How do three people write an article?
How do three people write an article so dry that you’re left gasping for water? This was my response to a story in Saturday’s Australian Financial Review. The “journalists” David Martin-Gruzman, Tom McIlroy, and Finbar O’Mallon have collaborated on a work noteworthy for its collegiality and for the division its underlying concepts promote. Our media has failed us. There are no insights. No effort to discuss or describe anything outside politicians’ proclamations. I use this article as an example and probably spend too much time pulling it apart.

The AFR 3 presented appalling notions like mandatory mass vaccination, including young children, forced unemployment for unvaccinated workers, whimsical lockdowns, mandated masks for children indoors and other restrictions. Am I exaggerating on this whimsicality? In an adjacent article, NSW Chief Health Officer, Kerry Chant says: “The evidence around curfews is mixed but I also think it sends a significant signal about the crisis we are facing”.

“The evidence around curfews is mixed but I also think it sends a significant signal about the crisis we are facing”.

NSW chief medical officer, Kerry Chant

All written with that Thatcherite sense of “There Is No Alternative”. For them, as for most media, we have jabs not injections. It is not an experimental vaccine but a playful jab in the arm. Sorry, you can’t dress it up. It’s an injection, an injection of god knows what. This is the way they present these enormous changes to our lives. Just matter of factly. They are anything but.

In the opening paragraph of the article we learn:

“NSW will seek to lead Australia out of the lockdown era by pressuring tens of thousands of workers in western Sydney to get jabbed in the next week, while offering to allow inoculated hairdressers to operate when restrictions start to ease”.

I rewrite it thus:

NSW politicians, police and the military will use threats and force to inflict continued lockdowns on citizens of western Sydney so they accept experimental injections. If successful, hairdressers can then trade.

The original version carries a misplaced sense of heroic leadership. Though they’re not named, our heroes are Gladys, our Premier, and Brad, her deputy.. They are saving us from a great threat. In truth, it is Glad ‘n Brad’s chosen way of dealing with the threat that is the cause of our misery. Vaccinate or ….

Dan of the Apocalypse

We then shift quickly to Victoria where Dan of the Apocalypse has Victoria “on the edge” of a Covid-19 explosion “similar to Sydney”. Like any good salesman, he sets an urgent deadline of the middle of next week. By then we must see a reduction in the day’s count of newly infected people. These are people with an unquantified and unqualified string of RNA up their nose.

Dan has a table where he places things you can’t touch or use. “Nothing is off the table” he chides Victorians. If Victorians misbehave more things will be placed on the forbidden table.

The AFR 3 tell us that in Victoria infections are soaring among children. With a state total of 311 infections for all ages, this is the sort of hyperbole that has the rest of the world asking what is going on in Australia. Add to this, the head of Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Jane Halton, told ABC’s Fran Kelly that children don’t usually get sick. When you’re cheerleading for the vaccine project, facts don’t matter. They destroy the carefully constructed narrative of Covid-19 horror.

Whoosh, back to NSW. Gladys bows to pressure and introduces a curfew in hotspot local government areas (LGAs). Why, like a vampire, is the virus only threatening at night?

Gladys bows to pressure and introduces a curfew in hotspot LGAs. Why? Is the virus like a vampire that only comes out at night?

In conversation with a friend

Who’s applying the pressure? It isn’t coming from business. It is unlikely to have come from families forbidden to visit each other. It’s just pressure and pressure happens. Pressure without a cause is another innovation from our AFR writers.

Gladys exults that vaccination is an opportunity, explains short sharp lockdowns don’t always work and laments that Delta is like nothing we have ever seen but still a wonderful opportunity.

The AFR 3 hint at their paper’s research presaging a beautiful future. A future where “mortality rates are likely to halve keeping deaths and hospitalisations down rather than case numbers”. We assume that by then case numbers will have done their job in scaring us into vaccines. I have to agree that if mortality rates come down deaths will drop commensurately.

Rapid Testing’s Rapid Approval

Gladys announced new rules for the 12 local government hotspots that will stop people working without a first vaccination or a rapid (antigen) test. How these tests work is unclear? I thought they needed 45 minutes or so produce a result. Will workers need to arrive early for their shift to show their patriotism.

Hospitality executive, Wes Lambert, names the bull elephant filling the room – mandatory vaccination. Small hospitality operations won’t be rapid testing. Wesfarmers, Commonwealth Bank and Visy will.

Late last week, we wrote about a couple of economists calling for rapid testing but their plan had to get past the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). We know the TGA is a turnstile for vaccine manufacturers but do they generally turn things around that quickly? The need to release pressure on the NSW Government’s own PCR testing stands as the reason. So does corporate testing not require TGA approval?

The rapid test supplier, Pantonic Health, happily advises us that its relationship to supply chain partner, Arrotex Pharmaceuticals, will allow the company to adjust to heavy demand. This could be very rewarding. Especially, if Pantonic is able to adopt the German policy of making the unvaccinated pay for a test before entering a restaurant, pub or sporting event.

NSW government policy has also issued public health orders which will make first injections mandatory by August 30 for childcare and disability workers. These will operate in the 12 hotspot LGAs. How long before this rule spreads to all workers? Teasingly, we are told NSW members of parliament have seen “a proposal to ease certain settings” by October if 70% of us are injected. This is the protection racketeer’s promise.

Excitingly, hairdressers will be free to trade, if both customers and operators are both fully vaccinated. Come in close David, Tom and Finbar. What is this fixation with hairdressers as though it’s an essential service like firefighting?

In closing, we learn of National cabinet deliberations to support 2 million vaccinations for 12 to 15 year olds. How long did the ferocious TGA deliberate on that one? Relax, our military head of operations comfortingly tells us the Australian Technical Advisory Group (ATAGI) will offer expert advice and we will have it within days. Why not hours or minutes. The Department of Health confirmed school-based vaccinations will begin this year.

Warren Ross

PS I have recently come across reference to an organisation called the Trusted News Network. It appears to be a conglomerate of media organisations who are sifting, censoring and shaping information related to all aspects of Covid-19. I would love people to join me in this research. Here are two articles that reference this organisation.

Peter McCullough on adverse reactions
Trusted News Initiative

PPS Clear your cache to read the related Financial Review article. They often let you in for one article. If that doesn’t work, email me and we can discuss other options.

Warren Ross
email: katwlr@protonmail.com