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I’m a 27-year-old artist, teacher and cyber security student. I’m married to an occupational therapist who looked after COVID-19-infected patients in aged care at the height of Melbourne’s second lockdown. We are three-quarters vaccinated with Pfizer (I’m waiting on my second dose).
I experienced hope and even joy that so many people were prepared to risk fines and arrest to protest the lockdowns that have been crippling Australia since March last year. I decided to join them. Not in the city – that’s a too easy target, and too easily misrepresented, by the media or the Twitter brigade. Instead I walked up my local shopping strip with a sign, wearing a mask, encouraging people to ‘stay safe’ wherever they are (as the Victorian Government’s propaganda never fails to remind us). My sign read:
‘COVID can’t be eliminated. Put a ring of steel around our Premiers.’
I meant every word.
For my sin of questioning a doomed and destructive policy, I have the privilege of sharing the status of the “selfish boofheads”’ and “ratbags” who congregated, some with their children, in our two major CBDs. A panoply of dictocrats predictably pronounced their verdict on us that evening. In an exasperated tweet His Highness, Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton, tried to argue that we don’t care about freedom if we oppose his elimination strategy. Mr Foley went further, effectively saying that we are “not on the side of humanity” for daring to challenge their edicts.
Well, I’m not convinced. You see, Brett Sutton could, under Victoria’s State of Emergency powers, ‘proportionately’ confiscate my possessions and require me to vacate my house. If I owned my house, he could order its demolition. These powers allowed him to cross the NSW-VIC border recently for a conference whose highlight appears to have been some dinner where awards were handed out. The reality is, Australia’s health officials and their lapdog premiers (or is it the other way around?) enjoy freedoms that our population does not. Why should we be lectured by them on freedom?
Here’s a thought: COVID can crush your body, but it cannot crush your spirit. And another thought: our premiers cannot eliminate COVID-19, but they can eliminate society in the trying. They might even succeed in doing just that before the next election. This is why I feel a great urgency to use whatever few means left to us as citizens to oppose their vision for life under COVID. They , not me and the thousands of others who took to the streets yesterday in state capitals, are the true enemies of the state, enemies of the community, enemies of individuals. They want to protect us from a disease that is out of their control, peddling lies and doling out shame while refusing point blank to release the “expert advice” that tells them their strategy is “working”. They have not sought the consent of the people whose rights they have been entrusted with.
For over a year I have tried to oppose this regime within the restrictions imposed on me with precious little success. The social contract is now rigged against common people. I look ahead and see a horizon of lockdowns, impositions and risk-avoidance that no vaccination level can cure. This horizon is bleakness incarnate. As if five lockdowns totalling some six months of domestic incarceration haven’t been bleak enough! If our premiers trash democratic norms to get their way and impose their will, they should expect fierce resistance. What they got on Saturday was only a taste.
By protesting it is said I am putting others ‘at risk’. By being alive I am putting others at risk. Life is risk – the risk of joy in the face of pain, hope in the face of death, love in the face of rejection. I will fight for life, and maybe we’ll all find more safety in that than in hiding from COVID.
Good on you Remy. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,and it isn’t those of us who oppose these lockdowns, and in particularly the lockdown of our faces.
the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. now regarding cover, I know they will mention variants, but we still get variants despite lockdowns. conclusion, lockdowns don’t work. so try something else.
I think Dan Andrews needs to go to spec savers so his focal point is a little further than his nose. He, like Gladys, lacks vision and imagination.
I too shall march.
Since Covid is no threat to the vast majority and the vaxxed believe that their genetic treatment will make Covid infection less severe, how on earth are these people doing anything but exercising their rights? They are no threat. There is no threat, except to freedom.
The average age of a Covid claimed death in Australia is 86 and the average age of death is 82.75. In the UK the average age of death is 81 and the average Covid claimed death (they are not proven) is 82.
From the beginning the mortality group has been 99% of very old, over 80 and very sick with 2-3 co-morbidities. Covid is no threat to the young, little threat to the healthy aged and a child has more chance of being impaled on a unicorn’s horn than dying of Covid.
