19th September 2021
Gigi Foster’s Voices against lockdowns – (9) 16 September 2021
Continuing from this (No.8):
Dear all,
The fight continues to end lockdowns in Australia. More and more determined voices – including that of the brave pilot in this home-made video – are being raised together against the madness, across the spectrum of professions and perspectives, as illustrated in the links below.
First, I’m delighted to announce that my co-authored book about this period with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker has now been released, and is available in paperback or on Kindle here and across the world: https://www.thegreatcovidpanic.com/. If you do read it, please consider writing a review on Amazon. Our publisher, the Brownstone Institute led by Jeffrey Tucker, has been doing terrific promotion in the US, although I’m told that posts about the book to social media in Australia are already being censored. I am presently liaising with a number of groups to organise book launches in Sydney and beyond, and will post details for these to the site above as they are fixed. You can see me speaking about the book, and the present situation, here:
GET REAL with Mahieash Johnney | Episode 120 | The Great Covid Panic (Sri Lankan TV)
https://youtu.be/DVG4otuH7vo (Macquarie University Liberals Club “Sunday Sessions” group meeting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMkk7CuuLFU (Nick Holt podcast)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBTNSWFpcyY (with Julia Hartley-Brewer on UK TalkRadio, at timestamp 2:19:20)
I’m also slated to appear on The Outsiders this coming Sunday morning and on additional podcasts and TV shows around the world in the coming weeks. The final episode of the fifth season of my ABC radio program and podcast co-hosted with Peter Martin, The Economists, also covered lockdown trade-offs, and rode the bleeding edge of what the ABC would allow to go to air.
A month ago I called on the lawyers amongst us to put their hands to the wheel. I have since become aware of a number of heartening initiatives and resources, such as:
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/newsradio/supreme-court-cases-challenging-legality-of/13536026 (Tony Nikolic speaking about his upcoming class action in the NSW Supreme Court challenging vaccine mandates)
https://www.advocateme.com.au/covid-class-action (information on the class action lawsuits being brought by the law firm AdvocateMe)
https://humanrightsadvocates.com.au/letters (letters to print if you want to resist various restrictions on your freedoms)
More businesses and business groups are starting to organise and push against discrimination:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1213829215752696/
https://youtu.be/X-jmOts8Jr0 (inspiration from the US)
From the medical resistance, see attached a letter that can be customised to your GP, speaking of the potential for early treatment of covid; and a covid patient treatment guide. While earlier this week, the TGA made it harder to access ivermectin, there has been a great deal of push-back against this decision. More and more doctors are speaking out about the lack of transparency about the vaccines and early treatment options, and about the costs of our covid response:
https://www.covid19assembly.org/doctors-open-letter/
https://rumble.com/vlq0js-australian-psych-perspective.html
Even the odd Australian politician has started to voice resistance to lockdowns in assemblies:
https://rumble.com/vkz9ah-covid-19-restrictions-dont-work-end-this-madness.html?mc=dho6e&mref=l0car
Some other good reading and watching from recent weeks:
https://thefatemperor.com/scientific-analyses-and-papers-on-lockdown-effectiveness/
https://spectator.com.au/2021/09/from-vaccine-passports-to-vaccine-apartheid/
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-bizarre-refusal-to-apply-cost
https://clubtroppo.com.au/2021/08/31/two-summary-pieces-of-hart-and-swpr-on-masks/#more-35154
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3872861 (on the costs of lockdowns in Ireland)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucfm9LCzLFM (Jay Bhattacharya defending the Great Barrington Declaration)
https://rumble.com/vitcgn-following-the-science.html (a collection of scientists rejecting the assertion that our covid policies have been “following the science”)
Some simple and well-presented “Facts about Covid” pieces to help people regain perspective:
https://spectator.com.au/2021/09/just-the-facts-coronavirus-in-australia-by-the-numbers/
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/selected-deaths-vs-covid-19-australia
Resistance art is priceless:
https://m.facebook.com/watch/?extid=SMS-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&v=521133085849651&ref=sharing&_rdr
https://twitter.com/JohnRuddick2/status/1433004499900108804
Many new media channels (BitChute, Telegram, Rumble, etc.), political groups (Reignite Australia, The New Liberals, Australia One, etc.), professional associations (e.g., http://amps.redunion.com.au/), community organisations (e.g., https://freedomtribe.net/, https://worldfreedomalliance.org/au/) and even new academic journals (e.g., https://www.australianconstitutionallawjournal.org/about) have been growing legs and members over the past few months, and are collectively part of the path out of our present reality. You may also wish to keep an eye periodically on the various petitions to Parliament available for your signing – many of which relate to covid policies.
