COVID-19
Federal Covid Inquiry Finds Public Trust Plummeted
From the Brownstone Institute
By
There is nothing like aggressively wresting human and civil rights away from a population to forcibly impose rules that fly in the face of available evidence, whilst censoring those who try to point this out, and refusing to reveal information on which your rules are based, to bottom out trust in the population at large.
In a report handed down Tuesday, Australia’s federal Covid Inquiry found that extreme public health restrictions, coupled with a lack of transparency about the evidence informing these decisions, has led to a major slide in public trust.
Apparently we need experts and a federal inquiry to tell us the bleeding obvious.
This, by the way, is not a Covid inquiry “like a royal commission,” as was promised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prior to his election, but is the toothless ‘royal commission lite’ alternative put forward by Albanese after he got into power.
From the Australian,
“The long-awaited report into Australia’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has lashed state premiers for fuelling distrust and confusion, and for adopting draconian border closures that lacked consistency and compassion…
“In the report, the panel argued the need for transparency in future pandemic responses after “economic, social and mental health and human rights impacts were not always understood or considered” in 2020.”
That’s putting it lightly.
Economic, social and mental health, and human rights impacts weren’t considered at all.
That’s why the Queensland Supreme Court ruled that Covid vaccine mandates enforced by the Police Commissioner were unlawful. Justice Glenn Martin held that the Police Commissioner “did not consider the human rights ramifications” before issuing the Covid workplace vaccination directive within the Queensland Police Service (QPS).
When asked about potential human rights abuses caused by his government’s heavy-handed Covid response, former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews retorted, “Seriously? One more comment about human rights – honestly.”
In one egregious case, the Ombudsman determined that the Andrews Government had “breached human rights” by confining over 3,000 Melburnians to nine tower blocks, under police guard, for up to two weeks.
Back to the Australian,
“[The report] lashed “control measures” instituted by state and federal authorities without sufficient explanation.
“This fed the perception that the government did not trust the public to understand or interpret the information correctly and contributed to the decrease in trust,” the summary reads.
“It was the mandating of public health restrictions, especially vaccination, that had the biggest negative impact on trust. The combination of mandatory measures and the perception people had that they were unable to criticize or question government decisions and policies has contributed to non‑mandated vaccination rates falling to dangerously low levels.”
This is absolutely the case. The hashtag I used the most on social media during Australia’s Covid response was, ‘make it make sense.’
There is nothing like aggressively wresting human and civil rights away from a population to forcibly impose rules that fly in the face of available evidence, whilst censoring those who try to point this out, and refusing to reveal information on which your rules are based, to bottom out trust in the population at large.
The biggest failure by far was the silver bullet vaccines that authorities mandated in order to prevent infection and transmission, when they were not tested for such endpoints, and observational data showed they waned in effectiveness after a month or two at best.
Safety surveillance databases exploded with adverse event reporting rates never seen before, yet authorities still insist these are definitely the best, most safe and effective products ever deployed on the population.
It’s small wonder then that fewer than 4% of Australians under the age of 65 have bothered to get a booster in the past six months.
But the nonsensical Covid response wasn’t just limited to the failure of the vaccines to deliver as promised. A few other rules that made no sense:
You need to be protected by a mask standing up, but if sitting at a table you are safe.
Mandatory vaccines are voluntary.
Rapid antigen tests are illegal – wait, now they’re mandatory.
Footballers can cross the border safely but children wishing to visit a dying parent cannot.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
To this day, federal, state, and territory governments have blocked all attempts to access the health advice on which their extremist policies were based.
In an address on Tuesday, Health Minister Mark Butler admitted that “heavy-handed” policies implemented during the pandemic eroded trust, and that “many of the measures taken during Covid-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again.”
But don’t think for one second that means they won’t try it again.
Just as the Queensland Government took its Supreme Court loss as a signal that it needs to add a ‘considering human rights’ box-ticking exercise next time it breaches human rights to bring in a mandate, the federal Covid Inquiry report recommends ways to do the whole shebang next time, but better.
That includes more spending, fast-tracking the new Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC, which the government has invested $251.7 million to establish), and better global coordination, particularly with the World Health Organization’s One Health policy.
The report recommends transparent, evidence-based decision-making next time around, but in light of my recent interactions with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), forgive me for considering this a pipe dream under the political status quo.
Butler said that the report was not about laying blame for individual decisions, but was rather about learning lessons. In other words, there will be no accountability.