This is the first time people have needed a test, and a flawed one at that, to tell them they are ‘sick’ with a viral infection for heaven’s sake. The levels of public gullibility on this issue are simply horrifying. Yes, it is time to take to the streets and demand our freedom and rights which are too easily lost.
We have millions now subjecting themselves to a highly experimental, genetic treatment called a vaccine, unapproved with final studies and safety testing NOT complete, which has already killed thousands and no doubt more given the very poor standards in reporting vaccine injury, for a virus which is no threat to 99.99% of people. Utter madness.
The last 18 months have been a reminder to the historically informed and sensible, how it was in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s; how the horrific Chinese Cultural Revolution came to be; how the Bolshevik Revolution happened; how the Cambodian genocide happened. All of them happened because not enough people asked questions, demanded accountability and too many could be terrified into irrational compliance.
I am sorry this poor women is a Pfizer labrat but good on her and the rest for taking to the streets to defend the rights and freedom for which millions have died in war.
Remy, I applaud your public-spirited and thoughtful actions yesterday, and article. But, I hate to say this, your second paragraph sums up my worry: mass protests are indeed too easily misrepresented, play into the authorities’ hands, and gift them pretexts to prolong lockdown misery. I don’t have the answers, however we need to come up with more creative strategies and responses – like yours. Jim
Mass protests are a sign of the great frustration felt by healthy and able people who are being prevented from earning a living and engaging in the normal social life that is vital to full health. Particularly for children and adolescents.
Shutting down society for such a limited threat is outrageous and nonsensical, it can only be the irrational fear of the ignorant, the mendacious and the political opportunist that is driving it.
The idea of eliminating the virus comes from fairy tale land, for grief’s sake.
This is part of the observation of Chesterton: if people stop believing in God, they will start believing anything.
Dan Andrews on cue: https://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-covid-live-updates-nsw-police-open-probe-into-lockdown-protests-federal-government-to-buy-85m-pfizer-booster-doses-20210724-p58cmz.html
Victorians are waking up. Sydneysiders are far less tolerant of lockdowns, as demonstrated yesterday.
Taking work and social interaction off the table for Greater Sydney has been a terrible mistake and one which Gladys must resolve soon or face more of it. It is unbelievable that she is asking people to dob on any they know that they see on TV attending the lockdowns. That sort of Stazi response was completely out of order and does her no credit at all.
this is worth watching for anyone interested in how many patents have been filed for SARS and Covid-19 in the past 8 years. More than 70. Clearly someone is on on the money and has been since 2003.
https://www.brighteon.com/db2172a4-0d6a-4482-a975-6a5965532443
If I may be forgiven for playing the devil’s advocate, in my humble opinion, “taking to the streets” is a totally self-indulgent, probably counter-productive display of civil disobedience that should be used only as a last resort against totalitarian regimes, the like of which have not existed in Australia in living memory, if ever. They prove nothing and disrupt the normal life of the vast majority, and invariably provide cover for extremists who couldn’t care less about “the rights and freedoms for which millions have died in war”.
The problem is that in this political environment, no Australian Prime Minister or Premier has the power or freedom to please anybody let alone everybody. The cynical media have one common objective – to get Morrison – and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the people’s “rights and freedoms”. Whatever Morrison or any Liberal Premier does it will be damned as either too much too soon or too little too late.
With the example of two ALP Premiers recently having won landslide electoral victories for keeping their people “safe”, and a third – Andrews – a red-hot favourite to win his next election despite the outrageous incompetence of his Government, it’s a very brave Coalition politician who could swim against that tsunami.
@Daffy,
Well said. It is heartening to think there are enough people out there who cannot and will not be terrified into submission and who dare to question the running narrative. Many of the worst experiences in history would have been avoided if this group in society was large enough to make a difference.
Anyone following the Covid narrative, and tracking cases, hospitalisations, deaths on the Australian Federal Government website can be left in no doubt that Covid is not the threat as claimed and unless one is very old and very sick with 2-3 co-morbidities, this virus presents such a minimal threat that it is criminal to lock up the healthy and impose things like masks and social distancing. Human immune function requires connection and contact and fresh air for optimal results.
