There has been some coverage in the media of the 860+ page Covid-19 Response Inquiry Report.1 It’s mostly a selective, mealy-mouthed recount of the Federal Government’s handling of the pandemic (I don’t actually believe it was a pandemic but since everyone keeps calling it that). For the vast majority of Australians who had their lives turned upside down by what the authorities did in response to covid, I suspect they will find this report deeply unsatisfying.
The conduct of state governments, except when they acted jointly with the federal government, largely escapes scrutiny. This means that some of the worst aspects of covid authoritarianism are given cursory treatment. For the most part vaccine mandates, arguably the most intrusive and paternal “public health measures,” were largely implemented by state governments through the legal instrument of public health orders. While vaccine mandates are mentioned 44 times in the 353,000 word report, the sections on mandates runs not more than a few pages. Even still the report makes it quite clear that there was immediate resistance to their imposition which continues to this day:
Vaccine mandates were particularly controversial. The mandates were associated with point-in-time upticks in vaccination and were justified in critical care settings, but they helped drive vaccine skepticism and hesitancy when used more generally and contributed to frontline workforce shortfalls in areas that could least afford this at the time of opening up. These issues persist to this day, with troubling declines in vaccination for COVID-19 and other diseases across multiple population groups, including children missing out on routine childhood vaccinations.
and…
broad opposition to vaccine mandates is one of the clearest findings from focus groups and surveys conducted by the Inquiry. Mandates were described as a heavy-handed and controlling response which lacked scientific justification. People could not understand why vaccines were being mandated for people who were at low risk of being exposed to or of having severe COVID-19.
It also quotes Dominic Perrottet ( I don’t know why I think a politician is necessarily quote worthy except I think Perrottet is a Catholic and I agree with him):
Health officials and governments were acting with the right intentions to stop the spread, but if the impact of vaccines on transmission was limited at best, as it is now mostly accepted, the law should have left more room for respect of freedom. Vaccines saved lives but, ultimately, mandates were wrong. People’s personal choices should not have cost them their jobs.
This graph shows that by the middle of 2021 support for the covid vaccines was already significantly lower than in the previous year with the number of people seeking to delay, avoid or refuse vaccination jumping by 20%. In this light the mandates, which came along later in 2021 can be seen as an attempt to coerce that quarter of the population questioning the official narrative on vaccines:
In light of this report it might be interesting to relate a part of my own experience with vaccine mandates. I remember it being very isolating. It certainly did not feel as though a quarter of the population was thinking as I did, though I knew that many had been cowed by the fear and intimidation which was the general social climate at the time.
When Covid came along I was a full-time teacher for the NSW Department of Education. I had been teaching full-time for more than 15 years with the last seven at a school in Northern NSW. On the 26th of August 2021 New South Wales introduced vaccine mandates for all aged care workers, healthcare, disability, school and early childhood education and care workers.
Soon after the announcement the department of education made available an app called VACS attest where we were directed to enter our vaccination status. Having done this we were to provide a copy of our proof of vaccination to our principal. The deadline was the 8th of November by which time, if we hadn’t complied with the directives, we were not permitted to come to work. We were told that failure to comply and arriving to work after the 8th would result in the police being called.
I ignored the directives and began receiving emails encouraging me to get in line. When my principal finally confronted me I told him that my medical situation was none of his business. He told me that I would be referred to the Professional and Ethical Standards Directive (PES) who would conduct an investigation into my failure to comply which could well end in my being sacked. I told him to do what he had to do.
The department concocted three “allegations of misconduct:”
- Failing to comply with the directions issued by Ms Yvette Cachia, Chief People Officer, on 22 October 2021 and 1 November 2021, to enter vaccination status on the department’s Vaccination Attestation and Confirmation System (VACS) by no later than 8 November 2021
- Failing to comply with the directions issued by Ms Yvette Cachia, Chief People Officer, on 22 October 2021 and 1 November 2021, to show your principal a copy of you vaccination evidence by 8 November 2021.
