Never again will Australians be able to sneer at other countries for their 'social engineering' and political oppression. During and since Covid we have been, and continue to be, the leaders of the West in Big Brotherism, Big Government and Big Bullshite; but with Small Freedoms allowed to us. With the Labor/Green/Marxist government we now have, and no real opposition, Australia is well and truly rooted.

Even now, with the government, the media and bureaucracy exposed as the villains they are, they are still spewing out advice to 'get the (fifth) jab', and reintroducing the monotonous, scare-mongering Covid case bulletins on the nightly news: 50% higher than blah blah, and so on.

Get ready for another totalitarian onslaught from the elected dictators. If it's not Covid, it will be something else.

Disagree. I think our approach was better but not perfect. Nobody got it completely right and the USA and the UK were caught with their public health policy pants down.

The Swedes relied on a non-existent herd immunity and like the USA and the UK paid the price with their death toll.
Kids were the least effected while the oldies were falling like flies.

Why? Well, I believe it was because the kids had cleaner less clogged arteries/veins and were more active with better cardiovascular outcomes.

Lesson? Allow managed EDTA chelation therapy for the oldies as part of public health policy and if big pharma wants a double blind as part of the deal, then let the double blind be on the included complementary medicine which they inferred was doing the cleanout work!

And nobody's licence to practise medicine should be on the line should they choose to include chelation therapy as part of their practice.
Alan B.

From the article... " Sweden was one of the few countries that adopted what must be regarded as a liberal, light-touch approach in response to the unfolding pandemic."

Here, we had a Liberal government, not a liberal government. Unlike Sweden, our elites didn't and don't trust the people to make decisions for themselves. So people were forced to stay home. The government made decisions about who you could and couldn't visit or have visit you. And when some refused to kowtow, the government unleashed their monopoly on violence against the dissidents to the point of shooting on them.

We had a Liberal leader admit that some policies were implemented not because of safety but because it made policing easier. The antithesis of liberalism.

Australia suffers for these errors. The current whining about interest rates ignores the fact that it is caused by the lockdown policies. New reports emerge constantly showing the massive detrimental effect on kids who, it needs to be noted, were all but immune to the virus.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/australia/pandemic-seriously-harmed-kids-mental-health-study

All Australian governments failed the people in 2020 but the Liberal governments who abandoned liberalism with alacrity were the worst. They have suffered the electoral consequences for their perfidity and deserve to have so suffered.

And the worst is yet to come.

I've never really understood the aversion to social engineering that so many right wingers have. Can someone explain why creating conditions conducive to people doing the right thing isn't better in every way than relying on harsh punishments to prevent them from doing the wrong thing?

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Alan B.,
>Well, I believe it was because the kids had cleaner less clogged arteries/veins
>and were more active with better cardiovascular outcomes
There is no scientific basis to that belief. The medical scientists who studied it at the time found it was due to the kids having more free T cells, while the older people had fewer.

I don't know if creation therapy is as good as you say or whether you're just posting one side of the story and ignoring the other (like you do with thorium power). But even if it's great at improving blood flow, it won't have much effect on your immune system.

Dear mhaze,

You write: "New reports emerge constantly showing the massive detrimental effect on kids who, it needs to be noted, were all but immune to the virus."

Well not all kids and not all conditions it appears.

"In this study, we only found statistically significant increases for pediatric hospital in patient admissions related to DSH behaviors and ED attendances related to eating disorders over the 1.5-year–long COVID-19 period with restrictions."

Interestingly substance abuse admissions fell through the Covid period as did attention-deficit, disruptive, impulse-control disorders.

Further they said:

"The increase was predominantly observed among adolescent girls aged 12to18 years and children and adolescents living in the least disadvantaged areas."

It would be an interesting follow up study to determine why the bulk of the impact was felt in the least disadvantaged areas which make up just 20% of Australia's demographic.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/4102.0main+features30mar+2010

Still quite concerning none the less. Thankfully the figures were not matched by suicide rates.

"Can someone explain why creating conditions conducive to people doing the right thing isn't better in every way than relying on harsh punishments to prevent them from doing the wrong thing?"

Well in essence, it comes down to who is deciding what is the right thing and what is the wrong thing.

From the Australian: "After three years, Sweden has experienced 23,777 deaths from or with Covid-19, compared with Australia’s 19,477, according to the World Health Organisation."

Sweden has just 2/5ths the population of Australia.

This is what success looks like to some people.

funny stuff. the swedes are bagged for their social democratic policies (high taxes and so on), but praised for their covid policies despite a higher number of deaths.

Aussies supported Aust govt approach for a long time: end of story.