It is up to all of us to push against destructive policies like lockdowns in the ways we can, to reaffirm our freedom and to build a better set of institutions for our future.
gigi
19th September 2021
Gigi Foster’s Voices against lockdowns – (8) 17 Aug 2021
Apologies for the delay. I’m just starting to catch my breath now. Continuing from here (No. 7)
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Dear all,
With all of New South Wales now in lockdown by order of the Premier’s Saturday afternoon tweet, the Australian Capital Territory locked down in response originally to a single covid case, and those who speak out for sanity (such as Matt Canavan recently on ABC’s Q&A) still subject to rabid bullying and cancellation attempts, it’s clear we are still in peak lockdown madness here in Australia. Overseas, the unsustainable business costs of mandating discrimination against non-covid-complaint customers are becoming apparent, and the health departments in US states like Texas and Florida are disseminating a far more sensible message on covid than we are receiving here, even in the face of covid case counts in those states alone far higher than we have ever seen in all of Australia.
Since my last missive just over a month ago, by far the single most frequent response I have received from those on this list is some version of “what can I do?”. Hence today’s missive is focussed heavily on answers to that question, alongside the usual collection of links and other updates. As always, please feel free to forward this email liberally.
At the end of the day it is push-back from the population that will force the politicians to change tack, so anything you do to help people recover from their brainwashing is part of the solution. Challenging the inconsistencies inherent in the mainstream narrative, pointing to overseas countries that have ceased blanket lockdowns and whom we’ll fall behind if we don’t follow suit, and drawing historical or literary analogies (Nazi Germany, US Prohibition, Orwell’s 1984) may all assist in making headway in your conversations with friends, family, and people on the street.
One amongst us sent me the attached list of MPs, with their email addresses; his advice on using email to raise your concerns to politicians is as follows:
- Create a new email account in Yahoo, Gmail, etc. with a new name, so if the account is blocked it doesn’t affect your personal emails.
- Using the internet find the contact details of for example the members of the Federal cabinet and the shadow cabinet or the equivalents at State level and paste them into Word file.
- Edit this Word file to delete everything except the email addresses separated by one space from each other.
- In another Word file write you letter of complaints, telling the recipient why you are not going to vote for them next election and telling them what is wrong with the restrictions and include links to videos or information from the internet that you think they should watch or read.
- Compose a new email in your new account.
- Copy and paste into the new email the text of your complain including links of videos, etc.
- Address in the TO box a leader of the target and then in the BBC (blank carbon copy) paste one of your lists containing the emails addresses of that particular target group.
When I shop for groceries these days I wear a Guy Fawkes mask and engage actively and in a friendly manner with people who notice the mask. Yet that message can only reach the few people I encounter personally. Attached you will find two flyers (“Are You COVID SMART” and “Pass On 5”) that can be printed and distributed to others as you see fit, courtesy respectively of Jorg Probst and an anonymous couple. See the “intro_letter” also penned by the latter couple for guidance on using the “Pass on 5” flyer. For those who are concerned about the threat to our normal freedoms posed by policies that mandate the covid vaccines – regardless of whether you or your loved ones plan to get a covid vaccine – I have also attached a letter from AFL Solicitors that can be customised to push back against a ‘no-jab-no-X’ policy implemented by an employer or educator.
The Covid Medical Network released an excellent Open Letter on August 2nd:
“Due to State and Federal Governments’ relentless and increasing hostility toward Australians over the pandemic, the directors and friends of CMN are issuing an urgent letter for all doctors, health professionals and all Australians to read.
Please find the open letter here: https://www.covidmedicalnetwork.com/open-letters/Covid-Medical-Network-Letter-to-Doctors-and-Health-Professionals-02082021.pdf
Any health professionals wanting to support this letter can either use the link
https://covidmedicalnetwork.com/open-letters/join-with-us.aspx
or email: admin@covidmedicalnetwork.com”
Steve, amongst us, contributes the following (my bolding): “I believe that in the light of fair work ombudsman’s 4 step plan it is vitally important that a website/app be set up asap to provide a business register for Australian businesses that refuse to discriminate on the basis of vaccination status. No doubt I’m not the first person to think of this however, I haven’t seen anything. This is vitally important particularly in terms of providing hope to those businesses who are questioning whether or not they can maintain their stand against government restrictions and mandates.” If you have web or app design experience and are interested in helping get this initiative off the ground, please email Steve (who is happy to coordinate efforts, but needs people with the abovementioned experience to contribute) directly on FMCWP@protonmail.com.
