We are owed an apology for Covid vaccine mandates.
Mounting evidence shows the vaccines were rushed, less effective than you’d expect of a jab, and, in some cases, dangerous.
The whole premise of mandates was to protect the community. But these vaccines didn’t stop contraction or transmission of Covid – so what exactly were we protecting?
Sure, it may reduce your likelihood of catching Covid. But that should be, and should always have been, your decision.
If you were jabbed then what did it matter whether the person at the table next to you in the pub wasn’t? You’d taken your own precautions. It’s up to others to wear the consequences of their own decisions.
There are plenty of treatments that can help prevent and reduce the severity of myriad other diseases but the government does not force you to take them to participate in society.
Even former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth now admits he hasn’t had a Covid vaccine for two years.
If one of the most high-profile doctors in the country won’t do it, why would the rest of us?
And most of us haven’t. By May last year, nearly 17 million Australian adults had not had a booster in the past six months.
The sky has not fallen.
News.com.au’s Frank Chung recently detailed the death of 34-year-old Katie Lees less than two weeks after receiving the AstraZeneca Covid jab from vaccine-induced thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome.
She had severe clotting in the brain and became unconscious, being put on life support. The plug was eventually pulled and she died.
At 34, her risk of death from Covid was minimal but in order to go about normal life, thanks to government-imposed rules, she – like the rest of us – had to be vaccinated.
Where there is risk of death or serious side-effects for a medical treatment there is no justification for force or coercion.
But that is what happened and no one has apologised.
AstraZeneca was pulled from Australia last year and its manufacturer discontinued it worldwide last month, saying demand had dropped because of the availablity of newer vaccines.
It followed an admission in a UK court that the vaccine could be deadly.
When the US Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in December 2020 – long before it was largely rolled out in Australia – it admitted there was no “evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person”.
The federal government set up a $77 million compensation scheme for Covid vaccine injuries in December 2021 in a clear admission of the possible dangers.
About $7 million worth of WorkCover claims have been paid to vaccine-injured people in Victoria who were required to be jabbed by their workplaces.
The last regular report of Covid vaccine safety by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, in November last year, showed 139,654 known adverse reactions.
And Dutch researchers have now sounded the alarm about a possible link between Covid vaccines and excess deaths.
The academics, in a paper published in BMJ Public Health this month, wrote that excess mortality following the introduction of Covid vaccines was “unprecedented and raises serious concerns”, that data on deaths linked to the vaccines was murky and “simultaneous onset of excess mortality and Covid-19 vaccination in Germany provides a safety signal warranting further investigation”.
Excess deaths in Australia were 6.1 per cent higher than expected for the first eight months of 2023 and 14.1 per cent higher than expected in the same period the year prior.
So when will the apology for mandates be forthcoming?