We as human beings rely on a number of things to keep us going. Our sense of community is vital to our stability, to our future. Part of belonging provides us with hope and prosperity it brings inspiration into our lives.
Hope is the mainspring of life. Without hope we become lost and lack direction. Hope is a universal human need. Hope is the fuel to keep us going. It’s the imagination to look beyond the bad things and see good in the future and the goodness that exists all around us. As long as we hold onto hope, it’s amazing what we can endure.
Whilst I do believe that our political leaders think they are doing what they perceive to be the best they can in these challenging times, it would seem to me that they are unravelling at the edges with little or no vision as to where next to turn. It looks very much like they are making policy on the run. More importantly they are failing to take responsibility for their inadequacies.
They go back to the future. They continue to fall back on stricter and stricter lockdowns as their first and only strategy. In the blame game, they resort to inculpate their medical advisors for their decisions, even when it turns out that their medical scape goats protest that they gave no such advice.
The latest among an endless stream of scaremongering is the ‘Delta variant’. “It’s a game changer” said Premier Gladys Berejiklian, hardly a visionary message of hope here.
The reality is, according to world authorities, the Delta variant is a new strain but, as with every pandemic, the virus may be more transmissible, but it grows weaker.
None of this is told to the public. One can only assume the withholding of such information is deliberate.
Why wouldn’t the Prime Minister tell Australians and his National Cabinet that Dr David Navarro, the special envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organisation, in a very recent interview with the British magazine ‘The Spectator’ said: “We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus … the only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers, who are exhausted. But, by and large, we’d rather not do it.”
None of these circumstances apply, rebalance your resources, or protect your health workers who are exhausted.
Dr Navarro went further: “Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never, ever belittle and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
As I write there are 1124 active cases in a NSW population of 8.1 million. That is 0.014 per cent of the population.
And right throughout all of this, while we have been in full panic mode, the virus has an over 99 per cent recovery/survival rate.
In Australia, with a population of 25.3 million, Palaszczuk, Berejiklian, Andrews, Marshall, McGowan, Gunner and Morrison fill us daily with fear. The percentage infected is 0.0053 per cent but the people of Australia are shut off from one another. Businesses are permanently destroyed, lives in ruin.
Cafes, restaurants, retail stores may never recover, to say nothing of mental health damage, suicide and the betrayal of children denied a continuous and optimistic education.
There is no apology to anyone. This is for your own good. We know best!
Vaccinated or unvaccinated, you’re still locked down because of a disease that is so bad you have to be tested to know whether you have it or not.
For a while, trusting Australians believed the alarmism and fear. I don’t believe that they do any more. They are now angry. There are too many mistakes been made in public administration. The positive test of the ‘Bondi Limousine driver’ which kicked off this current set of lockdowns is proof positive that 18 months down the track, public health seems to have learnt nothing about living with the disease. Then sadly the failure and farce of the vaccine roll out is criminally negligent. Is there little wonder why people are losing faith in their leadership.
Yet again this morning the headlines in the tabloids scream: “State of confusion on home work”
Health Minister, the hapless Hazzard blamed “confusion” for the error.
Following calls for clarity and precision in Covid rules, Mr Hazzard on Tuesday said government bureaucrats “might not get absolute precision” in their health orders.
“There might be some confusion, initially, because of the fast drafting done in hours instead of months or years.” The trouble is they have had 18 months of us all living with Covid-19 how much longer do they need.
In 2019, Australia’s health system (pre Covid) had to face one of the worst flu seasons on record. The number of reported flu cases for 2019 climbed to over 300,000, which was 80 per cent higher than 2018 and 17 per cent higher than 2017 – described by experts as the ‘worst ever’.
Sadly, that year at least 812 people died from the flu – whilst almost 4,000 people were hospitalised. Yet there were no lock downs, no daily terror talks. There were no plea’s to get tested even if you don’t feel sick. There were no mandatory isolations. Businesses were not shut down, children kept away from schools. Face masks demanded.
I realise of course that the flu is not Covid, nor is Covid just the flu. One cannot but feel that our political masters are using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. Of course, the obvious happens when such a device is employed; the walnut is smashed to smithereens with nothing left to salvage.
Things are different in Singapore. What is the response of our “leaders” to the latest statements coming out of one of the world’s most successful countries in combating Covid-19?
The Government there have stated that in the city state of Singapore, Covid will be treated like any other endemic disease, such as flu. There will be no goals of zero transmission. Please see the article on thrive50plus titled: (As Australia Contemplates Its Pandemic Exit Strategy, Singapore’s Roadmap To Living With COVID-19 Could Offer Insights).
Quarantine will be dumped for travellers and close contact of cases will not have to isolate. Singapore will no longer announce daily case numbers. Senior Singaporean Ministers have said the new “normal” is “living with Covid”.
As Health Minister Hong Ye Kung has said: “It means that the virus will continue to mutate and therefore survive in our community.”
