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Just saying…

Open letter to all Australian politicians regarding COVID-19

Wednesday, 19 August 2020

Prime Minister Scott Morrison
All State Premiers
All Federal and State Parliamentarians

Re: COVID-19

I am an ordinary citizen, and like everyone else I have been watching the developments around COVID-19 over the last months with growing concern. 

Mr Morrison’s announcement today, 19 August 2020, that he intends to make a COVID-19 vaccination mandatory was the last straw for me, and has compelled me to write to you all.

I am not an anti-vaxxer at all. However, there are good reasons why it takes upwards of 5 years to approve a vaccine, and upwards of 10 years to approve a new method of vaccination. 

The most promising vaccines in development for the SARS-Cov-2 virus are all RNA-based vaccines, in other words vaccines based on gene technology. Since this is a new method of vaccination for humans, a much longer approval process must apply. Two decades of research with this method have been unsuccessful, long-term effects cannot possibly be known, and suddenly we are to believe that a safe vaccine can be developed and rolled out within months or a year. 

It is simply reckless and irresponsible for any government or authority to release such a vaccine, and on top of that to expect that this vaccine is administered to the entire population. 

Life carries all sorts of risks, and we live with those risks, and sometimes, sadly people get hurt or sick, or die. You did not hesitate to shut down the entire society and economy over a virus which is so manifestly about as dangerous, but no more dangerous, than flu viruses we’ve lived through many times in the past. You have displayed a level of risk aversion that makes the most prudent lawyer look like a cowboy, although there were many voices around the world that warned of this all-out approach of locking down entire societies, saying they were disproportionate and unnecessary. 

And yet you are now willing to take a huge and completely unnecessary risk on behalf of the Australian people by foisting an unproven technology on us. 

Not only that, it appears that any companies providing such vaccines will be indemnified by the relevant government, in other words, they will not be held liable for any damage done. On the contrary, the damage will ultimately have to be carried by us taxpayers, whilst the pharma companies are laughing all the way to the bank. It could not get any more cynical.

In other words, I and no doubt many other of my fellow citizens, strongly object to an unnecessary and insufficiently tested vaccine being foisted on the Australian public at our own expense, let alone that such a vaccine be made directly or indirectly compulsory.

At this point I would also like to voice my strongest objection to many of the measures the governments of Australia have imposed since March/April of this year, in particular all those measures that have been and still are disrupting, and are causing widespread and immeasurable economic, social, psychological, and physical damage to many Australians.

Not only were the disastrous consequences easily foreseeable, but since March, even before these drastic measures were implemented, as I mentioned above, there were a number of renowned international experts that voiced their concerns about such disproportionate measures: Prof John Ioannidis, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, Knut Wittkowski, Prof. Dr. Martin Haditsch, just to name a few. These people were not heard in most countries, in fact they were completely ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, or even censored by the mainstream, including by the entire Australian media.

I knew about these people and their common sense and perfectly logical and rational arguments because I cast my information net wide. I also remained calm, and was unimpressed by the media hype that was rapidly spreading and poisoning our society. I applied my critical thinking skills and I always knew that the danger from this allegedly new virus was vastly over-stated, and the measures were completely disproportional, irrational, and unjustified.

Collectively all you professional politicians were complicit in creating mass hysteria and panic in the population. You blindly relied on projections that never looked likely and have already proved to be completely wrong, predictions by a man who has been proven wrong on previous occasions. It apparently occurred to nobody, not even your advisers, to question and check the wild and exaggerated claims that were being made not just by Prof Neil Ferguson. 

No good decisions can be made in an atmosphere of fear and panic. As leaders, you should know that. 

From any responsible and diligent politician I would expect that, faced with reports of a new and potentially deadly virus, they would have taken a step back, consulted very widely (not just their established Chief Medical Officers), across a multitude of disciplines, and questioned and challenged all experts thoroughly before taking any drastic decisions, and to be transparent with the public throughout this process. 

You don’t need to be an expert in anything to do that research, but you do need to apply your critical thinking skills. I did it, why couldn’t you, who have such a huge responsibility?

You could have done everything possible to protect the vulnerable part of the population as best as possible in a humane way, and otherwise promoted traditional measures like recommending good hygiene, asked sick people to stay home, all of which are sensible measures during any flu outbreak; measures that just about everyone is happy to comply with. 

Instead, you treated this virus as another enemy and heroically declared war, and you acted and are still acting like the delusional Don Quixote, fighting against windmills. 

