Alan Jones: Public anger at draconian lockdowns, Covid restrictions

Locking people away from one another has led to an abandonment of basic freedoms and what seems like a breakdown in democracy in this state, writes Alan Jones.

The public anger manifesting itself in the handling of coronavirus, vaccines and quarantine is coming to a crescendo.

Draconian measures, locking people away from one another, increased police brutality and the encouragement to “dob” one another in are completely eroding public trust.

Grant from Sydney sums it up: “We have Health Chiefs out of their depth, shooting from their hip, on a whim and their Premiers following like lap dogs. What a mess.”

Patrick from Geelong says: “I never thought I’d see Police act like this in Australia (a reference to the Bowral disgrace last week). We are truly declining. I fear for our nation’s future.”

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty

In abandoning our commitment to basic freedoms, democracy has lost its way.

Government is meant to be by the people, for the people, not by brazen, defiant know-alls parading themselves as politicians.

Gladys Berejiklian said in May, of NSW, that she had “made sure” that the state had “the systems in place to be able to weather whatever came our way so that we wouldn’t ever go into lockdown again’’.

A new cluster forms and she presses the lockdown button; and now defiantly presses it again, so millions of Sydney people face another week in lockdown.

The metaphor of that farce is the Sydney Opera House.

A builder has tested positive, so the whole place is shut down and guarded by police.

Given the mentality of some of the people in charge, perhaps they thought the Opera House might be infected.

The Deakin University Chair of Epidemiology, Catherine Bennett, says the proportion of people, fully vaccinated, to avoid the need for lockdowns would be in the order of 30 per cent.

Gladys Berejiklian says the target for avoiding future lockdowns is 80 per cent of adults vaccinated.

Who do you believe?

But when asked what she had done, backtracking on lockdowns, Berejiklian said: “I don’t regret a single decision we have taken, because it is based on health advice.” That is a palpable nonsense, if not an untruth.

There is international health advice from places like Oxford University, Stanford University and Yale which denounces the validity of lockdowns.

I have cited that advice before in this column but, beyond that, no government leader is prepared to share that advice with the public.

At the National Press Club, at the start of the year, the Prime Minister said the Government’s main task would be to get everyone vaccinated so life could return to normal.

The year is halfway gone, 7.57 per cent are fully vaccinated.

But vaccination doesn’t make a scrap of difference.

Call a lockdown.

If you’re fully vaccinated, you too are locked down.

If you’re a close contact, but fully vaccinated, you too stay at home.

You, too, spend two weeks in quarantine.

States like Texas and Florida have been open for months. California and New York are back to normal.

Health workers at the Fairfield Showground Sypath Drive-through Clinic. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Britain has opened up but had nearly 30,000 new cases last Friday.

The Singapore Trade Minister had it right when he argued 10 days ago that the bad news is that Covid may never go away; the good news is, it is possible to live normally with it amongst our midst.

How does Gladys Berejiklian say in May that Australians should be able to move freely around the country, irrespective of whether they have been vaccinated or not; but then say in June that 80 per cent of the population will have to be vaccinated before we can talk about the “new normal”.

There was a headline story this week: “Facts not figures in daily updates.”

There is one fact they won’t give you.

With a population of 25.3 million we have, as I write, 474 cases, that is 0.018 per cent of the population. Some pandemic — and 99.8 per cent are mild. Why have government avoided that fact for the last 18 months.

July 19 is being labelled Freedom Day in Britain.

While the requirement to scan a QR code when entering bars, restaurants, hairdressers and gyms will be dropped, the same QR codes will be mandatory in NSW from July 12 – retail businesses, supermarkets, shopping centres, individual shops, gyms, offices, warehouses, universities, schools — not students, but teachers and parents.

Was there any discussion? Was there any debate? Was the public consulted?

There are Cabinet Ministers in NSW who receive their daily information via the Premier’s press conference. That is where dictatorial powers have taken us.

Amongst these “restrictions” are face masks.

We had the NSW Health Minister at the weekend saying, “when you are in a war, you don’t win it with wacko views; and unfortunately, we are seeing that with some people who think it is not okay to wear masks.”

And on Wednesday, an alarmist NSW Premier said: “Every time you leave the house, please assume you have the virus … wearing a mask will reduce the chances.” Really?

Dr John Meehan, of Global Research, an organisation comprised of the heads of science from around the world dedicated to promoting the sharing of data and best practice, has said: “All over the world … bacterial pneumonias are on the rise … why might that be? Because untrained members of the public are wearing medical masks, repeatedly … in a non-sterile fashion … they are becoming contaminated. They are pulling them off their car seat, off the rear-view mirror, out of their pocket, from their countertop and they are reapplying a mask that should be worn fresh and sterile every single time.”

But if our increasingly discredited leaders cared to do some homework instead of listening to bureaucrats who tell them what they want to hear, they might note the comments of Dr Russell Braylock.

He is an American neurosurgeon and formerly a Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre, who surely makes a statement of the obvious: “By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain … no one is telling the frail, elderly and those with lung disease such as, emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis, of these dangers when wearing facial masks of any kind, which can cause a severe worsening of lung function.”

Well may we ask to whom the NSW Health Minister was referring when he talked about people with “wacko” views.

To prosecute your case, under the guise of leadership, in a brazen and know-all manner, denying the public information to which they are entitled is an abuse of the democratic process and dangerous to good health practice.