Discussion:
OT - Anti-vax gurus dying like flies...
(too old to reply)
Sygmund_F
2021-09-23 05:38:13 UTC
Permalink
Phil Valentine, a prominent Tennessee rightwing talk radio host, had released a song
called Vaxman, an anti-Covid vaccination ditty based on the Beatles track Taxman.

Marc Bernier, a host in Daytona Beach, Florida, had declared himself "Mr Anti-Vax". Dick
Farrel, also from Florida, urged his listeners not to get vaccinated, and Jimmy DeYoung
asked on air whether the vaccine could be a "form of government control of the people".

All four men died in August of coronavirus. A fifth conservative radio host, Bob Enyart,
died on 13 September, weeks after he told his listeners to boycott vaccines that were
"immorally developed".

Read more >>>>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid?


==============================

A wonderful Trump legacy. His advice is killing his own base. Gotta love that...


======================
Sygmund Froyd
.Gerry's Worst Nightmare
2021-09-23 16:20:56 UTC
Permalink
On 9/23/2021 12:38 AM, Sygmund_F aka Gerry Binder, aka Nurse Ratched,
aka Sigmund Froyd, aka Sygmund_F, aka Walt_M, aka waltmitty, aka N=N+1,
aka Jew Hating Nazi, aka GOD, aka TheWiz, aka Commie Faggot, aka ObyOne
Texanfuckah, aka F4Phantom, aka Darren Thorneton



Fat and Bald is no way to go through life fuckwit...

Fat Ass & Bald Gerry in his natural state:
https://yip.su/3CyU54

Little Dictator Gerry
https://yip.su/3CpU54
Post by Sygmund_F
FUCKTARD, lying blowhard troll, welfare fraudster fucknut,
terrorist sympathizing, dole-bludging, anal retentive limpdick,
race-baiting, Net Cop Spider, Wanker Spider, Humourless Git Spider,
Control Freak Spider, racist anarchist, cry-bully, village idiot,
ass-licking, sperm guzzling, cock snogging, scrotum sucking, bum
banging, pig fucking, Fritz admiring, animal fondling, wank cloth,
spunk trumpet, thunder cunt, waste-of-rations, spunk bubble
horrenda-cunt, terrorist-supporting, fucknugget.. etc., etc.
Phil Valentine, a prominent Tennessee rightwing talk radio host, had released a song
called Vaxman, an anti-Covid vaccination ditty based on the Beatles track Taxman.
Marc Bernier, a host in Daytona Beach, Florida, had declared himself "Mr Anti-Vax". Dick
Farrel, also from Florida, urged his listeners not to get vaccinated, and Jimmy DeYoung
asked on air whether the vaccine could be a "form of government control of the people".
All four men died in August of coronavirus. A fifth conservative radio host, Bob Enyart,
died on 13 September, weeks after he told his listeners to boycott vaccines that were
"immorally developed".
Read more >>>>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/21/anti-vax-radio-hosts-dying-covid?
==============================
A wonderful Trump legacy. His advice is killing his own base. Gotta love that...
======================
Sygmund Froyd
Bwahahahahahahahaha

Again, idiot fuckwit Gerry sticks his foot in his mouth. The sheep has
succumbed to the leftist prattle and lies that it's Trump supporters
that aren't getting vaccinated.

A simple Google search would have shown this was bullshit but fucknut
Gerry is more interested in Terrorist Sympathizing and Race Baiting.
Just like all left wing radical asshats.


Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccinations by Race/Ethnicity


White adults accounted for the largest share (60%) of unvaccinated
adults,1 Black and Hispanic people remain less likely than their White
counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk,
particularly as the variant spreads. However, the data show that these
disparities are narrowing over time, particularly for Hispanic people.

The CDC reports demographic characteristics, including race/ethnicity,
of people receiving COVID-19 vaccinations at the national level. As of
September 21, 2021, CDC reported that race/ethnicity was known for 59%
of people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Among this
group, nearly two thirds were White (60%), 10% were Black, 17% were
Hispanic, 6% were Asian, 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and
<1% were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, while 5% reported
multiple or other race.

