The Covid-19 Hall of Shame

911 deaths in Australia from (with?) Covid, in 18 months. 169,301 registered and received deaths in Australia in 2019 (pre-Covid). Are we missing something here? Like a sense of proportion?

Pardon our manners, but here we must quote ourselves : “In this plague year…we saw Australians banned from returning to their own country; banned from leaving it; banned from crossing state lines, in apparent/arguable breach of section 92 of the Constitution; locked in their homes unless adjudged by a bureaucrat as ‘essential workers’; arrested on beaches, golf courses, parks (and in the case of one pregnant woman in Victoria, handcuffed at home in her pajamas for suggesting the State government was overreaching); denied necessary and in some cases life-sustaining medical treatment; forced to close businesses; forced from hospital beds into Aged Care Homes to die; quarantined, hectored, lectured, and harassed, all often to the accompaniment of confused, contradictory and opaque edicts based on the highly spurious guesses of so-called experts.”

The Varnished Culture‘s Covid Hall of Shame is housed in a hermetically-PPE-sealed edifice similar in style to Alphonse Balat’s Musee des Beaux Arts, and features many rooms. We are still curating the Great Hall madly, writing those irritating cards to explain what should be obvious, namely the leaders, experts and apologists who should be infamous rather than famous, so bear with us…We have decided to proceed in alphabetical order rather than in Dante-esque fashion. And we expect to add new wings fairly soon.  Note: The Varnished Culture wants to say that some of the people honoured in this Hall of Shame have worked hard during the pandemic; they have on occasion even tried their best. Yet what features here is a litany of fear and failure.

Daniel Andrews

The Victorian Premier heightened hysteria with his daily press-conferences. Spurned Commonwealth offers of expert and experienced assistance in the conduct of hotel quarantine. Engaged ill-equipped union mates and heavies instead. Caused 820 of the nation’s 911 Covid deaths. Then claimed, like Pilate washing his hands in sanitizer, to a lettuce-limp inquiry, that no one knew who ‘gave the order.’  Locked Victorians down en masse without targeting hot-cell areas: abused dissenters or even querists. Engaged a highly paid PR outfit, QDOS, to advise him to go in hard, on the basis that “antagonised opponents are angrier, less coherent and less persuasive.” Required masks for people outside or on their own. Closed schools and hence, opportunities, for children, in pandering to the Teachers’ Union. Then he fell down some stairs and really hurt himself – our genuine sympathies, but that left Victorians even more at the mercy of dopes and pen-pushers.  On his return, he ‘doubled-down’ and imposed even more ludicrous and oppressive powers on himself to mess with the lives of his unfortunate subjects.

Gladys Berejiklian

Once a beacon of calm reason among State Premiers, Gladys simply panicked when the Delta Goodrem Strain hit NSW shores from India. She claimed ‘thousands’ could die, and locked down the Premier State, insisting that police would inspect the shopping bags of the citizenry to ensure they were only buying essential items.  Covid remains less harmful overall than asthma or flu, and mortality in this country is negligible, the average Covid death age being above the average mortality age.  Ironically, it was an inconvenient boyfriend, rather than her executive overreach on Covid, that did her down in the end.

Joe Biden

The clearest beneficiary from Covid-19, President #46 gets a guernsey here, even late to the party as he is. Waiving intellectual property on vaccines to open the door to Russia and China; kowtowing to the latter as a shill for his artist son, he reportedly shut down a State Dept. inquiry into the Wuhan lab leak.  He’s been an enthusiastic promoter of lockdowns, the kind favoured by US blue States such as New York, Illinois and California. (As has been observed, lockdowns for Covid are not only worthless, but a cruel and harmful overreach: like the guillotine for a headache.) He said Trump should resign over Covid deaths: the mortality rate in Biden’s 11 months pretending to be at the helm has exceeded those of 2020.