One only has to look at the bad Flu season in 2017, when, in a QUARTER of the time Covid has been around, some 1,100 Australians OF ALL AGES died and more than 300,000 sought medical help. If Covid in more than 18 months offered that level of threat we would have seen 4,500 Australians of all ages dead and more than a million seeking medical help.
Instead, in more than a year and a half, we have 32,765 cases (most of whom were not sick by any medical definition) and 916 deaths with the mortality group largely confined to the very old and very sick with 2-3 co-morbidities. Our hospitals have been empty and our ICU units have been echo chambers even as we are told that yet another ‘variant’ has arrived which is more infectious. What they do not talk about is virulence and as a dozen doctors last year said to Dan Andrews in a letter, later signed by hundreds more doctors, Covid-19 was infectious but not virulent, i.e. serious. They were ignored.
Viruses mutate all of the time and generally become weaker and more infectious and NOT more virulent. And when they mutate, the change is generally so slight, less than one or two percent, that the virus is pretty much EXACTLY what it had always been in terms of the human organism’s immune response. The fact that we had SARS in 2003, when by the way the Pharmaceutical companies began lodging patents for SARS, means most people would have some immunity anyway to the later development of SARS COV 2, whether a natural mutation or something manmade out of vaccine or bioweapons reasearch.
Nearly 24 million tests have been done with 32,755 cases, or rather, positive readings, from a test which is deeply flawed and renowned for its levels of false positives. And this is a pandemic? Only the truly gullible and easily brainwashed could believe such a thing. And all of these stats have come from the Australian Government websites.
@Doubting Thomas,
There are countless examples littered through human history of tyrannies which developed and wrought carnage because people ‘did not take to the streets’ soon enough, or indeed at all.
It is vastly better to protest early than late and always better than too late. And what is early about a large minority of Australians protesting, after nearly two years of the Covid insanity which has eroded their freedoms and rights and now has Governments coercing, blackmailing, forcing people to participate in a totally unnecessary medical experiment involving genetic treatments?
If the Government/science-medical industry/media, pushing this genetic vaccine experiment get it wrong then we will have catastrophe beyond imagining and vastly worse than anything Covid could do.
For those watching with high degrees of balance and informed objectivity, it has been deeply troubling to see how easily people can be brainwashed, bullied and frightened into compliance. However, any knowledge of history means while troubling, it has not been surprising and in fact protests should have started earlier.
I sympathise, but disagree. There is nothing in history, in the context of our country and its present situation, to justify people taking to the streets as happened in Sydney. What we do know is that our democratic governments operate with the consent of their people tested at the polls every three or four years without fail.
A few thousand people rioting in the streets might satisfy them and the like-minded, but says absolutely nothing about the will of the people. That the best part of 25 Million people stayed at home, albeit unhappily, speaks far more loudly.
The fact remains that governments must obey their scientific advisers even when they are mistaken. If they don’t, they have no defence if things go wrong. (We can add this example to the idiocy of the lumpen left – the paradox of “believe the science” but only when it suits us, eg catastrophic anthropogenic global warming versus the biological science that defines males and females.)
It’s easy to criticise from the luxury of our lounge chairs. Politicians and bureaucrats with actual responsibility and accountability have to follow the best available advice.
Based on quite a bit of reading and watching interviews with extremely qualified people such as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. Dolores Cahill, Dr. David Martin, etc., I think we can be certain that:
1) The virus is not ‘novel’ and is entirely synthesised.
2) The RT-PCR test is useless and has been used from the very beginning as an agent of fear.
3) The mRNA injections and the viral vector injection have an efficacy (defined as “the ability to produce a desired or intended result.”) of from 0.7 to 1%. The touted “95%” is statistical fraud.
4) All of the above are not only useless but dangerous in the acute, subacute, and chronic time frames.
5) There is no “herd immunity” to be achieved via these injections, and herd immunity can only be achieved through the natural immunity that comes from the majority having recovered.
6) It is likely that many who have had “two jabs” are in danger of mortality within two or three years.