Black people have received smaller shares of vaccinations compared to
their shares of cases, deaths, and the total population in more than
half of states reporting data. In the remaining reporting states, the
share of vaccinations they have received is similar to their shares of
cases, deaths, and the total population. For example, in Florida, Black
people have received 9% of vaccinations, while they make up 15% of
cases, 17% of deaths, and 15% of the total population.

Reflecting disproportionate levels of infection, Hispanic people have
received smaller shares of vaccinations compared to their shares of
cases in most reporting states. Their share of vaccinations is similar
or higher than their shares of deaths in most reporting states. However,
in some states it remains lower. For example, in California, 31% of
vaccinations have gone to Hispanic people, while they account for 61% of
cases, 47% of deaths, and 40% of the total population in the state.


In nearly all reporting states, the share of vaccinations among Asian
people was similar to or higher than their shares of cases, deaths, and
total population. For example, in Hawaii, 53% of vaccinations have been
received by Asian people, which is higher than their share of the total
population (40%) and their shares of cases and deaths (both at 44%).


White people received a higher share of vaccinations compared to their
share of cases in most states reporting data. In fewer than half of
reporting states they received a higher share of vaccinations compared
to their shares of deaths and total population, while in other states it
was similar or lower. For example, in Colorado, 76% of vaccinations were
received by White people, while they make up 68% of the population. In
Tennessee, 64% of vaccinations have been received by White people, which
is lower than their share of cases (71%), deaths (78%), and their share
of the population (77%).


Overall, across these 43 states, the percent of White people who have
received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose (53%) was 1.2 times higher
than the rate for Black people (45%) and 1.1 times higher than the rate
for Hispanic people (49%) as of September 20, 2021.



Discussion

As the Delta variant continues to spread across the country, risks are
increasing, particularly for people who remain unvaccinated. White
people account for the largest share of people who remain unvaccinated,
but Black and Hispanic people are less likely than their White
counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk,
which may lead to widening disparities going forward and limit the
nation’s recovery.


All reported data on vaccinations by race/ethnicity are available
through our COVID-19 State Data and Policy Actions tracker and
downloadable through our State Health Facts Online tables. KFF will
continue to update these data on a regular basis going forward as
vaccination distribution continues.




The people refusing the vaccine are definitely NOT Trump Supporters.

Meanwhile in Draconian Australia, the leading Nanny State.........



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The donkey told the tiger, "The grass is blue."

The tiger replied, "No, the grass is green ."

The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to
arbitration, so they approached the lion.

As they approached the lion on his throne, the donkey started screaming:
′′Your Highness, isn't it true that the grass is blue?"

The lion replied: "If you believe it is true, the grass is blue."

The donkey rushed forward and continued: "The tiger disagrees with me,
contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him."

The king then declared: "The tiger will be punished with 3 days of
silence."

The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating
′′The grass is blue, the grass is blue..."

The tiger asked the lion, "Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after
all, the grass is green?"

The lion replied, ′′You've known and seen the grass is green."

The tiger asked, ′′So why do you punish me?"

The lion replied, "That has nothing to do with the question of whether
the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is degrading
for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an
ass!"

The biggest waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic like
Gerry Binder who doesn't care about truth or reality, but only the
victory of his beliefs and illusions.

Never waste time on discussions that make no sense. There are people
like Gerry Binder who, for all the evidence presented to them, do not
have the ability to understand. Others, like Gerry Binder, are blinded
by ego, hatred and resentment, and the only thing that they want is to
scream they are right even if they aren’t.

The Tiger replied, "But it is so much fun to shove Binders shit back up
his nose".

Bwahahahahahahahahaha
--
___________________
| |
Gerry Lies
|___________________|
\ (• •) /
\ /
---
| |


______________________________________
| |
Projection, Thy Name Is Gerry!
|______________________________________|
\ (• •) /
\ /
---
| |


Socialism has been murdering millions upon millions for decades in evil
wars designed to prop up the wealthy elite. It's NOT new that socialism
is willing to kill millions of his own people as their economy tanks
{Venezuela} so the wealthy can maintain power and get richer off the
backs of the oppressed people. Are we starting to see what's wrong with
the World's evil brand of socialism yet, boys and girls?