Big Tech

Using its monopolies to censor anyone who strays from the Covid Orthodoxy (whatever that may be from time to time); conspiring with China, their poodles, and the pharmaceutical industry, Big Tech has become worse than any disease. Apart from smothering facts, they ridiculed, demonised and cancelled anyone suggesting an alternative to the vaccines, or raising the Wuhan leak theory. The Washington Post (owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos) led the fear charge. And the big companies made a fortune by eliminating pesky bricks-and-mortar corner-store rivals, encouraging lockdowns, and utilising cheap Mexican/Venezuelan/Guatemalan labour to swell their coffers by the billions. Facebook deleted a 100,000+ strong group sharing posts on side effects of Covid vaccines.  In February 2020, Bill Gates (whose Foundation is a big donor to the WHO, incidentally) warned of 10 million Covid deaths in Africa. Covid is like computers: no one seems to know anything, and someone wants to keep it that way.  As they say on the worldwideweb: “Beware a third strain of propaganda and a new wave of bullshit.”

The Cops

Criminalizing the citizenry, police all over the place have arrested people for walking their dog, taking a swim, reading a book in the park, or buying the wrong (inessential) thing at the shops.  Why is a tomato essential but aerosol cheese, dairy whip or beer are not? Brutal in their take-no-prisoners approach, beating peaceful protesters, checking coffee cups to ensure the unmasked were still drinking outdoors, the nadir was perhaps reached in Ballarat, Victoria, when a pregnant woman was arrested and cuffed in her home, in her pajamas, for re-tweeting about a lockdown protest. 10,000 BLM slacktivists in Melbourne last year were no problem however. The real problem seems to be the odd errant journo who covers police brutality (like Avi Yemini, who had a late night visit at his home to check that he was being a good boy.)

Andrew Cuomo

New York’s Governor was feted on CNN by prominent news anchor, Chris Cuomo, awarded an Emmy Award for his almost daily death-watch press conferences, which were adjudged to “cross…cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity” and he also ghosted a book, American Crisis, where he impartially and modestly recounted what a good job he was doing.

Meanwhile, he racked, packed and stacked sick old folks. Gracelessly slapping away President Trump’s provision of pop-up hospitals and a medical ship to treat Covid-plagued New Yorkers, Cuomo had the elderly infected plucked from NY hospitals to free-up beds for normal people and shipped back to nursing homes, where the plague attacked the State’s most vulnerable citizens. And then, it seems, his administration covered-up the damage, fudging the figures handed to the US Department of Justice. In fact over 15,000 Covid deaths were caused by the nursing home debacle. As the normally simpatico New York Times reported on 19/2/21: “The state counted the total losses, but they were attributed to the hospitals where the patients died, not the facilities where they had lived, effectively hiding the toll the pandemic took on those facilities.”  And Cuomo, like Gladys, was rusticated not over Covid failures, but sex scandals. This is 2021, after all.

Peter Daszak

A British parasitologist, President of the ‘Eco Health Alliance,’ Pete has his dabs all over the Wuhan experiments, yet in February 2020 he organised the famous letter, signed by 27 scientists (“The Science”) to the Lancet ‘debunking’ the Lab-escape theory, describing such as a “conspiracy theory,” and then he managed to head the WHO investigative team that declared a wet market caused the trouble! (He’s only recently recused himself from that august body and is reportedly skulking at his palatial home in Rockland County, New York). This after getting almost $123m from US authorities for his “Global Non-Profit.”

Anthony Fauci

Embarrassingly, after hundreds of appearances on TV over 18 months, Tony had to renegue on virtually all of his Covid pronouncements (on herd immunity, masks, more masks, triple masks, transmissions, the actual Covid risk and lethality, re-infection risk, lockdowns, the need for masks and distancing after vaccination, etc., etc.) The good doctor, a lifelong bureaucrat who has never practised medicine, seems immune to the real world but savvy enough to sense political static and actively conceal his promoting lifting the moratorium on gain-of-function research (experimentation that aims to increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens). His National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases sent bags of cash to middleman Peter Daszak (see above), who sent it on to the Wuhan Virology Lab – to carry out gain-of-function research. Tony claimed the ‘lab-leak’ theory was practically impossible. And now look where we are.

