Restoring trust in public health

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike. – Theodore Roosevelt, 1900

On Thursday, April 13, the Australian Medical Professionals' Society will be hosting an event in New South Wales to discuss how we restore trust in public health.

Can there be trust in public health without access to truth, without honourable conduct, and without integrity? And what happens when our medical, bureaucratic, political, journalistic, and legal authoritarians appear to be bereft of the character traits that create trust? What do you do when there seems to be no avenue for recourse to demand transparency in decision-making, data accountability, and justice for bad decisions? How do we rebuild trust in public health when those with all the power seem to bear no responsibility for the outcomes of their actions or lack thereof? As Thomas Sowell said, 'It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.'

Trust, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a firm belief in the honesty, veracity, justice, and strength of a person or thing.

Truth is the body of real things, facts. Honour is to have a keen sense of ethical conduct and integrity. Integrity is a firm adherence to a code of especially moral incorruptible values.

For many, the time of Covid has created an immense sense of destabilisation, as our trust in these core values has been shattered almost beyond redemption. Medical ethical principles, evidence-based medicine, fundamental principles of public health, political due diligence, institutional regulation, and legal recourse have all been ignored or subsumed by a single focus of achieving consensus to maximise compliance. It has been compliance based on false and misleading information where those who have power appear to have declined to do even the basic level of due diligence by failing to read even their own reports.

From lockdowns to natural immunity to infection fatality rates to vaccine safety and efficacy, the truth is being revealed, demonstrating a failure of integrity to follow any actual science for the health and safety of Australians. The gravest of failures are against pregnant women and children. Practitioners who spoke out across the country knew it would likely cost them careers, relationships, financial security, and reputation. But they did it anyway because they knew Covid public health policies would likely cause harm and cost lives, creating physical, social, and economic effects nationally and internationally. These modern-day heroes have been censored, deplatformed, and punished for trying to lead authorities to the evidence.

Should we trust those who pay no price for being wrong, or those who have made huge sacrifices in the pursuit of truth to save lives? As Dr Michael Keane and I asked in a previous article, what builds trust in an institution? Intellectual freedom through open scientific discourse, or enforced adherence to the regime's singular 'truth' under the threat of professional excommunication? To take a stand for medical ethics, valid informed consent, and evidence-based medicine against the biopharmaceutical censorship industrial complex, a government behemoth that enforced their 'message' as the single source of truth is an extraordinarily costly risk that has seen people go from prestige to food banks. Is there anything more honourable than refusing to compromise the truth fighting to protect humanity? Is there a better definition of integrity than doing what is right knowing how high a price might have to be paid?

It causes intense pain to moral people to be powerless to protect others. There is a great grief many feel as they have watched families fall apart. Jobs have been destroyed, future economic prosperity hampered, child development impaired, and mental health problems have rocketed. There have been unprecedented vaccine injuries, while deaths have gone unacknowledged, all unnecessarily. For the most part, all that was needed was due diligence and humility. Is there any justification for the head of the Department of Health to appear to be unaware of their own regulatory documents such as the non-clinical evaluation report? Having read the non-clinical report and all the Public Assessment Reports, Advisory Committee on Vaccines Meeting Minutes, and Pfizer's 5.3.6 cumulative analysis of post-authorisation adverse event reports it is difficult to understand how decisions were made and on what findings the 'safe and effective mantra' was based other than blind hope. Is it acceptable to impose policies onto an entire population when there is evidence that they are unscientific, lacking in conclusive data, and based on secret health advice all together resulting in a pandemic of death and economic catastrophe?

What was the government's definition of Covid public health success? Until the implementation of the coercive, mandatory lockdown and vaccination-only strategy, there was no pandemic of death. Yet we now find ourselves in just that, with increases in excess mortality not seen since the world wars. Shrouded in continued secrecy our authorities implemented authoritarian pandemic policies in complete contradiction of their own plans. This behaviour, in my opinion, has cost lives. The consequences of the failures are difficult to ignore.

The truth of the damage done by the government's unscientific and unjustified response to Covid is snowballing and the dam wall is finally breaking. The apparent media-and-government malfeasance has been laid bare through the release of the Twitter Files, the US Senate, the WhatsApp scandal, and the alleged collaboration between social media platforms, the WHO, and the White House.

Court-ordered Pfizer documents released and subsequently reviewed show what the population has been subjected to. The Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine/BNT 162b2 was granted on the efficacy data of 170 patients collected over a mere 2 months with major disqualifying protocol deviations identified. Based on this questionable trial data, we were told two 'safe and effective' shots would stop the virus and that society could return to normal; then it was three, then four, and now more. Pfizer admits that it did not test for transmission before the vaccine was first distributed. It has recently been revealed they tried to keep certain information withheld for 75 years. But Australians are expected to trust the regulator to ensure they keep the pharmaceutical manufacturers accountable…?