Lying Gerry's Motto: Lie, Deny and Counter-accuse:
Tell a lie Often and Loud enough and MAYBE someone will believe it:

Got any flight sim talk to contribute here today Walnut?

Let the good times roll...

===========================================
Hero's war cry: "Keep on hosing the Freedom
Fighters and wasting away the teenagers, so
we can brag about it to the gilded youths.
Let the good times roll!!!
===========================================


Offense is always free in usenet
================================

Those Offended by my Sigs are generally only self-professed war heroes,
PX warriors, newsgroup destroyers, lying blowhards, Trolls, bigots,
Pathetic Pious Pricks, POSER's, anti-American's, terrorist sympathizers,
anal retentive limpdicks, f*ckwits, lying toxic mega trolls,
race-baiters, Bacon Boys, paranoid schizophrenics and village idiots.
It is delivered only in the form of harmless, tiny little electronic
characters appearing on their monitors, tablets or cell phones.


---------------------------

POSER - Exaggerator

Exaggerators actually served, but inflate or in some cases just
make up important details. These are the kinds of people who,
for example, might have been a cook but want everyone to think
that he was some kind of elite ninja SpecOps killer.
They generally have enough knowledge about the military to fake
it with their civilian friends, but usually get outed quickly enough
when in the company of other veterans, especially those with the
kind of experience that the poser is claiming to have.
http://www.havokjournal.com/culture/veterans-hate-posers-much/

==============================================



There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING preventing people posting
flightsim and/or aviation related material here except
Lying Gerry and the NoT's intolerance of the rights
of others and their psychological inability to stop
posting confrontational, hypocritical, broken logic,
totally unrelated to simming.

Therefore, please do not complain about any lack of
flightsim and/or aviation related material here if _you_
have not complained directly to Lying Gerry and/or to the NoT.
In the meantime, please enjoy the thought provoking
"off-topic" discussions brought to you by the destroyers
of AGMFS, Lying Gerry and the NoT.
Who knows, they may even fry your mind.

The facts speak for themselves:

Fact [1]: Two control freaks (Lying Gerry and his flying monkey
Cyril), who thought they owned this newsgroup, attacked the rest
of the group and tried to ostracized them because they
occasionally voiced OT Posts.

Fact [2]: Lying Gerry "trolled" insanely for years.
Lying Gerry then blamed everyone else for the destruction
of the newsgroup by claiming he was the victim.

*False Victimization Syndrome*
The cyberstalker will claim that the victim is
harassing him/her. Bocij writes that this phenomenon has been noted in a
number of well-known cases. – And yet ANOTHER hallmark of your average
Troll"


===================================
THE AGMFS GROUP HAS MOVED AWAY TO:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1433553270286096/
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com
GOD
2021-10-14 01:25:45 UTC
Permalink
On Thu, 23 Sep 2021 11:20:56 -0500, Bob Smith, a.k.a. Bully boB,
Bob_Copter_Six, a.k.a. Truth Sayer, a.k.a. Gerrys Worst Nightmare,
a Trump-voting, AR-15 loving, fake news regurgitating, Stormfront,
Breitbart, Infowars and The Daily Stormer reading, obnoxious, lying,
defamatory, CYBERSTALKING, neo-Nazi white supremacist
"patriot" TOXIC ABUSE TROLL who is most likely a member of
white nationalist terror groups such as "Atomwaffen", "The Oath
Keepers", and "The Base", and who was majorly instrumental in
the destruction of this once fine flight sim newsgroup once again
used the following derogatory, defamatory and abusive terms when
FUCKTARD, lying blowhard troll, welfare fraudster fucknut,
terrorist sympathizing, dole-bludging, anal retentive limpdick,
race-baiting, Net Cop Spider, Wanker Spider, Humourless Git Spider,
Control Freak Spider, racist anarchist, cry-bully, village idiot,
ass-licking, sperm guzzling, cock snogging, scrotum sucking, bum
banging, pig fucking, Fritz admiring, animal fondling, wank cloth,
spunk trumpet, thunder cunt, waste-of-rations, spunk bubble
horrenda-cunt, terrorist-supporting, fucknugget.. etc., etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking

Poor Bully boB... What a sad little military issue brainwashed brain
he's got. - so bereft of worthwhile ideas. And now that it's come
down to the endgame, what's he got left? Cyberstalking, abuse, and
defamatory lies.... Cyberstalking, abuse and defamatory lies is all
he's got. That's it. He's got nothing else. Nil. Nada. Zip.

