top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureGary Moller
    • Feb 7, 2022
    • 46 min read

Here's a COVID email dump for you!

Updated: Mar 18





 

Important disclaimer directed at the Thought Police and various other snoops during these times when those who hold unacceptable ideas get punished:

The following article is not medical advice, I'm merely sharing what I know with subscribers to my blog. They are sensible people who are able to think for themselves.

 

I've been in regular contact with Australian economist, Gigi Foster, who is co-author of the book, "COVID Panic". With this book, Gigi and her two co-authors outline: "How to make sense of the astonishing upheaval of Spring 2020 and following? Normal life – in which expected rights and freedoms were taken for granted – came to be replaced by a new society as managed by a medical/ruling elite that promised but failed to deliver virus mitigation, all in the name of public health".


I have just finished reading their book and recommend it along with Kennedy's mind-blowing book, "The Real Fauci":


Gigi is doing a great job at keeping track of developments, making sense of what is behind this oppressive mayhem and documenting things. Below is an email dump she sent me. There is enough information in these emails to keep the most obsessive Pandemicer going for weeks!


We have her permission to share this information.


Enjoy!


Gary


 

FW: Voices against lockdowns Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au>7 February 2022 at 18:19To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au>Dear all,

What a stunning few weeks it has been. In the footsteps of previous generations of freedom fighters, Americans have gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in the US capitol to “defeat the mandates” (livestream coverage here). In the Freedom Convoy 2022, Canadian truckers have staged what is fast proving to be the most determined, level-headed, and internationally inspirational demonstration against the covid policy response that we have seen in the past two years. Inspired speeches and community spirit have been heart-warming features of the Ottawa occupation that has drawn attention from across the globe. Taking a cue from the Canadians, Australian resistors have convoyed down to Canberra and set up camp. (More on the Canberra events here, here, and here, with anger boiling over into signals of revolutionary intent in some quarters and the convoy drawing attention from the UK press.) The New Zealanders too are now convoying. As my publisher has written, when performed at the right moment, such acts of solidarity and courage can make a measurable impact on the course of history.

We are starting to see mainstream figures edge away from the conviction that freedom restrictions as the right response to covid, including the White House and the American NFL. Several countries in Europe have significantly walked back pandemic restrictions, including the UK (whose national health system has scrapped its vax mandate for health workers, citing staff shortages) and Sweden and its Nordic neighbours; and some countries are stopping some covid vaccines in some age groups based on accumulating evidence about side effects. The international press (with the Wall Street Journal a leading example; see here and here) is increasing publishing sensible dissenting arguments.

This paper, finding that lockdowns weren’t worth the damage they caused, has seemed to crack into the mainstream – including in Australia. Realities about the present covid vaccines (such as their ineffectiveness in preventing transmission) are starting to surface even in mainstream journals. There are signs that infighting, re-writing of history, and the blame game have begun amongst the ranks of those who have played prominent roles in covid policy-setting, with whistle-blowers speaking out, corporate execs resigning for moral reasons, some politicians facilitating and disseminating their own investigations about what has gone on during covid times, and some jurisdictions pro-actively defending their people against covid-inspired bullying and moralising.

On the legal front too, developments have been rapid.

A challenge to the rollout of covid vaccines to children in Australia: https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/01/17/australia-avn-pursues-federal-court-case/ (also see here)

A challenge to the rollout of covid vaccines generally in Australia, based on cost-benefit principles (see attached)

A Canadian constitutional scholar speaks with Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdhFuMDLBDM

Documentarians are coming into their own:

Evidence has been accumulating on excess deaths, presented here on a site that invites viewers to conduct their own analysis: https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid; and some data suggest a worrisome rise in deaths amongst younger groups – the vast majority of which are not because of covid itself, but rather because of various aspects of our response to it.

In spite of the promising developments of the past couple of months, the fight is not over. Claiming violation of their standards, the fund-raising site GoFundMe has kicked the Canadian Freedom Convoy off its platform, and in response the convoy’s organisers have shifted to GiveSendGo. The public outcry against Spotify for giving Joe Rogan a platform (about which you can express a view here) has seen Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and other musicians try to wield their power as artists to block the expression of non-mainstream opinion. Medical professionals who have followed their conscience and their expertise during this time rather than following government edicts and the pronouncements of bureaucrats are still being attacked, bullied, and censured, and are reporting that when they want to discuss the evidence, “no one wants to fight” them (an experience I’ve also had, with no pro-lockdown Australian commentator having yet been willing to engage publicly with me about covid policy questions). Participation in our legal institutions, including juries, has been prohibited for unvaccinated people in WA. In a now-familiar pattern, people still thoughtlessly supporting and justifying the standard line on covid continue to accuse dissenters of doing exactly what they themselves are doing – i.e., offending values as diverse as free speech, tolerance, life preservation, empathy, and scientific approaches to policy-making: https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/04/baylor-professor-calls-for-prosecution-of-criticism-of-fauci-and-other-scientists-as-hate-crime/.

I will be flying to Brisbane this week to speak here – please join if you are local: https://aip.asn.au/events/the-great-covid-panic-what-happened-why-and-what-to-do/

As always, thank you to those who have been sending me material to consider for these missives. Also, some brief reminders: all previous missives (since August 2020) appear below if you scroll down; on-forwarding or re-posting is welcome; and all requests to be removed from this mailing list will be actioned promptly.

The “mainstream narrative” seems to be rapidly losing its vice-like grip on populations and politicians around the world. This is not the time to ease up on our efforts to recover the freedoms from which we have been separated for nearly two years, to illuminate and communicate the truth, and to work towards amending our institutions so that such a horror never recurs. Steady on and we will see a return of light and freedom. gigi

From: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Sent: Saturday, 15 January 2022 12:18 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all,

Things have been heating up fast, on both sides of this fight of our lives. Australia’s incompetent, inhumane, hyper-politicised, multi-headed covidocracy has embarrassed the country on the world stage via its treatment of the world’s number one men’s tennis player. The reactions of the Australian public to this debacle have demonstrated some of the most benighted elements of Australian culture. The US Supreme Court has thrown out most of President Biden’s covid vaccine mandate (while allowing it to stand for healthcare work subsidised by the federal government), other legal victories have been emerging, and just today it became possible to cross into Queensland over state borders unencumbered by covid regulations. In what I hope are the death throes of the covid compliance ideology (though some outlets are more pessimistic), several world leaders have begun “othering” unvaccinated people in their speeches.

Cracks in the covid narrative have been gaining increasingly mainstream coverage, with accompanying anger and confusion, around the world. The covid resistance in Australia and worldwide has been gaining in numbers, courage, and determination. One by one, people who for myriad reasons have finally reached their breaking points have begun adding their individual voices to resistance groups communicating, collaborating, and fighting to hold our institutions to account for the immoral restrictions issued over the past two years. The realisation is dawning that a better future will not just drop from the sky, but must be dreamt of, argued for and built, by good people who are willing to pay the costs of these actions.

