The Covid dominoes are falling.

In recent weeks, political leaders in Australia and beyond have begun to admit obvious truths that so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ have been harping on about for months.

The Vaccines Don’t Prevent Transmission

The classic example of this, which slowly came to light over the course of 2021, is the ubiquity of ‘breakthrough infections’.

Once dubbed ‘rare’ by the corporate press, such cases are so common among the double and triple jabbed that we no longer bother using such an onerous phrase to describe them. Now, we just shrug our shoulders and carry on when the supposedly-immune catch the virus.

Many argue that the Covid injections were never designed to confer sterilising immunity as with other vaccines, but that is not what the world’s most trusted leaders told us at the beginning of the pandemic.

President Joe Biden, White House Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and pharmaceutical investor Bill Gates clearly stated that by getting injected, you would neither contract nor transmit Covid.

It is now abundantly clear that, while the vaccines may prevent severe and deadly outcomes, they do little to slow the spread of the virus. This, of course, makes vaccine mandates and passports (which supposedly protect others) futile. I made this point in an article last year and was rebuked by many for being irresponsible. Where are my detractors now?

Everyone Will Eventually Get Covid

A more recent admission was made last week by NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. ‘We would expect that pretty well everybody in New South Wales at some point will get Omicron,’ he told reporters. ‘We’re all going to get Omicron.’

Queensland Chief Health Officer made the same admission in January, admitting that Covid must become endemic in the community, ‘that is absolutely critical – it has to happen this way’.

While Hazzard and Dr John Gerrard were addressing the new variant specifically, our leaders have known for a long time that Covid would eventually reach us all.

How? For at least two reasons. The vaccines don’t prevent infection, as we have seen. Also, they have not reduced Covid’s reproduction rate (the average number of additional cases caused by an infected person) to below the necessary target of one.

‘Covid-zero’ was always going to be impossible, but that never stopped state premiers like Daniel Andrews and Mark McGowan pursuing it with reckless abandon. They truly believed it was possible to keep their state safe from Covid until the threat simply disappeared into the ether. To question their radical commitment was verboten just months ago.

Now even our Prime Minister is saying that we must ‘live with this virus with common sense and responsibility’ – ironically, while case numbers reach heights that would have made his eyes water last year. And now we’re all free to say in polite society what was taboo just weeks ago.

Hospitalisation Numbers Have Been Overstated

Brad Hazzard has again come to the rescue, admitting what the tinfoil hats among us have suggested from the start: Covid hospitalisation figures are not what they seem. Last week he explained at a press conference:

‘A reasonable proportion of cases being classified as Covid hospitalisations are actually people with other reasons for admission. Heart attacks, births, falls, none of that stops just because there is Covid.

‘They come into hospital, they have a swab taken and it confirms Covid. This shows us it’s out in the community, but we aren’t necessarily seeing that as the primary reason for all of the admissions.’

According to the Daily Mail, ‘data shows as many as 50 per cent of ‘Covid patients’ in the state’s hospitals were actually admitted for other reasons’.

Coincidentally, just days earlier, Anthony Fauci acknowledge the same anomaly in US hospitalisation statistics for children:

‘If you look at the children who are hospitalised, many of them are hospitalised with Covid as opposed to because of Covid. And what we mean by that, if a child goes into the hospital they automatically get tested for Covid and they get counted as a Covid hospitalised individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis.’

It takes commendable blind faith in talking heads to believe this was a conspiracy theory last week and a perfectly acceptable viewpoint today.

Your Health is Your Responsibility

Millennials like me went through school learning that exercise, healthy eating, and good self-care were hallmarks of responsible adulthood.

Then over the last two years we were abruptly told that the deaths of others were on our heads if we didn’t live like hermits, take a provisionally-approved medical treatment, and happily hand over a swathe of other human rights.

If you’ve followed the science, you would know that Covid disproportionately affects those who are immunocompromised, chronically ill, and overweight. It is ironic, then, that those insisting on healthy eating, vitamin supplements, exercise, and sunlight these last two years have routinely been frowned upon as encouraging ‘vaccine hesitancy’.

‘Protect your family and get vaccinated’ and ‘stay home to save lives’ have been far more popular slogans – perhaps because they require far less effort from us than the hard work of personal health.

While I remain dumbfounded and disconcerted that so few public leaders anywhere (as far as I am aware) have promoted personal health, perhaps the tide is beginning to turn. El Salvador’s government recently released an ad to that effect.

As Omicron continues to spread, maybe Western governments will begin to see the wisdom in the ‘quackery’ of personal health as well.

All of this to say: if your main source of news the last two years has been the corporate press, you may be shocked and even afraid of what our leaders are now telling us about Covid. But if you have been consuming independent and conservative media and thinking critically, none of it will come as a surprise.

Maybe it’s time to take a moment to reach out and apologise to your ‘conspiracy theorist’ friends and family?

First published here. Kurt Mahlburg is a teacher and freelance writer. He blogs at kurtmahlburg.blog.

Get 10 issues for just $10

Subscribe to The Spectator Australia today for the next 10 magazine issues, plus full online access, for just $10.

SUBSCRIBE 10 issues for $10 REGISTER 3 articles a month

Already a subscriber? Log in