And we certainly do have more "weak or corrupt leaders (and) captured authorities" since they took advantage of the 'once in a lifetime opportunity" of Covid - which the Great Unwashed allowed them to do, of course. The collapse of Conservatism, and take over by Socialism has sealed our fate. The AMA is in it up to its neck.

The Australian Medical Professionals Society needs our support.

As I've said elsewhere on these pages, the Covid response is an inflection point in our and the west's history.

Government, over the head of the data itself, imposed its 'solutions' to a problem that wasn't. Way back at the very start of the hysteria, government's could be forgiven for reacting in panic. But within two months of the outbreak, it was clear that it was indeed an over-reaction. Yet they doubled-down and imposed increasingly harsh restrictions, destroying lives and livelihoods, careers and businesses. Dissent was suppressed to the point of police shooting on peaceful protestors.

While the article tends to absolve the medical authorities, blaming the political class for all this, it has to be said that there were any number of medical 'experts' prepared to play the game for their own advantage. And a vastly greater number prepared to just go-along to get-along.

All of this was possible because Big Tech/Big Media censored dissent. Elon Musk's Twitter Files is opening a small window into how extensive and coordinated was this censorship.

The only way to ensure this doesn't happen again is to ensure the censorship doesn't happen again. But that's not in the interests of Big Government/Big Tech/Big Media/Big Pharma so there will be no efforts to investigate the censorship or to make sure it can't continue. Indeed even the evidence of the censorship of alternate views is being censored.

Dark days ahead.

Great article, well done Kara.
- But you left out the media's part in this mess.

At first do no harm.

BS, Doctors prescribe medications on a daily basis that does harm, harm to the cognitive ability of patients and harm to the sexual health of patients while withholding safer medication on the basis of an allegedly embarrassing side effect.

Seemingly work for big pharma and their profit curve without examining the evidence at all. Statins being a case in point. Or vascular dilators that cause ED!

Viagra dilates veins, arteries and protects the heart without harm, just an interesting side effect, the very opposite of harmful ED!

Think that vaccinations may cause autism with no reliable or any proven evidence whatsoever. Think that we should rely on natural immunity to protect us from most things.

Worked well during the bubonic plague the Spanish flu, polio and smallpox, didn't it. Withhold whooping cough vaccines and sit back helpless to help a new-born is infected by a carrier and dies exhausted because it can't stop cough long enough to feed.

Medicine is allegedly informed, not ignorance personified by wilfully blind antivaxxers. Without which many more millions more would have died.

COVID 19 took more lives than two world wars and the Vietnam war combined, saw scenes not seen since Napoleonic wars, when causalities were interred in mass graves.

See nothing of merit, worth or fact in this erroneous pernicious postulation, merely masquerading as informed debate.

Instead of, I believe, repeatedly peddled BS! And allowed without alleged censorship!

If there were any medical censorship in the country, I wouldn't be allowed to write what I've just written! Ditto the Author of the piece.
Alan B.

This bulwark is being slowly dismantled.
Kara Thomas,
Drawn towards the bigger Dollars is vastly different to dismantling !

"Medicine is allegedly informed, not ignorance personified by wilfully blind antivaxxers."

Hang on a minute here Alan B.
I just want you to know I'm getting really sick on this mentality.
This word right here being thrown around willy-nilly to vilify people.

'Antivaxxers'

I'm unvaxxed for Covid.
But that doesn't mean I'm against tried and true inoculations.
That word is meant to divide, coerce and vilify people.
NO OTHER REASON, and sing it just spreads fear and hate.

ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Many people like me ARE NOT opposed to vaccinations,
We're opposed to UNSAFE VACCINES.

Being opposed to the covid vaccine does not necessarily make one an antivaxxer.
Get this through your head and stop parroting the idiotbox.
(Where right now YOU ARE THE IDIOT)

I'm not some weird religious person opposed to injections of all kinds, very few people fit into that category.
And for the record, the covid vaccine is NOT inoculation.

EVERYONE ELSE - Get that through your heads as well.

- I'm sick of it -

No AC it is not inoculation but more like a flu shot that may protect you for 12 months or so until a new variant arrives as a mutant strain against which none of us have any real protection.

And will remain so until the new vaccine arrives which protects one against any new mutation or variant. Albeit, the boffins have found a particular protein in the lungs of infected but seemingly healthy folk that could be synthesised and become a medication that may provide some further protection for the vulnerable.

Nobody decided they wanted to ingest rat poison, i.e., sodium fluoride in their drinking water, but we were all medicated via town water. Where were all the antivaxxers then?

Fluoride only affects teeth enamel as it passes over the teeth, that is all and may have a cumulative affect with possible bone deformities and other abnormalities.

The (I'm all right Jack) unvaccinated are the ones that spread this killer onto others, and one only needs 15 seconds in their (stiff cheese) company to become infected!

Deny it a human host for a month, Lock down completely and keep all folk indoors without exception! And disinfect with UV in all premises and it's gone. But we can't do that cause that may trample some jerk water's rights! Right?
Alan B.

We're opposed to UNSAFE VACCINES.
Armchair Critic,
How can we know what's safe & what's not ? Not even many Doctors have a clue so how can normal, uninformed folk form a decision on these jabs ?
What can you base your stance against this vaccination on as being good or bad. The majority of people who got the jabs are still upright, some aren't. Isn't it just a case of some people having an abnormal metabolism or whatever we can call that makes them different & their reaction was not what it was for the majority ? Do people really expect to have perfect results 100% from every medication ?

Normally I have no time for anti-vax conspiracy theorists, but this author has a point. Doctors and other medical professionals are indeed on the front line public health. If they identify problems – for example, as Kerryn Phelps has done in documenting cases of severe adverse reactions to Covid vaccines – they should be encouraged to report and discuss them; even if they are seized on by the anti-vaxxers and misrepresented as embracing their cause (as also happened to Phelps).

I expect government attempts to suppress unwelcome information to backfire, badly. The truth will eventually come out, and seriously undermine public faith in government heath messaging. And the one thing most likely to ignite weird conspiracy theories is an actual conspiracy.

The best response to the misinformation of the anti-vaxxers is transparency, facts and logic. That means acknowledging truths that could seem to weaken the official line, such as evidence of adverse reactions and the lessened efficacy of vaccines against some new variants.

The weight of evidence still suggests overwhelmingly that we are better off if everyone is fully vaccinated unless there are specific medical reason why vaccination is not advisable for particular individuals.

I’m full vaxxed and will get my next booster when I become eligible later this year, along with my annual flu jab.

People need to accept that the vaccines are developed for the masses & it's simply bad luck if those different to the masses have adverse reactions.
To refuse vaccination based on not knowing how one's body might react is ok by me but to refuse simply on hysteria is no guarantee that one will not spread a virus to others !
If people are prepared to risk infecting others than they should also be prepared that others don't want to take the risk associating with them.