Shenanigans at NSW Health

While reading two interesting posts this weekend, here and here, I wondered to myself whether one of the health departments locally were also engaging in these sorts of shenanigans discussed therein. Well, it appears they were.  When the numbers began to obviously resist the vaccine uber alles message, currently pervading the public health cabal and transmitted ad nauseam through the media and Big Tech, NSW Health chose to muddy the waters insofar as vaxx status of positive COVID cases from June onwards is concerned.*

As I was trying to tabulate the numbers, gathered from here, I tried to establish what exactly was to be counted as fully vaxxed, partially vaxxed, and unvaxxed. The first thing I encountered, however was four categories early on: fully Continue reading “Shenanigans at NSW Health”

Guest Post: Cassie of Sydney – Covid Witchiepoo

Medusa, Caravaggio, 1597

Over the last eighteen months Australia has been transformed into a nation consumed with Covid fear and overflowing with Covid hysterics. This hysterical fear has been fomented by various Australian governments, federal and state, as well as bureaucracies, both of which have deliberately nurtured and cultivated fear amongst the populace through manipulation, panic, and coercion. We’ve witnessed the rise of Covid shills, who feed off the fear of the Continue reading “Guest Post: Cassie of Sydney – Covid Witchiepoo”

Guest post: Hugh – A redraft of the Australian Government’s COVID letter

Dear Australian,

To protect yourself, your loved ones and your community, we urge you not to get your COVID-19 vaccination which is available to you right now.

Australia has done piss-poor with the dual challenges of the alleged “pandemic” and its economic consequences because every gullible Australian has followed the “expert” health advice and “cared” for each other. Sure, other countries may have done even worse, but it’s not a race to the bottom!

Continue reading “Guest post: Hugh – A redraft of the Australian Government’s COVID letter”

Vaccine passports are not inevitable

There are a number of problems with contemporary conservatism. One involves its near universal voluntary surrender of public office over the last 30 or so years to its enemies. Another is its fatal mistake of thinking that culture was downstream of politics, not vice versa. But the mistake I want to concentrate on today is its usual surrender to what it believes is now inevitable. Nothing encapsulates this better at present then Tom Elliot on 3AW Drive ‘conceding’ that we just have to prepare for vaccine passports and the two-tiered life that this will involve in the near future. Go to the 1:33:00 min mark and listen to the short exchange between Tom and a caller.

Beyond the ridiculous argument that the vaccine greatly reduces the chance of transmitting COVID at a large public event (the absolute risk reduction (ARR) is 1.3% at best; people that focus on relative risk reduction (RRR) and not ARR are being tendentious because the chance of catching it and getting sick are already quite low) you see him suggest at the end of the exchange that vaccine passports is ‘just where we are headed’. And if you think that being fully vaxxed means two doses now, sorry to inform you, passports will likely require you to keep up date, which means regular boosters, to remain valid.

Continue reading “Vaccine passports are not inevitable”

Danish Health Ministry: COVID ‘no longer a critical threat to society’

Illustration: Vilhelm Pedersen, 1837

In the words of the Danish Health Ministry, COVID in its extant variants is no longer a ‘critical threat to society’, and as such, it will remove all its current COVID restrictions, including any vaccine mandates, by September 10 having fully vaccinated 71% of the population. The only remaining restrictions involve agreements with other countries regarding international travel that should begin to end in October onwards. Keep in mind that this is occurring with a daily case rate of 925 new cases, compared with 976 new cases in Australia (note, Australia has a population almost five times the size of Denmark).

However, here in Australia, our political elite are seeking to impose restrictions on the unvaccinated through vaccine passports once 70% of the population over 16 is vaccinated and to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Now why would Denmark be removing vaccine passports as it passes 70% coverage as Australia prepares to implement them as it reaches 70%? Why would the Danish Health Ministry deescalate the threat of COVID while Australian federal and State Health departments crank the fear porn to eleventy? What possible rationale is behind the continued house arrest of at least a quarter of the Australian population in Victoria and Greater Sydney? I’m at a loss to understand the justifications for this given the facts on the ground, and given that we are now almost a year and a half into this crisis of policy, I’m well past the limits of charity. There is something both malicious and ostentatious afoot here politically; but at the level of policy and expertise, there is rank stupidity. Frankly, all three are admixed throughout.

Policy outpaced by events

As the days and weeks pass, we are learning that the road maps offered by the PM and premiers, particularly, the sign posts of our deliverance from house arrest, do not comport with reality. Zerohedge reports that the most recent study of vaccine efficacy re delta variant is significantly reduced compared with alpha and degrades over time.

It should be clear now that the vaccines, though helpful as a part of a coordinated policy, are no panacea. As Mater described in a previous post looking at the Cabinet’s final response to the Spanish Flu in 1919, the government’s resources are exhausted and the public is by now well-informed of the measures they can take to avoid COVID; continuing the present course is ruinous.

Not Mandatory. Mandatory. Not Mandatory.