Instead, Covid premiers and leaders have been awarded medals and cushy jobs. Most recently, Andrews was appointed to the lucrative role of chairman of Orygen, a youth mental health not-for-profit, to collective outrage.
A good thing that has come out of the report is that government overreach on vaccination mandates has been squarely blamed for a drop in vaccination rates in Australia more generally (not just for Covid vaccines).
“The erosion of trust is not only constraining our ability to respond to a pandemic when it next occurs, but it’s already, we know, bled into the performance of our vaccination programs, including our childhood vaccination programs,” said Butler.
“Since the beginning of Covid…we’ve seen a reduction of seven or eight percentage points in participation in the whooping cough vaccination program for under fives and measles vaccination program for under fives, which means we are well below herd immunity levels for those two really important diseases.”
Nice to see a politician finally admit the role of government in driving this trend, which is too often blamed on the boogeyman of ‘misinformation.’
Read the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report.
Read the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report Summary.
For further commentary, check out Alison Bevege’s response to the report on her Substack, Letters from Australia.
Republished from the author’s Substack
COVID-19
Canadian doctor ordered to pay back $600k she earned through mass COVID vaccination
From LifeSiteNews
In a November 26 ruling, the Ontario Health Services Board ordered Kingston-based Dr. Elaine Ma to pay back over $600,000 which she had claimed after having undergraduate medical student volunteers mass vaccinate Ontario residents in 2021.
The province of Ontario paid doctors for every experimental COVID shot they administered, with one physician now being told to repay the $600,000 she earned by using medical students to mass vaccinate residents.
In a November 26 ruling, the Ontario Health Services Board ordered Kingston-based Dr. Elaine Ma to pay back over $600,000 which she had claimed after having undergraduate medical student volunteers mass vaccinate Ontario residents in 2021.
“The Appeal Board orders the Respondent to reimburse OHIP the amount of $600,962.16,” the board wrote in their decision.
Beginning in January 2021, Ma had organized drive-in vaccination clinics in several parking lots in the Kingston region to vaccinate thousands of Canadians. She recruited undergraduate medical student volunteers to administer the shots.
Under Ma’s program, which lasted until January 2022, 27,250 doses of the experimental COVID shot were administered, earning her a total of $606,657.60, according to the General Manager of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
According to OHIP, Ontario doctors were paid $13 for administrating COVID vaccines, and an additional $5.60 if the patient’s sole reason for their appointment was receiving the shot.
However, OHIP argued that Ma’s claims did not meet their requirements as she used volunteers to administer the vaccines, explaining, “the persons who administered vaccines at the clinics organized by Dr. Ma during the Review Period were not her employees.”
As a result, she was ordered to repay the money. However, Ma is arguing that she was acting in Ontario’s best interest, considering the alleged danger of the COVID “pandemic.”
“It’s really still just disbelief that we’ve completely forgotten about COVID,” she told CTV News Ottawa. “We’ve completely forgotten what we were asked to do. We’ve completely forgotten the fact that we were asked to do it in new and different ways, and quickly, and as fast as possible.”
Indeed, many mainstream media outlets are defending Ma, arguing she was doing her best to vaccinate as many Ontarians as possible. The outlets, and Ma herself, conveniently fail to mention the dangerous side effects of the shots, which were pushed on Canadians.
While Ontario previously paid doctors to administer the shots, Canada’s program to compensate those injured by the so-called “safe and effective” COVID vaccines has now spent $14 million, but the vast majority of claims remain unpaid.
However, while Ma collected taxpayer dollars to administer the experimental vaccines, many courageous doctors have risked their livelihoods to warn Canadians about the dangers of the COVID shots.
For example, Ontario pro-freedom Dr. Mark Trozzi has lost his medical license for speaking out against the mainstream narrative, despite overwhelming evidence as to the negative effects of the vaccines.
In 2023, Trozzi exposed the dark money, political pressure, establishment corruption, and fake news that made the COVID-19 propaganda campaign a terror operation that brought the world to its knees.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews, he revealed that many of his colleagues were spellbound by the government’s COVID-19 fear campaign. However, he notes that others discovered that following the establishment’s mandates for COVID-19 treatment – such as only conducting PCR tests or nasal swab – paid as much as 20 percent more than regular work at their normal practice.
The campaign to foist the so-called COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ upon the global population also carried with it a monetary payoff.
