If you want everyone to become infected with the Covid-19 virus then go ahead and be my guest. I have never read such a load of selfish drivel.
David

There is some agenda to rush getting a jab in every arm, not just a jab for the vulnerable. A rush to get everyone compliant, with a digital ID, leading sooner rather than later to cashless society.

The State versus the individual;
The archetypal bottom-rung Academic has spoken.
It's not the State vs individuals, it's Sheeple vs the State ! Sheeple all over the place want but do not contribute.

Thanks Sonia Bowditch for your article- it's good that you have presented the alternative view here in this polarized and demonizing social context. It's interesting to see journalists lose their cool (and objectivity) in the face of their (mis)understanding- one suspects that the media is no longer a pillar of democracy- perhaps this is no longer so of the media and perhaps also of democracy.

There's a lot of scared and angry people- in WWII Britain it's seems that the threat was more real in a sense but people handled it better. It seems strange to think we are the ancestors of these WWII Briton's- in some sense perhaps the same people.

Thanks Sonia.

The bottom line has to be that your personal freedoms and rights are not more important than my life.

The first two lines strike a chord. Before I read on though, I have to remark that, whatever the political class is doing to us, we have allowed them to do it. We are pathetic sheep. Not "sheeple", individual: we are more sheep than we are people these days.

"Narrow mindedness of our government"? No. Bastardly minded, dictatorially minded. Are people really ignoring the comments from the elites that Covid is "the perfect opportunity to …." . People from Prince Charles to the Great Reset arseholes, to the Cancel Culture mob: they are spelling out their intentions, and the dozy population is ignoring them!

Covid has most certainly released the tyranny that is always just below the surface in the bloody awful people who want to be politicians and taxpayer-funded demigods.

It's good to see an increasing number of people with a public voice speaking out against these rotten thugs in government and the public, so-called service. And, the media should also be targeted for its appalling scaremongering.

Noone should ever be able to think of Australia, its government, its institutions - including its police - the same way they did before the pandemic.

However, I can't sympathise with the non-vaxxers. I respect their right not to vaccinate, and it's none of my business what they do or don’t do. But there are better ways to resist tyrannical governments than putting your health at risk unnecessarily.

The author wrote:

The narrow-mindedness of our government (both national and state) is such that it has prioritised avoiding death by COVID above all else.

But the author is wrong. The governments are prioritising saving countless Australian lives and the capacity of the health system to survive by requiring mutual obligations amongst the citizens.

The author wrote, in relation to unintended consequences of a lockdown:

Self-harm and suicide attempts, for example.

Again she is wrong if she believes that the numbers from potential suicides are so big so as to warrant a change in public health policy. I'd wager the number of actual suicides is a minuscule fraction of the number of total deaths from a unchecked pandemic. Let alone as a percentage of the number of hospital presentations which would occur without lawful restrictions placed on and complied with by the populace.

The author wrote:

Imagine someone who is thinking about suicide, who breaks the rules and leaves their house.

Sorry, but my thoughts are not with any imaginary death but with the documented passing of vulnerable men, women and children across the country whose deaths are a function of staff (security guards, cruise line and aged care employees) working around them, unvaccinated.

Just a quick aside - if lockdowns work, how is it that NSW is getting more cases each day? Is it the mania for testing? Is it that that those tests are rigged - after all, the common flu seems to have vanished altogether. Get run over by a bus these days, and Covid is sure to turn up at your autopsy.

"if lockdowns work, how is it that NSW is getting more cases each day?"
Perhaps if people obeyed the lockdown rules and didn`t openly, non masked, protest the lockdowns may work.
You cannot legislate against stupidity.

A risible rant and highly disingenuous diatribe and that is high praise in the context of the post!

I am for one, glad new laws are to be enacted, that will fact check then trace down the authors of (shovelled by the shipload) BS like this is! Then follow that with exposure and some real jail time for the monumental mendacity like the (knows SFA) Author's example/C.R.A.P.?!
Alan B.

"Perhaps if people obeyed the lockdown rules and didn`t openly, non masked, protest the lockdowns may work. You cannot legislate against stupidity."

Yes, ateday, that is one reason why they don't work. But my question was rhetorical. Lockdowns will never work on humans.

