A “Grotesque Overreaction”

Tony Abbott on Australia’s Covid response

Tony Abbott, one-time pugilist and former Prime Minister of Australia, has come out swinging against Australia’s response to Covid.

In a podcast hosted by Graham Hood, an Australian pilot sacked because he refused the industry’s Covid vaccine mandate, Abbott, the former Liberal (conservative) prime minister, has described the policy response of the then government of Scott Morrison’s Liberals (and the state Liberal and Labor governments) as a “grotesque overreaction” to a “relatively mild pandemic”.  The “herd thinking” that drove a lock-step, panicked policy and behavioural response was taken to task by Abbott as was the role, the continuing role, of global bodies, such as the WHO in promoting the madness and the authoritarian powers that go with it. 

Abbott added that he was opposed to Covid vaccine mandates which breach the principle of ‘my body my choice’ and that he had only gotten vaxxed because he “didn’t want anyone to have an excuse for keeping us locked up any longer than was absolutely necessary”.

Before going on to praise Abbott’s intervention, it is both tempting and necessary to dissect the deficiencies in his views on Covid.

(1) Let’s start with his statement that the overreaction was “grotesque” because the ‘pandemic’ was only “relatively mild”.  Mild the ‘pandemic’ certainly was.  Indeed it was indistinguishable from a normal cold and flu season, probably because that was all it ever was.  There is considerable doubt that there ever was a novel pathogen doing anything unusual from the normal run-of-the-mill cold and flu viruses.  Cruddy metrics of ballooning ‘cases’, inflated hospitalisation statistics and over-counted deaths ,based on a dodgy PCR test, plus lashings of 24/7 propaganda, fed a snowballing hysteria which resulted in a pandemic of panic, not a pandemic of a world-devastating killer virus.

People who had unremarkable cold-like symptoms probably had a cold and people with flu-like symptoms probably just had the flu.  Even if there was a novel virus, it was doing the rounds with remarkably cold-like and flu-like symptoms.  The ‘pandemic’ was nothing special at all.  If the PCR test had never existed, no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary.  Without the relentless, high-rotation talk of  a deadly virus, and the shonky statistics it rested on, no one would have noticed a thing nor cared about the alleged ‘pandemic’. 

So, Abbott’s formulation (the overreaction was grotesque because there was only a relatively mild pandemic), whilst fine on the face of it, leaves open the option of justifying a harsh response of restrictions if there had been, or will be in the future, a ‘serious’, ridgy-didge pandemic.  The flaw with this view, however, is that there can never be any justification for such a response because, as we now know, and knew then before the ‘experts’ went crazy, that lockdowns, masks, all the ‘social distancing’ absurdities, border closures and ‘vaccines’ not only didn’t work but, more importantly, were destructive of people’s livelihoods and liberties and inflicted indignities on humanity too many to catalogue.

The best response, as always, was and is to do nothing.  Anything more than nothing would be over the top and grotesque regardless of the virulence of any virus.

(2) Abbott is correct to have opposed Covid vaccine mandates.  They were and remain unethical.  Even if the ‘vaccines’ had ‘worked’ – a dubious proposition, not just for the Covid drugs misleadingly called vaccines but for other vaccines, too - then those who willingly take them are ‘protected’ and, if the vaccines don’t work then any mandates are useless as a public health prophylactic measure and merely serve a politically performative role of enforcing social conformity to the public health caste’s edicts.

Yet, this is the former PM who was responsible for introducing de facto vaccine mandates for children whose parents choose not to ‘vaccinate’ them against childhood diseases.  Families are denied Commonwealth child support payments if the parents exercise their right to vaccine choice.  This coercive policy opened the way for most state governments to deny access to early childhood education facilities for unvaccinated kids.  If Covid vaccine mandates are unethical (and useless), as they are, then all vaccine mandates are too.

(3) Abbott’s justification for getting an unwanted Covid vaccine in order to “avoid any excuse for keeping us locked up any longer than was absolutely necessary” not only implies that some locking down was in fact necessary, no matter how briefly (remember the ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ joke), but it is a capitulation to the overarching narrative arc of the righteousness of the great war against a virus that could only finally be won in the end by the miracle weapon of the vaccine.  To go along with the premise that some sort of (short-term) lockdown was needed is to support the whole virus-fighting ‘pandemic’ response.  Lockdowns were never necessary, and never scientific, and could have been lifted at any time, regardless of how many people signed up to the vaccine juice of liberation.

Earlier, Abbott had also chosen to pay the fine for once being unmasked in public (whilst in the open air at a beach) when a firm stand against the pseudoscientific mask authoritarianism would have been really helpful to holding back that particular tide of nuttiness and knocking a further hole in the ‘pandemic’ Narrative edifice.

If such a high-profile Covid policy sceptic like Abbott had stood against all of the ‘pandemic’ measures, including those initial lockdowns, and the mask mania, that could have inspired others to do so.

Abbott - A mixed bag

Tony Abbott has often flattered to deceive, talking the (conservative) talk but often piking it in practice.  I can respect a politician (even someone like Abbott whose political value system I largely do not share) who ‘says what they mean and means what they say’, the so-called ‘conviction politician’.  Abbott, however, has too often gone missing when it came to the crunch on various policy issues, including Covid.

Yet, yet, yet ‘grotesque overreaction’ made the mainstream headlines and is another step in changing public consciousness about the ‘pandemic’ and the disastrous response to it and few people are going to parse the partially-flawed text of the rest of his comments which concede some ground to the ‘pandemic’ narrative.  Yes, all the media outlets have sought to circle the wagons around their precious pandemic paradigm by reflexively calling Abbott’s podcast statements the ignorant, irresponsible talk of kooky, fringe, far-right conspiracy theorists and anti-vax fanatics.  Which means Abbott is over the target, of course.  That more than makes up for the flawed parts of his position.

With the so-called enquiries into the Covid response looking set to be whitewashed by reliable, official Covid maniacs, getting some words of real dissent a pubic airing is a positive strategic outcome.  We are going to hear a lot about how everything from the initial lockdown to the grand vaccine finale was ‘the right thing to do’, how it was ‘better to be safe than sorry ‘and that all measures were imposed with the best of intentions and were mostly correct.

The Coronamanic decision-makers are determined to avoiding admitting or apologising for their diabolical lockdowns, masks, deadly ‘vaccines’ and their mandates and passports.  Abbott’s intervention should make it that little bit harder for the public to let them get away with it.  So, thanks, Tony.