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If the opinion polls are in any way adjacent to popular feeling, then Australia’s monumental COVID policy disaster of the last three years has largely been marked, now that the hysteria has subsided, by the majority of Australians with a laconic ‘What was all the fuss about?’.
Most of us, apparently, are unruffled by the economic devastation of the lockdown years, including their debt/inflation/interest-rate spiral. Likewise, they are mostly unconcerned about, if even aware of, the mortality, morbidity and fertility costs of mass experimental injections. And 
they have no issue with the assaults on liberty that imposed on Australia more than a touch of a banana republic.
We are three years into the ‘pandemic’ (which would never have been a pandemic under previous WHO definitions which, inter alia, required significant real world mortality, not just alarming horoscopes cast by the pandemic astrologers), but the latest polls attest to the lack of public fuss over what our governments did to us in the name of ‘safety’. It seems a majority of the population believes our governments and public health ‘experts’ have successfully handled the pandemic. The dissident minority can often lose sight of our fellow citizens’ largely enthusiastic, or just blasé, views on the COVID policy farce.
Active opposition and protest was a factor, eventually, in helping to roll back the COVID mandates and restrictions, but the freedom-oriented parties that sprang up in opposition have had a hard time finding permanent electoral traction. Arguably, widespread virus fatigue at both elite and popular levels, together with the political, social and economically unsustainable COVID Derangement Syndrome as society’s default operating mode, contributed more to COVID lockdowns, mandates and restrictions overstaying their welcome. Even the most tyrannical premiers — yes, that’s you, Dan, Mark and Anastasia — succumbed to political exhaustion in the end.
Their pandemic reputations, however, remain largely unsullied, according to the polls and, a more telling example of Australians’ tolerance in being ordered about, the resounding re-election of Victoria’s Dan Andrews. As much as we may wish it otherwise, for three years the states-sponsored COVID panic was a stunning success for its architects, administrators and enforcers. Recall the kilometres-long queues at testing centres and vaccination hubs, the ubiquity of masked faces and look to the public’s positive acceptance of social distancing, lockdowns, curfews, masks and vaccination policies were all tickety-boo.
Consider the findings of three opinion surveys.
Pew: An international Pew Research survey (the 2022 Global Attitudes Survey) in August last year found that in Australia, land of the long lockdown and the big needle, the population rates its government’s COVID response more highly than do people in nearly every and any other countries. In Australia, 76 per cent of us think government ‘has done a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak’. Only socially authoritarian Singapore (88 per cent) and Malaysia (77 per cent) give a bigger tick of approval (80 per cent of Swedes also had positive feelings towards their government but, unlike every other country surveyed, Sweden maintained liberty).
Pew’s survey highlights that, back in the darkly hysterical COVID days of 2020, almost all (97 per cent) of Australians rated our government’s handling of the virus as very good, so there is some comfort in the decline from 97 per cent to 76 per cent of those who really like what our governments did to us.
Lowy: The latest Lowy Institute poll basically confirms the Pew poll. Back in 2021, reports Lowy, 65 per cent of us thought our governments handled the pandemic ‘very well’, and although this ardour has cooled somewhat (only 24 per cent give it top marks now), over half of us (56 per cent) still say our governments did ‘fairly well’ (up from 30 per cent in 2021). Whilst 14 per cent now say that it has all been handled badly (up from a tiny base of just 4 per cent at the height of the awfulness at the start of 2022), those saying we did ‘very badly’ remains at a depressingly low 5 per cent (although that is an improvement from just 1 per cent in 2021). Pollwise, we hardcore COVID dissidents represent not much more than a rounding error.
Overall, according to Lowy, roughly eight in ten Australians in 2022 give our governments a COVID pass mark. Disturbingly, 94 per cent of Australians think the lockdown-loving, border-sealing New Zealand also handled the ‘pandemic’ well or very well.
The COVID vaccines, whilst we are on gloomy poll news, remain in good standing with Australians, and globally as well, according to Pew. In all 19 countries surveyed, around two-thirds or more of their populations say that having been vaccinated is somewhat or very important in order “to be a good member of society”. Dismayingly, Australia is at the very top of the vaccine virtue league ladder, with 87 per cent of those surveyed backing being jabbed as a social good — a number that includes 60 per cent who rate vaccines are ‘very important’.