And what's it all about? Well, this AmeriKKKan "patriot" is the last
remaining pathetic member of a small gang of abusive and defamatory
cyber-thugs who destroyed this newsgroup by waging their
five-year-long cyber-bullying War On Gerry, starting in 2010.

And why? Well, it's all because Gerry had the temerity to call out
and challenge OFF TOPIC AmeriKKKan "patriot" war propaganda bullshit
(and other off topic crap) which really had no place in what was
supposed to be an _international_ flightsim forum.

Thanks to the efforts of Bully boB and his small gaggle of "patriot"
compadres, a mass exodus of people occurred and this newsgroup
ceased being a flightsim newsgroup in 2015. Since then, apparently
with the aim of ensuring that this newsgroup did not recover,
he continued, like the true "patriot" he is, to ongoingly subject
Gerry to
abuse and defamatory lies. So, to be clear, dear reader, Bully boB
has
been abusing and defaming Gerry for TEN YEARS now!

===================================================

Here's a test readers can do: Go back over _any_ sample of 100
threads in the last ten years, and see who, IN EACH THREAD,
_initiates_ the personal abuse. I assert that you will find that
Bully boB is the perpetrator in 99.9% of cases and then it will become
clear to the reader who the LYING DEFAMATORY ABUSE TROLL is
around here.

==================================================

Cyberstalking, abuse and defamatory lies. That's all Bully boB's got.
That's his best shot. Says it all, really. So, as you can see, Bully
boB, like most AmeriKKKan "patriots", has severe unresolved
psychological issues. Cognitive dissonance and psychological
projection have so distorted his already-fucked worldview that he,
like his hero, Donald "I cannot tell a lie" Trump, no longer has even
the faintest grip on reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

However, we really ought to be a bit forgiving of Bully bob. You see,
it's not really his fault. He, like millions upon millions of other
AmeriKKKan "patriots" is the brainwashed product of the military
industrial complex. They fed him a whole barrel-full of propaganda
crap in order to get him to be a nice little unthinking attack droid
(I don't know why they call it the "Defence" Department - they ought
to call it the Attack Department.)

So, there was poor little brainwashed Bully boB, a head full of
beliefs based on lies and war propaganda, and along comes "commie"
Gerry with a whole bunch of challenging ideas. What's a "patriot" to
do? Cognitive dissonance happened, that's what.

Part of Bully boB's brain knows, deep down, that Gerry is right, so
what does it do? Its brainwashed other half can't let him admit that,
so it goes into cerebral overload and blows a fuse. Its fried
cognitive circuits now cobble together an ersatz "reality" in which
wrong is right, black is white, down is up, and so on - just so it can
stay true to its "patriot" brainwashing.

But the other part of his brain, the part that knows that Gerry is
right, is still there, and it's disgusted with what "patriot" brain
is now thinking. Guilt and self-loathing set in, but they must, at
all costs be suppressed, so... projection happens... Gerry is wrong.
It's all Gerry's fault. Hate Gerry! Big Bad Evil Gerry! Gotta get
rid of Gerry! Etc., etc., etc.

Dear reader, you really need to get that Bully bob, due to the
cognitive dissonance caused by his brain trying reconcile the
undeniable truth of the reality all around him with the "patriot"
lies and propaganda he's been (and being) fed by his political
masters, leaves his brain nowhere to go but to La La Land.

As Jesus once said "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they
do."

But you watch, dear reader, Builly boB will come back at this message
with - you guessed it - more lies and abuse. He's been stuck in this
brain-fried cognitive dissonance loop for ten years now. He can't
stop. His "patriot" brain won't let him. He has to "save" AmeriKKKa.

"...and the beat goes on, the beat goes on..."