A guest post by Arky

From around the web:

September:

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison told 3AW a vaccine would be “as mandatory as you can possibly make it” there was an immediate backlash from some groups.

Mr Morrison even went so far as to suggest the grounds by which exemptions should be granted.

“There are always exemptions for any vaccine on medical grounds, but that should be the only basis,” he said.

A few hours later, talking on 2GB, Mr Morrison made a sharp departure from his earlier comments, ruling out a compulsory vaccine.

“It’s not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine,” he said.

November:

The vaccine will not be mandatory and individuals will maintain the option to choose not to vaccinate. The vaccine will be available for free to those who choose to be vaccinated.

-ABC

January:

Residents and workers in aged care facilities will not be required to get a vaccination in order to remain living or working there, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.

..

June:

Vaccinations will become mandatory for aged care workers, the Prime Minister has announced.

Scott Morrison said the decision was made at the emergency National Cabinet meeting between state and territory leaders on Monday night.

August:

The Commonwealth’s deadline for all workers in the aged care sector to be vaccinated is in mid-September.

The Prime Minister said the “important principle” of the national vaccine roll out was that the jab would be free and not mandatory.“We are not going to seek to impose a mandatory vaccination program by the government by stealth,” he said.

Last Friday, Mr Morrison outlined the options available to private businesses to enforce a vaccine mandate, which he reassured were existing powers under current legislation.

And:

The Therapeutic Goods Administration, July:

Death related to TTS

A 72-year-old woman from South Australia has sadly died after developing TTS following vaccination with her first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The TGA extends its sincerest condolences to her family and loved ones.

TTS cases to date

Since last week’s report, a further seven reports of blood clots and low blood platelets have been assessed as confirmed or probable TTS likely to be linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine. One of the cases reported this week is critically unwell in intensive care.

..

In summary:

When an individual takes a treatment that has a risk of death or disability and something subsequently goes wrong, as long as the individual was fully informed and every care was taken, that individual is responsible for their own misfortune.

When a government mandates a treatment that it knows will result in death and disability for a portion of those having the treatment a line is crossed. An important line, one that puts those enforcing the mandate in a position that is likely to lead to cynicism and callous disregard for individual deaths. In a large bureaucratic system, that’s what happens. It’s why we only do so in the case, usually, of war.

If this is a war, who are we at war with? And don’t tell me it’s a war against a virus. Wars are against people. Not viruses or “terror”. So who are the actual humans we are at war with if we are taking wartime measures? Is it, like with the war on terror, that it is again impolite to say who this war is against?

Something furthermore should be said about the deliberate move of risk from older people to younger people. Because that is the effect of mandating vaccines for everyone when the vaccine might kill a younger person, but the virus mainly kills older people. If the government knows something about the origins and likely course of this pathogen that leads it to believe that younger people might in the near future be at more risk from it, they should make that information clearly known.

Mater’s Musings #1: Why the difference in approach?

This is a guest post by Mater, reposted with permission.

When you hear the Premiers indicate that we will remain under house arrest until we have zero cases and no community transmission, please keep this in mind.

The 2009 Swine flu (A(H1N1)pdm09) has been lurking around killing people during the flu season up to, and including, 2020, when deaths from any variety of flu completely, and miraculously, stopped in July of that year. That being, incidentally, almost exactly the time when Covid deaths started during the second wave in Victoria.

To summarise:
If we’d taken the same approach to A(H1N1)pdm09 as we have with Covid 19 and its variants, we would still be locked down, more than a decade later.

Remember, also, that A(H1N1)pdm09 attacks primarily the younger generations and, like all flus, tends to primarily kill those with co-morbidity factors. That, and the fact that younger people suffer less co-morbidities, would seem to be the telling factor in the death rate differences (although Covid-21 seems less deadly than A(H1N1)pdm09). The specialists seem to explain this by indicating that it is now more prevalent in the young.

“The ratio of deaths to cases in the year to date has decreased in comparison to this time last year, noting substantially lower case numbers this year and the difference in age distributions of those infected in 2021 versus 2020.”

Year to date (2020) 1 January – 1 August 2020 – Case Fatality Rate = 2.75%
Year to date (2021) 1 January – 1 August 2021 – Case Fatality Rate = 0.28%

I rest my case.

https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/1D03BCB527F40C8BCA258503000302EB/$File/covid_19_australia_epidemiology_report_47_reporting_period_ending_1_august_2021.pdf

The shamelessness of Branch Covidian

The drive to vaccinate by hook or by crook the entire country is entering a frenzied stage in Australia. Not only is the establishment of a second class citizenry being discussed in media for the unvaccinated without blushing, but the deaths of individuals are now cunningly exploited (h/t: C.L.) to try and install fear in the unvaccinated and ground the prejudices of the vaccinated. With all due respect to the NSW health authorities, an unvaccinated woman in palliative care has nothing to teach the vast majority of the under 50s of the dangers of COVID; and frankly, neither does the vaccination status of those 70 or over, especially where they have preexisting medical conditions.