Sanjeev Sabhlok, an economist, has done tremendous work criticising Australis’s public health system, in the light of Covid: https://ph.sabhlokcity.com/ . Recently he spoke at the Australians for Science and Freedom Conference at the University of NSW, and he delivered the basis of his paper, “The Ugliness, Evil and Impossibility of Public Health.” His position is that “Australia’s Covid response wasted more than a trillion dollars on lunatic policies based on panic - and nobody has been held to account.”
The disease had an infection fatality rate of 0.03 percent for those under 60, and for this reason alone, there should not have been lockdowns. But there was, with enormous social and economic costs that are still being felt by many, whose lives and businesses were destroyed. The useless economic models that were used to justify the lockdowns were all flawed, not adequately considering costs. “The pandemic policies being pursued in Australia – particularly in Victoria – are the most heavy-handed possible, a sledgehammer to kill a swarm of flies. These policies are having hugely adverse economic, social and health effects, with the poorer sections of the community that don’t have the ability to work from home suffering the most.” “Governments should have also realised at the outset that they are hostage to chronic groupthink and actively sought alternative advice. I attempted repeatedly to raise my voice within my public sector role, but my attempts were rebuffed. The bureaucracy has clamped down on frank and fearless, impartial advice, in a misplaced determination to support whatever the government decides.”
He, among many others feel that this grave injustice cannot just be let go, and forgotten in the maelstrom of other issues on the contemporary scene, such as war. There needs to be accountability. There needs to be justice.
https://lettersfromaustralia.substack.com/p/nobody-has-been-held-to-account-for
“Australia’s covid response wasted more than a trillion dollars on lunatic policies based on panic - and nobody has been held to account, a conference has heard.
Respected economist Sanjeev Sabhlok said public health officials threw out empirical science for poorly functioning models in 2020 after doctors freaked out over an illness that, at its worst in 2020, had an infection fatality rate of just 0.03 percent for those under 60.
Dr Sabhlok has just completed a first-principles review, called “The ugliness, evil and impossibility of public health”.
Speaking at the Australians for Science and Freedom Conference at the University of NSW on Saturday, Dr Sabhlok said lockdowns were imposed on the basis of models that didn’t include human factors and costs. The models are therefore useless.
“There is no science in public health,” he said.
“Instead of empiricism which is testing things and hypotheses, what we have is models and so-called ethics.”
Dr Sabhlok, a senior economist who advised the Victorian Department of Finance and Treasury on public policy for 15 years, said public health bureaucrats had stoked hysteria and picked up the worst-case models to support totalitarian policies, causing great harm.
It is necessary now to stop, revise and put in place common-sense policies to save money and misery in the future.
Building separate infectious disease hospitals with isolation wards to keep the infectious away from general hospital patients is a sensible way forward, he said.
“We need to separate the general and infectious hospitals.”
“Cancer does not cross to other people, but if you have smallpox or TB it does affect others so you need to be separated from the very beginning … You separate the infectious patients from the non-infectious.”
During 2021, St Vincents Hospital, Sydney, would close down whole corridors while covid patients moved through, then sterilise them to reopen for general staff and patients.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported one in five people who died in Sydney’s Delta outbreak in 2021 caught the infection in hospital and about 160,000 infections are caught in Australian hospitals each year.
From January to November of 2020 when Australia’s first cases were seen, 277 people caught covid in Victorian hospitals, which was one for every nine patients hospitalised with covid or 11 percent, according to Victoria’s Department of Health.
“The second thing we need is spare capacity, which eliminates the argument of ‘flatten the curve’,” Dr Sabhlok said.
Surge capacity from separate infectious disease hospitals removes the justification for the repressive lockdowns that destroyed many people’s lives and small businesses.
Building surge capacity now will save money in the long run, he said, as there will always be another medical panic in future.
Dr Sabhlok quit the Victorian Department of Finance and Treasury during the 2020 covid panic because they would not listen to reason.
“The pandemic policies being pursued in Australia – particularly in Victoria – are the most heavy-handed possible, a sledgehammer to kill a swarm of flies. These policies are having hugely adverse economic, social and health effects, with the poorer sections of the community that don’t have the ability to work from home suffering the most,” he wrote in September 2020.
“Governments should have also realised at the outset that they are hostage to chronic groupthink and actively sought alternative advice. I attempted repeatedly to raise my voice within my public sector role, but my attempts were rebuffed. The bureaucracy has clamped down on frank and fearless, impartial advice, in a misplaced determination to support whatever the government decides.”
Dr Sabhlok was one of many courageous intellectual leaders who energised the first Australians for Science and Freedom (ASF) conference at UNSW last weekend.
The deep and rich discussions by academics, lawyers, doctors, journalists and activists from across Australia were all filmed and will eventually be made public by the ASF.
Some of the highlights included:
- Journalist Maryanne Demasi’s stunning expose of how Big Pharma silences journalists in Australia. Pfizer, AstraZeneca and lobby group Medicines Australia, successfully interfered in ABC editorial affairs, moving against her thoroughly-researched and balanced piece on the overprescription of statins. She joined journalist Rebekah Barnett from Dystopian Downunder along with Brendan Vote and Matt Wong for a stellar panel on diversity in media.
- Dr Melissa McCann spoke of how the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) was the driving force behind the covid gene-vaccine disaster by silencing doctors. Doctors could not have open and honest discussions with their patients on the risk-benefit case for the products and the way forward needs to fix this. Ethical behaviour was cast aside and now there are barriers for doctors to return to honest ethics as so many people played a part in gene-vaccine deaths and injuries. There is also a reluctance to be seen as wrong in something they have invested time and energy in.
- Dr McCann is suing the Australian Government in a class action for the gene-vaccine injured. The next court date will be early next year. Donations to fund the ongoing action can be made here.
- Barrister Julian Gillespie gave a stunning overview of his case against the TGA regarding the covid gene-vaccines, which were not scrutinised by Australia’s Gene Technology Regulator, Dr Raj Bhula, as the law requires. Mr Gillespie says the products satisfy the legal definition for genetically modified organisms (GMO). As a consequence, the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus is required to recommend charges be laid against Pfizer and Moderna for dealing with a GMO in Australia without a GMO license. I will address this bombshell with a separate story in more detail.
- An excellent panel on civil resistance in the covid era with protest leader and documentary maker Topher Field from Melbourne, teacher and protest organiser Christian “Mack” Marchegiani from Sydney, Light Beyond the Campfire who built community with gardening on the Northern Beaches, and the quiet power of Selki from Tasmania who started the Forests of the Fallen which now has more than 120 silent memorials for the gene-vaccine injured and bereaved popping up around Australia. It was a wonderful diverse panel showing the contrast between the power of positive protest in strengthening people to know they are not alone and that they can resist, with the power of the silent space, creating a quiet place for people to discover for themselves some of the stories of the injuries that have been suppressed.