=============================
US war cry: "Keep on killin' 'em till
they submit to our superior culture!
Hooah!!!"
=============================
US Rationalisation #1: "We had to
destroy the village in order to save
it from the Viet Cong"
=============================
US Rationalisation #2: "We had to
destroy the country in order to save
it from Saddam Hussein."
=============================
US Rationalisation #3: "We had to
destroy the world in order to save
it from people who don't like being
fucked over by our corporations."
=============================
Bully Bob's Rationalisation:
"We 'patriots' had to destroy this
newsgroup in order to save it from
'the Beast of AGMSFS'."
=============================

.Gerry's Worst Nightmare
2021-09-23 16:21:13 UTC
Permalink
Australia’s draconian lockdown restrictions must end
By Russell Coates

Published on August 25, 2021



In Australia, government policy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has
consisted of keeping borders closed and implementing snap lockdowns any
time new cases emerge.

Throughout the pandemic, Australia’s government has chosen the path of
increasingly severe restrictions to combat COVID-19.

*However, a year of authoritarian policies such as stay-at-home orders,
the closure of workplaces, and the prohibition of most leisure
activities have not only failed to reduce the infection rate but have
also taken their toll on the continued cooperation of a weary population*.

*In spite of these efforts and despite being largely cut off from the
rest of the world, the infection rate has risen across Australia over
the past two months*.


Freedom of expression must not become a casualty of the pandemic

While restrictions on public gatherings vary between states, much of
Australia’s population has seen its freedom of assembly suspended for as
long as their government sees it necessary. In Sydney, *individuals now
face on-the-spot fines of up to $3,700 (A$5,000) for not complying with
stay-at-home orders*, up from A$1,000 previously.

As such, despite an effective ban on protests, an increasing number of
Australians have taken to the streets to voice their opposition to
draconian lockdown restrictions. Sadly, rather than upholding the right
to protest, a crucial component of a free society, *the authorities’
response has been one of further escalating repression*.

Last week, in Sydney, numerous protesters were arrested as they
attempted to assemble and march to a park. *The organizer was
subsequently sentenced to three months in prison*. Many attempted
protests have been quashed by the authorities, who have made extensive
use of pepper spray.


By criminalizing peaceful protest and compelling the authorities to
intervene, the current government policy is increasing the risk of
violent altercations and even the risk of spreading the virus amid the
ensuing chaos. The authorities are also undermining social trust by
*appealing to members of the public to report friends and family for
breaches of lockdown regulations*.

When governments remove the right to protest against their policies, it
creates a dangerous lack of accountability on top of the obvious
infringements on what should be considered a fundamental human right in
any free society.

Draconian lockdown restrictions inflict a massive economic and social cost

The recent surge in protests is understandable in the context of the
severity of Australia’s lockdown restrictions. At this point, it should
go without saying that stay-at-home orders, particularly over any
prolonged period of time, carry disastrous economic and social costs
which can far outweigh the benefits.


In Australia, due to extremely strict travel restrictions, many people
have been unable to reunite with loved ones abroad for the duration of
the pandemic. However, Australia’s most recent period of lockdown
provides some particularly poignant examples of the costs of lockdown
restrictions.

For instance, *it is illegal to travel into locked-down regions under
any circumstances, even to attend a funeral*. This is enforced through
the numerous police checkpoints across the country, and *authorities
pledging to take a “no-nonsense approach” to dissent*.

Furthermore, a particularly disturbing story recently emerged whereby
*authorities shot dead several dogs in an animal shelter in order to
prevent volunteers from leaving home to care for them*.

Even in those parts of Australia where people are still allowed outside,
restrictions have wandered into the realm of the absurd. For example, in
a rant about people using outdoor pop-up bars for “pub crawls,” Victoria
Premier Daniel Andrews asserted that *patrons are banned from removing
their masks to drink*.


When months of draconian lockdown restrictions have not proven effective
at eliminating the spread of the virus, we must wonder at what point
will governments understand the unsustainability of policies based on
constant social and economic disruption and realize that a different
approach to the pandemic is needed. One that encourages individual
responsibility around risk mitigation instead of indefinite periods of
house arrest.

The people of Australia must have the right to go out and earn a living.

*Australia’s snap lockdowns are an attempt to deflect from earlier poor
decisions*


*What is clear about Australia’s current situation is that it is far
more rooted in poor decisions by the government over the past year than
it is about irresponsible individuals*. A particularly prominent example
of this was the government’s mistaken idea that by remaining isolated
from the rest of the world, Australia could eliminate the virus
entirely, thus placing less emphasis on ensuring that Australians have
access to vaccines.