- Failing to meet the conditions of your employment as set out in the determination made by Ms Georgina Harrison, Secretary Department of Education, on 18 October 2021, that an employee must provide either (a) vaccination evidence or (b) a medical contraindication certificate.
I was assigned an investigating officer, Maysa Chakik, and a case number: CPM-2021-3190.
In order to sack me the department’s own internal processes required that a sham investigation be carried out which gave me a right of response. My response was as follows:
To whom it may concern
This is a response to a Letter of Allegation I received from the Professional and Ethical Standards Directorate (PES) on the 19.11.2021. This letter alleges that I have engaged in misconduct by failing to comply with the department’s new vaccination mandate rules.
I’ll say from the outset that my responding to these allegations should not be read as an indication that I think this process is fair or likely to result in a meaningful consideration of the case. Nor should it be taken to mean that I think that I have done anything wrong. The reference in the letter to procedural fairness is laughable, as is the pretense of concern for the wellbeing of staff in distress. I understand this charade as a formality that may absolve yourselves of responsibility to allow you to do whatever you want. While I hope for due consideration, I am not so naïve as to expect it.
Apparently “the paramount consideration in these matters in the protection of children, ensuring a safe environment for students, staff and visitors at all times.”
My understanding is that the likelihood of children dying of Corona Virus rounds to none. It is also my understanding that the vaccines you are recommending do not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus. It is also obvious from experience here and overseas that the vaccine is no guarantee against serious illness or death and whatever protection they confer wanes over a relatively short period of time. This point is also underscored by the push for boosters. How is it then that the requirement for all staff to be vaccinated can be justified on the basis of protecting children?
It is my understanding that the vaccines you are mandating are still in the trial phase. Since they have not been trialed over the medium or long term there is no way of knowing what the medium to long term effects of them are. It is also my understanding that there are legitimate concerns about adverse events related to the vaccines, including death and permanent disability. As a healthy 39-year-old it is my understanding that Corona Virus presents only a negligible risk of death or serious disease to me. However, it is a relief to know that, since vaccination is available to all staff, my decision to abstain presents no risk to my colleagues. Given this situation can you explain to me how the mandates are justified on the basis of providing a safe environment for staff?
It is my understanding that I am supposed to have certain rights with respect to medical treatment and privacy. These rights mean that valid consent must be obtained from me for any proposed medical treatment. Part of the criteria for valid consent is that the consent “must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.” How is it possible for me to provide valid consent in these circumstances that you have created? How is it proper that dozens of my colleagues have been coerced into getting vaccinated?
I should also have my right to medical privacy respected. This means that I should not be compelled to tell my principal, Yvette Cachia, Georgina Harrison or anyone else anything about the state of my health or the medicine I take. Nor should I be pressured by loss of livelihood to enter these details onto a computer system
This is a summary of my analysis of the situation. Correct me where I am wrong. So you can see I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand I have the department saying they’ll end my career if I don’t do as I’m told and to hell with what I think, and on the other I have what I consider to be a reasonable assessment of the situation that says to vaccinate makes no sense. Is might right?
What does the future hold for an education system whose leadership rules by decree and rides rough-shod over the long-established rights of citizens? Forced injections are the starkest confirmation I know for C.S. Lewis’ dystopian observation that “rulers have become owners.” It is difficult to understand how a bureaucrat that nobody ever heard of can make a determination that tens of thousands of people will receive injections against their will or be thrown on the scrap heap. It seems to me that if you can do this anything is possible.
I am currently on stress leave from work. I’ll exhaust my sick leave entitlements in a couple of weeks and I don’t know what I’ll do next. The fifteen or so years I have invested in teaching will be scrubbed out and I’ll have to start from scratch in something else. I’m not sleeping as well as before and we are worried that we’ll no longer be able to afford to keep my wife at home to look after our three young kids. I would add that I remain willing and ready to work as always.
The cost is high but despite all this I must follow my reason. I have the rest of my life to live with reason as my guide and for the sake of me and my family I won’t abandon it. To abandon one’s own reasoned conclusions is to deny the validity of one’s perception of reality, and then insanity lurks not far off. For those who hold to raw power, good luck to you, but you should know that history recommends against it.