Many people do not push back because they do not know their rights, and are afraid of being fined or jailed for refusal to comply with restrictions on freedoms. Do states’ declarations of emergency trump Commonwealth laws that describe our freedoms? Are masking orders or 5-kilometre-radius movement restrictions lawful? What about general restrictions on the movement of healthy citizens, within, into or out of Australia – are these legal? Answering such legal questions is outside of my expertise, so let me also ask any lawyers in this group to share their specific knowledge about what rights citizens have to which they can appeal if stopped by a police officer or member of the Australian Defence Force without a mask or driving in the wrong place on the highway without an approved excuse, or if found by an authority figure to be in breach of mandated quarantine or in some other way being non-covid-compliant.
Some written words of sense and hope from the last month:
Martin T. Lally’s cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns in New Zealand, in pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.15.21260606v1
Ramesh Thakur’s argument against vaccination certificates: https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/vaccination-certificates-an-idea-whose-time-must-never-come/; his argument with a co-author, for a more academic audience, against a zero-covid strategy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09700161.2021.1918947; and his calling-out of governments’ use of fancy-seeming models rather than actual data in their covid policymaking: https://spectator.com.au/2021/07/covid-governments-have-ditched-data-for-glamorous-models/
An analysis of the costs of the Australian lockdowns by actuary Marc Hendrickx: https://quadrant.org.au/the-damage-done-and-yet-to-come/
Some estimates of the mental health costs of lockdown policies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01537-x
Some perspective on the risks of covid to children from Dr Sebastian Rishworth, who offers several other reflections of possible interest on his blog: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/07/07/is-covid-a-danger-to-children/
Some perspectives with hindsight of how Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy played out: https://shahar-26393.medium.com/not-a-shred-of-doubt-sweden-was-right-32e6dab1f47a , https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/sweden-despite-variants-no-lockdowns-no-daily-covid-deaths
A well-referenced letter of questions addressed to Scott Morrison, penned by Emma McArthur: https://humanityattheprecipice.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/letterscottmorrison16-07-2021_v2-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2Gc4H9Jgvu8pOsH3FcYOVXAoem5O0QZ48U5Ec3jQV1PdGGJ8FebWfDpy4
An articulate commentary on the suppression of real science during this period: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425/rr-31
An application to the International Criminal Court alleging violation of the Nuremberg Code by the government of Israel (attached)
Someone at Wikinews interviewed me about Australia’s “pandemic control” response and produced this: https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_Professor_Gigi_Foster_about_pandemic_control_in_Australia?dpl_id=2927091
An independent investigative-journalism-style report about the developing narrative that vaccination is a precondition for regaining freedoms in Australia: http://www.harrisonpublications.org/operation-covid-shield.html
Finally, some videos, radio, and podcasts:
My appearance together with lawyer Tony Nikolic and law academic Rocco Loiacono being interviewed about the covid situation in Australia by Reiner Fullmich’s Corona Investigative Committee: https://www.bitchute.com/video/ac6Fk6Tyowl5/
My first appearance on the Alan Jones show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2p9-NRV3fs (my second appearance on the show the subsequent week was not made available on YouTube)
Dr Peter McCullough making the case that the vaccine is not the only medical weapon in our arsenal against covid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM
Dr Cameron Murray speaking on the “longevity machine” – the economy in normal times – that we have interrupted with lockdowns: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/lockdowns,-lifespans-and-covid-responses/13470794
An interview I did with Ben Fordham on 2GB radio, aired this morning, making the case that other things apart from covid matter: https://www.2gb.com/economics-professor-pushes-back-against-lockdowns/
All going well, my co-authored book The Great Covid Panic (about which I speak here with Gideon Rozner of the Institute for Public Affairs) should be coming out in just under a month. I will include mention of how to get a copy, plus information about launches, in the ensuing missive I send to this group. In the meantime, the publisher’s website contains some sensible pieces on covid-related matters: https://brownstone.org/
Thank you, as usual, to everyone who has been sending me material. Please continue.