Fauci’s emails, released under FOI, show how terrified he was of the lab-escape theory escaping from its warm smothering blanket of official secrecy. And he has changed tack again on masks, and had the CIC change the definition of “Gain-of-function.”

Steven Marshall

SA Premier Marshmallow handed governance to the Cops (see above) and the Chief Medical Officer (see below). This included a 3 day lockdown when the Government feared a monster-variant emanating from a pizza box. The Varnished Culture observed that lockdown by gorging on cold pizza and beer: others who needed to go out to make a living weren’t so lucky or sanguine. He has a brace of Covid Committees, one of which he chairs, but not much sense emanates therefrom.

Mark McGowan

Emperor Mark effectively seceded from Australia. It got him votes but who, east of Eucla, even thinks of WA these days?

The Media

If you’re going to be pushing fear, lies and misinformation, you need a barrow. The Fourth Estate (with help pitched-in by Hollywood) has been that barrow: useful idiots who recite the words from on-high and seem to have forgotten to formulate, let alone ask, a decent question.  Screaming “The Science” at us might resonate a tad more if anyone in the media had studied science beyond primary school. For example, we’ve heard next to nothing about natural selection and its tendency to de-fang the viral strains, or degrees of transmissibility.  We have Covid-cases rammed down our throats but rarely information about deaths or serious cases.  We wonder why: shouldn’t and wouldn’t that be the story?

Even the self-appointed “fact-checkers” and media umpires deserve censure: Politifact called the lab theory “ridiculous” – Paul Barry on Media Watch stated that “almost every virus expert had dismissed the lab escape theory.”  (Except those experts that were right.) As Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas observed: ‘One lesson for the media is that self-interested denials from the Chinese Communist Party do not equal “debunking”‘

Scott Morrison

The Prime Minister destroyed federalism with his wartime cabinet when there was no war. Lead a Government that shamed anyone under 60 hesitating about Astra Zeneca, then revoked the shame (in part) by limiting its recommendation to have that vaccine to those 60 and over. Screwed-up its vaccine ordering; screwed-up its international quarantine arrangements, choosing to rely on brain-dead State Premiers; relinquished its management of interstate movement, trade and commerce. And then he allowed the murmurs of vaccine passports, demolishing the illusion that “if it’s our body, it’s our choice.” The Commonwealth had the power to crush the various State vaccine mandates, but funked it. (It’s not Bob Menzies or John Curtin down there in Canberra anymore…)

Morrison does get a bouquet, however, for asking China to accommodate an independent Covid inquiry. That got him plenty of blowback and condemnation from the Chinese Fascist Collective, including Xi’s running dogs in Australia.

Anastasia Palasczuk

The Premier of Queensland refused entry to people near the border needing emergency medical treatment because ‘Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders’. She ordered her citizens to take Astra Zeneca and shut up: she opted for Pfizer. She denied a leave pass to her people and forced the gelatinous, crystal-clear blob masquerading as our Prime Minister to cut international arrivals by half, but she’s jetting off to Tokyo to enjoy cocktails at the Olympic Games and help secure Brisbane 2032, which insiders say is already a done-deal. Closing borders at the drop of a hat, quick to blame the Feds on one hand while begging for federal cash on the other means that the only good pole in Queensland politics is a Newspoll.

The People

The Human Race gets co-billing for cowardice, selfishness, subservience, snitching, panic-buying, and a willingness to condemn and vilify anyone exercising their own judgment (these days, they’d stone St. Francis of Assisi for kissing the leper). (Ed Murrow: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”)

The Pharmaceutical Industry

It grabbed public money coming and going, vilifying generic palliatives such as Invermectin; developed vaccines at warp speed, foregoing clinical trials, using the World as its petri-dish instead, and raking in dollars bulk-selling PPE, masks and private health services. ‘No link between the vaccine and clotting or myocarditis.’ ‘People of all ages should get the jab so they can be free again.’ (Yeah, right.) We note Pfizer reckoned its vaccine had 95% efficiency: now it’s rolling out, they point to real world studies (such as Israel, which has had the quickest vaccine programme) putting it at about 64%. Great news for Pfizer – already there’s serious talk of top-up jabs, or having one every year, like a flu shot. But what if we find Pfizer only has an effective efficiency of 19%, which the British Medical Journal has flagged as a possibility, based on data about the Pfizer trial?