*When considering the vaccination rate of other developed countries,
Australia lags far behind*. This is a result of a slow vaccine rollout,
with previously low infection rates contributing to government
complacency in procuring an adequate supply of vaccines, as well as
regulatory delays. As of August 2021, largely due to supply shortages,
*only around 25% of Australians have been fully vaccinated*, as opposed
to upwards of 50% in other developed countries.


However, after the number of daily cases hit record highs, Australian
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated that the country will only
begin to implement a strategy of living with the virus once the
vaccination rate reaches 70% among the adult population. This means that
any meaningful reopening, even just on the scale of what is seen in some
parts of Europe and North America, remains a long way off.

Politicians and state authorities continually try to deflect attention
away from the shortcomings of the government’s vaccine rollout program.
Instead, they will gladly lay all of the blame for the rise in cases,
and thus the draconian lockdown restrictions they insist are the only
option, on the Australian public.

The Australian government’s heavy handed response to dissent against its
current lockdown policies is not something one would expect in a
supposedly free society and must cease immediately.

If the Australian government is allowed to violate the rights of
Australian citizens due to an emergency, what’s stopping them from
creating an emergency to break the law in the future?




Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha

Fucking nanny State...

And the sheep are sucking the elite's assholes, Gerry loves it......










===================================
THE AGMFS GROUP HAS MOVED AWAY TO:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1433553270286096/
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.Gerry's Worst Nightmare
2021-09-23 16:21:26 UTC
Permalink
No Liberty? No Problem


Australians shrug at their government’s draconian pandemic response.
Arthur Chrenkoff August 30, 2021


Riot police firing rubber bullets into lockdown protesters. Rescue dogs
being shot to prevent volunteers travelling to collect them. Nighttime
curfews and one hour of exercise per day. Five-kilometer travel limits.
Soldiers patrolling suburbs to enforce lockdowns. Health bureaucrats
advising the citizenry not to stop and talk to their neighbors while
walking their dog.

*What the hell is happening Down Under*? “Totalitarianism,” says Tucker
Carlson. *“Australia has lost its collective mind*,” according to Ben
Shapiro. “*If we invade Australia we will be greeted as liberators*,”
argues Jack Posobiec. Has Covid-19 really turned one of the world’s
oldest democracies into a dystopian health dictatorship? As my Polish
grandmother used to say, things are rarely as good or as bad as they appear.

First, some background to the current crisis. Australia has been the
victim of both its success and its failure in tackling Covid. At just
under 1,000 deaths, Australia has had the second-lowest mortality among
the OECD countries (after New Zealand). It stands at just over 36 people
per million of population, versus 1,853 for the United States. It helps,
of course, to be an island nation that had closed its international
borders at the start of the pandemic. The border remains closed today,
with permits required to come to Australia (issued in limited numbers
and limited circumstances) and to leave it. The few arrivals are subject
to a 14-day quarantine. In addition, state governments have from the
outset reacted with hard lockdowns and closures of their own borders.
Flattening the curve was so successful that it prompted the transition
to the elimination, or “zero Covid,” strategy. Hence, nowadays a mere
handful of new cases is enough to send a state capital city with a
multimillion population, or even an entire state, into lockdown in an
attempt to contain and suppress an outbreak.

Success in keeping the infection numbers and deaths down has bred
complacency, which in turn has led to failure. Starting late and slowly,
the vaccination program has been plagued by problems, such as the
*locally produced AstraZeneca vaccine, on which the federal government
made its big—and sole—bet, generating serious side effects*. Such
problems are extremely rare, to be sure, but in an overall climate of
public health hysteria, these issues proved catastrophic for public
confidence. Still, the rollout has sped up significantly, and the
population is approaching an 80 percent vaccination-rate target, lured
in part by the carrots of eased restrictions in the future.