In my opinion, the only way out of this quandy is as follows:
a) Widely publicise the fact that most sufferers (at least 90%) are Vitamin D deficient and encourage people to use D3 supplements (especially in winter) as well as Zinc and an ionophore such as Quercetin.
b) Stop sending good money after bad on RT-PCR ‘tests’. They are meaningless.
c) Encourage doctors to gin up on several appropriate early treatments for Covid-19, in particular the Borody protocol or Zelensky protocol. Apply as doctor and patient see fit.
d) Dispense with the dangerous injections immediately. They do not in any way shape of form meet the definition of a ‘vaccine’. Their ‘efficacy’ is in fact in a range of 0.7% to 1%. They are worse than useless. Many people have a died from these injections and many more will die over the next several years.
e) Set up a sort of ‘Nuremberg’ court to try the insidiously evil cabal that has developed, produced, and distributed this virus, and to try the sum total of politicians, health officers, and pharmaceutical companies that have perpetrated and been involved in this, the ugliest most vile scam ever to afflict the human race.
Come on, Australia, where is the spirit that drove the 1854 Eureka Rebellion? The issues then are bein g repeated. Eventually the common people had enough of the bullying and rebelled. Are we just going to roll over and let them kick us some more?
What i utterly loathe about this government, is there were no arrests for BLM protests during covid , but there are for people who want their freedom. The hypocrisy of gormless Gladys is outstanding . I will bite for anyone who is not Gladys
Further if gormless Gladys decides she wants to punish us bad children by extending the lockdown , rhen more protests should ensue ….
It will become more costly, and the state will go broke . For gormless gladys fiscal problems will be her undoing
Doubting Thomas is correct that street protests will not “move the gauge”, although I contend his reasons for this are wrong.
A large majority of the population are scared beyond wit by this disease. The MSM, politicians and bureaucrats have done an effective spin job – “hundreds of thousands, nay – millions – dead in lesser countries, long COVID causing irreparable damage to people’s bodies, ventilators the only treatment …” and so on.
To break that fear, a clear set of practical, useful measures, that will convince the majority they are effective, is needed. Nothing less has any hope.
The financial ruin that is being enforced will not break the fear, simply worsen it by addition.
As my late father would say
‘Methinks you protest too much’.
Just to clear up my ‘woke credentials’.
I happen to work in an industry that is still allowed to be working, but has been smashed by covid.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/suicide-mental-health-veterinarians-leaving-in-droves-or-turning-to-suicide-due-to-stress/ec428277-a51a-429a-9b99-35c2ea999053
Two of my children have lost all their work.
Needless to say its the Bank of Mum and Dad and the federal government that has kept them going.
I’m over 70 and in the frail aged category, two of my young staff are immune suppressed and not vaccinated, the ‘outliers’ I spoke of in an earlier blog.
The young that the stats don’t pick up.
Two of my staff are in total lockdown.
My aunt is a Jew and a Holocaust survivor.
My youngest daughter is a quadriplegic spastic with Crohn’s disease and all 100 points.
We looked after her for 35 years.
I am having to work 11 hour days.
I will be fully vaccinated with A/Z in one week.
Woke enough?
But seriously, so what?
That’s not the issue.
Remembering my first large animal practice, I was called out to a calving heifer with an emphysematous calf in her.
It took four hours and I removed the calf by total embryotomy through the flank.
I instructed the farmer to give her antibiotics by injection twice a day.
It was a half hour round trip.
He said ‘I shouldn’t have to do this!
Its really hard, I should have just shot the cow.’
My reply
‘The bugs don’t know’.
To the specifics.
1 Overwhelming the hospital system.
Yep you’ve got it.
One person gets covid in the ward and everyone goes home and the ward is shut and deep cleaned.
None of this doctors and nurses dying on the job thing, as happened in India and Indonesia.
If it spreads the whole hospital has to shut down.
That’s because, by definition, it is full to the brim of sick, immune suppressed people.
To date the veterinarians have given all their ventilators to the hospital system in Australia.
There was a call to arms.
We do not wish to repeat the past mistakes in India.
2 ‘Its a mild disease that only kills a few people and is no worse than the flu.’
Two of my clients have had it.