Essential: This lingering, widespread adherence to the official COVID Narrative in Australia is manifested in ongoing illusions about the virus and alleged countermeasures. Five months ago, an Essential poll found that a majority of Australians viewed our quasi-fascist, politico-medical COVID regimes as delivering better outcomes than in lockdown-free/light-restriction Sweden. Well, if you’re only ever told by the propaganda organs that pass for the media here that ‘let-it-rip’ Sweden has been a virus basket-case, why wouldn’t you believe it? Encouragingly, 29 per cent of Australians now think that Sweden did better than Australia, so at least the anti-lockdown cause is getting into some Australian ears.
The same poll, however, found that two-thirds of Australians are still labouring under the illusion that our hospitals are bursting at the seams because of COVID. Hmmm, wasn’t the COVID vaccines supposed to stop that from happening? Perhaps best not to explore that bit of cognitive dissonance (‘Saved by the COVID vax!’ / ‘Hospitals overrun by COVID!’) because it may reveal that the vax is a dud and all the measures to force it on the population were authoritarian hijinks to reinforce a political narrative (COVID bad / government and its experts good).
What Essential, Lowy and Pew are telling us is that whilst a majority of Australians are keen to fold up the COVID circus tents, they are taking a distorted pandemic history with them.
Not just Australia
The Great COVID Delirium has been global, of course, and the majority of the world’s populations still maintain a rosy view of harsh ‘pandemic’ policy. Lockdowns in the US, for example, remain bafflingly popular, according to the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus index for September 2022, with three in four Americans (73 per cent) saying that the early 2020 shutdowns ‘were necessary to save lives’ (Democrat voters are insanely infatuated by 
lockdowns, with 93 per cent singing their praises compared to just 52 per cent of Republicans).
Large reserves of other COVID-crazy attitudes still exist Stateside, with a third of Americans saying it will be ‘a year or more’ before they personally return to living normal lives; a third of those surveyed report wearing a mask some or all of the time when leaving the house. Fortunately, some Americans are starting to get a bit self-conscious about their face furniture, with one in five (19 per cent) saying they ‘worry how other people view them because of their mask’. Well, advertising your public-health virtue like that will make you a bit of a target for the odd caustic glance.
Why so much support?
Popular support for lockdowns and all the other ‘mitigation’/Zero-COVID policy efforts can be explained as the result of a stunningly successful fear campaign which massively exaggerated the risk. In a Kekst CNC poll in 2020, conducted at the height of the viral terror, the median guesstimate by Britons for the percentage of the population killed by COVID was 7 per cent (which would, if true, mean a truly horrific 4.5 million dead). Americans were worse, believing COVID had 
already disposed of 9 per cent of their countrymen (some 30 million people – more than died amongst all combatants in the First World War).
People are generally not very good at such guessing games in the absence of comparative context such as normal mortality rates from other causes, but the common man’s perception of the lethality of COVID, then and now, does not come within cooee of its actual risk profile.
The go-to expert (a genuine one) to consult on COVID’s Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), prior to whatever benefit of the vaccines, is Stanford professor of medicine Dr. John Ioannidis. His latest meta-analysis of 31 separate empirical infection studies (based on sero-prevalence measurements of antibodies), combined with official COVID death figures, frames what was imagined by many as the ‘deadliest disease ever’ in a completely different light.
The IFR that Ioannidis calculates was a near-invisible 0.0003 per cent for those aged 19 and under, 0.002 per cent for those aged 20–29 years, 0.011 per cent for the 30–39 year-olds, 0.035 per cent for the 40–49 year-olds, 0.123per cent for the 50–59 age group (a mortality rate equivalent to a normal flu season) and 0.506 per cent for the 60–69 year-olds (again, equivalent to a bad flu season). So, out of every 100,000 people aged under 70 infected with the virus, COVID would have struck down just 95. For the over-seventies, their IFR was 4.9 per cent (2.0 per cent in normal household settings and 5.5 per cent in residential aged care, where you find the much sicker, the more frail and thus the more vulnerable.
COVID’s IFR is thus highly age and morbidity-stratified, the viral illness targeting almost exclusively those people already at or over average life expectancy and who have serious comorbidity baggage. The IFR, mortality-wise, is also incredibly low compared to other causes of death and, even then, it is significantly inflated because it uses official COVID deaths tallies which inflate the IFR because they include ‘died withs’ as well as ‘died froms’ (73 per cent – 88 per cent of official COVID deaths in the US, for example, were those of people who died not from COVID but because of multiple pre-existing conditions. Only 6 per cent had no known pre-existing comorbidity).
