What was all the fuss about?

Not that much, if the Covid polls are to be believed

If the opinion polls are in any way adjacent to popular feeling in Australia, then the monumental Covid policy disaster of the last three years has largely been greeted by the majority of Australians with a laconic ‘what was all the fuss about?’.

Most Australians are, apparently, content with the economic devastation of lockdown including its debt/inflation/interest-rate spiral, they are mostly unconcerned about, if even aware of, the mortality, morbidity and fertility costs of mass experimental injections, and they have no issue with the assaults on liberty that gave Australia a touch of the banana republics.  If this is the case, what is to stop any of it from happening again?

The latest opinion polls attest to the lack of public fuss over what our governments did to us in the name of ‘safety’ – they show that a majority of the population think that our governments and public health ‘experts’ have successfully handled the ‘pandemic’ in Australia.  We, the Covid dissident minority, can often lose sight of our fellow citizens’ enthusiastic, or blasé, views on Covid policy as we become immersed in our own bubble, a bubble which provided absolutely essential social support and intellectual sustenance during the depths of the Covid stupidity, but a bubble nonetheless.

Although ‘Covid’ may be ‘over’ to all intents and purposes (other than the drip-drip-drip disaster of the jabs), it wasn’t us Covid dissidents who won the war by changing public hearts and minds.  The large freedom rallies were impressive, uplifting to participants and, despite a desperate media blackout, did make an impact and leave an impression and, despite the Covid True Believers caricaturing them as the far-right extremist devil’s handiwork, even our Covid-crazed politicians couldn’t simply put their fingers in their ears and go ‘la-la-la, can’t hear you’.

So, active opposition and protest was a factor, eventually, in rolling back the Covid mandates and restrictions but the ‘freedom parties’ have had a hard time finding any permanent electoral traction.  Arguably, widespread virus fatigue at both elite and popular levels, and the political, social and economic unsustainability of monomaniacal Covid hysteria as society’s default operating mode, contributed more to Covid policy outstaying its welcome.  Even the most tyrannical state premiers (yes, that’s you, Dan, Mark, Anastasia and that bug-eyed what’s-his-name in the NT) got politically exhausted with it all in the end.

As much as we may wish it was otherwise, the governments’ Covid psyops was, for three years, a stunningly huge success (witness the kilometres-long queues at both the testing centres and the vaccination hubs as well as the sea of masked faces throughout) and the public acceptance of our governments’ management of the ‘pandemic’ is reflected in the most recent polls which show alarmingly persistent popular illusions that ‘social distancing’, lockdowns, masks and ‘vaccination’ policies were just tickety-boo.

Pew and Lowy

Covid had rather dropped off the opinion poll radar in Australia lately but an international Pew Research survey (the 2022 Global Attitudes Survey) in August found that in Australia, the land of the long lockdown and the big needle, the population rates their government’s response to Covid more highly than do people in nearly all other countries.  In Australia, 76% of us think our government ‘has done a good job dealing with the coronavirus outbreak’.  Only Singapore (88%) and Malaysia (77%) give a bigger tick of approval (80% of Swedes also had positive feelings towards their government but, unlike every other country surveyed, Sweden maintained liberty and freedom by not locking down and by having only very light, non-mandatory restrictions).

Pew highlight that, back in the darkly hysterical Covid days of 2020, almost all (97%) of Australians rated our government’s handling of the virus as very good (if you were amongst the 3% who didn’t, congratulations, but no wonder it was so hard to find each other back then).  So, there is some comfort in the decline from 97% to 76% of Australians who like what our governments did.

Nevertheless, whilst one in five Australians have changed their mind on Covid policy, we don’t know whether this is because, on the one hand, they lament the loss of freedom and have discovered just how useless but damaging the restrictions were or, on the other hand, whether they are now critical of the government for too much relaxation of too many restrictions too rapidly.  Pew notes that the ‘near unanimous’ positive verdict of 2020 frayed significantly only after Australia “ditched its COVID zero stance after frequent mass lockdowns in many state capitals” so those who have since switched to the ‘unhappy’ Covid camp would include those who are displeased about the retreat from tyranny, the ‘lock me down harder, mask me up tighter, jab me more often’ sado-masochistic Zero Covidistas who still walk amongst us.