One at Port Botany,[please no wharves iterations]
The other survived the Ruby Princess.
https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/assets/dpc-nsw-gov-au/publications/The-Special-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Ruby-Princess-Listing-1628/Report-of-the-Special-Commission-of-Inquiry-into-the-Ruby-Princess.pdf
Both healthy, one in her 50’s and the other below 50 years, reported that they thought they were to die.
They described extreme breathing difficulty and months of recuperation.
That was before delta.
So the moral of this story is that a lot of people will be very sick and require support which may not be forthcoming if we have hot spot mass rallies as our correspondent advocates.
3’The science is in.’
‘Lock downs work.’
Well.\, no one actually knows, the trial is on.
The Australian problem is that we are not vaccinated.
The author is privileged to have Pfizer and be on the short list.
The situation in aged care and home care was parlous.
When the pandemic started I had to supply home care with pp gear.
My daughter being heavily immune suppressed was on the frontline.
Also instruct home care/NDIS.
Many died in aged care, a terrible grief for the author’s wife.
4 ‘Lets all run free like the UK’.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Well, the variant is ripping through the UK, but the country has at least 80% antibody protection of its population.
Those immune suppressed have already died.
We don’t have any real immunity here in Oz.
Our immune suppressed have yet to die of this disease.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Over a million people still have it in the UK.
If those I saw are like them, they won’t be working.
5 ‘The lockdowns are destroying lives, businesses and people are slowly going mad.’
Well, yes, the level of anxiety in my community is high.
The opera scene recorded another suicide.
When the tradies stopped, anxiety blew up.
But then, should the powers that be, however unappealing, let the flood gates open and let her rip?
There are plenty of cases in the animal population that come to mind when that happens.
https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/28/international-collaboration-and-rivalry-in-the-early-fight-against-rinderpest/
Imported cattle were OK, the locals died or were not worth saving.
This will for sure bust our economy if let go without immunity.
Africa has not recovered.
5 The obligation of Student Representatives.
Leadership requires more than strong feelings.
In this context it requires a path outward, with carefull leadership.
In the meanwhile we need to keep our collective heads, assist those who seek our aid, while working to a just outcome.
Remember, we did not cause this disease.
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm
rod.stuart, contrary to the FitzSimons version of “history”, the Eureka Rebellion has little if any relevance to the current situation in Australia, or any other for that matter. The fact that it also happened in what is now, but not then, Australia is the only point of similarity. One was a protest against taxation without representation while the other is against decisions made by Australian Federal and State governments all of which are popularly elected and are representative of, and accountable to, the Australian people.
“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.”
George Orwell
Gibralter fully vaccinated every eligible citizen by April 2021. Now, 2 ½ months later, Gibralter has the third highest per capita rate of infection on Earth, with 80% of the “cases” in the past two days being fully vaccinated.
Apparently, 100% vaccination does not lead to “zero Covid”.
And masks and lockdowns don’t work.
Someone please tell Gladys and Dan.
@Doubting.Thomas my thoughts exactly.
So well said.
I could hardly bare to watch the capture on tv – actually I didn’t.
A shameful day for Australians.
All.
I have never seen anarchy in Australia in my 74 years – or read of it in our history.
Remy, it was a pleasant shock to hear of these protests over the weekend. It seems that nearly everyone I talk to is in lock-step with the ‘need for lock-downs’, and how dare anyone should disobey orders. Of course none of these people live in lock-down areas, which I like to point out to them, but they never even seem to hear that comment. Paul Murray once again showed what a directionless wind-vane he is last night, conflating the BLM ‘protests’ with these freedom protests. TV off.
This reminds me of the one protest march I was involved in, joining around a million other Australians to defy John Howard’s decision to take our soldiers into the utterly futile Iraq war, after taking us into the utterly futile war in Afghanistan. Of course Howard was the first to unveil the true outlook of our political class towards its constituents, referring to us all as ‘The Mob’, premeditating Clinton’s ‘Deplorables’. That was the point at which I began to take a deeper interest in Australia’s political affairs, as like so many others I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Fast forward to 2021 and our political class locking Australians in their own homes, forcing us to wear nappies on our faces, and brazenly destroying the basis of our economy along with people’s lives. Anyone who thinks this is excessive is fined or beaten or locked up and classified a ‘boofhead’.
