Australia’s Corporations Rebel Against Government’s Draconian COVID Lockdowns

Australia's corporate sector has finally had enough of the ongoing lockdowns that have left the country's economy hobbled and its people cut off from the rest of the world for months.

Increasingly frustrated by a slow vaccine rollout and the ongoing lockdowns, the leaders of many of Australia’s biggest companies, including BHP, Macquarie and Qantas have signed a letter demanding that the government acknowledge it's time to "learn to live with the virus," as many other countries have done, since "COVIDZero" has finally been exposed as an impossible dream.

In the letter - which was reported on by the FT - the signatories allege that Australia is making “big mistakes” in failing to reopen to the world. By making the lockdowns so severe (and so unceasingly long), the Australian government is putting politics before the well-being of the Australian people ahead of the federal elections that must be held by the end of May - when the Senate's present term is slated to expire.

The companies that signed the letter "...employ almost one million Australians" and warned that lockdowns were having "long-lasting" effects on the economy. However, this shouldn't be news to Australia's political elite: Economists at Australia's central bank, the RBA, already lowered their growth projections after a stronger-than-expected Q2 GDP print.

But all the incremental data seen so far suggests that Q3 could be a disaster - well that, coupled with the intensifying economic pressure from Beijing, which is trying to win a geopolitical stare-down contest with the Australian government by blocking a growing number of imports.

As for Australia's infamous "drawbridge" border policy, the letter's signatories insisted that the decision to close Australia's borders was a colossal mistake.

...Yet, the country still has among the lowest vaccination rates in the developed world. Only 41.4% of the population is fully inoculated — well behind the UK (66.7%) and Canada (70.4%) and below the US, where 54.7% are inoculated.

In the letter, the Business Council of Australia also warned about a quiet "mental health crisis" plaguing the country, a result of the lockdowns and other anti-COVID measures - "some of the impacts of current lockdowns are hidden, and the effects will be long lasting."

Corporate behemoths aren't the only ones struggling with Australia's COVID rules. Groups representing small businesses have made similar complaints. Alexi Boyd, CEO of the Council of Small Business Organizations, said the refusal to reopen internal and external borders has hampered the country's economic recovery.

In recent weeks, the Aussie government has shown some acknowledgement that they might have chosen the wrong course. But with his conservative Liberal Party trailing the Labor opposition in the polls, PM Scott Morrison is under a lot of pressure to stay the course and pray that the latest delta-driven wave finally subsides.

I wonder are these same corporations going to refuse any vaccine passport mandate or will they sack workers who wont get the jab? Self-interest is powerful motivation but will they stand up to be counted when the bottom line is not affected. The federal government has told states that they will soon be losing funding for businesses and those individuals affected by lockdowns once vaccinations reach a certain level. This will put pressure on all the states who have locked down so hard to open up. About time I expect for those poor bastards in continuous lockdown.

forget “cases”.

there have been 1,278 ‘covid’ deaths since the start of the ‘pandemic’, and quite a few of those were ‘historical data’ simply added to the totals.

for most of the pandemic, something like 81% of ‘covid’ deaths in Australia occurred in aged care facilities. many of those deaths - particularly in the State of Victoria - were dubious.

9 Sept 2020: The Conversation: ‘Died from’ or ‘died with’ COVID-19? We need a transparent approach to counting coronavirus deaths
by Marc Trabsky, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe Law School and Director, Centre for Health, Law and Society, La Trobe University
and Courtney Hempton, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University
For example, on August 31 Victoria recorded only eight COVID-19 deaths from the previous 24 hours, but also added 33 historical deaths to the toll. According to the state’s Chief Health Officer ***Brett Sutton, this backlog was due to changes in how aged care providers reported COVID-19 deaths, and differences in reporting methods between the state and federal governments.

On September 4 there were six deaths recorded over the previous 24-hours, but a further 53 historical deaths were added to the daily toll, 50 of which were related to aged care.

There is a lack of transparency about why there is a discrepancy between how Victoria and the Commonwealth count COVID-19 deaths...

Delays may have been caused by aged care providers struggling to verify not only residents who died from COVID-19, but also those suspected to have died with the virus.

The Victorian and Commonwealth governments are reportedly working to reconcile how COVID-19 deaths are counted and reported. But it may be months or years before detailed death data can be analysed...
https://theconversation.com/died-from-or-died-with-covid-19-we-need-a-transparent-approach-to-counting-coronavirus-deaths-145438

there was no further investigation of the above, so there’s no knowing how many were not really ‘covid’ deaths.

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