The narrow-mindedness of our government (both national and state) ....
Is that really so ?
How about seeing this from the Government's side ? There are 16 million healthy people of whom 10 million are Sheeple who will never, repeat never, think of others as Govt has to.
Those complaining about having to stay home are those that don't want to comply with anything ever.
Ask them to do something for the Nation such as serving in a National Service & what answer will you get ? A resounding "Stuff You", yet when they require help it's "It's their Democratic Right" to demand.
The conspiracy crowd will never amount to society building people !

What I am finding interesting is that the same people who are causing a fuss about 'discrimination' against them because of their refusal to get vaccinated were happy to vote against same sex marriage.

Indeed the same lot who are saying a business should have had the right to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple are now saying businesses shouldn't have the right to refuse to serve the unvaccinated.

This article smacks of the same.

SteeleRedux,
Placing the Homosexuals in the same basket as Covid-19 is an insult to the Chinese Lab technicians !

I am coming late to comment on this article, but from the comments, I can not let it pass. Ms Bowditch has made some vary valid and pertinent points in her article. For this, she has been attacked by a number of people who really seem extremely frightened by the truth.
Many of those commenting often try to claim the superior knowledge level. Often claiming to have above average intelligence and objective thinking abilities.
Here many seem to have lost all of those abilities.
When the Federal Minister for Health, Mr Greg Hunt, stood up in the House of Representatives and said "If you don't get vaccinated, you will catch Covid and die". His level of misunderstanding and misrepresentation was at a level that when going the other way, has had people's accounts in Twitter, Facebook and Youtube suspended.
A quick look at the numbers as presented on a daily basis by the respective Premiers, Chief Health Officers, Ministers for Health and Deputy Premiers prove him very wrong on both points.
Globally, the numbers as presented by Worldometer show that no where have the overall numbers of people in any country testing positive for Covid 19 and it's variants been greater than 20% of the population with the majority under 10%. Australia comes in at under 0.3%.
That's not exactly "catch covid".
"And die"? Even on the worst cases, the deaths have been less than 10% of those who have contracted the virus. Australia presently sits at less than 0.2%. See the irresponsible hyperbole?
More to come.

Continuing.
Is Covid-19 widespread through the community?
It certainly has never met the Dictionary definition of "pandemic" in Australia. Widespread? No, no State has it disseminated widely across the whole of the State (even now as NSW is having clusters turn up in western towns, it is not spread throughout the communities, but restricted to specific social demographs), usually it has been found only within about a 25 km radius of the respective CBDs with individual cases popping up elsewhere from people from within those CBDs and even here, it seems unable to infect more than a handful of immediate victims.
The other part of the definition includes "serious", as in causing much greater than normal hospitalisations and deaths. Not doing very well at meeting that criteria either as in Australia, the recovery rate is over 50% with a death rate of less than 0.2%. I'll say that again "less than zero point two percent".
But the daily numbers confirm that it's been spreading rampantly through the communities. No, it hasn't. The numbers as usually given at the daily press conferences by the respective Premiers, Chief Health Officers, Ministers for Health and the Deputy Premiers confirm that this is not happening.
Remember that those who are eligible for testing are from a narrow cohort of "probables". People who are claiming at least two or more of the possible symptoms, people who have been in direct contact with a confirmed positive case, or people who have been in the immediate vicinity of confirmed positive cases. And yet, even at the worst in NSW, the number testing positive was less than 0.3%. Typically before they rolled into such a high number, it had been less than 0.2%.
If you were in business and your advertising at a specific target audience of probable customers and you were getting a response of such a low level. you'd withdraw and reassess your strategy.
And when the positives are found, greater than 50% of them are coming from clearly defined social and cultural groups.
To continue:

Continued:
There have been over 31 million tests carried out in Australia. These tests do not come cheap. I'm estimating that each test will be costing over $100 a time. That is a lot of money going into the pathology services. That's a milk teat that no-one will want to relinquish.
And as even the developer of the rt-PCR test emphasized, it was never intended to be used in this manner and can be set up to give a positive almost on demand.
The SARS-Cov-2 virus is not a "beast", it's not a sentient being. It has no sense of being, it has no sense of destiny, it is an opportunist blowing in the wind, easily killed by exposure to the UV of sunlight, desiccation in dry environments and cell disruption when intercepted by most disinfectants and bleaches.
The un-vaccinated do not pose any danger to the vaccinated. The vaccinated pose a greater danger to themselves and others as they may be asympomatically carrying the virus without being aware of it. It is imperative on them to behave in a socially responsible manner if they genuinely care about the health of the community.