Hang in there. We will get through this together.
18th September 2021
Extract from a letter by Kanishka Raffel, Archbishop of Sydney against vaccine mandates
I have the full letter of 3 September 2021 with me – but am only publishing the information that is in the public domain, e.g. at https://www.facebook.com/StPetersSouthTamworth/posts/4122712551159459.
“Meeting with the Minister for Health
Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with the Minister for Health, Brad Hazzard and Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant. Also in the meeting were Roman Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher, the President of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Mr Lesli Berger and the President of the Australian National Imams Council, Sheikh Shadi Alsuleiman. The meeting came in response to the letter signed by the four of us last week.
We expressed our thanks and appreciation to the Minister and Dr Chant for their efforts in protecting the people of NSW. We reiterated that restraints on the freedom to worship were inconsistent with inalienable rights and had been accepted by religious communities as part of a united response to the health crisis, but should be lifted as soon as possible. In addition, the restrictions are taking a toll on many people at a time when the comfort and assistance of their faith and faith community is most in need, and worship should be considered an ‘essential’ service.
The Minister and Dr Chant expressed appreciation for the support and work of religious communities throughout this period, and invited us to continue to liaise with them about plans for opening up.
Online media has engaged with the possibility of vaccine passports for places of worship. As far as I am aware there is no jurisdiction in the world that has introduced such a measure in relation to places of worship, nor have I heard such a thing being suggested by government leaders in Australia.
The Minister gave no indication whether this was under consideration however Anthony Fisher and I both strongly put the case that mandating vaccination for attendance at Christian places of worship was something we could not support. In my view, such a step would be contrary to the nature of the gospel, the church and our mission.
I also took the opportunity to suggest that on grounds of equity and social cohesion mandatory vaccination requirements should be strictly limited in terms of both sphere of application and duration. I warned that there was a real risk of entrenching inequity and creating deep discontent by widespread or enduring practices of mandated vaccination.
If it is helpful, you may share this with members of your congregation, although it may not alleviate the concerns of those who are already subject to mandatory requirements in health and education. Where people have issues of conscience, this needs to be respected, but you should also do what you can to inform people so they are not unduly burdened in ways that Scripture does not require.
While not supporting the idea of a ‘vaccine passport’ for entry into Christian places of worship, we made clear that we have been and remain committed to ensuring that our churches are safe for all who attend. The vast majority (over 85%) of those who were hospitalised in NSW at the beginning of August were unvaccinated. I am aware that some people have ethical and other concerns about vaccines, and they are entitled to decline vaccination while these concerns are not addressed to their satisfaction.
At the same time, such concerns must be weighed against the ethics of remaining unvaccinated, including the risk of contracting the disease and requiring hospitalisation oneself, or infecting a loved one or someone who is vulnerable. Neither ‘side’ of this debate can claim the ‘moral high ground’. We are frail and fallible creatures and the assertion of moral certitude in this area is out of place.
The issues to be addressed by local churches are numerous. They include ensuring that people are safe when they attend church and that those who cannot or choose not to attend are able to access ministry online or in some other way. Churches will need to pray and work against the mischief making of the evil one so that differences of opinion in relation to vaccination do not become a source of division, anger or unkindness towards those for whom Christ died.”
18th September 2021
The sheer ignorance, idiocy and arrogance of Klaus Schawab’s Great Reset
Hayek’s Nobel lecture The Pretence of Knowledge should be compulsory reading for anyone who even remotely wishes to talk about public policy. Thereafter, anyone commenting on the covid pandemic must have read a LOT of biology and read all the pandemic plans. Without that, their outpourings can be extremely ill-informed and misleading, as with Schwab’s Great Reset.
I’ve only skimmed through the first part of the book – it is a MASSIVE PIECE OF JUNK. I’ll revert to it in due course if I find time. [Also see this]
UNBELIEVABLE EXAGGERATION
The worldwide crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic has no parallel in modern history. Now that the unthinkable is upon us.
