Warren Mundine: People are sick of lockdowns and border closures
Chief health officers are revered because they are scientists, supposedly basing decisions on some higher truth but I very much doubt that, given their increasingly bizarre edicts, writes Warren Mundine
Opinion
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I’ve had enough of bureaucrats telling us all how to live.
I’ve had enough of them shutting down livelihoods, putting us under house arrest, closing schools, keeping families apart and banning free travel across this country. We are one country, not eight.
Chief health officers are revered because they are scientists, supposedly basing decisions on some higher truth.
I very much doubt that, given their increasingly bizarre edicts.
I thought we’d reached peak stupidity when South Australia’s CHO, Nicola Spurrier, warned football fans to duck if the ball came near them in case Collingwood players had brought Covid from Victoria.
And then Queensland CHO Jeannette Young gave the anti-vaxxer movement its greatest boost since the Wakefield fraud.
She opposed allowing all age groups to have the AstraZeneca vaccine if they wish to, declaring: “I don’t want an 18-year-old in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got Covid, probably wouldn’t die.”
The risk of dying from a TTS blood clot following an AstraZeneca vaccination is one in two million – about the same risk as dying from a lightning strike.
The risk of dying in a car accident is 56 times higher. Will Young ban 18-year-olds from car travel? Not too fast: the risk of dying as a pedestrian is 16 times higher.
And if Queensland’s CHO thinks the risk to young people from Covid is so low, why did she shut schools?
NSW’s CHO, Kerry Chant, advises that 75 to 80 per cent of the population needs to be vaccinated before normality can return, even though few countries in the world have yet achieved this.
Why the entire population? Why include young people when Queensland’s CHO says they have Buckley’s chance of death?
Do these bureaucrats think we’re fools?
Where’s the science in closing gyms but not construction sites?
Where’s the science in allowing thousands at a football match but not a few hundred at church?
Where’s the science in saying a man can go to a brothel but can’t dance with his wife?
Where’s the science in allowing drinking sitting down but not standing up? Is it because it may lead to dancing?
These examples are farcical. Others are cruel.
Where’s the science in changing border restrictions while people are mid-air?
Recently Queenslanders on a flight from Sydney landed in Brisbane to dozens of police officers informing them they were off to two weeks hotel quarantine at a cost of around $4000. Many burst into tears.
Bureaucrats with secure employment, remote working and generous leave entitlements may think an unexpected hotel stint is no big deal.
Try it when you run a small business, need to work on-site or have used up all your annual leave minding kids during school closures.
Where’s the science in denying someone a last visit with their dying father? Are health bureaucrats worried a man with days to live might get sick?
Where’s the science in forcing grieving Victorians to Zoom into funerals, but allowing Victoria’s CHO, Brett Sutton, to travel to Canberra for a conference?
Border closures have literally killed babies.
Last year, a Ballina woman, denied entry to Queensland, lost one of her twins after waiting 16 hours for a care flight to Sydney.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk declared: “People living in NSWs, they have NSW hospitals. In Queensland we have Queensland hospitals for our people.”
Four babies died because South Australia has no paediatric cardiac facilities and the usual emergency transfers to Melbourne were denied.
It’s commonsense that babies should be permitted to be transported interstate, even in a pandemic, rather than be left to die.
And while state bureaucrats and politicians lock us up, shut down businesses, put people out of work and literally allow babies to die, many have pocketed huge pay rises. It’s disgusting.
We’ve learned a lot about Covid in 18 months. We know many early fears and predictions were unfounded or exaggerated.
We’ve seen health officials and scientists, globally, contradict themselves; act out of politics and self-interest; dismiss a hypothesis about Covid’s origins – now regarded as the most credible – as a “conspiracy theory”.
Health officials aren’t infallible. And they’re certainly not saints.
The Quiet Australians are sick and tired of it.
Sick of the politics between the states and the Commonwealth.
Sick of the chopping and changing.
Sick of the fearmongering.
There’s nothing wrong with vaccinations. I’ve had AstraZeneca myself and had no fear of it.
We’re sick of border closures, lockdowns and disruptions to our work, businesses, families, education, health and lives.
And we’re sick of the self-righteousness.
People will forgive mistakes. They won’t forgive continuing to make the same ones.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO is the author of Speaking My Mind and Warren Mundine – In Black and White. @nyunggai
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