Inn a few words, Australia lost its collective mind over a virus which 99,905 out of every 100,000 infected people aged under 70 would easily survive and which saw 951 out of every 1000 people over seventy pull through. People of any age in average health had little to fear, yet the optics for politicians and public health ‘experts’ of being seen to ‘do something’ meant shutting down the economy, imprisoning critics, social-media bans and gags and injecting them with a vaccines that were rushed into production and remain even today listed as ‘experimental’.
The next frontline
We have come a very long way here in Australia since the darkest days of dreary lockdown, heavy policing, manic masking and clownish ‘social distancing’ but one Great COVID War front remains active. Excess deaths following the introduction of the COVID vaxxes and their boosters continue to quietly pile up, a global phenomenon that COVID experts so enthusiastic about mass jabbing refuse to recognise. Meanwhile, popular enthusiasm for the jab, once near monolithic, is beginning to wane.
Whilst 97.3 per cent of the Australian population aged 16 or over have had one shot, and 96.0 per cent have had two, only 72.4 per cent have lined up for shot number three and just 44.2 per cent (of the eligible population i.e. those aged 30 or more) have opted for dose number four. Parents of children aged 5-15 are also cooling off, with a bare majority (52.4 per cent) of children having had two doses, down from 60.7 per cent who have had one dose. Absent unethical jab mandates for employment or travel or access to venues, Australians are voting with their now-liberated feet by walking away from the experts’ elixir. Safe, effective and necessary? Only the minority of Australians who are fully, four-dose jabbed believe this fiction anymore. Not before time, the vaxx narrative is crumbling.
Nevertheless, there remains a largish minority of COVID True Believers in Australia. Sans their once-ubiquitous facemasks, they can be hard to spot at first glance. But, like Idaho farmers abducted by aliens for a deep and thorough probing, a wild-eyed and other-worldly stare comes over them when talk turns to COVID. Fortunately, the social and political momentum is no longer with them.
There is, however, a much larger majority of ‘compliants’ who mask up when told and unmask only when permission is granted, who could again become the automaton footsoldiers in a never-ending war on viruses. It is this great middle — those who feel that our governments basically got it right — that must be reached and persuaded if we want to hold to account the policy architects responsible for making the past three years so much worse than they need have been. In short, those with political power, media heft and cultural influence who royally screwed us over.
What’s needed, clearly, is a royal commission.
If there isn’t a reckoning, the next generation of pandemic choreographers, including the experts’ choir currently singing the praises of mRNA pharmaceuticals for every disease under the sun, will try it all on again. They got away with it because, as the polls show, the great Australian public were complicit by ditching our native scepticism and healthy distrust of elites in favour of blindly accepting what was fed to us.
I think it was Robert Conway in ‘The Land of the Long Weekend’ who described Australia is a nation with an ‘I need a mother’ ethos. We, as a nation, want some one to boss us around for our own good, it would seem.
Of course, many of us are free of this particular mental virus.
I think my recollection is close to accurate, or at least a reasonable interpretation of Conway…and If so, all pigeons were well roosted during the Covid Circus.
Why oh why, doesn’t the text editor preserve paragraph spaces?e
Typing a full stop on the line between the paragraphs has the required effect.
For an explanation for the above mass formation cognitive dissonance, I thoroughly recommend Lord Jonathan Sumpton’s excellent insights published previously in this august journal.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/12/the-relentless-rise-of-the-authoritarian-state/
It’s usually thought tyranny is imposed on a population.
It’s not.
It’s welcomed.
The test run was successful.
You are right, Katzenjammer.
I am not in the “plandemic” camp, so I think the “test run” was not premeditated (much less with malice aforethought). I see the “test run” as an inadvertant and telling stress test on the resilience of the “liberal democracies” of the West. One that we failed spectacularly, but which (as depressingly revealed in the above-quoted polls) the vast majority of citizens still regard as a great success. And for which three State Prems (the Emperor, the Chairman, and the Queen) were returned with increased majorities.
Welcome to the Tyranny of the Majority.
Oh the Horror, the Horror!
