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State coercion and lockdown

Stephen Andrew statement on State Coercion and Lockdown

Those in power know that if you make people desperate enough, you can get them to do almost anything. With vaccination rates stubbornly low – 15.7% as of yesterday – snap lockdowns and harsh restrictions are being used coercively by governments to enforce their will on an unexpectedly recalcitrant Australian people. As the political adage goes, if you want people to be willing to accept a solution, first you have to make them realise that they have a problem.
With each passing day, more and more extreme restrictions are being imposed, and the country’s leadership are stridently adamant that the lockdowns and strict measures won’t end till most of Australia is fully vaccinated. The PM, Scott Morrison, told Australians last month that phase B, the ‘transition phase’, only begins when the adult population has reached 80 per cent of people fully vaccinated, and any State wanting to move to the next stage will also have to have reached that target. The NSW Premier told the people of her State that the ‘harshest lockdown ever’ would be lifted at the end of August. Yesterday, she walked that back, saying only much higher vaccination rates would see restrictions loosened.
In Queensland, we have had three snap lockdowns already this year, with the most recent one extended another week by the Deputy Premier, Steven Miles. Miles told media that this could be the last lockdown, provided Queenslanders did the right thing by wearing masks, checking in at venues, getting tested for the virus and, yes, getting vaccinated. So eighteen months after ‘flattening the curve’, people are still being told that they aren’t allowed to seek and find basic social interaction, enjoy physical contact with friends and family or derive confidence and self-esteem from their work.
The impact of these coercive, cruel lockdowns, combined with the frightening dismantling of our rights and civil liberties, has been enormously destructive of public confidence and trust.
The damage done to social cohesion and people’s sense of happiness and well-being has also been profound. Many will take years to recover, if they ever do.
Whether they will ever forgive their Governments and those who led them down this road, is another question altogether.
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Vaccine profits rolling in

Stephen Andrew statement on vaccine profits

Vaccine profits are starting to mount as the COVID-19 vaccine is on track to become to the most profitable drug in world history. Giant pharmaceutical corporations, like Pfizer, Moderna, China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Sinopharm Group Co, are making obscene levels of profit from the monopoly they hold on the Covid-19 vaccine market.
According to People’s Vaccine Alliance, a group of non-profit, non-governmental organisations including Oxfam and UNAIDS, more than a dozen executives and investors became billionaires overnight last year, thanks to their ownership of Covid-19 patents. The new billionaires include many CEOs of firms like Moderna, the CanSino Biologics and German firm BioNTech, which helped develop the technology behind the Pfizer vaccine.
BioNTech increased its production capacity to 3 billion doses in 2021 and is working with 15 partners, including Merck, Novartis Sanofi and Baxter to form licensing and manufacturing agreements and establish a global vaccine manufacturing network worth trillions.
US Drug company, Pfizer, told investors last week that thanks to Covid-19 vaccine sales, the company had nearly doubled its second-quarter revenue and boosted profits by a staggering 60%. The pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla, celebrated by announcing an increase in price of the Pfizer vaccine, raising it from $USD19.50 to $USD24 per dose.
Bourla is also now pushing for people to get a third “booster” shot of the vaccine, saying boosters will be needed within 6 to 12 months of people getting the second shot. During a February earnings call, Bourla told analysts the company could make significant profits by charging higher prices and implementing routine booster doses for new variants of the virus, assuring investors the company didn’t see this as a one-time event, but “as something that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future”.
Australian biotechnology giant CSL notched up its fastest profit and revenue growth in years, after its flu vaccine was bought by the tonne by the federal government. Net profit surged a massive 45 per cent to $US1.8 billion ($2.32 billion) in the six months to December 31, while revenue leapt 16.9 per cent to $US5.7 billion.
All told, governments and non-profits around the world invested billions in developing these vaccines. Add to this the cost of advance purchase deals, and public investment in Covid vaccines climbs even higher. Big Pharma has been the big winner without a doubt, and it has all been handed to them 100% risk free, with blanket immunity for any injuries or deaths caused by their fast-tracked product. The only industry in the world to be handed such a gold-plated pass. It begs the question, though – if a company is not prepared to stand behind the product it sells, then why should the Public trust either them or their product?
No liability. No trust.
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