The high degree of ongoing uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 makes it incredibly difficult to precisely assess the risk it poses. in June 2020, roughly half a year after the beginning of the outbreak, our knowledge is still very patchy and as a result we still don’t really know just how dangerous COVID-19 is. , the societal upheaval unleashed by COVID-19 will last for years, and possibly generations. [RUBBISH. WE HAD A VERY GOOD HANDLE ON THE SIZE OF THIS PANDEMIC BY EARLY APRIL 2020]
FALSE AND BOGUS CLAIMS ABOUT PAST PANDEMICS “SHAKING” UP SOCIETIES
Historically, pandemics have tested societies to their core; the 2020 COVID-19 crisis will be no exception. [THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF THAT EVEN WITH THE SPANISH FLU. THE WORLD ECONOMY BOOMED IN THE 1920s. AND THERE WAS NO IMPACTD OF THE ASIAN OR HONG KONG FLU ON ECONOMIES. WHAT PLANET DOES SCHUAB LIVE ON?]
CLAIMS THAT THIS IS A NOVEL VIRUS WHEN IT IS PATENTLY NOT
This should not come as a surprise. Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA, confesses: “This is a novel virus, new to humanity, and nobody knows what will happen.” [MASSIVE REPORTS OF CROSS-REACTIVITY HAD COME IN BY JUNE 2020. SCHAUB CHERRY PICKS WHAT HE WANTS TO “PROVE”]
DIRECT LINK WITH CCP AND CHINA’S CRIMINAL “SCIENTISTS”
An overwhelming consensus has emerged within the global scientific community that Jin Qi (one of China’s leading scientists) had it right when he said in April 2020: “This is very likely to be an epidemic that co-exists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal and is sustained within human bodies.” [19]
MAN-MADE CATASTROPHE PAINTED AS SOMETHING ARISING FROM THE PANDEMIC
The global economic catastrophe that we are now confronting is the deepest recorded since 1945. A seminal paper on the long-term economic consequences of major pandemics throughout history shows that significant macroeconomic after-effects can persist for as long as 40 years, substantially depressing real rates of return. .. the severity of the economic shock inflicted by the coronavirus [BUT THIS IS NOT A MAJOR PANDEMIC BY ANY STRETCH OF IMAGINATION!]
ZERO UNDERSTANDING OF BIOLOGY AND PANDEMICS
authoritative measures to attempt to contain them have always been part of the policy arsenal. Thus, there is nothing new about the confinement and lockdowns imposed upon much of the world to manage COVID-19. They have been common practice for centuries.
The spread of infectious diseases has a unique ability to fuel fear, anxiety and mass hysteria. Epidemics are by nature divisive and traumatizing. What we are fighting against is invisible; our family, friends and neighbours may all become sources of infection; those everyday rituals that we cherish, like meeting a friend in a public place, may become a vehicle for transmission; and the authorities that try to keep us safe by enforcing confinement measures are often perceived as agents of oppression.
A TINY BIT OF HONESTY THAT CONTRADICTS THE FIRST FEW CLAIMS MADE IN THE BOOK
COVID-19 doesn’t pose a new existential threat. It will not result in unforeseen mass famines or major military defeats and regime changes. Whole populations will neither be exterminated nor displaced as a result of the pandemic.
CALLING THE PANDEMIC AN “OPPORTUNITY”
we should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our world, in a bid to make it a better and more resilient one as it emerges on the other side of this crisis.
REJECTION OF COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
if prematurely loosening the various restrictions and the rules of social distancing result in an acceleration of infection (which almost all scientists believe it would), more employees and workers would become infected and more businesses would just stop functioning. Only future data and subsequent analysis will provide incontrovertible proof that the trade-off between health and the economy does not exist. [ECONOMISTS NEVER SAY THIS – THEY LOOK AT THE ENTIRE PICTURE AND DETERMINE THE MOST BENEFICIAL TO SOCIETY – BUT SCHUAB, AN ALLEGED “PROFESSOR” HAS NO CLUE ABOUT BASIC ECONOMICS]
CONDEMNING THE POOR TO PERPETUAL MISERY
many people may wonder whether “obsessing” about growth is even useful, concluding that it doesn’t make sense to chase a target of ever-higher GDP growth. We do not know yet whether the “tyranny of GDP growth” will come to an end, but different signals suggest that the pandemic may accelerate changes in many of our well-entrenched social norms. [AND SO SCHAUB EFFECTIVELY WANTS TO DESTROY THE LIVES OF BILLIONS OF THE WORLD’S POOR IN INDIA, AFRICA AND OTHER NATIONS?]
Overall, this kind of a “book” is not worth reading. Give it an F.