There are a myriad of serious issues with the testing regime, serious issues with how deaths are attributed to COVID-19. There are many inconsistencies, arbitrariness and contradictions. Nothing adds up, nothing makes sense, and there is a complete lack of transparency. It’s as if our governments were hiding something. Mind you, I am not interested in conspiracy theories. But I am very interested in getting to the bottom of things and seeing the full picture. 

Perhaps some of you politicians might by now even realise that you were wrong in taking or supporting such drastic measures back in March/April. Even the wobbly and woefully inadequate statistics we do have show that around the world none of these insane and unprecedented lockdown measures had any effect. 

Instead of admitting that you overreacted and apologising for what really went wrong here, you continue to maintain the official narrative, which appears to have infected just about every country on the planet. 

It’s not too late to turn back, but it takes character and courage. The longer you maintain this ridiculous farce the more untenable your position becomes and the more credibility you lose. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason why you are now peddling the imminent availability of a vaccine to the Australian people is so that you can walk away from the mess that you have created looking like heroes and saviours. 

If you were truly interested in the health and well-being of the Australian public you would not have imposed such irrational measures that do far more harm than good, that compromise our immune system and our health, you would not trample on our rights and freedoms, you would not deny us our humanity, you would not try to scare us into blind obedience, you would not have risked all our livelihoods, you would not create this mountain of debt for us and future generations, and you would not expect us all to get injected with an unproven vaccine. 

Most Australians are probably too scared of the virus to notice that our democracy, and our civil and human rights are slipping away. The most obvious example is Victoria, which has descended into a totalitarian state. 

But many of us have noticed, we can see what is going on, we have noticed with what contempt you have treated us, and we will not remain silent. 

You let down and misled the entire country. Enough is enough. 

Yours sincerely,

Jörg Probst, Macquarie Park, NSW

PS: Research is time consuming. But there is a great resource that collates a lot of information, strikes a balanced and neutral tone, and always provides credible source links, Swiss Policy Research, found at https://swprs.org

Standing at the precipice

For about ten weeks now we have been living in a madhouse. Well, the mass hysteria began much earlier, but in Australia, where I am currently imprisoned, the lockdown conditions were imposed about 10 weeks ago. In the last few weeks some of these conditions were somewhat relaxed, but we’re still told we’ll have to live with social distancing measures for a long time to come. 

The obvious question is: why? 

I always think it’s a good idea to go back to basics, and with everything that is now known about this virus, especially the manifestly obvious fact that its potency and lethality is quite limited (about that of other flu viruses) and negatively affects only those with serious pre-existing conditions, why are people still so scared of this virus? 

The answer of course is simple, but to me it is infuriating. Politicians, in cahoots with their subservient mass media, have managed to scare entire populations into submission through their relentless propaganda. The vast majority has readily accepted losing their jobs, have even welcomed their own incarceration, and the loss of their freedoms and rights, just because they blindly believed the official narrative. Many would now have welcomed with open arms the nanny state they previously so despised. To me, the ease with which people submitted themselves to this gigantic false narrative is the really scary thing about this entire COVID-19 saga. The governments now need to maintain the narrative. They cannot suddenly admit that it’s all been a false alarm or not as bad as they made it out to be at first. There are political and professional careers at stake here, and they must be protected at all cost, regardless of the facts. All of this we have been put through has to all have been worth the sacrifice.

Governments are already telling us the lockdowns worked because we’ve been such compliant citizens, never mind the fact that in many countries the lockdowns were only implemented when the infections were already in decline. This reminds me of the following joke:

A man walks the streets of the city, frantically clapping his hands. A lady comes along and asks him “may I ask you what are you doing there?” The man says “I’m chasing away the elephants.” The woman looks around and says “what elephants?” The man replies “see? It works!”

COVID-19 has already been successfully instrumentalised to bring about changes that would otherwise have taken many more years to implement. Admittedly, some have been positive, for example flexible work practices. But the end surely doesn’t justify the means, especially when it is already abundantly clear that the economic and social impact resulting from the complete lockdown measures imposed practically worldwide will be much greater than the relatively few COVID-19 cases and the even fewer deaths COVID-19 caused, compared for example with many previous influenza outbreaks and pandemics, over which no country ever imposed any kind of generalised lockdowns. 

Locking up the healthy population is just lunacy and hugely counterproductive. Humanity has lived with viruses and bacteria and learnt to deal with them for millennia, and humanity will have to continue to do so. To believe that we can come up with vaccines that will forever protect us from COVID-19 is not only pointless, because viruses will simply continue to mutate, but the obsessive measures taken now will result in us having weakened immune systems that make us more vulnerable. Also, will we have to stop our lives every time a new virus comes around?

What does make sense is to try our best to protect the vulnerable sections of society, to isolate the sick, and for the healthy population to exercise common sense and caution during such outbreaks. 