Kevin Rudd

Said he’d written to the head of Pfizer to free-up its vaccines because the current Government was too rude and lax to do it.

There was a letter, certainly: what else was achieved by Kev remains a mystery. (Imagine what shape the World would be in if he’d got the gig as head of the U.N.)

Nicola Spurrier

Nic, a paediatrician, now operates mainly as a media tart. Excitedly telling-off South Australians (SA in 2021 to date: Covid deaths – 0; Road deaths to date – 55) about the lethal Delta Goodrem Strain; instructing fans not to touch the football if it strays – as apparently it sometimes does, warns Nicola – into the crowd; or howling at the moon over people drinking while standing (as though she’s a confused Baptist) or dancing, or attending Church, Spurrier on Covid-advice is arguably as spurious as they come.

Brett Sutton

 

Professor Brett (“Bambi Eyes”) Sutton, Victoria’s Chief Medical Officer, like Fauci, NSW’s Brad (‘Hunger Games Health’) Hazzard, Spurrier, Young, et al, often appears to be making-up stuff on the wing, has little insight into the inconsistency of his opinions or the damage they wreak on people trying to live their lives, and gives off a strong whiff of sanctimony. He is not an epidemiologist. It has been reported that Brett is a Public Health Masters graduate from James Cook University (#462 in QS Rankings), whose principal authorship research papers are on Climate Change, Palliative Care and Gonorrhoea.

Brett likes scaring people. He’s referred to the virus as a fast-moving “absolute beast.” But he moved fast across State lines to go to an awards ceremony. Meanwhile, Cancer treatment must take a back seat until the Beast is under control or in public service speak, eradicated (As If).

UPDATE: Brett is quitting as Victoria’s CMO, and as a gold watch, has been named Victorian of the Year by the Victoria Day Council. You can’t make this stuff up.

Donald J. Trump

Perhaps more a Covid victim than villain, The Donald still gets a place in the Hall for speculating (aloud) that we might ward-off the virus by injecting ourselves with bleach.

The World Health Organisation

Declared the virus wasn’t transmitted among humans. Declared it came from a pangolin-cheeseburger. Went to Wuhan and gave it a huge tick, after a 12 day vacation, parroting the ‘findings’ they’d been given.

Xi’s poodle, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, led the cover-up, while WHO’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Soumya Swamiaathan, who also asserted the virus was not synthesized in a lab, ‘ran a disinformation campaign’ against Ivermectin, for reasons yet to be explained, which yet, somehow, are all too clear. And when the ‘Omicron’ variant (anagram: ‘Moronic’) came along, they passed over the preceding Greek letter in the queue to name it. Which one? ‘Xī.”

Xi Jinping

Winnie the Pooh set up the Wuhan Virology Lab in order to wage biological warfare: once Covid-19 leaked, he decided to weaponize it in a global trial. Wuhan was sealed and made a ghost town: dissenters and premonitors (such as Dr. Li Wenliang) were vanished; public square discourse throughout the Middle Kingdom was squelched. The virus was blamed by the Chinese on bats, pangolins, frozen meat from Australia, and the US military. Economic chaos in the West was fomented and now Xi ramps up his wolf-warrior, debt-trap diplomacy not only via infrastructure, but with his dodgy vaccines (SinoPharm and Sinovac), handed out for free, but still at a price.

Jeanette Young

Queensland’s Chief Health Officer and Governor-in-Waiting recommended that people alone in their car should wear masks.

Shi Zhengli

“Bat Lady” needs no introduction. Over 10 years spent harvesting bats in Yunnan; taking their anal swabs; collecting viruses in vivo; gathering a huge collection of samples and genetic sequences; growing Covid in vitro and then letting a thousand spores bloom, the Good Doctor now claims there’s ‘nothing to see here.’ That might be right: the Wuhan database is now offline. And Dr. Z declined to provide the US with a vial of a sample to be used to trace the genetic sequencing, calling the request “outrageous.”