William Waite, 1984
Of course, none of this made any difference to the outcome. The final report merely recited some of the points I had made in my response and recommended that the allegations against me be sustained and “that the sustained allegations amount to misconduct.” There was no attempt to answer any of the questions I had raised in my response.
Shortly after I was notified by the Executive Director of PES that with my misconduct confirmed he was “contemplating imposing” “Dismissing you from your employment with the NSW Department of Education.” (emphasis in the original).
I was entitled to another response in the two weeks following this letter. By now this had been going on for months and I was more or less resigned to my fate. I didn’t bother with a response, but during the two week period before my sentence was to be carried out, news came down that the public health orders would not persist past May 13.
With the disappearance of the public health orders went my troubles with the department. What had been the number one priority of the education department, trumping education itself, for the previous 18 months or more was suddenly an institutional embarrassment. All the most extreme manifestations of the covid response were to be replaced with a “risk-assessment approach” which never arrived (I had asked for a risk assessment back in October and been sent links to NSW health websites). On coming back it felt like people had emerged from a sort of mass-hypnosis during which they knew something bad had been done to them but they weren’t quite sure what.
I ended up with a caution and my file retains the misconduct charges. I eventually went back to work where everyone was trying desperately to pretend that nothing had happened. After a while (too long) I resigned my position.
Despite the denials of head education bureaucrats the teachers and support staff who refused to be pushed around by the mandates made the education system in New South Wales inoperable. Student enrolment in public schools has dropped every year since the pandemic and staffing remains an ongoing problem. While this trouble isn’t solely attributable to vaccine mandates, I know for a fact that significant resentment persists over how the whole covid affair was mishandled. I consider myself lucky. The bitterest pill was taken by those who were coerced into doing something they didn’t want to do. I wouldn’t be the first to ask to what extent is the general collapse of sanity, usually referred to as the mental health crisis by the therapeutic state, a legacy of covid?
The general loss of trust is a theme running through the government’s Covid report.
Vaccine mandates have been associated with broader declines in public trust in government and medical science since the pandemic. Mandates were among the least preferred and understood measures taken during the pandemic. Australians now fear the politicisation of medical science and are placing their trust in local healthcare providers instead of government leaders and media.
Uptake of other vaccines has dropped significantly enough for the report to recommend “a national strategy to rebuild community trust in vaccines and improve vaccination rates.”
What this report fails to appreciate is the relationship between honesty and trust. As one submission simply advised; “Don’t lie. Most people have good intuition. Unfortunately, you lied so much during this event. Most will never ever trust you.” And that is where we are. There is throughout this report the implication that what the authorities did could have been made more acceptable to the public if they had pitched it differently, been more transparent, handled misinformation and data better or we had an Australian version of the CDC resourced and ready to go. What is closer to the truth is that there is actually no justification for what the government did; some transgressions are so egregious they are beyond the powers of even government spin to smooth out.
One more thing. The report refers repeatedly to what it calls the “alert phase” of the pandemic. This was the opening act and was characterised by massive incitement to fear, high trust, confidence and compliance with government authority. This phase inevitably waned when more became known, the initial shock of the crisis had worn off and people were better able to assess the risk for themselves. Another way to describe this phenomenon is the “rally around the flag effect” included in the report’s terminology section:
During crises, particularly international crises which may represent an existential physical threat to a country, trust in government – irrespective of partisanship and policy outlooks – increases dramatically. This surge in public support for the government has been referred to as the ‘rally around the flag’ effect, with citizens looking to the authorities – and especially to a single national leader – to guide them through the crisis
This is a well understood phenomenon and it contains a warning for when the next crisis comes barreling down the road. When that happens, and it will, we must avoid being hypnotised by the lies that would lead us into surrendering our civil liberties and sense of decency for the promise of protection.
Come wolves in sheep’s clothing. We’re expecting you.
1. Commonwealth Government. October, 20214. Covid Response Inquiry Report. Commonwealth of Australia. Available from: https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/covid-19-response-inquiry-report