Although some setbacks have occurred in spite of courageous voices over the three months since I last wrote, I am increasingly hopeful that 2022 will bring the restoration of our basic pre-covid freedoms in Australia – the freedom for all people to show our faces in public, to celebrate, worship, and mourn together in groups of any number and in any proximity in or out of doors, to conduct our businesses, ply our trades, attend our schools, receive medical help, and travel where we like without first being required to submit to medical procedures of dubious social efficacy that may be seriously harmful to us personally, to protest peacefully against government policies with which we disagree – and all of this without the crippling uncertainty created by the spectre of new covid-excused directives that might be handed down at any moment by those in authority and impinge once again on our freedom. Recognising for themselves the bankruptcy of the justifications for so many actions taken, those in positions of power will slowly creep away, hopeful of escaping justice, but some will be held to account and the first stirrings of true reckonings of what has happened here will begin. Our social and economic resources will shift perceptibly from checking, enforcing, cowering, and punishing to caring, healing, learning, and working at what each of us does best. Such are my hopes for the new year. Let me begin this missive with contributions from several internationally prominent personalities and courageous thinkers. Jordan Peterson is angry: It's Time to Live Robert Malone (one of several doctors challenging the mainstream responses to covid, including lack of emphasis on early treatments such as, but not limited to, ivermectin) is given a platform by Joe Rogan to discuss the covid vaccines, and the talk reaches 50 million viewers worldwide. Predictably, Rogan is witheringly attacked afterwards by other scientists and an Australian guest soon afterwards challenges Rogan on an important point about side effects of the covid vaccines, revealing a shallowness of analysis on both sides. (Not all covid infections are documented, particularly amongst the young and hardly symptomatic, not to mention that a single article should never be considered a strong enough basis on which to recommend a recently developed medical treatment to an entire demographic group; also see this analysis by writers at The Expose, this analysis by Toby Rogers, this compilation of sudden deaths in young vaccinated athletes, this discussion with a molecular biologist, this discussion of potential longer-run side effects, and this analysis by Steve Kirsch.) If you are interested in more information about covid vaccines and how to get involved with groups pushing against them, including their use in children, I advise you to email Tania de Jong who runs a mailing list on such topics. Lord Sumption airs his concerns about Europe A professor in Israel articulately challenges his government’s handling of covid A doctor in the US articulately puts the case against covid policy choices Jay Bhattacharya speaking against lockdowns on the Lex Friedman podcast Peter McCullough on The Joe Rogan Experience Some inspiring work by the Australian covid resistance: “Battleground Melbourne” documentary, streamed live earlier this week A courageous doctor has his practice searched by the Victorian government without warrant and fights back A Tasmanian healthcare group resists the covid vax mandates Nurses speak out about vaccine side effects Former NSW police sergeant Stephen Kelly speaks out A new portal on which to report covid vaccine injuries, without the gatekeeping of a medical professional Words penned by an Australian doctor to AHPRA, attached Some recent interviews I’ve given: On the Discernable podcast with Matt Wong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDgDWaXWeyY On the Ivor Cummins podcast: https://thefatemperor.com/australia-new-zealand-update-professor-gigi-foster-expains-lockdown-reality/ (also see his “Covid Chronicles”: https://www.bitchute.com/video/g5PLJF9mcpdK/) With Voices for Freedom in New Zealand: https://odysee.com/@voicesforfreedom:6/Gigi-Foster-An-Economists-Perspective:b A compilation of evidence about the negative benefits of restricting freedoms, by my beloved publisher The Brownstone Institute, which continues to print excellent articles about our time: https://brownstone.org/articles/more-than-400-studies-on-the-failure-of-compulsory-covid-interventions/ Mainstream Australian and international media channels giving voice to arguments for more sensible policy settings: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/vaccine-mandates-set-us-on-path-towards-segregation-and-despotism/news-story/4e708abfa1c62544355bb1575ab9848d https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/health-and-wellness/top-doctors-academics-living-in-an-alternative-reality-20220110-p59n73 https://www.wsj.com/articles/speeding-it-may-be-safer-omicron-mandates-antigenic-drift-shift-covid-supervariant-mask-social-distancing-lockdown-vaccine-11641847062?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-variant-meets-our-policy-mess-death-fatality-covid-vaccines-mask-mandate-hospitalization-11639517305?mod=hp_opin_pos_5#cxrecs_s https://fb.watch/9TMUWEdSvA/ From the academy: My colleague at UNSW, psychology professor Joe Forgas, interviewed on the psychology of populism The attached paper by Bagus et al on mass hysteria An encouraging new initiative in the US: https://dc.hillsdale.edu/Academy-for-Science-and-Freedom/Overview/ More resistance groups with which to join forces: www.gaihh.org (for mental health professionals), which has just put out two videos described by their creators below: MSM & The Magician's Toolbox: has psychology has been used to manipulate the public’s levels of fear and compliance? https://rumble.com/vrwd33-gaihh-c19-and-psychology-msm-and-the-magicians-toolbox.html Psychology & BIG PHARMA: from 4 psychs who have worked in the industry: https://rumble.com/vrwdz1-gaihh-c19-and-psychology-psych-and-big-pharma-an-insiders-guide.html All other GAIHH videos can be found at https://rumble.com/c/GAIHH https://www.fairbusinessaustralia.com.au/ https://unitedntbusinesses.org/ https://www.gofundme.com/f/zr995-wa-cops-injection-objection “Jasmine's Hub” on LinkedIn (namesake of the sceptical Jasmine character from The Great Covid Panic), with associated email address jasmineshub@gmx.de Evidence of what too much power and money do to people: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635.full …and the powerful will censor dissent, while promoting stories favourable to themselves, in other dimensions too (e.g., https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2021/12/03/twitter-censors-a-content-from-a-respected-medical-conference-that-americans-deserve-to-know-n1538693, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCOn74_PMJg, https://www.rt.com/usa/543684-emails-fauci-collins-herd-immunity/) …and sometimes they really go off the deep end: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2021/nov/22/stuff-it-shove-it-a-furious-michael-gunner-calls-out-those-against-vaccine-mandates-video …in spite of which, some governments in the world are producing sane messages, and some Australian politicians and political groups are reaching out to supporters of sane lines on covid: https://www.georgechristensen.com.au/freedom, https://mailchi.mp/alexantic/freedom; https://votegap.com/2021/11/24/letter-of-response-to-a-workplace-direction-to-vaccinate …yet because of which, initiatives like this are promising: https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ …and the powerful cannot hide everything forever: https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/news/pfizer-document-concedes-that-there-is-a-large-increase-in-types-of-adverse-event-reaction-to-its-vaccine/ Some musings about effective protesting: https://comments.bmartin.cc/2021/12/30/on-covid-protesting/ Inspiring stories, groups (including some to join), and analysis from overseas: https://rescue.substack.com/p/a-judge-stands-up-to-a-hospital-step https://www.freedomtravelalliance.com/ https://policeforfreedom.org/ https://doctorsandscientistsdeclaration.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgds-a_0n7o, https://brandnewtube.com/watch/senior-uk-lawyer-second-nuremberg-is-coming_R7lTJKdpVUoPrgb.html (both featuring courageous UK employment lawyer Anna de Buisseret) https://dailyexpose.uk/2021/12/10/uk-team-file-complaint-of-crimes-against-humanity-with-the-international-criminal-court/ with full filing here: https://www.docdroid.com/WUjv6iw/icc-complaint-7-1-pdf and some inspiration for the team here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FLMRa9WOh4 https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/12/a-half-truth-is-whole-lie-omicron.html https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/ https://www.c19science.info/ https://covexit.com/ https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/map/ https://rumble.com/vqfdcq-on-vaccine-mandates-science-and-politics.html https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/masks-were-to-soften-you-up-for-plan https://rumble.com/vobcg5-relative-vs-absolute-risk-reduction.html https://renz-law.com/renzletter/ https://corona-ausschuss.de/ https://macabim.org/ https://www.covidfraudbureauinvestigation.com/ A few other local pieces of note: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/1983899/r-covid-vaccine-mandates.pdf (my fellow economist Martin T Lally, author of this piece of analysis subjecting New Zealand’s lockdown policies to a cost-benefit analysis, turns his attention to the question of whether the vaccines mandates can be justified on a cost-benefit basis) https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/11/all-cost-no-known-benefit/ https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/12/covid-notes-9/ https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?artguid=ae42a573-7bb1-4994-b492-cb2d69a91ad4 https://spectator.com.au/2021/12/the-tides-gone-out/ (better late than never, Judith Sloan calls out most of my profession for its abrogation of responsibilities during this period) More new platforms and channels: https://mailchi.mp/engagemedia/2021-reflections https://www.ukcolumn.org/ https://discord.com/ Resistance art to uplift and inspire you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qrSbTIA2Lw https://www.facebook.com/622681050/posts/10158350543526051/?d=n https://www.bitchute.com/video/2T7ahdeglBFC/ Finally, in 2022 our main task will be to coordinate effectively with one another as we seek to rebuild our society. To that end, in addition to doing simple things like distributing homemade fliers around our neighbourhoods (see attached for one