In what must pose as a significant danger to blindfolded politicians, Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur, a senior research fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU, wrote recently: “Freedom died of Covid. Unchecked medical tyranny seems hellbent on destroying freedom in Western society with the presumption that we’re all sick, whether we know it or not; or will soon be sick; and we must be dealt with as potential germ-ridden disease carriers who pose a constant threat to all others.”
Professor Thakur rightly says: “In the name of keeping us safe, the entire machinery of state, backed by a fear-peddling media and unprecedented censorship of social media by Big Tech, has been let loose upon our citizens.”
Perhaps hubris has overtaken the political elite who say look at the figures and look how well we have done, compared with the rest of the world.
We have given you this success story, our strategies have worked.
Is it uncharitable to point out that in only three nations have lockdowns appeared to reduce excess mortality — Australia, Malta and New Zealand. Is this because we have brilliant politicians and clever health bureaucrats, or may it be that all three are islands?
If the public voice is not heard, the warning of the late American journalist Edward Murrow will be more than valid: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Let us forget about the lockdowns for a moment. Covid cruelty has come in many forms. Apart from our morning ‘terror talk’ from state leaders. Forget ‘Chicken Liken the sky is falling in’; if that was our only problem; we should be so lucky. It would appear that at every turn our political masters seek to terrorise to justify their actions. They act from a platform of fear. They utilise instruments and forces at their disposal to act as a hammer to force the nation to acquiesce to their will.
Police arrested a homeless woman in Perth’s CBD two weeks ago for not wearing a mask. Did they consider that she may have significant mental health issues, as many homeless people do? Is a prison cell the best we can do for this poor woman?
Earlier this month, Queensland’s chief health officer denied an exemption for a fully vaccinated woman who tested negative to Covid to see her newborn baby when she gave birth prematurely, while in quarantine. Most will be relieved when Young moves in November to Government House, where her primary functions will revert to opening baby shows and bridges.
Anna Coffey travelled from the US to Australia when her father was moved to palliative care in Melbourne. The young woman wrangled for days with health bureaucrats who demanded more and more documentation. They then demanded that she charter a private plane to get from Sydney to Melbourne. After a charity offered to help her with that expense so she could see her dad before he died, she was granted an exemption to drive to Melbourne. How does that work?
There seems a sense of satisfaction from finger pointing nameless bureaucrats. Some who have allowed power to go to their heads, making decisions that make their jobs easier rather than trying to find sensible, compassionate solutions.
But maybe we are to blame, too. Our subservience to lockdowns and other crazy rules has been reflected in polls that are consumed like superfoods by politicians.
And at a grassroots level, private hysteria has morphed into public nastiness, Australians dobbing on each other, verbally abusing nurses at Covid testing stations, harassing staff and business owners for exposing them to Covid, with nary a thought that they may have brought the virus into the business.
Psychologist and deputy editor of ‘Psyche Magazine’ Christian Jarrett told Inquirer that politicians and the media have played to less appealing aspects of our human nature.
“For instance, by highlighting the idea that there are sensible people who follow the rules and there are those who do not they are dubbed ‘covidiots’, politicians and the media encourage division. They encourage a ‘them and us’ mentality, which can lead to a greater polarisation of opinion and people in each camp seeking ways to derogate those in the other camp.”
Speaking of “them and us”, national cabinet slashed the number of overseas arrivals, again. Palaszczuk wins the gold medal for Covid hypocrisy, complaining that people should not be allowed to travel overseas for business. However, in the ultimate act of sanctimony she flew out to a genuine hot spot Tokyo for the Olympics over the weekend.
I don’t believe that it is escaped anyone’s attention that the politicians and bureaucrats that have turned our lives upside down are still enjoying full salaries and continued superannuation support. Many are earning well in excess of $500,000 PA. Their decisions have inflicted great grief and pain at large, (all but it be for what they say is the greater good) but they do not suffer any of the financial burden they themselves? Is this fair?
We are told ‘we are all in this together,’ but are we? Almost 1.2million Australians having lost their jobs due and their actions. What is the price of the greater good?
I however cannot help but feel that they are overlooking the most fundamental and important need of our community. The need that will allow it to emerge stronger, post Coronavirus.
During great times of crisis, humans naturally turn to their family, friends and community to provide hope. By denying easy access to such support networks, they are being denied the vital infrastructure of hope in their future.
People can and have made it through the most difficult of times. In the past our older generations have seen Economic Depressions, War, and life changing technological innovations. All these things were made possible with hope via friends and community support. They not only can survive the worst this world can dole out, but they can even flourish – as long as they have hope and faith. Our political masters must take note if they do not provide hope, they will not be ‘Masters’ for long.
Alarmists exist everywhere, it’s good to sell newspapers and it fuels the 24-hour news cycle. Great care must be exercised ⎼ not to be taken in by their rhetoric. Again, Prime Minister, hope is the key. Provide the people with hope and a vision for our future, do this, and you will be amazed at how strong our community can be.