…and this is apposite, despite being quoted out of context:
.
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals”.
CS Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment” (1949).
The bureaucrats and the medical profession won and the country lost, simple as that. The media and bureaucrats are still trying to scare us all with new and terrible strains “just around the corner” coming to get us but in reality there never was a cause for alarm judging by the death rates. We ordinary folk will never know the truth and a Royal Commission is a waste of time because the old saying of “never hold a RC unless you know what the outcome will be” still holds.
Four of my relatives were/have been affected adversely after two injections of the poison as follows;
65 yr old male cousin = dead in 2021
42 yr old female cousin = dead in 2022
35 yr old male cousin = dead in 2022
73 yr old father in law = dementia in 2021
I don’t believe more money needs to be wasted on a Royal Commission just to tell us that the whole thing was fake.
I would like to see proven government audits of all those who died, all those who had pregnancies terminated/miscarried, all those who suffered adverse reactions as a result of taking the poison jab.
I would also like to see the government compensate with a two year salary, all those people who had employment terminated through refusal to take the poison,
…..
tut tut in reality bites, my ‘likes’ will only happen the same day the colour of Stan Grant’s skin returns to its original coat.
I largely blame my (medical) profession.
The media acted like the media always do in perpetuating the terror narrative. No surprises there.
Politicians did whatever would win votes.
No ethics in politics.
People acted as they do when scared- behave as a herd.
The medical profession had a duty in both questioning, teaching, and criticising unscientific pronouncements, as well as upholding the “primum non nocere” principle.
In all cases they aligned with Big Pharma, destroying dissenters, and likely diminishing the trust in which they have previously been held.
The way I see it:
At the outset dire predictions of high mortality rates based on modelling from the UK triggered an
overreaction by governments and health authorities around the world.
Public fears were heightened by the mass testing of healthy people via a flawed method which
produced many false positives thereby inflating the reported numbers of new cases announced daily
by government officials and the media.
Lockdowns were counterproductive and went against the advice of internationally respected
epidemiologists, as did vaccine mandates. Meanwhile governments mistakenly pinned their hopes
solely on the rushed production of a vaccine.
In the interim, of those vulnerable people who died of COVID, tragically thousands of those deaths
could have been prevented had health officials not suppressed early treatment with repurposed drugs,
specifically hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, falsely labelling them ‘unsafe and ineffective.’
Several months after the introduction of the novel gene-based vaccines, the data began to indicate
they had minimal and short-lived efficacy (now acknowledged by both regulators and manufacturers)
neither preventing infection nor transmission. On the other hand, it was shown that immunity acquired
naturally through contracting the disease was robust and enduring.
Truly worrying was the mounting evidence of the vaccines causing actual harm at a rate higher than all
former vaccines combined, including permanent injury and death. Despite this some governments
persist with vaccine mandates for certain occupations.
The economic harm has been massive—the lockdowns and the billions of taxpayer dollars paid to the
captains of the bio-pharmaceutical complex leaving nations in huge debt. In Australia there were also
worrying political changes which impact on federalism and democracy—a centralized ‘national cabinet’
which shows no sign of being abandoned and at least one state premier arrogating to himself
permanent emergency powers without accountability to parliament, while another was seeking to invest
similar powers in that state’s chief of police.
Why does the public appear to be generally unaware of these facts? That is a question for our
governments and the legacy media. However, should the truth become widely known and the world
return to sanity, Australians could reasonably expect that:
1. All remaining vaccine mandates would be lifted.
2. There would be an urgent inquiry into the independence of both our health and medical
regulators—the TGA and AHPRA, and of the legacy media; in addition, the issue of corporations
becoming coercive arms of government—as in enforcing vaccine mandates—would come
under scrutiny.
3. Employees who lost their livelihoods for refusing to be vaccinated and doctors who were
deregistered for putting patients’ health above the dictates of the health bureaucracy would
receive an apology and be reinstated and compensated. Recognition would also be given to
those who reluctantly took the jab out of duty of care to family or others.
4. Doctors would be encouraged to do their own due diligence in future and where necessary,
challenge the dictates of bureaucracy.
5. And governments, rather than relying solely on bureaucrats for their advice, would encourage
collaboration among practicing clinicians to come up with safe and effective treatments, while
vaccine manufacturers would never again be allowed to relax the proper procedures for
ensuring the safety and efficacy of their products.