example, “Rochelle Print”, created by another resistance member), I would like to piggyback upon this newsletter to connect people. Are you a local resistance group leader – in your occupation, your workplace, or your community – based in Australia? Would you like me to advertise your activities, your general location, and a way for interested others to contact you in future missives of this newsletter? If so, please let me know. Also, if you are based in Sydney and interested in meeting up in person with like-minded others, please write and tell me this. I will never share the Voices Against Lockdowns mailing list with anyone else, or use any email address on it for any purpose other than these newsletters without the holder’s explicit permission. As always, I welcome and will act promptly on any requests to be removed from this mailing list, to which I continue to send these missives as part of my educational outreach duties to the Australian taxpayers who fund my job. We will get through this, speaking out and working together. gigi From: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Sent: Wednesday, 27 October 2021 4:15 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, In this period of transition in Australian policy, we are witnessing a pivot from wholesale lockdowns in the name of protection from covid towards state-sanctioned segregation of society in the name of protection from covid. Many have noticed the sobering parallels between the stories and images demonstrating racial, ethnic, and religious segregation decades ago here and elsewhere in the world, and the stories and images illustrating medically-based segregation being promoted today in the West. People in our midst are losing their jobs, their freedom of movement, and their right to frequent business establishments – not to mention, sometimes, the respect of their friends and family – for having the audacity to decline a vaccine that does not prevent infection or transmission and about which knowledge of longer-term efficacy and side effects is still accumulating, against an illness with a survival rate of over 99.9% (higher for healthy young people, lower for the old and sick, and higher for everyone when appropriate early treatment is given) and for which they may already have acquired enduring natural immunity. (For further discussion of the medical dimensions of these issues, see the Rome Declaration page here and petition here, Dr Peter McCullough’s recent presentation at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons here, and his advice for Australia here; and email jenny.beth@teapartypatriots.org if you want to be added to Dr McCullough's email distribution list.) This Voices Against Lockdowns newsletter, ongoing for approximately 15 months and built on the premise that lockdowns were the wrong response to covid, is coming to a crossroads as Australia begins to emerge, blinking, from the catastrophe of population-wide lockdowns. Being right about the foolhardiness of covid lockdowns, however, is little consolation when we continue to see the withholding of choices that only two years ago we took for granted in Australia as being ours to make. Damage continues to be caused by Australian covid policy, not only through what we hope are the last gasps of wholesale lockdowns (with condolences to our long-suffering Victorians), but through new ways of withholding liberties via governmental and organisational edict. Following the pivot of Australian policy, in future editions of this newsletter I will pivot its content to support dissent about restrictions of freedoms in the name of covid that extend beyond lockdowns. I will also reduce the frequency of the newsletter as the various nascent groups I have mentioned and linked to that are fighting for the restoration of freedoms, and which I encourage you to consider joining forces with, gain strength and influence far beyond what I or anyone can offer as an individual. I will not use this newsletter to pass on lengthy information regarding the vaccines, early treatments, or other medical information about the disease, but will retain focus on the core purpose that initially compelled me to start this mailing list: to help people who are alarmed at and wish to fight against the removal of their rights and freedoms in the name of covid. As always, I welcome and will act promptly on any requests for removal from this mailing list. Now onto more content. I’ll start by sharing some of my recent and imminently forthcoming appearances speaking about my co-authored book The Great Covid Panic, published last month and which has already sold about 3000 copies worldwide: On The Leighton Smith podcast: https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/podcasts/the-leighton-smith-podcast/leighton-smith-podcast-episode-132-october-13th-2021/?utm_source=edm&utm_campaign=CE-RS-NL-EDM&utm_medium=email With Ron Barshop on the Primary Care Cures podcast: https://www.primarycarecures.com/2021/09/24/episode-137-gigi-foster-is-an-award-winning-economist-and-professor-who-co-authored-an-important-new-book-the-great-covid-panic-what-happened-why-and-what-to-do-next/ With the Sydney Institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5cxDWPgf4 With the Ramsay Centre (video to be released tomorrow): https://www.ramsaycentre.org/news-and-media/announcements/gigi-foster-the-great-covid-panic/ I am honoured and delighted to announce to this group an in-person book launch this coming Friday evening of The Great Covid Panic at the private home, in Mosman, of one amongst us named Ditta – after the first launch she generously hosted last Friday sold out. There are a few spots left for the event this Friday the 29th, starting at 6 PM. If you’re interested in attending (and having your copy of the book signed by me, and/or buying copies directly from me at the event), please email Ditta promptly on d.bartels@iinet.net.au. To follow my co-author Michael Baker’s Twitter feed about the book, visit https://twitter.com/GreatCovidPanic (@greatcovidpanic). The publisher of The Great Covid Panic, the Brownstone Institute established in May 2021 and led by Jeffrey Tucker, has been putting out article upon article of excellent reading on different aspects of the crisis of freedom we face: https://brownstone.org/articles/. Jeffrey is soon to release an interview that he and I recorded just this morning. Some musings about what has happened to the “libertarian left”: http://www.andrewdobson.com/blog---notes-from-a-cliff-edge/where-is-the-libertarian-left; thoughts from a psychologist about what has made and sustained the covid crowds: https://jermwarfare.com/blog/mattias-desmet; and a retrospective on how lockdowns got taken up by the West, offered here caveat emptor: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/masked-ball-cowardice More on Sweden, everyone’s favourite punching bag last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZRR5zZ0I0s; https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=103 Work by the servants of justice amongst us to fight for medical and other personal freedoms continues, with mixed success. Recently, an appeal heard by the Fair Work Commission considering dismissal of an employee who did not have the flu vaccine was rejected. However, the dissenting opinion penned by Deputy President Dean lays out arguments that may be of use in future cases involving covid vaccine-related wrongful dismissal suits. In Dean’s words, “Never have I more strenuously disagreed with an outcome in an unfair dismissal application. The Decision manifest a serious injustice to Ms Kimber that required remedy. More egregious, however, is that the Majority Decision has denied Ms Kimber the protections afforded by the Fair Work Act in part because of ‘an inference that she holds a general anti-vaccination position’. Had I been able to do so, I would have granted permission to appeal, upheld the appeal and quashed the Decision. In re-determining the application, I would have found that Ms Kimber was unfairly dismissed and would have reinstated her to her former position.” Read the full decision, and the full dissenting opinion, here: https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/decisionssigned/html/2021fwcfb6015.htm?fbclid=IwAR2jWd9bmZ6xrbcYWwZ86VdOyA7_qp67yBEblcgF3IRkHbFKSCAM3IjTxJw Tony Nikolic being interviewed by Monica Smit about his recent unsuccessful attempt to challenge vaccine mandates in the Supreme Court of NSW: https://www.reignitedemocracyaustralia.com.au/tony-nikolic/ Musings by a team of legal professionals about the legality or otherwise of lockdown orders: https://www.acfl.com.au/police-lockdown-powers-unlawful/ Solicitor Peter Fam’s musings on the legality of vaccine mandates: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-employers-mandate-medical-interventions-peter-fam/?trackingId=yeVRij8h5JoM2K9ZdJpnNA%3D%3D News of a legal challenge to vax mandates in Queensland: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-28/qld-police-sue-commissioner-carroll-covid-vaccination-mandate/100498750 Police officers speak out against what they are witnessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRMEbN7jk3s; https://cmnnews.org/story/an-australian-police-officer-speaks-out-TH4fnlJd806DmuUU2zncy Politicians will be politicians, but that doesn’t mean they can never be right on an important issue: https://www.senatorhanson.com.au/2021/10/21/hanson-acts-to-end-pandemic-of-discrimination/; https://timesnewsexpress.com/news/world/australia/dominic-perrottet-says-sydney-is-australias-truly-only-global-city/; https://www.facebook.com/tanyadaviesmulgoa/videos/3881075938658921; https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=391547645855854 How to make a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission: https://humanrights.gov.au/complaints/make-complaint Popular writing about the corrosive divisions that are being thrust upon us: https://spectator.com.au/2021/10/covids-lepers/; and more, with an artistic flair: https://spectator.com.au/2021/09/covid-an-alternate-interpretation/ From the academy, thoughts about how to move towards better models of policy-making (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3599939) and how to cope with the devastation that lockdowns have wrought (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577740/full) Thoughts on why so many in my own profession failed in their duty to speak out against lockdowns: https://dailysceptic.org/2021/09/27/why-did-so-few-economists-speak-out-against-lockdown/. Still, not all have failed; see attached evaluation of New Zealand’s covid policies by economist Ian Harrison. Some sense that has made it into the mainstream press: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/covid-hysteria-based-on-lies-propaganda-and-ignorance/news-story/b95a651fc3b98e76235621ecfdfe936a; broadcast