The Australian Government has just published its inquiry into the Covid pandemic.
Much smaller and less legalistic than Lady Hallett’s leviathan, it primarily entailed commissioning researchers to elicit people’s lived experience of Australia’s COVID-19 response. Submissions were sought, with 2,201 received. Stakeholder meetings and focus groups were held.
This approach has an inherent hazard. It attracts and over-represents the politically engaged and the representatives of organised interest groups. It is less likely to capture the views of those – such as small traders and truck drivers – who just seek to live their lives with the least interference from government. Yet these often were the people most adversely affected by lockdowns.
Despite this limitation, the report does recognise vital points. Most notable is the acknowledgement that Australia’s Covid response eroded trust in government and public health. This, it is noted, has led to reduced uptake of vital childhood vaccines and to a large body of people distrustful of most or all government advice and initiatives. The same conclusion was reached a year earlier by academics at the University of Adelaide.
Further, and crucially, the report (p242) admits that the severe impacts of extended and universal lockdowns were “not appropriately considered”:
Isolation and quarantine arrangements, social isolation requirements, lockdowns, border closures and other public health measures affected the mental health and wellbeing of all Australians, but they had disproportionate effect [their bold] on some priority populations and on the viability of businesses. For many, such as children and people with existing mental health issues, it is very likely these impacts will be felt for some time. It is clear these impacts were not appropriately considered given these measures continued to be applied once the risk-benefit balance had shifted and proportionality was harder to argue. This must not be repeated in a future health emergency.
Quite.
Despite this scathing criticism, the authors believe that Australia’s approach – to close borders, lock down centres of viral circulation, vaccinate widely, then re-open – was broadly successful. They assert that it led to far fewer excess deaths than Canada, which they consider to be an otherwise comparable country (p276).
There are at least three objections to this self-congratulatory view:
First: Australia, unlike Canada, is geographically isolated and the pandemic struck at the end of the southern summer, when people – with high vitamin D levels – are less vulnerable to respiratory viruses. To this extent Australia was simply lucky: the virus failed to gain early traction. Secondly, by the time Australia did re-open, SARS-CoV-2 had evolved to its milder Omicron forms. Again, Australia was lucky to avoid the first hit, and there was no guarantee of the virus’s direction or speed of evolution. Thirdly, the claim of fewer excess deaths is disingenuously based on the early pandemic period (2020-21) and fails to consider more recent years, when Australia has recorded substantial excess deaths. The Spectator’s analysis of all cause excess deaths from the start of the pandemic to January 2023 shows these higher in Australia that in Sweden, which had far fewer restrictions. What exactly is causing these later deaths, which seem to be increasing (figure)? Is it the virus, the vaccines, or the disruption of other healthcare when Australia was fixated upon Covid? The report is silent. It doesn’t acknowledge the phenomenon, and the dead have no voice.
Apropos Covid vaccines the Report is uncritically positive. In almost 900 pages there is not one mention of vaccine-associated myocarditis, other cardiac issues or blood clots. The Djokovic farrago passes without a note. Gosh! The inquiry’s Terms of Reference (Appendix B of the report) were wide, and vaccine harms were not excluded a priori. It is beyond credulity that the researchers failed to be contacted by anyone harmed by these products. Why are their voices denied, whereas Australia’s co-development, with Moderna, of new mRNA plants is highlighted (p 256)?
Surely it is more pertinent to discuss these aspects than to begin your report with a long, rambling piece of official wokery, which commences:
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia on whose lands we all work, play and live. We acknowledge their continuous connection to lands, waters, skies, culture and community….
and ends with a warning that:
This report contains material that may be distressing for some readers. If you need to talk to someone, support is available.
Two counselling helpline numbers are then provided for those affected.
You may, like me, believe that primary Covid vaccination did some initial good in high-risk populations, or you may believe that it did no good at all. What is beyond dispute is that the vaccines failed to stop viral transmission and circulation, as evidenced by the fact that the major Omicron surges came after the great majority of Australians were vaccinated.
Accordingly, there was no justification for Australia’s (and the U.K.’s) policy of giving novel mRNA and viral-vector products – with unknown immediate and long-term side-effects – to all age groups, including those at no significant risk from Covid. Nor of continuing universal vaccination after the failure to stop viral circulation was obvious. There was no justification whatsoever for the vaccine passport systems adopted, in various forms, by individual Australian states.
As he wrote in these pages, Professor Angus Dalgleish of St. George’s Hospital in London recently toured Australia, finding considerable medical disquiet about mRNA vaccines. He noted that around 1,000 medical staff in New South Wales alone had been sacked for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates. The voices of these dismissed healthcare workers are absent from the present report. Why? Perhaps they should ring the helpline. I hope they do so.
The report aims to inform future respiratory pandemic planning and has numerous recommendations to that effect. Many involve the formation of more committees and expert groups along with more central planning and the establishment of an Australian National CDC. The underlying aim seems to be to standardise responses across Australian states, not to ascertain the most appropriate response.
The recommendations pay lip service to civil liberties. Disturbingly, though, they fail to say that lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine mandates must never be repeated in a ‘free’ country; the report suggests only (above) that they went on for too long. There is no clear, unequivocal condemnation of Dan Andrews’s nine months of lockdown in Melbourne, nor of its often brutal enforcement which, even in its early days (September 2020) was condemned by Human Rights Watch. Andrews, it should be remembered has recently received the Order of Australia from King Charles for his totalitarian efforts, and is promised a statue.
There are recommendations on countering misinformation but no admission of how much misinformation came from Governmental sources, for example on the efficacy of masks and vaccines and the evidence base for lockdowns and social distancing. It is this official misinformation that eroded trust in public health authorities. Until this is admitted and contrition shown, there is no remedy.
Overall, this report deserves five out of 10. Its curious omissions of views and experiences that must have been elicited by its processes need to be queried by the Australian media.
Dr. David Livermore is a retired Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia.
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The Australian response to the Chinese lab-leaked virus was (apart from the vaccinations) exactly the same as the country’s response to the1918 Spanish flu outbreak – isolate the country and ban travel.
The official narrative is never going to be reneged on. The fox is guarding the hen house. The farmer needs to shoot the fox otherwise the hens will be picked off one by one, allegorically speaking of course.
Dr M Yeadon calling out the vaccine again… “designed to kill, injure and reduce fertility…
https://youtu.be/JHXxxWjT-z0?si=4uena5PIiK_ZKSuF
One of the most grotesque aspects of that situation was how the countries with the most amiable people on earth were those subjected to the worst tyranny. This in itself was a psychological operation akin to experiments conducted in the 1950s onwards by the CIA which involved getting a child to become really attached to a pet and then being forced to watch as it was slowly and painfully killed. It brings about a schism in the mind, essentially creates a new hard drive that can be programmed. I love Canadian and Australian people but the reason I love them is because they are like babies in their happy-go-lucky attitude. Obviously New Zealand. Can you imagine a beautiful country and people like that being led by that horse WEF Jacinda monstrosity? They want to create nightmares in your mind.
The inquiry was doomed to failure as it could only examine commonwealth measures and not those imposed by states. Vaccine mandates, border closures, stay home orders, mask mandates, school closures etc were all enforced at a state level. Most of the population supported these measures early on as they had been whipped up into a frenzy of fear by the media and were in terror at the thought of catching a cold.