6. The national cabinet would be abandoned, and the legislation which concentrates emergency
powers in any individual without parliamentary accountability would be repealed.
The way I see it:
At the outset dire predictions of high mortality rates based on modelling from the UK triggered an overreaction by governments and health authorities around the world.
Public fears were heightened by the mass testing of healthy people via a flawed method which produced many false positives thereby inflating the reported numbers of new cases announced daily by government officials and the media.
Lockdowns were counterproductive and went against the advice of internationally respected epidemiologists, as did vaccine mandates. Meanwhile governments mistakenly pinned their hopes solely on the rushed production of a vaccine.
In the interim, of those vulnerable people who died of COVID, tragically thousands of those deaths could have been prevented had health officials not suppressed early treatment with repurposed drugs,
specifically hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, falsely labelling them ‘unsafe and ineffective.’
Several months after the introduction of the novel gene-based vaccines, the data began to indicate they had minimal and short-lived efficacy (now acknowledged by both regulators and manufacturers) neither preventing infection nor transmission. On the other hand, it was shown that immunity acquired naturally through contracting the disease was robust and enduring.
Truly worrying was the mounting evidence of the vaccines causing actual harm at a rate higher than all former vaccines combined, including permanent injury and death. Despite this some governments persist with vaccine mandates for certain occupations.
The economic harm has been massive—the lockdowns and the billions of taxpayer dollars paid to the captains of the bio-pharmaceutical complex leaving nations in huge debt.
In Australia there were also worrying political changes which impact on federalism and democracy—a centralized ‘national cabinet’ which shows no sign of being abandoned and at least one state premier arrogating to himself permanent emergency powers without accountability to parliament, while another was seeking to invest similar powers in that state’s chief of police.
Why does the public appear to be generally unaware of these facts? That is a question for our governments and the legacy media. However, should the truth become widely known and the world return to sanity, Australians could reasonably expect that:
1. All remaining vaccine mandates would be lifted.
2. There would be an urgent inquiry into the independence of both our health and medical regulators—the TGA and AHPRA, and of the legacy media; in addition, the issue of corporations becoming coercive arms of government—as in enforcing vaccine mandates—would come under scrutiny.
3. Employees who lost their livelihoods for refusing to be vaccinated and doctors who were deregistered for putting patients’ health above the dictates of the health bureaucracy would receive an apology and be reinstated and compensated. Recognition would also be given to those who reluctantly took the jab out of duty of care to family or others.
4. Doctors would be encouraged to do their own due diligence in future and where necessary, challenge the dictates of bureaucracy.
5. And governments, rather than relying solely on bureaucrats for their advice, would encourage collaboration among practicing clinicians to come up with safe and effective treatments, while vaccine manufacturers would never again be allowed to relax the proper procedures for ensuring the safety and efficacy of their products.
6. The national cabinet would be abandoned, and the legislation which concentrates emergency powers in any individual without parliamentary accountability would be repealed.
Great article Phil, sorry about the long and doubled up post above. I wrote it out of sheer frustration with our governments, health officials, regulators, legacy media, and, frankly, the apparent unawareness of so many of my fellow citizens and their willingness to meekly accept whatever they were told. You nailed it in the following quote from your article:
“Derangement Syndrome as society’s default operating mode, contributed more to COVID lockdowns, mandates and restrictions overstaying their welcome. Even the most tyrannical premiers — yes, that’s you, Dan, Mark and Anastasia — succumbed to political exhaustion in the end.
Their pandemic reputations, however, remain largely unsullied, according to the polls and, a more telling example of Australians’ tolerance in being ordered about, the resounding re-election of Victoria’s Dan Andrews. As much as we may wish it otherwise, for three years the states-sponsored COVID panic was a stunning success for its architects, administrators and enforcers. Recall the kilometres-long queues at testing centres and vaccination hubs, the ubiquity of masked faces and look to the public’s positive acceptance of social distancing, lockdowns, curfews, masks and vaccination policies were all tickety-boo.”
Agree with you – it was a scam from the outset. Many smelled a rat when we went so rapidly from “flattening the curve” to full-scale freedom curbs. While acutely aware of Australian secularism, I remain particularly disgusted with the craven covid compliance of organised religion: concerted resistance from this quarter might have stopped some of the worst excesses of over-reach.
Amen!