The latest Lowy Institute in Australia poll confirms the international Pew poll.  Back in 2021, reports Lowy, 65% of us thought our governments handled the ‘pandemic’ very well and although this ardour has cooled somewhat with the passage of time (only 24% of us in 2022 give it top marks), over half of us (56%) now say our governments did ‘fairly well’ (up from 30% in 2021).  Whilst 14% of us now say that it has all been handled badly (up from a tiny base of just 4% at the height of the awfulness a year ago), those saying we did ‘very badly’ remains a depressingly low 5% (although that is an improvement from just 1% a year ago).  We hardcore Covid dissidents are a statistical rounding error.  The slowly growing ‘unhappy’ camp could, of course, also include the Covid Narrative captives who miss their chains and want more of that wonderful virus-crushing tyranny.  Overall, according to Lowy, nearly eight in ten Australians in 2022 give our governments a Covid pass mark.  Disturbingly, 94% of Australians think that New Zealand, governed by the lockdown-loving, border-sealing Toothy Tyrant, handled the ‘pandemic’ well or very well across the ditch.

The Covid ‘vaccine’, whilst we are on gloomy poll news, remains in good standing in Australia and globally according to Pew.  In all nineteen countries surveyed, around two-thirds or more of the population say that having the vaccine is somewhat or very important in order to ‘be a good member of society’.   Dismayingly, Australia is at the very top of the league ladder of vaccine virtue with 87% of Australians backing them in as a social good (including 60% who say that the vaccines are ‘very important’).

Essential

This lingering, widespread adherence to the official Covid Narrative in Australia is manifested in ongoing illusions about Covid and its alleged countermeasures.  Five months ago, an Essential poll found that a majority of Australians viewed our quasi-fascistic, politico-medical Covid regimes as delivering better Covid outcomes than lockdown-free/light-restriction Sweden.  Well, if you’re only ever told by the propaganda organs that pass for the media here that ‘let-it-rip’ Sweden has been a virus basket-case, why wouldn’t you think that.  Fortunately, 29% of Australians now think that Sweden did better than Australia, so at least the anti-lockdown cause is getting some hearing in Australia.

The same poll, however, found that two-thirds of Australians are still labouring under the illusion that our hospitals are bursting at the seams because of Covid.  Hmm, wasn’t the Covid vaxx supposed to stop that sort of serious disease outcome from happening?  Perhaps best not to explore that bit of cognitive dissonance (‘Saved by the Covid vaxx!’  ‘Hospitals overrun by Covid!’) because it may reveal that the vaxx is a total dud and all the measures to force it on the population were authoritarian hijinks to reinforce a political narrative (Covid bad, government tyranny good).  A further 60% of Australians still can’t let go of masks being required ‘in some settings’.

Nevertheless, some 55% of Australians agreed that ‘we really need to get on with life and treat Covid like another form of flu’.  Only 22% never want the Covid madness to end.  Progress!

The most recent Essential poll (in November 2022) on the speed of easing of restrictions (lockdown is now a relic of the past, mask mandates have retreated, isolation requirements for those testing positive are no more, unvaxxed tennis players are allowed into the country, etc.) found, pleasingly, that barely 15% of Australians think that the restrictions have been relaxed too quickly.  Two thirds (63%), however, feel that the pace has been about right - as if three years of wretched policy nonsense was just what the doctor ordered.  One in five, thank goodness, think that the pace of easing has been too slow.

It’s not just Australia

It’s not just a majority of Australians who have a rosy view of harsh ‘pandemic’ policy.  Lockdowns in the US, for example, still remain bafflingly popular according to the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus index for September 2022 with three in four Americans (73%) saying that the early 2020 shutdowns ‘were necessary to save lives’ (Democrat voters are insanely infatuated by them, with 93% singing their praises compared to just 52% of Republicans).

Large reserves of other Covid Crazy attitudes still exist (most likely in the virus-deranged ‘liberal’ Democrat states of New York and California) with a third of Americans saying it will be ‘a year or more’ before they personally return to normal living whilst a third report wearing a mask some or all of the time when leaving the house.  Fortunately, some of these maskabators are starting to get a bit self-conscious about it, with one in five (19%) of them saying they ‘worry how other people view them because of their mask’.  Overall, however, a majority of Americans, like Australians, are keen to fold up the Covid circus tents and move on from the ‘pandemic’.

Even the vaxx is beginning to get on the nose

We have come a very long way here in Australia since the darkest days of lockdown, heavy policing, mask mania and various social distancing stupidities.  Even enthusiasm for the jab is beginning to wane downunder – whilst 97.3% of the Australian population aged 16 or over have had one shot, and 96.0% have had two (the two shots that were fraudulently promised to end the pandemic), only 72.4% have lined up for shot number three whilst just 44.2% (of the eligible population i.e. those aged 30 or more) have opted for dose number four.  Parents of kids aged 5-15 are also cooling off with a bare majority (52.4%) of kids having had two doses, down from 60.7% of children who have had one dose.

