can’t afford to pay the mortgage, the rent, the food or work. Now to throw out the army to enforce lockdown on the streets is going to be a huge issue to these people.”

It’s mind-boggling that the Australian government is practically placing its citizens under house arrest and outlawing their incomes over five deaths per day. It’s particularly bizarre given that countless studies have shown the ineffectiveness of stay-at-home orders and lockdown policies. (In fact, most COVID-19 spread happens at home.)

And the conclusion.

It’s inexplicable. If lockdowns could really vanquish COVID-19, why would Australian cities be on their sixth one? And how could a handful of deaths per day in a nation of 25 million possibly justify such draconian measures and using the military to crack down on citizens?

Ultimately, it’s not our responsibility here in the US to answer these questions. But there’s a bigger lesson we can take away from watching such a totalitarian policy descend upon a Western, advanced society like Australia. If we are not vigilant, it can happen here….

Americans must heed this warning, lest we end up meeting Australia’s sad fate.

Alas, it has happened here. Australia’s reaction to Covid really is pathetic and genuinely shameful.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

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Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy after the match. Picture: Maja Hitij/Getty Images

In a sense things are as they ought to be. First, Australia to play for gold in beach volleyball final against USA.

And then, second, Aussie athletes defend actions on controversial Japan Airline flight.

Rugby Sevens players have been issued with an official warning and will have to undergo counselling about behaviour and alcohol consumption, following an investigation about drunken antics on board a flight returning from the Tokyo Olympics.

An internal integrity commission into the behaviour of the men’s team on the Japan Airlines flight from Tokyo to Sydney last week found “a number of members of the team were drinking excessive amounts of alcohol on JAL 15 while also being disruptive to cabin crew and other passengers’’.

But the investigation found “no evidence that any JAL property was damaged or mess in seats, aisles or bathrooms was made by the Men’s Rugby Sevens team.’’

It is only what to expect. These are rugby players, not beach volleyball.

Australian man has heart attack while being arrested for not wearing mask while exercising

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From Australian Man Suffers Suspected Heart Attack While Under Arrest For Not Wearing a Mask.

A shocking video out of Brisbane, Australia shows an elderly man suffering a suspected heart attack after he was arrested by police for not wearing a mask outside while exercising.

The incident occurred in Brisbane Botanical Gardens on Monday while the man was walking. He has a mask exemption due to his medical condition.

The clip shows the man being handcuffed while complaining about his wrists hurting. A woman who is accompanying the elderly man tries to answer the questions police officers are asking about the man’s place of work.

“Absolutely disgraceful,” says the woman as the man is led away.

The video then cuts to him having a violent seizure as he appears to suffer a heart attack.

Police remove the handcuffs as the elderly man desperately reaches for his medicine while the woman shouts, “Just let me get it for God’s sake!”

A shocking video out of Brisbane, Australia shows an elderly man suffering a suspected heart attack after he was arrested by police for not wearing a mask outside while exercising.

The incident occurred in Brisbane Botanical Gardens on Monday while the man was walking. He has a mask exemption due to his medical condition.

The clip shows the man being handcuffed while complaining about his wrists hurting. A woman who is accompanying the elderly man tries to answer the questions police officers are asking about the man’s place of work.

“Absolutely disgraceful,” says the woman as the man is led away.

The video then cuts to him having a violent seizure as he appears to suffer a heart attack.

Police remove the handcuffs as the elderly man desperately reaches for his medicine while the woman shouts, “Just let me get it for God’s sake!”

“See, do you believe me now, you pricks!” she states as one of the officers says he is unable to administer the medication (although he’s perfectly willing to induce a heart attack in an old man for not wearing a piece of useless cloth over his mouth).

A final image from the scene shows paramedics attending the scene as the elderly man still lies prostrate on the ground.

“Police allegedly joked when he had a seizure that they did not believe he had heart problems that warranted the mask exemption,” reports Rebel Media. “The man’s heart medication was revealed to be in a plastic bag in his backpack.”

An Instagram user called _josephmerlino claiming to be the man’s son posted a message asserting, “My father could have suffered brain damage from this. Permanent injury or death. All for what because of a mask?”

“Police are supposed to serve and protect and there is none of that is happening here,” he stated.

The footage once again underscores that thanks to the country’s brutal enforcement of its disastrous ‘zero COVID’ policy, Australia is no longer a free country.

As we highlight in the video below, in imposing what represents the most draconian lockdown in the developed world, even Communist China is jealous of the iron fist which Australian authorities have used to crackdown on the population. 58 Comments

Australia is the World’s Worst State of Lockdown, an absolute disgrace.

 

By “this country” he means Australia

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These are the notes to the vid:

Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks about the insane coronavirus restrictions put in place to deal with the delta variant in Australia. The other day Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier of New South Wales announced their no regrets policy. This COVID response may be the most extreme in the world. The Sydney lockdown will force almost a million people to stay in their homes, but wait till you hear the numbers to justify it. Dave also shares a clip from Chief Health Officer of New South Wales, Australia, Dr. ​​Kerry Chant, where she actually advises people to not even talk to their neighbors or people you see at the grocery store.

Personally I’m glad I do live here since I think everywhere else is worse. We may well be the least crazy people on the planet, Daniel Andrews notwithstanding.

Thought I might include this as an added bonus:

AND NOW FROM CNN: Australia once reveled in being the ‘lucky country’ on Covid-19. Now weary Aussies ‘feel like prisoners’. There we learn:

More than half the population — including those in state capitals Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide — are again living under lockdown measures following dozens of new cases.

While other Western countries surge ahead with their vaccination rollouts and begin to reopen, Australia’s has been achingly slow. Just over 11% of Australians are fully vaccinated — the lowest of the OECD’s 38 countries.

“Fortress Australia” is now facing uncomfortable questions about just how far this island sanctuary is willing to go to protect itself from external threats — including raising the drawbridge to its own citizens.

Australians have been willing to “put up with restrictions which elsewhere in the democratic world would have been entirely politically impossible,” said Marc Stears, director of the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney.

That’s because these restrictions speak to “quite a deep cultural sense that danger lurks overseas, and the best thing that Australia can do in these moments is cut itself off from the world,” Stears added.

The challenge now is how to rejoin it.

Not a fan of lockdown myself, but who would trade life in Melbourne or Sydney for life in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles or Minneapolis? As for Covid deaths, we have had fewer than a thousand while in the US there have been, according to the official statistics, 35,184,671 cases and 626,713 deaths. The American numbers are obviously exaggerated but it’s a worldwide frenzy of fear mongering that has caught on here. But seriously, where would you rather be?

The Delta outbreak in New South Wales started in Bondi, Sydney.