journalism of the sort we need more of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ItkYhFiGBI; and journalism illustrating the damage to our country’s image that has been created by our covid policies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qf5l2nmWOY Some channels/organisations/movements speaking out for freedom and sanity – many of them new – in case you’ve not already come across them: https://voicesforfreedom.co.nz/ https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/ https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/launch-with-publication-of-at-home-treatment-guide/ https://www.australianssayno.com/ https://anchor.fm/matt-wong (also see this interview of an Australian policewoman by Matt Wong) https://www.cafelockedout.com/ https://votenoconfidence.co/ https://www.hoodyshelpers.com.au/ A grassroots movement against discrimination, #NotOurBusiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybx1TTttBLQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8SKRNqlfFs Good sources on facts about covid: https://swprs.org/fakten-zu-covid-19/; https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/shining-a-light-on-the-elephants-in-the-covid-room/ And finally, resistance art to make you laugh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPUuOXVF-Pg&t=4s) and a moving message thanking those responsible for the disastrous policies we have witnessed during this period (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9FA6_t5Zp4). The fight to restore normal freedoms in Australia and the rest of the developed West is far from over. You are directly helping Australia and the world when raising your voice, where and how you are able, in service to this worthy cause. gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Thursday, 16 September 2021 11:38 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, The fight continues to end lockdowns in Australia. More and more determined voices – including that of the brave pilot in this home-made video – are being raised together against the madness, across the spectrum of professions and perspectives, as illustrated in the links below. First, I’m delighted to announce that my co-authored book about this period with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker has now been released, and is available in paperback or on Kindle here and across the world: https://www.thegreatcovidpanic.com/. If you do read it, please consider writing a review on Amazon. Our publisher, the Brownstone Institute led by Jeffrey Tucker, has been doing terrific promotion in the US, although I’m told that posts about the book to social media in Australia are already being censored. I am presently liaising with a number of groups to organise book launches in Sydney and beyond, and will post details for these to the site above as they are fixed. You can see me speaking about the book, and the present situation, here: GET REAL with Mahieash Johnney | Episode 120 | The Great Covid Panic (Sri Lankan TV) https://youtu.be/DVG4otuH7vo (Macquarie University Liberals Club “Sunday Sessions” group meeting) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMkk7CuuLFU (Nick Holt podcast) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBTNSWFpcyY (with Julia Hartley-Brewer on UK TalkRadio, at timestamp 2:19:20) I’m also slated to appear on The Outsiders this coming Sunday morning and on additional podcasts and TV shows around the world in the coming weeks. The final episode of the fifth season of my ABC radio program and podcast co-hosted with Peter Martin, The Economists, also covered lockdown trade-offs, and rode the bleeding edge of what the ABC would allow to go to air. A month ago I called on the lawyers amongst us to put their hands to the wheel. I have since become aware of a number of heartening initiatives and resources, such as: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/newsradio/supreme-court-cases-challenging-legality-of/13536026 (Tony Nikolic speaking about his upcoming class action in the NSW Supreme Court challenging vaccine mandates) https://www.advocateme.com.au/covid-class-action (information on the class action lawsuits being brought by the law firm AdvocateMe) https://humanrightsadvocates.com.au/letters (letters to print if you want to resist various restrictions on your freedoms) More businesses and business groups are starting to organise and push against discrimination: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1213829215752696/ https://youtu.be/X-jmOts8Jr0 (inspiration from the US) From the medical resistance, see attached a letter that can be customised to your GP, speaking of the potential for early treatment of covid; and a covid patient treatment guide. While earlier this week, the TGA made it harder to access ivermectin, there has been a great deal of push-back against this decision. More and more doctors are speaking out about the lack of transparency about the vaccines and early treatment options, and about the costs of our covid response: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hard-to-get-a-patient-to-come-in-vital-screening-drops-30-per-cent-20210915-p58rtx.html https://www.covid19assembly.org/doctors-open-letter/ https://rumble.com/vlq0js-australian-psych-perspective.html https://cmnnews.org/ Even the odd Australian politician has started to voice resistance to lockdowns in assemblies: https://rumble.com/vkz9ah-covid-19-restrictions-dont-work-end-this-madness.html?mc=dho6e&mref=l0car Some other good reading and watching from recent weeks: https://fee.org/articles/daily-covid-deaths-in-sweden-hit-zero-as-other-nations-brace-for-more-lockdowns/ https://thefatemperor.com/scientific-analyses-and-papers-on-lockdown-effectiveness/ https://spectator.com.au/2021/09/from-vaccine-passports-to-vaccine-apartheid/ https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-bizarre-refusal-to-apply-cost https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2021/08/19/commentary/world-commentary/australia-authoritarian-covid-19-response/ https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/coronavirus-parents-deserve-the-truth-about-the-danger-of-lockdowns/news-story/4fb7db6a9fa0c5734373b46eeec2467b https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/global-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-covid-human-economic-trade-offs/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=e98c56b5-9d7b-4780-8daa-3f55ee952962 https://clubtroppo.com.au/2021/08/31/two-summary-pieces-of-hart-and-swpr-on-masks/#more-35154 https://www.smh.com.au/national/lockdowns-don-t-just-save-lives-they-cost-lives-too-20210825-p58lvu.html https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/09/07/covid-sweden-v-australia/?cspt=1630984839%7C3eb713b3c9a91814c2a48963400ef0da https://www.abc.net.au/religion/tim-soutphommasane-and-marc-stears-covid-why-are-progressives-s/13521952 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3872861 (on the costs of lockdowns in Ireland) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucfm9LCzLFM (Jay Bhattacharya defending the Great Barrington Declaration) https://rumble.com/vitcgn-following-the-science.html (a collection of scientists rejecting the assertion that our covid policies have been “following the science”) Some simple and well-presented “Facts about Covid” pieces to help people regain perspective: https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/PIC-COVID-19-Disease-Information-Statement-DIS-August-2021.pdf https://spectator.com.au/2021/09/just-the-facts-coronavirus-in-australia-by-the-numbers/ https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/selected-deaths-vs-covid-19-australia Resistance art is priceless: https://m.facebook.com/watch/?extid=SMS-UNK-UNK-UNK-AN_GK0T-GK1C&v=521133085849651&ref=sharing&_rdr https://twitter.com/JohnRuddick2/status/1433004499900108804 https://youtu.be/dNt4NIQ7FTA Many new media channels (BitChute, Telegram, Rumble, etc.), political groups (Reignite Australia, The New Liberals, Australia One, etc.), professional associations (e.g., http://amps.redunion.com.au/), community organisations (e.g., https://freedomtribe.net/, https://worldfreedomalliance.org/au/) and even new academic journals (e.g., https://www.australianconstitutionallawjournal.org/about) have been growing legs and members over the past few months, and are collectively part of the path out of our present reality. You may also wish to keep an eye periodically on the various petitions to Parliament available for your signing – many of which relate to covid policies. It is up to all of us to push against destructive policies like lockdowns in the ways we can, to reaffirm our freedom and to build a better set of institutions for our future. gigi From: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Sent: Tuesday, 17 August 2021 3:27 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, With all of New South Wales now in lockdown by order of the Premier’s Saturday afternoon tweet, the Australian Capital Territory locked down in response originally to a single covid case, and those who speak out for sanity (such as Matt Canavan recently on ABC’s Q&A) still subject to rabid bullying and cancellation attempts, it’s clear we are still in peak lockdown madness here in Australia. Overseas, the unsustainable business costs of mandating discrimination against non-covid-complaint customers are becoming apparent, and the health departments in US states like Texas and Florida are disseminating a far more sensible message on covid than we are receiving here, even in the face of covid case counts in those states alone far higher than we have ever seen in all of Australia. Since my last missive just over a month ago, by far the single most frequent response I have received from those on this list is some version of “what can I do?”. Hence today’s missive is focussed heavily on answers to that question, alongside the usual collection of links and other updates. As always, please feel free to forward this email liberally. At the end of the day it is push-back from the population that will force the politicians to change tack, so anything you do to help people recover from their brainwashing is part of the solution. Challenging the inconsistencies inherent in the mainstream narrative, pointing to overseas countries that have ceased blanket lockdowns and whom we’ll fall behind if we don’t follow suit, and drawing historical or literary analogies (Nazi Germany, US Prohibition, Orwell’s 1984) may all assist in making headway in your conversations with friends, family, and people on the street. One amongst us sent me the attached list of MPs, with their email addresses; his advice on using email to raise your concerns to politicians is as follows:

  1. Create a new email account in Yahoo, Gmail, etc. with a new name, so if the account is blocked it doesn't affect your personal emails.

  2. Using the internet find the contact details of for example the members of the Federal cabinet and the shadow cabinet or the equivalents at State level and paste them into Word file.

  3. Edit this Word file to delete everything except the email addresses separated by one space from each other.

  4. In another Word file write you letter of complaints, telling the recipient why you are not going to vote for them next election and telling them what is wrong with the restrictions and include links to videos or information from the internet that you think they should watch or read.

  5. Compose a new email in your new account.

  6. Copy and paste into the new email the text of your complain including links of videos, etc.

  7. Address in the TO box a leader of the target and then in the BBC (blank carbon copy) paste one of your lists containing the emails addresses of that particular target group.

When I shop for groceries these days I wear a Guy Fawkes mask and engage actively and in a friendly manner with people who notice the mask. Yet that message can only reach the few people I encounter personally. Attached you will find two flyers (“Are You COVID SMART” and “Pass On 5”) that can be printed and distributed to others as you see fit, courtesy respectively of Jorg Probst and an anonymous couple. See the “intro_letter” also penned by the latter couple for guidance on using the “Pass on 5” flyer. For those who are concerned about the threat to our normal freedoms posed by policies that mandate the covid vaccines – regardless of whether you or your loved ones plan to get a covid vaccine – I have also attached a letter from AFL Solicitors that can be customised to push back against a ‘no-jab-no-X’ policy implemented by an employer or educator. The Covid Medical Network released an excellent Open Letter on August 2nd: “Due to State and Federal Governments’ relentless and increasing hostility toward Australians over the pandemic, the directors and friends of CMN are issuing an urgent letter for all doctors, health professionals and all Australians to read. Please find the open letter here: https://www.covidmedicalnetwork.com/open-letters/Covid-Medical-Network-Letter-to-Doctors-and-Health-Professionals-02082021.pdf Any health professionals wanting to support this letter can either use the link https://covidmedicalnetwork.com/open-letters/join-with-us.aspx or email: admin@covidmedicalnetwork.com” Steve, amongst us, contributes the following (my bolding): “I believe that in the light of fair work ombudsman's 4 step plan it is vitally important that a website/app be set up asap to provide a business register for Australian businesses that refuse to discriminate on the basis of vaccination status. No doubt I'm not the first person to think of this however, I haven't seen anything. This is vitally important particularly in terms of providing hope to those businesses who are questioning whether or not they can maintain their stand against government restrictions and mandates.” If you have web or app design experience and are interested in helping get this initiative off the ground, please email Steve (who is happy to coordinate efforts, but needs people with the abovementioned experience to contribute) directly on FMCWP@protonmail.com. Many people do not push back because they do not know their rights, and are afraid of being fined or jailed for refusal to comply with restrictions on freedoms. Do states’ declarations of emergency trump Commonwealth laws that describe our freedoms? Are masking orders or 5-kilometre-radius movement restrictions lawful? What about general restrictions on the movement of healthy citizens, within, into or out of Australia – are these legal? Answering such legal questions is outside of my expertise, so let me also ask any lawyers in this group to share their specific knowledge about what rights citizens have to which they can appeal if stopped by a police officer or member of the Australian Defence Force without a mask or driving in the wrong place on the highway without an approved excuse, or if found by an authority figure to be in breach of mandated quarantine or in some other way being non-covid-compliant. Some written words of sense and hope from the last month: Martin T. Lally’s cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns in New Zealand, in pre-print: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.15.21260606v1 Ramesh Thakur’s argument against vaccination certificates: https://spectator.com.au/2021/08/vaccination-certificates-an-idea-whose-time-must-never-come/; his argument with a co-author, for a more academic audience, against a zero-covid strategy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09700161.2021.1918947; and his calling-out of governments’ use of fancy-seeming models rather than actual data in their covid policymaking: https://spectator.com.au/2021/07/covid-governments-have-ditched-data-for-glamorous-models/ An analysis of the costs of the Australian lockdowns by actuary Marc Hendrickx: https://quadrant.org.au/the-damage-done-and-yet-to-come/ Some estimates of the mental health costs of lockdown policies: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01537-x Some perspective on the risks of covid to children from Dr Sebastian Rishworth, who offers several other reflections of possible interest on his blog: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/07/07/is-covid-a-danger-to-children/ Some perspectives with hindsight of how Sweden’s no-lockdown strategy played out: https://shahar-26393.medium.com/not-a-shred-of-doubt-sweden-was-right-32e6dab1f47a , https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/sweden-despite-variants-no-lockdowns-no-daily-covid-deaths A well-referenced letter of questions addressed to Scott Morrison, penned by Emma McArthur: https://humanityattheprecipice.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/letterscottmorrison16-07-2021_v2-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2Gc4H9Jgvu8pOsH3FcYOVXAoem5O0QZ48U5Ec3jQV1PdGGJ8FebWfDpy4 An articulate commentary on the suppression of real science during this period: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425/rr-31 An application to the International Criminal Court alleging violation of the Nuremberg Code by the government of Israel (attached) Someone at Wikinews interviewed me about Australia’s “pandemic control” response and produced this: https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_Professor_Gigi_Foster_about_pandemic_control_in_Australia?dpl_id=2927091 An independent investigative-journalism-style report about the developing narrative that vaccination is a precondition for regaining freedoms in Australia: http://www.harrisonpublications.org/operation-covid-shield.html Finally, some videos, radio, and podcasts: My appearance together with lawyer Tony Nikolic and law academic Rocco Loiacono being interviewed about the covid situation in Australia by Reiner Fullmich’s Corona Investigative Committee: https://www.bitchute.com/video/ac6Fk6Tyowl5/ My first appearance on the Alan Jones show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2p9-NRV3fs (my second appearance on the show the subsequent week was not made available on YouTube) Dr Peter McCullough making the case that the vaccine is not the only medical weapon in our arsenal against covid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM Dr Cameron Murray speaking on the “longevity machine” – the economy in normal times – that we have interrupted with lockdowns: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/lockdowns,-lifespans-and-covid-responses/13470794 An interview I did with Ben Fordham on 2GB radio, aired this morning, making the case that other things apart from covid matter: https://www.2gb.com/economics-professor-pushes-back-against-lockdowns/ All going well, my co-authored book The Great Covid Panic (about which I speak here with Gideon Rozner of the Institute for Public Affairs) should be coming out in just under a month. I will include mention of how to get a copy, plus information about launches, in the ensuing missive I send to this group. In the meantime, the publisher’s website contains some sensible pieces on covid-related matters: https://brownstone.org/ Thank you, as usual, to everyone who has been sending me material. Please continue. Hang in there. We will get through this together. gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Wednesday, 14 July 2021 4:02 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, The New South Wales leadership announced today a further two-week extension of the lockdown instituted several weeks ago, plunging us even deeper into this self-inflicted dystopian nightmare. Other Australian states too have called snap lockdowns over the past month, at times with no or precious few covid cases, and to the puzzlement of many in countries overseas (including the UK and also Singapore) that are now getting back to normal, often despite still seeing far more suffering and death with covid than Australia has ever seen. Our governments have approved and released manipulative, misleading dramatisations that fan the fear of covid amongst young people, while paying mere lip service to the punishing costs of their lockdown edicts that continue to fall disproportionately on the young and the disadvantaged. All of this further underscores the dysfunction that has set into Australian policy-making. On the bright side, I have a number of new resources to share with you that I hope will provide encouragement and opportunities to fight this continuing madness. Starting with happenings in the medical profession, The Covid Medical Network has launched a “Swiss based non-profit global newspaper” to which you can subscribe here: https://cmnnews.org/. The CMN describes this as: “A One Stop Shop … which will also promote the CMN website. People are starved of alternative news — they don't know where to go to get this information. This will be ONE location where they can go to get the best news on Covid. It will draw from the best Covid News sources with the latest and most reliable stories." Meanwhile, the Doctors for Covid Ethics group has put together and sent a letter to the political leadership of New South Wales, objecting to the present policies on both ethical and legal grounds: https://doctors4covidethics.org/legal-letter-to-the-minister-for-health-and-premier-of-new-south-wales-australia/ Find here a compendium of reports and data about the costs of lockdowns put together, discretely, by the Great Barrington Declaration folks: https://thepriceofpanic.com/ And finally on the medical front, Arief Farid invites you all to a presentation this Saturday entitled “COVID Unmasked - A Scientific Analysis of the Past 18 Months”, presented by Dr David Richards. Details: Saturday 17 July 3pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) (a second presentation will be on 31 July) Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82041671092 Meeting ID: 820 4167 1092 For tech support or other questions, please email: arief.farid@outlook.com Moving to the legal front, herewith a report of the continuing efforts of lawyer Reiner Fullmich, who has also taken to periodically interviewing other experts in podcast form: https://rumble.com/vgdl3f-dr-reiner-fuellmich-international-lawyer-has-all-the-evidence-that-pandemic.html?fbclid=IwAR2-_A10IFSa6ojJlOdfcvpfxdeUwNsvFU10vA1zgriShjMESwkPizrTKI0 A recent academic piece by economists examining whether shelter-in-place orders save lives: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28930/w28930.pdf, and an “entertain your friends” tool pitched to the lay audience asking essentially the same question: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ Some recent popular-press writing from journalists and scientists in Australia:

Some informative written and spoken words for public consumption released by more members of the worldwide “Covistance”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4grP1718Ps (a presentation by Professor John Ioannidis at Stanford) https://odysee.com/@PANDA:3b/TimeToReopenSociety:7 (featuring Nick Hudson, founder of PANDA) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btWfAXQ8wYg (featuring UK-based pathology expert John Lee, and produced by Ivor Cummins) https://www.collective-evolution.com/2021/02/01/scientists-explain-the-catastrophic-impact-of-covid-forced-societal-lockdowns/ https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-60H (University of Wollongong Professor of Social Sciences Brian Martin muses on the way in which views that challenge the mainstream one have been silenced, discredited, and otherwise harassed away from the public’s eye and attention) Some recent podcasts I’ve been featured in: https://themodernconservative.substack.com/p/lockdown-economics-making-sense-of https://shows.acast.com/principle-of-charity/episodes/should-we-put-a-dollar-value-on-human-life And one coming soon, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/counterculture-with-gideon-rozner/id1555393918 My weekly talk-radio show on ABC Radio National has commenced its fifth season, with the first episode all about lockdown policy: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-economists/title/13406906 - and i am pleased to share that I am receiving and fulfilling voluminous requests to speak on television and radio each week. By invitation earlier this week I also gave the opening keynote speech at the annual Australian Conference of Economists, with staunch Covistance member (not to mention term-coiner) and brother-in-arms Paul Frijters giving another invited keynote in that same conference. Even my own university has begun to feature my work on covid policy. I take these as encouraging signals that the mainstream narrative is shifting, if glacially. I am also very excited to share news of my forthcoming book, co-authored with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker, entitled The Great Covid Panic. We are aiming to have the book on shelves within two to three months – in time for the Christmas season – with book launch events to come in October/November. Further details to follow in future missives. Another forthcoming production in my family is a musical being written by my son Neil, inspired by the events of the covid period, provisionally entitled Hive Mind. If you or someone you know works in the musical theatre business and would be willing to consult with Neil about next steps to progress this project, please email him directly on bakerneil0@gmail.com. On the business front, some sensible push-back from the airline sector: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-17/virgin-ceo-jayne-hrdlicka-covid-borders-vaccine-deaths/100144956 A statement from the tourism industry of the massive losses it expects due to covid policy settings: https://www.unwto.org/news/global-economy-could-lose-over-4-trillion-due-to-covid-19-impact-on-tourism Plus an inspiring grassroots project begun in Mullumbimby to help the small businesses that have felt the brunt of covid restrictions (see the contact details in the description below the video, if you would like to get involved): https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=RjNzYoLFbPg&fbclid=IwAR21Ut2P-KSruhQbj0HeKp-ZkzrPw8p_QlbROGWDH9z_ygeTeFs09gbZhis And finally, while Van Morrison queries where all the rebels have gone, the Cubans are showing us in the supposedly free West how it’s done: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57799852 It grieves me to be compelled to continue to send missives to this group. I will keep doing so as long as the normal freedoms of movement of Australian populations are being revoked in the name of covid. Yours in hope and determination, gigi PS for those on this list also interested in the legal and ethical aspects of requiring covid vaccination as a pre-condition for regaining freedoms, a petition to the Australian Commonwealth government against mandatory vaccination expires tonight: https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN2753 Also, Jorg Probst shares the existence of a small grassroots group working against vaccine passports (https://nohealthpassports.wordpress.com) and a Telegram channel where he posts news (Australian and worldwide) on the issue of vaccine passports and news closely related to this topic: https://t.me/VaccinePassportNews From: Gigi Foster Sent: Monday, 26 April 2021 9:55 AM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, On this ANZAC Day long weekend, I hope you are feeling solidarity not only with freedom fighters of the past but with the increasing numbers of people in Australia and the world today who are coming to understand the folly of lockdowns as a response to Covid-19. Notwithstanding the recent snap lockdown in Western Australia, with other Australian states promptly restricting free border crossings of travellers from WA, the recent protests in London and many of the resources and information below show the slow turn of the tide. I continue to hope that we will be free to live and travel unencumbered by blanket restrictions in the name of Covid by the end of this year or early 2022. As usual, below/attached is a collection of curated links and reports that you may find of interest. The most careful cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns for Australia that I have yet seen is attached (“The Costs and Benefits of a Covid Lockdown-6”), penned by Martin T. Lally of New Zealand, who comes to the firm conclusion that the Covid lockdowns were not worth it. Douglas Allen has also produced the attached “Lockdown Report”, concluding that lockdowns may go down in history as one of Canada’s greatest peacetime policy disasters. On the legal front, disturbingly, Serene Teffaha – a solicitor I have mentioned in previous missives who has been working on class-action lawsuits for those negatively affected by lockdowns – has had her license revoked. She responds here: https://youtu.be/q5g3OvamOik However, staying with legal matters, there is also the following heartening news: https://ahrp.org/german-court-in-weimar-declares-lockdown-unconstitutional/ The following page also featuring Dr Reiner Fuellmich contains, if you scroll down, some useful argumentation against lockdowns: https://fos-sa.org/2021/01/12/cease-and-desist-papers-served-on-prof-dr-christian-drosten-by-dr-reiner-fuellmich/ A Facebook group of Australian lawyers: https://www.facebook.com/Concerned-Lawyers-Network-110748590838926/ Some useful information, evidence, and analyses by those on the North American continent: https://www.liftthelockdown.ca/ https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/03/do-lockdowns-make-a-difference-in-a-pandemic/ https://www.constitutionalrightscentre.ca/medical-censorship-lockdowns/?fbclid=IwAR3k14riDsd_ZXAV9C4r7LO0dD7JWrK_434dQ_lBf6tkFzYy_hg3MOXetec-- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qydRF1Rlr68&t=25s And staying on that continent, the transcript of a speech by a kindred spirit in the US: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/science-politics-covid-will-truth-prevail/ A couple of heartening pieces from the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-american-epidemic-of-covid-mania-11618871457 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lockdowns-werent-worth-it-11615485413 The American Institute for Economic Research and its writers continue to publish sensible and useful stuff on Covid lockdowns: https://www.aier.org/article/16-states-are-now-following-the-science/ https://www.aier.org/article/the-lockdown-paradigm-is-collapsing/ https://truthcomestolight.com/the-zerocovid-movement-cult-dressed-as-science/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new-posts-are-available-at-truth-comes-to-light_16-- The Spectator as well has published some quality pieces during this period – a recent one is here, by Ramesh Thakur: https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/04/lockdowns-are-the-opiate-of-champagne-socialists/ Pieter den Heten passes along information about the group he created to help advocate for Australians stranded overseas during the Covid period, called the Stranded Aussies Action Network (https://strandedaussies.com/). Some key extracts of SAAN’s mission statement: The Stranded Aussies Action Network (SAAN) is an initiative that formed in January 2021 when the Australian government halved its international arrivals caps. SAAN’s objective is to make the critical facts and figures widely known and to provide tools to help all of those impacted to advocate for themselves and their loved ones. SAAN’s founders – the authors of the strandedaussies.com website and resources – are volunteers, currently in different parts of the world, who have been impacted by Australia’s travel ban. They understand the experience of being locked out of their home country. SAAN is an informal network that is not politically partisan. It is not affiliated with any other group or initiative other than removethecap.com. Its founders are not involved in any proposed legal actions or rescue flights. SAAN requires no membership and it will not collect or store names or personal information. It will not collect money. SAAN’s objective is to empower those impacted by the travel ban. It provides the