Some in the medical freedom movement distrust official Commonwealth government statistics on Covid vaccination, especially the near 100% take-up of the first two jabs, because lying has been the government’s default communication mode for its entire Covid psyops.  Whilst the government and its ‘pandemic planners’ should, in general, be afforded no more trust than an unsolicited email from a Nigerian ‘prince’ who needs your assistance, for just a few upfront fees and taxes, in getting his wealth out of the country, the Australian Covid (and other) vaccination stats are highly reliable.  When I worked in the Commonwealth Department of Health (for thirty years as a public servant in Canberra, where prematurely-aged former high-school Maths/English teachers go to fade away), I worked, inter alia, on data integrity issues, and the vaccination stats in the National Immunisation Register (and other basic administrative datasets) stack up very well because every medical service in Australia is tied to our universal health care/insurance system based on a unique Medicare card identifier.

Even if you think the immunisation stats lack validity and have been fudged by the government for political purposes, they have reliability over time and it is the trend that matters – and that is a downwards one for Covid vaxx take-up.  Absent unethical jab mandates for employment or travel or access to venues, Australians are voting with their liberated feet by starting to walk away from the magical elixir.  Safe, effective and necessary?  Only the minority of Australians who are fully, four-dosed, jabbed believe this fiction any more.

Australia is probably edging closer towards that of a more vaxx-sceptical America where the Rasmussen pollsters found that half (49%) of American adults think it is likely that Covid vaccines have caused ‘a significant number of unexplained deaths’.  Only a third of Americans (37%) believe the Covid vaccines are entirely safe.  Against personal experience and on-the-ground reality, the Vaxx Narrative is crumbling.  The dam walls holding back the bad news about the vaxx are beginning to crack with each personal testimonial to vaxx harm and with each new research paper – I love the sound of cracking Narrative walls in the morning.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, there remains a still-captured, largish minority of Covid True Believers, the vanguard of Covid Hysterics deeply attached to the fundamental belief system of ‘Covid’ and all its trappings.  They remain beyond reach and reason but the social and political momentum is no longer with them.

There is, however, a much larger majority of ‘Compliants’ who, for example, mask up when told to and unmask only when allowed to, who could again become the automaton footsoldiers in a never-ending war on viruses.  It is this great middle, the politically inert, intellectually incurious and naively-trusting-of-authority middle, those who feel that our governments basically got it right, that we need to reach to win the battle of ideas, and psychology, on ‘Covid’ and all that that term has come to stand for (the death of liberty, humanity, reason and science, for starters).

This big middle is our main audience as we pursue the policy architects responsible for the Great Covid Scam, those with political power, media reach and cultural influence who royally screwed us over.  Although the worst features of the Covid nightmare are behind us and more-or-less normal service has been restored, we should never kiss and make up with those who smirked when the unjabbed were sacked from their job, who wanted to deny medical treatment to the unperforated, who would have dearly loved to hold down the anti-maskers until we were forcibly muzzled, who would have happily deported the unvaxxed to camps until they yielded, who hoped with all their heart that the Covid ideological deviants get the virus and die.  The always superb Paul Collits documents some of the worst examples of this malicious vendetta against the unvaxxed, reminding us that such extremism was not a fringe position.  We should neither forgive nor forget the Covid crimes and their perpetrators.  If there isn’t a reckoning for those who orchestrated it all last time, then the next batch of virus choreographers will try it on again.

But take heart - we Covid dissidents in Australia have grown from near-invisibility back when Covid ideological hegemony was virtually monolithic and are now a (minority) force that can’t be as easily politically marginalised in the future.  We will have to be seriously reckoned with in any future political calculus by any public health authorities tempted to perform an encore of heavy-handed political interventions against viruses.  We now know, thanks to the ‘Covid’ policy schemozzle, what it means to be truly human and truly free and that is a good starting point for the next phase of the battle against those who would sacrifice these values for illusory ‘safety’.

For a final word on how we approach this task, I can’t improve on the cartoons of Anne Gibbons – from her Substack, ‘Anne Can’t Stand It!’ (“an outpost on the edge of madness in the planetary looney bin we’ve been thrown into”):

Dare to struggle, dare to win! Dare to squiggle, dare to grin!