Thanks John. Well done mate.
rod.stuart: Vaccination has nothing to do with the “elimination” of covid. Like the Flu jab each year, it reduces the likelihood of major illness, and conveys a level of protection against getting the virus. Governments and the Health Authorities have little idea of such matters, and produce propaganda rather than fact. It is this which induces people to “thow off the yoke” as they did in Australia yesterday. The media will always side with the Government. Had they been present in 1215 at Runnymeade, I think their headlines would have been fully in support of King John, and condemnatory of the Barons who rose against him. The world doesn’t change, the actors simply fluff their lines more publically\, and incur greater opprobrium.
Lewis P Buckingham
You are in the frontline of covid. That is, it sounds your entire household and loved ones are vulnerable. My thoughts are with you. I cared for both my elderly parents until their deaths only a couple of years ago and recall the anxiety I had with every flu season and the occasional health panic (sars,mers, and swine flu). But with all respect this issue is bigger than you, your family, and all your clients. In many respects all individual human beings are expendable. Wars teach us that countries recover very quickly even from wars where millions die. What takes much longer to develop are systems of social life. Have you ever mused on why we have jets, the internet, and genetic engineering, when Pythagorus or Maxwell had only candle or gaslight. Notwithstanding their individual genius, the human environment had to develop. Humans are very prone to fight and to destroy. The world we live in today will not be touched by covid but if social cohesion breaks down the shit will really hit the fan. Street protests were the standard form of informing governments of the publics displeasure as far back as ancient Athens or Imperial Rome. The ruling governments response has always been a litmus test of its fear. Finally, while all your anecdotal evidence I respect, I reject most if not all of your conclusions, in particular “This for sure will bust our economy if let go without immunity..”
As I pointed out earlier, wars show the lie in this regard. In 1914, Australia had a population of 4 million. We lost 60,000 of our best young men in the Great War and had to care for another 120,000 severely disabled. The rest as they say was history.
Doubting Thomas
As I pointed out in my earlier response to Lewis P Buckingham, street protests have an ancient and if I can add, ongoing history. The thing you must remember is that under our system of government every elector has equal soveriegnty. In human society however, soveriegnty is always in a state of flux. The reality is that ultimate power rests with “the mob”. The mob is not the majority or the elderly like us, it is the Remys, the young and active. A cursory reading of modern Russian history will show that a small group of highly motivated people can control a much larger group. The protestors in Paris on 14 July 1789 were definitely a minority, but they exerted their power. This is how it should be. Lockdowns have dissproportionately impacted the active young for our benefit. As time goes on the young and active will exert their power, and we either bend to it or suffer the consequences. Again this is how it should be. I
NFriar,
If this was anarchy–and anarcy for the first time in Australian history–then how was it worse than Vietnam War protests? How was it worse than the union invasion of Parliament House in the 90s? How was it worse than the annual Australia Day protests? In particular, how was it worse than the Australia Day, 2012 riot that saw then-PM Julia Gillard and then-Opposition Leader Tony Abbott having to flee in the same car? How was it worse than any number of other protests that have gone on in MY lifetime, much less before?
I do not agree with any violence against police or their horses; but I know that the news would have concentrated on such aspects of the protests, rather than referring to them as “mostly peaceful” (which, I imagine, they were).
As a Christian, I can’t justify the Boston Tea Party; but I do sympathise with its motives. I do not agree with any rioting that happens in protesting, and the propensity of protests to turn to riots does make me wonder if it is a good idea to join them. But I have no doubt that joining a protest in a desire to see this madness end is a lesser sin than doing nothing but quietly griping about aspects of the Present Crisis, while doing nothing to oppose it.
I don’t really understand DT’s comments – they seem to assume that people have no right of expression when it comes to democratic government (ignoring the fact that these protests are essentially about the non-democratic nature of our governments). The idea seems to be that because government represents the electorate, you must comply. But if you are BLM running riot or a gold miner starting an insurrection, that’s ok because it’s not directed specifically at government. Even criticising government policy (such as in a magazine like this), is then illegitimate.