“As I understand it, those injections paid very well everywhere,” said Trozzi. “One case in point is one of my colleagues has a contact who’s an ear, nose, and throat surgeon in Germany, and he stopped doing surgery. He said, ‘I only do the minimum amount of V.A. specialty work to keep my license because I’m making way more money just giving shots during that peak.’”
COVID-19
New York City workers fired for refusing COVID jab ask Trump, Vance, RFK Jr. to reinstate them
From LifeSiteNews
Their letter ‘brings attention to the fact that Mayor Eric Adams is the number one obstacle preventing unvaccinated workers from being brought back to their jobs and getting compensated.’
A group of former New York City workers representing thousands who were fired or displaced from their jobs for declining the city’s unconstitutionally mandated COVID-19 vaccine based on religious or medical grounds sent a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking for help with being reinstated to their jobs.
“The letter (included below) draws attention to the plight they have been fighting for more than three years in the courts, in the streets, and in City Hall trying to get back to doing what they do best — working for the City of New York,” explained Michael Kane, writing at the Teachers for Choice Substack.
“Firefighters, cops, teachers, sanitation workers, medical professionals and more have asked the incoming presidential administration for help getting back to their employment,” Kane wrote. “The letter brings attention to the fact that Mayor Eric Adams is the number one obstacle preventing unvaccinated workers from being brought back to their jobs and getting compensated.”
****
Dear President-Elect Trump and Vice President-Elect Vance,
In the Fall of 2021, thousands of well-performing New York City employees, including but not limited to firefighters, police officers, teachers, social workers, sanitation workers, medical doctors, nurses, plumbers and doormen were unlawfully placed on leave without pay and subsequently terminated by the duplicitous leaders of New York City for non-compliance with the unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Many City workers had to choose under duress to take the shot in order to keep making a living. Others were coerced into early retirement, waiving their labor rights or resigning. This mass reduction in the City’s workforce has caused a critical staff shortage. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, his then Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi, Mayoral Expert Advisor Jay Varma, Mayor Eric Adams and his then Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan are only some of the political leaders and health bureaucrats who violated our constitutional and labor rights. The two former NYC Department of Education (DOE) Chancellors, Meisha Porter and David Banks, embraced the vaccine mandate and cooperated in removing DOE employees, as did the UFT President Michael Mulgrew and AFT President Randi Weingarten. Much has changed in the past three years, and there are many revelations now that we were lied to about almost every aspect of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Thousands of unvaccinated workers nationwide have gone through hell due to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates. For the past three years, New York City workers had our wages illegally seized, which has led to the loss of income, loss of property, loss of medical insurance, poverty, humiliation, emotional distress and family discord. Many of us have gone from having a good income with a plan for retirement to meet our basic needs and secure our family well-being, to living hand to mouth, losing our homes and other assets, having to move in with family, and even move to other states and countries. Some of us were foreclosed upon. Some ended up in the shelter and welfare systems. At least one committed suicide.
The morale and mental health of all City workers, both public and private sectors, have been dealt a severe blow by the vaccine mandate firings. Many City workers have taken legal actions against the City of New York and other parties involved in the hope of correcting the irreparable harm. Some courts and juries have rendered decisions in favor of the unvaccinated workers, but relief has not been awarded because the City of New York and Mayor Eric Adams keep appealing the decisions at the taxpayers’ expense, which is a reckless use of public funds.
According to available records, in 2023, Mayor Adams hired 30 additional attorneys at a taxpayer cost of $5,000,000.00 a year, just to keep up with the lawsuits filed by the fired employees who tirelessly worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, without vaccines and PPE. His actions are beyond outrageous and disheartening.
Based on Court decisions rendered in Michigan, California, Illinois and Colorado, New York seems to be the only state that has not awarded relief to the unlawfully terminated workers. Despite all the cruelty and financial hardship unvaccinated workers are faced with, we are standing firm in our pursuit of justice. We know that you are committed to uphold the Constitution as it pertains to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for We The People.
Therefore, we respectfully ask that you please help City workers, members of the military and all other citizens who were unlawfully forced out and fired as a result of the vaccine mandate.
Sincerely,
****
The 250+ signatories of the letter, who have thousands of years of service to the city between them, have come together under the umbrella of “NY Workers for Choice,” representing Bravest for Choice, Teachers for Choice, Finest Unfiltered, Court Workers for Choice, Cops 4 Freedom, Educators for Freedom, Strongest for Freedom and Medical Professionals for Informed Consent.
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