The “help saves lives” slogans that were bandied about in support of these unnecessary measures, which quite obviously resonated with the vast majority of the population, are a further indication that something is fundamentally wrong with our societies.

We now seem to think that it is worth shutting down our entire society to save for example a 75 year-old with a litany of health issues. That is just beyond any sense of proportionality.

Outrageous as this might sound to some, dying is, and will forever be, part of being human, and nothing will change that fact. On the other hand, it now seems to be quite acceptable for that same 75 year-old to die all alone and in the most undignified way in a nursing home without his loved-ones by his side. That is the height of hypocrisy and absurdity.

The travesty is that during our ridiculous quest to overcome death we have left our humanity behind us.

For me it was clear enough from the beginning that the measures taken by our hapless politicians were entirely disproportional to the threat that this particular virus posed, and it is frustrating for all those who have said this all along, but who have been ignored, ridiculed, or even silenced and censored by this tsunami of madness, fear, hysteria, and irrationality.

The untold human suffering to come as a result of all this madness will reverberate through our societies for years to come.

All the talk about the “new normal” or “next normal” started so quickly that I cannot help but think that this crisis was at the very least not unwelcome to the hard to define but powerful and very real forces that are steering us swiftly towards a technocratic, totalitarian, 1984-ish type of brave new world, where concepts like democracy and freedom are even more of a farce than they already have been. 

It seems the die are cast, these forces are unstoppable, and massive popular uprisings against them are highly unlikely. There was practically no resistance to the most blatant violations of humans rights and civil liberties, quite on the contrary. The propaganda machine of the states and the most influential media worked in perfect sync, and the people swallowed the message hook, line and sinker. Even though the cracks, inconsistencies and absurdities are becoming more obvious, the next crisis will come and keep the blinded and silent majority distracted from what’s really going on. 

The only thing that could break through this veil of deceit which has been spun around us for many decades now is widespread awareness and sound, rational debate about what is really happening in this highly complex world of ours.

But how is this even possible now ? This can only happen when critical thinking becomes the norm within our societies and cultures; when reasoned, respectful, vibrant and open debate replaces the primitive tribalistic, black vs white, left vs right, virtue signalling, divide and conquer culture we currently live in. 

Alas, our education systems and our economies are based on the premise to churn out docile automatons that are useful and faithful tools to the ruling elites, so it doesn’t look like a paradigm shift is likely any time soon. So, standing right at the precipice, we need to educate ourselves and each other. We need to point out to each other that things are often not at all what they seem to be, and that we need to be vigilant and take care of our rights and freedoms and responsibilities, or lose them forever. 

I for one will do my bit to encourage everyone to think for themselves, to be curious, to look at every issue more deeply, to inform themselves broadly. I will advise everyone to do their own research, to make up their own minds and to speak out when they do not agree.

COVID-19 – Former UK judge on why lockdown is nonsense

Former UK Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption, one of the seemingly few lawyers critical of the lockdown measures, has summarised the COVID-19 situation most eloquently in this radio interview, and he would answer his critics like this:

What I say to them: I’m not a scientist, but it’s the right and duty of every citizen to look and see what the scientists have said and to analyse it for themselves and draw commonsense conclusions. We are all perfectly capable of doing that, and there is no particular reason why the scientific nature of the problem, that should mean that we have to resign our liberty into the hands of scientists. We all have critical faculties and it’s rather important in a moment of national panic that we maintain them.

https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/lord-sumption-discussing-the-police-response-to-coronavirus

In this interview he says:

The problem about using law as your instrument is that law requires definition, exact definition, and it works in categories. So, if you do this not voluntarily, but compulsorily, you are bound to have laws which make perfect sense in some contexts, and not in others. The problem about law is that it excludes commonsense. Now the Prime Minister has said in the House of Commons this afternoon, that he trusts the British to use their commonsense. But you can’t say to a policeman you must arrest somebody or fine them if he’s using commonsense and not otherwise. The whole legal approach invites a collection of completely arbitrary rules unrelated to the underlying purpose of the regulations, and you couldn’t have a more perfect illustration of that than the incredibly complex, utterly arbitrary distinctions contained in the government’s document this afternoon, dinstinguishing between meeting one person and meeting two people, between meeting one person in your back garden and meeting one person in the street outside your front garden. I mean these are illustrations of the kind of ridiculous distinctions that you get when instead of resorting to commonsense you resort to law. … I have every confidence that our sense of preservation and commonsense will enable us to get through this without the nanny state telling us at every point what we can and can’t do, especially when so much of what they are saying actually makes no sense at all.

https://youtu.be/86P7EEJeNKM?t=337

I’m infected by COVID-19

Sorry, typo, stupid auto-correct… I mean, ”I’m affected by COVID-19”.