To those half-jokingly tweeting about invading and liberating Australia,
I have some bad news: *Australia does not want to be liberated. Strong
majorities support the harsh measures*. Several state elections over
this time have seen incumbents comfortably reelected on platforms of
acting tough against Covid, amid messaging that those advocating a
lighter touch want to kill your grandma. In Victoria, where the
left-wing Labor government has been by far the harshest and most
trigger-happy—Melbourne has been under “hard” lockdown for more than 200
days so far—polling suggests only a small dip in support, not nearly
enough to unseat the administration. The consensus can be distilled into
the following: Look at the rest of the world! Our government has kept us
safe so far. We can’t allow what has happened in the United States or
Europe to happen here.

American readers might be surprised at such a supine public attitude in
the face of some of the hardest and longest-lasting Covid restrictions
in the developed world. To the extent that Americans think of Australia,
they might think of a staunch ally in wartime, or perhaps a relaxed but
tough and rough-around-the-edges country that has produced Crocodile
Dundee and a long procession of Hollywood’s leading action men. All that
might be accurate, but the truth is that *Australia simply does not (and
never did) possess as strong a libertarian streak as America*. For all
the jokes about theirs being a “nation of convicts,” *Australians have
always been far more statist and beholden to authority than Americans*.

A powerful coalition of those with the most to lose and those who have
not lost anything is driving the official “zero Covid” fantasy. The
media has piled on, helping the government to terrify the population.
*The Fauci Syndrome is strong in Australia*, too: health experts and
bureaucrats have tasted unprecedented fame, power, and influence, and
continue to be among the main drivers of the most ridiculous
restrictions*. The ever-growing section of society directly or
indirectly dependent on taxpayers for its livelihood has been well care
for during Covid-related upheavals. Those most at risk of death or
serious complications remain strongly supportive of government
“protecting” them from the virus. *And the so-called laptop class also
hasn’t had a bad pandemic, with many enjoying being able to work from home*.

*This leaves a minority of Australians driven to despair by isolation,
lockdowns, travel restrictions, and the disappearance of their
livelihoods*. Service industries, particularly hospitality, have been
hardest hit by forced closures and other restrictions. The economy
continues to chug along, *as the money printer in Canberra churns out
tens of billions in handouts*. The open federal money tap has allowed
state governments, mostly in the hands of the opposition center-Left, to
go to extremes; in any case, the center-Right small-business
constituency is suffering the most. This is not a sustainable strategy,
even if the governing center-Right has largely given up on fiscal
responsibility.

The success in suppressing Covid comes with other price tags. The
single-minded obsession that no one get sick and die from Covid is being
paid for by a slowly unfolding *mental-health crisis*. Social isolation
and dislocation are taking their toll in terms of *rising suicide,
depression, substance abuse, and domestic violence*. Physical health
suffers, too, as treatable conditions don’t get treated in the health
system that now seems to have only one goal.

How long can this last? *If it was up to the drunk-on-power politicians
and bureaucrats who have found a winning electoral formula, health
experts who have found relevance, and the deathly scared who have found
a sense of safety (and, for some at least, the frisson of being a part
of something big and important), the answer is “forever*.” Which is why
the federal government—belatedly trying to orchestrate a return to some
normalcy once certain vaccination levels are reached—finds its efforts
contradicted by state governments and health experts arguing that the
vaccination target actually needs to be (the unreachable and
unrealistic) 90 percent or 95 percent, that lockdowns should continue
even with a highly vaccinated population, and that international borders
should stay closed indefinitely. *That this is not great marketing—get
vaccinated, but you still won’t be able to do anything!—needs no genius
to recognize*. Sadly, little evidence has materialized of any major
shift in public sentiment. *The powers that be still find it easy to
taint the opposition to their “zero Covid” policies as callous,
anti-science, anti-vax, right-wing extremists*.

*Will people finally start getting restless as the rest of the developed
world slowly returns to normal*? Here’s wishing. For now, Australia
remains a salutary lesson—an example of what can happen when an easily
isolated population is subjected to a relentless scare campaign that
plays to existing prejudices and exploits popular innumeracy and lack of
critical thinking*.

*The land Down Under is now a Galapagos archipelago of fear, on its own
evolutionary path to a utopia where no one ever dies* (but terms and
conditions apply). Like the Galapagos tortoise, too, the solution is to
withdraw inside its shell—but let’s hope it’s not for 150 years.










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