informal means for all of those affected to form a unified force that can compel political leaders to act. From the academy: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1376/htm https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.625778/full Some recent media appearances of mine: https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2021-25-03/13260458 https://www.findinggeniuspodcast.com/podcasts/behavioral-economics-and-lockdown-ramifications-moving-the-world-economy-forward-in-the-wake-of-covid-19/ Some turning of the corner in the mainstream Australian press (though I also note that Adam Creighton, who has been one of the staunchest advocates in Australian journalism of abandoning the lockdown approach, has recently moved to the US, taking up a new post as the Washington DC correspondent for The Australian): https://www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/two-moments-from-our-federal-leaders-hit-me-like-thunderbolts-this-week-20210413-p57iyi.html Some inspiration from the music world: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eric-clapton-van-morrison-anti-lockdown-song-stand-and-deliver-1106174/ Somehow I’ve neglected to include a link to this group in my prior missives, but it is long overdue: https://lockdownsceptics.org/ Finally, as the raison d’etre of this mailing list is to help provide solidarity and support for those (mainly in Australia) who believe that lockdowns are the wrong response to Covid, I have resisted including significant amounts of information in these Voices Against Lockdowns missives about related but separate issues such as the vaccines, vaccine passports, testing, masking, anti-Covid prophylaxis, and other interventions being implemented or discussed in the public space. Many of those on this list regularly forward me links about these related topics. While I do not wish to devote much space to them, in case you are interested, here are a few illustrative examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPbxOeYAC7s http://www.jorgprobst.com/en/another-court-acknowledges-limitations-of-pcr-testing/ https://covid19criticalcare.com/ https://www.aier.org/article/masking-a-careful-review-of-the-evidence/ Sense will prevail, eventually. Until we see a cessation of blanket restrictions on normal human activities – including interstate and international travel – in the name of Covid in Australia, I will keep periodically sending these missives. Just let me know at any point if you’d like me to take you off my list. Thank you again to those who have sent me information since my last missive, helping me to compile the resources above. In solidarity, gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Tuesday, 26 January 2021 6:09 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, Happy Australia Day! The throngs at Coogee Beach today would almost make you think that our policy settings had returned to normal. Sadly, I am still finding reason to keep sending these missives. Australia’s international borders are still closed, with standard air-mail services to most countries suspended; many of our domestic borders are still closed to a selection of would-be interstate travellers, and a suite of state- and territory-level regulations still mandate that people from certain regions of origin quarantine for significant periods on arrival; and in several states, the free movement, congregation, and otherwise legal behaviours of people and businesses are still restricted. Our governments have still not articulated an end-game strategy with a timeline for the removal of these restrictions. All of this continues to cause unprecedented disruption to Australia’s activities and the welfare and progress of its people – not to mention the disruption that our choices are causing for our trade and aid partners abroad. Meanwhile, abroad in Europe, the Americas, and many other countries, lockdowns of various forms continue at even tighter levels, bringing their own human tragedies. I am heartened at some signs that people are starting to see the folly of the lockdown approach to managing Covid. The traditional satirical Australia Day advertisement put out by our lamb producers is a great example, poking fun at the very idea of domestic border closures, and featuring an elderly male (more vulnerable to Covid than most of us!) as the unwitting protagonist: https://youtu.be/aCIMYjqWxwA Below I have pasted links to more resources that I hope aid and hearten you in the fight for a removal of these unprecedented restrictions on our economic and social activities, and the pursuit of more sensible policies. I am continuing to write on this topic and will also continue to speak out in the media when the opportunity presents itself. I have also taken to wearing a Guy Fawkes costume mask while doing my weekly grocery shop, as a statement of passive resistance against the NSW blanket mask mandate in shops (for those who don’t know the reference: https://youtu.be/lSA7mAHolAw). In the past month, about 75% of the people in my eastern Sydney suburb who have noticed the mask and made a comment about it have been supportive. An extensively researched article by Ramesh Thakur and Deepak Nayyar on the recent political, economic and health trajectories in India and the rest of the world, including the consequences of lockdowns: https://apjjf.org/2021/3/Thakur-Nayyar.html A few recent pieces from the academic literature: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103120304248 (finding experimental subjects to weigh the human costs of alternative action plans asymmetrically depending on whether or not the costs are directly related to Covid-19) https://sabeconomics.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/JBEP-4-S3-2.pdf (reviewing the media headlines in Australia, Sweden, Thailand, and the UK in 2020 and suggesting that insights from behavioural economics can help us understand the responses to Covid-19 by people and governments) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484 (finding that more restrictive interventions do not cause reductions in Covid-19 cases) Two pieces articulating with extensive references the position that lockdowns do not achieve their stated anti-Covid aims, published by the American Institute for Economic Research: https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/ https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-dont-prevent-coronavirus-spread/ A video of European medical professionals arguing (amongst other things) against lockdowns: https://www.bitchute.com/video/GrAmcLjZymKa/?fbclid=IwAR22PXexYUv3Ui0gZrVRTvLJRH_ZpQeT9NgZ8SR8yTedZ5drhoPS03nqEo4 A piece in the Toronto Sun featuring Canadian medical professional Ari Joffe, arguing against lockdowns: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/canadian-experts-research-finds-lockdown-harms-are-10-times-greater-than-benefits A presentation by New Zealand medical professional Sam Bailey in relation to claims about excess mortality, arguing (amongst other things) that a significant fraction of reported excess deaths have been due to lockdowns themselves: https://youtu.be/bw5ldWr9QD0 An interview with a German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich who plans to seek legal redress for the harms that the German government has created via the restrictions it has mandated during this period: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpOzHHJmy7g A speech by Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre arguing against lockdowns: https://www.facebook.com/PierrePoilievreMP/videos/3844403742279142 A blog by economist Paul Frijters about the comparative severity of lockdowns in different countries around the world: https://clubtroppo.com.au/2020/12/22/which-governments-have-been-most-restrictive/ An entertaining, data-heavy narrative thread arguing that non-pharmaceutical interventions (“NPIs” – of which restrictions on economic activity are one type) do not work to control Covid, crafted by someone adopting the pen name “the bad cat” (el gato malo), on a site called Buzz Chronicles: https://buzzchronicles.com/Alex1Powell/b/society/4912/ A review of the incorrect, naïve, and/or misleading claims of people and groups supporting lockdowns, published by the Ron Paul Institute: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/december/27/twelve-times-the-lockdowners-were-wrong/ I have also attached to this email the transcript of my testimony to the UK Treasury late last year, together with that of David Miles and Tony Yates, with whom I shared the evidence session. Finally, some groups overseas whose mission statements are consistent with our position: https://worldfreedomalliance.org/ https://usforthem.co.uk/ https://hartgroup.org/ https://pandata.org/about/ (see also accompanying PDF, attached) If you would be interested in starting a group here in Australia that is affiliated with or modelled on one of these organisations, I would be happy to lend support as I am able. Another person on the Voices Against Lockdowns list, Arief Farid, has organised the following virtual space that may be useful for coordination: https://semperfi.mn.co/ Let me close by thanking all of you who have continued to pass me links and resources since my last missive. Much of what appears above has come from you. I plan to keep periodically disseminating to this group selected information that I find and receive about the folly of lockdowns and ways to fight against them for as long as the extreme