Anyway, here’s a little something I wrote on the State Library of NSW’s The Diary Files. Cool project. Here is the link to my contribution, also extracted below:

COVID-19 – inflating the numbers

Bad science is at least partially responsible for landing us in the current societal and economic mess. But is this just a mistake, a failing, or is this by design? It is becoming increasingly evident that it could well be the latter.

This manufactured crisis is quickly becoming the biggest con ever perpetrated in the history of humanity. Forget 9/11, forget the Iraq war, even forget the alleged climate emergency. The application of the tried and tested shock and awe tactic at this scale is truly unprecedented. 

Mind you, not everyone buys it, but that’s not necessary.

No, the early wild predictions designed to scare the world population into submission didn’t have to be accurate. Those shyster “experts” like Neil Ferguson from the UK, Anthony Fauci from the US, and Guan Yi from Hone Kong did a fabulous job. Stage 1, causing fear and panic, was a resounding success.

But now it’s about real numbers, and they need to be substantial. But probably not everyone in power knows it’s a scam, so how does one achieve the desired statistics in the absence of an actually really deadly virus? One moves the goal posts, one ensures that every dead body where COVID-19 is found is counted as a COVID-19 death. 

In the case of the world-renowned Bill Gates-funded German Robert Koch Institut (RKI), its president Lothar Wieler confirmed on 20 March that Germany counts everyone who dies with COVID-19 as a COVID-19 death. 

US hospitals have been given a dubious incentive when legislation was introduced that funnelled more funds to hospitals that admitted COVID-19 patients. The CDC’s instructions on reporting COVID-19 are also an interesting read.

In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published on its website a document dated 24 March which leaves no doubt that here too, every death where COVID-19 is found, the death certificate should state that COVID-19 was a primary cause, under Part 1 of the certificate, even where this was a presumed COVID-19 death.

Source: ABS

Further, each Australian state issued practice directions that effectively prevent autopsies being carried out on COVID-19 deaths (I have found those of New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia).

Who gave the direction to all states not to carry out autopsies, and on what grounds? 

Considering that the only way we can obtain reliable, scientifically useful information is by ensuring that people who possibly died of COVID-19 actually did die because of this disease, the opposite direction would have made more sense. 

Several medical experts have stated there is no reason why autopsies should not to be carried out to determine the cause of death. The city of Hamburg in Germany is doing just that for every possible COVID-19 death, against the wishes of the RKI. According to Dr Klaus Püschel in this interview on 21 April, out of the over 100 COVID-19 deaths he autopsied, all of them died with significant pre-existing conditions, and so had a weakened immune system when they contracted COVID-19. Two hospitals in Basel, Switzerland, also autopsied 21 patients with COVID-19.

Considering the general level of hysteria, one would assume that everything would be done to obtain accurate and detailed information on every possible person who died with COVID-19, but it seems the contrary is the case in most parts of the world.

At the very least one can question why authorities and politicians from Australia and elsewhere are not interested in doing exact science to understand this disease as well as they can. 

Instead, they seem more preoccupied with finding out where it originated and engaging in petty political scuffles. Smoke screens and mirrors everywhere.

The aim seems to be that the statistics should show the highest possible number of deaths attributable to COVID-19, with nobody ever able to verify those numbers. This is important, to justify the draconian and disproportionate measures that have been implemented.

Locking down the herd

Has herd immunity been reached? You bet. The public in most countries was well and truly immunised against any logical and rational thought soon after governments began their fear mongering propaganda campaigns.

Are the lockdown measures we are experiencing required? No. Of course not.

Switzerland is one of the hardest hit countries when it came to the spread of COVID-19, and it was also a country to introduce a lockdown quite early. This article by Swiss Prof. Dr. Pietro Vernazza suggests that lockdown measures have really nothing to do with flattening the curve which our politicians, aided and abetted by a clueless and complicit media, want us to believe.

Keep Reading

Think for yourself

With this video I aim to encourage everyone to think for themselves. No matter what governments and the media tell us, we should always look at important issues (COVID-19, climate issue, war on terror and other wars, 9/11, obesity epidemic etc) with a critical mindset to avoid being manipulated into things we as societies could come to regret. COVID-19 and the climate issue are at the centre of this video. The basic message is: inform yourself as broadly as possible, learn to recognise spin and propaganda, but above all, #thinkforyourself.

Below a selection of non-mainstream sources of news and in-depth information I find useful:

General

Covid and health-related

Climate-related