Federal Covid Inquiry Finds Public Trust Plummeted

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

Author

Rebekah Barnett

Rebekah Barnett is a Brownstone Institute fellow, independent journalist and advocate for Australians injured by the Covid vaccines. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Western Australia, and writes for her Substack, Dystopian Down Under.

Related Topics:#BrownstoneInstitute #RebekahBarnett AustraliaCovidInquiry FederalCovidInquiry PublicHealthPublicTrust

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COVID-19

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich says her trial verdict now delayed to unknown date

Published on February 28, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich said she is “disappointed” in the Canadian “justice system” that her and convoy co-leader Chris Barber’s verdict for their mischief trial, which supposed to have been released in two weeks, has now been delayed to an unknown date.

In a X post late Thursday, Lich shared the news with her followers, noting, “We just received news that our March 12th verdict date is unfortunately being postponed.”

“At the end of our criminal (longest) mischief trial last August, when Her Honour set the verdict date, she let us know the court system assigned her a full trial schedule to help clear the backlog from the Covid years,” wrote Lich.

“This is the sad state of the justice system in Canada. While we are disappointed in yet another delay in our case, we know the importance of the upcoming decision not just for us, but for all Canadians.”

Lich said that as soon as she is told when the new verdict date will be, she will let everyone know.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich and Barber’s verdict was supposed to have been announced on March 12.

They both face a possible 10-year prison sentence. LifeSiteNews reported extensively on their trial.

Lich and Barber’s trial concluded back in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.

Last week, Lich shared a heartwarming letter she received from a child, who told her to “keep fighting” for everyone and that “God will protect” her from the “enemy.”

Lich was arrested on February 17, 2022, in Ottawa. Barber was arrested the same day.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the never-before-used Emergencies Act (EA) on February 14, 2022.

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.

Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.

COVID-19

RFK Jr. pauses $240 million contract for new ‘oral COVID vaccine’

Published on February 27, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

For his first major action since taking office just two weeks ago, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has issued a 90-day stop-work order to American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which had been contracted during the Biden administration to develop a new “oral COVID-19 vaccine.”

Kennedy’s order came just as 10,000 individuals were scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday.

HHS will utilize the 90-day hiatus to review Vaxart’s initial findings to determine the future of the human trials and continued drug development.

Approximately $460 million had been allotted to Vaxart by HHS to develop its new COVID-19 “vaccine,” of which $240 million had been authorized for the preliminary study, according to a report by Fox News Digital, which broke the story.

“While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital.

“I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” added Kennedy.

“If anyone was worried that RFK would not address vaccine damage, this is proof he’s only getting started,” declared the producers of the 2022 Died Suddenly film, which questioned the motives behind the development and mandating of the first round of COVID-19 shots and the startling number of deaths attributed to them.

There appears to be plenty of justification for pausing and even terminating Vaxart’s continued development of its “oral COVID-19 vaccine”

According to a report by The Defender’s John-Michael Dumais and published by LifeSiteNews in June, “Vaxart’s pill, VXA-CoV2-1, uses an adenovirus vector to infect epithelial cells in the lower small intestine. The vaccine delivers the genetic material to create the spike protein. The company boasts that a special coating allows the oral pill to survive the low pH in the stomach.”

“Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) and AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines also used adenovirus vectors,” noted Dumais, who explained:

The use of J&J’s vaccine was paused in April 2021 due to reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a severe blood clotting disorder. In July 2021, the FDA warned about the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome with the J&J vaccine after approximately 100 cases were reported among 12.8 million vaccine recipients. With existing doses of the J&J vaccine having expired in May 2023, the vaccine is no longer in use.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine also caused blood clots, resulting in temporary pauses in its use in several countries. With declining demand, it was also removed from the market in May 2023.

Vaxart’s oral COVID-19 development project is part of the Biden administration’s $4.7 billion Project NextGen initiative, launched in 2023 to accelerate the development of new COVID “vaccines.”

Vaxart’s “vaccine” was funded through a contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which falls under the umbrella of HHS’s Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

The pausing of Vaxart’s COVID-19 “vaccine” development can be seen as Kennedy’s first important move to fulfill his stated mission as HHS secretary.

Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Establishing The President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (MAHA EO) to investigate and address the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.

Chaired by Kennedy, the commission has four main policy directives to reverse chronic disease: Empower Americans through transparency and open-source data and avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research; prioritize gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government; work with farmers to ensure that U.S. food is the healthy, abundant, and affordable; and ensure expanded treatment options and health coverage flexibility for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.

The MAHA EO came at a time when many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s healthcare system and are increasingly skeptical as to whether they are receiving honest answers about the causes of the country’s health crisis and how to improve it.