So group, infinity – individual, zero. In other words, socialism. Anyway it is most certainly not democracy, which is an attempt to capture both the self-governance of the individual and the cooperation of the group in a single form of governance. In a democracy, the opinion of tens of thousands of voters is to be treated with respect rather than contempt – particularly when they are voicing grave concerns about over-reach of the executive. The process then being that once they have been respectfully heard, the population at large can take their ideas into consideration. That is the exact opposite of what we are seeing here. How else can they be heard in the current climate, other than to shout it in the streets?
So it makes no sense to de-legitimise their actions, nor does the idea that a government ‘must obey their scientific advisers’. No, their advisers aren’t the elected government – your points are contradictory. If the advice falls outside the purview of their political philosophy then of course they should ignore them, or find better advice. Then they can fall back on their philosophy in their own defence. What this situation shows us is how far the conservative political philosophy in particular has fallen from its branch.
Probably predictably, the attitude of a person to lockdown depends on age and susceptibility. As a newly-fledged octo, with 33 days in hospital a couple of years ago with pneumonia, pleurisy, pericardial effusion and more, I consider myself allowed to be a bit frightened at the prospect of a hit from Covid19.
While I am libertarian enough to be quite concerned by lockdowns causing loss of various freedoms, I cannot endorse those who display their enthusiasm in ways that could be 100% adverse for my wife or me. This includes mass protesters, who should be bright enough to invent other expressions of displeasure.
As a scientist, I am also concerned by the lack of conventional proof of efficacy of the vaccines and restriction of use of anti-virals. The medical profession has treated me well in the past so I have, on balance, let them have my trust that they know what they are doing.
One could write a book on these topics, but I suspect that I am not alone with these few words. Geoff S
I’m sure I would feel somewhat different were I several decades older, but I hope that my opinions would still be similar (as they have been in my auntie and uncle–before and after they had covid–in the US, both approaching seventy, he missing parts of both lungs). But while I firmly believe that lockdowns do more harm than good–that an outbreak that has killed eight people (as of today’s paper) in over a month is not an epidemic–and a number of other factual arguments, to me all of that debate is somewhat beside the point.
The key issue, to me, is that it would not matter if this disease had a 30% death rate, mostly among young people (I know; that’s easy for me to say, but I believe it’s true). The key issue is that it is WRONG for governments to assume dictatorial powers; it is WRONG to imprison innocent people without trial; it is WRONG to destroy our liberties. Patrick Henry was not speaking as a man who was in no danger; he knew that he was putting a target on his back. He was risking great wealth. He had a large family and very unwell wife to consider.
Yet he still said, “What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
Great article.
The restrictions being imposed upon us — can’t move, can’t associate, must wear a mask, must not do business — are simply tyrannical. They are therefore illegitimate and should be ignored, and the authorities promulgating them are also illegitimate and should be deposed.
pgang, perhaps – as an 81 year old auld phart – I may be forgiven for having old-fashioned ideas that may be incomprehensible to younger generations. You misunderstand me. I have absolutely no objection to public protests against real or perceived unjust Government policies. What I object to is rioting in the streets on any pretext whatsoever, no matter how “noble” the cause. If you and the rest of your angry and unrepresentative minority want to throw a collective tantrum, there are large public parks where this can be done without inconveniencing or endangering the vast majority. But, of course, this does not satisfy the atavistic instincts that motivate the mob. For them, the whole point is to inconvenience the silent majority. They are well aware that the violent protests will be ignored by Governments as they should be.
Now, as to what advice, if any, Governments should act on, “please explain”. If this emergency demonstrates anything, it is that our politicians have very little power to influence events without resorting to draconian restrictions. People simply have refused to act sensibly, and will continue to do so. Whole ethnic enclaves seem to be either totally unaware of the need to take precautions.
Rioting in the streets is for irresponsible idiots.
“The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.”― Thomas Jefferson, Democracy in America
The NSW Gestapo have already announced that they will be beating up protesters this weekend, with 1,000 batons at the ready. Take care out there if you have the courage to get involved.
Oh, sorry, ‘rioters’, not protesters, to satisfy those who are easily duped by the zombie media.