restrictions on economic and social activities in Australia remain in place, as part of the public service and community outreach component of my occupation as an academic economist funded by the Australian taxpayer. Yours in sanity and hope, gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Tuesday, 24 November 2020 2:31 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, A chunky further update here with resources and opportunities to work against economic lockdowns as the right policy response to the Covid-19 phenomenon. The world seems gradually to be waking up, person by person, but the battle for sense in policymaking on this issue is still far from won. As always, please disseminate this email liberally. Sanjeev Sabhlok has prepared the attached submission to the International Criminal Court, accusing the Victorian and Australian governments of crimes against humanity. Culpability for the same crime of the health scientists involved in lockdown decisions is proposed here by Ramesh Thakur: https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/10/hippocrates-cancelled/ A group of Victorian police officers have spoken out against police enforcement of lockdown policies under the banner Cops for Covid Truth, and then faced repercussions: http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/cops-for-covid-truth/ https://advocateme.wixsite.com/copsforcovidtruth/the-project https://tottnews.com/2020/11/06/cops-for-covid-truth/ A group of UK doctors have put up an open letter against lockdowns here: https://usforthem.co.uk/first-do-no-harm/ More broadly, doctors and medical professionals across the world are represented here: https://worlddoctorsalliance.com/ An excellent compendium has been compiled of evidence against the wisdom of lockdowns and opportunities to push against them, though the site’s curators/moderators keep themselves well-disguised: https://evidencenotfear.com/ Perhaps a reason for the mysterious stewardship of the above site is the sort of phenomenon discussed here, a flavour of which is also on display in the response to the Victorian Cops for Covid Truth people: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2020/10/why-scientists-fear-toxic-covid-19-debate?fbclid=IwAR2_4Yqo0bsLFeJplJJVxdnbHo9xQYxxavtvSPW44lvJhg1ALSnRic9ehVY Relatedly, a heartening, if hero-worshippy, political-philosophical statement of support for the anti-lockdown position is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDsjHZHsGc A lockdown severity response tracker: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker The ABC Four Corners team have put together a program about the costs of lockdowns in Australia as told by people on the ground, including those paying the costs: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-job-ahead:-surviving-australia%E2%80%99s-covid-19/12711470 For those who prefer to fight the fines imposed on people found to disobey lockdown restrictions, rather than help people pay them (an alternative option about which I previously circulated information): https://www.rebelnews.com/fight_the_fines_australia Two informative videos put together by Ivor Cummins, trained engineer turned health guru (https://thefatemperor.com/about-ivor-cummins/): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmoM1AMdd4g A heartening radio interview in which host Maajid Nawaz confronts a SAGE epidemiologist about the costs of lockdowns: https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/epidemiologist-on-cost-of-second-lockdown-coronavirus/ Coverage of some of my recently-released appearances: https://www.mixcloud.com/Troublemag/gigi-foster-the-economics-of-a-pandemic/ (interview for Deep Trouble podcast) https://news.yahoo.com/uk-lockdown-cost-covid-19-coronavirus-treasury-select-committee-economist-161611405.html (story following my testimony to the UK Treasury Select Committee) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1skjFx_FLKcBx4ij3l7hFT5fwSOBQOpgL/view?usp=sharing (panel discussion with myself, David Limbrick MP and Sanjeev Sabhlok, moderated by Daniel Wild of the IPA, organised by Bev McArthur MP) Speaking of the IPA, that organisation has conducted the following modelling of the costs of lockdown policies: https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/media-releases/modelling-finds-covid-elimination-strategy-equal-to-entire-health-defence-education-and-welfare-spend-combined Some other informative pieces from the UK media: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8751389/Oxford-scientists-circuit-break-need-cycle-bad-data-bad-science.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8776267/Ex-Supreme-Court-judge-LORD-SUMPTION-denounces-No10s-rule-muddle-authoritarianism.html Finally, a couple of pieces with more name-calling and stronger political overtones than some on this email list may be comfortable with – shared here caveat emptor: https://tomwoods.com/the-covid-cult/ https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda In case I do not write again before the holidays, let me wish you a happy and restorative break, filled with love, peace, and meaning. If you are physically alone, know that you are not alone in spirit. And for those Americans amongst us (ex-pat and otherwise) – happy Thanksgiving! gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Monday, 12 October 2020 11:03 AM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, Since I last wrote a month ago, a number of momentous events have signalling movement globally and within Australia away from economic lockdowns in response to Covid. I have selected several to highlight here. As always, please forward to others as you deem appropriate. The WHO has changed its stance on lockdowns: https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus-who-backflips-on-virus-stance-by-condemning-lockdowns/news-story/f2188f2aebff1b7b291b297731c3da74?utm_campaign=EditorialSB&utm_source=news.com.au&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_content=SocialBakers A large group of medical professionals has spoken out against lockdowns, and is racking up signatures on its open letter, christened “The Great Barrington Declaration” (members of the public are also welcome to sign; I have signed): https://gbdeclaration.org/ Ramesh Thakur has put together this excellent webinar setting out the case against lockdowns: https://youtu.be/NrA1K5jH8Xk Sanjeev Sabhlok, the courageous economist who quit the Victorian Treasury on principle, has produced the attached paper (“PAPER FOR GIFFITH”) and published this book. He and I will be appearing together in an event on the evening of Thursday 15 October, being organised by Beverley McArthur, Member of the Victorian Parliament for the Western Victoria Region. A Facebook group called “End the Lockdown Australia” has been organised – for details, see: https://www.facebook.com/groups/endthelockdownaustralia/ Quoting from organiser Tim Flynn, “The End The Lockdown Australia Group was established in mid-April 2020 and was set up to allow ordinary Australians to feel comfortable debating the merits of government policy from an economic and societal perspective. My rationale for establishing the group is included in my submission to the Senate inquiry into the management of COVID (submission 377) : https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/COVID-19/COVID19/Submissions. The group now has 4,200 members; it would have been much larger but we have a policy of deterring conspiracy theorists and extremists. Two cross bench members of the Victorian upper house are active members, as are several prominent journalists.” A group of Belgian doctors has penned this Open Letter: https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/ My fellow economist Henry Ergas published this beautifully written piece in The Australian last Friday. A Catholic bishop in America has spoken out publicly against lockdowns: https://www.ncregister.com/interview/bishop-paprocki-catholic-church-can-provide-a-clear-path-for-covid-19-response Sibby Ilzhofer (sibby3@msn.com) is helping to organise small businesses that are interested in joining forces with others in a collective effort to lodge affidavits with the Victorian and New South Wales governments, affirming the damage of lockdowns. If you or people known to you are involved in a small business and looking to re-open but are struggling due to governmental restrictions – including but not limited to lockdowns – please email Sibby for further information about how to get involved. On a drier academic front, I have published the attached paper, documenting some of the costs of the lockdowns to the present and future Australian labour market, in the Australian Journal of Labour Economics. I will also be giving an address at the Economic Society of Australia on 26 October, in which I will speak amongst other things about the failure of my profession in what should have been its finest hour – advertisement here: https://esacentral.org.au/event/43536/2020-young-economist-address-and-2020-esa-awards-online-only I have also been invited to give evidence on 22 October at a session of the Treasury of the United Kingdom, regarding the economic costs of lockdowns. I will draw partly on my own cost-benefit analysis of the lockdowns in Australia (linked to in one of my earlier missives, to which you can scroll down), but if you come across any detailed, well-referenced costings of lockdowns here or in other countries, please forward them to me for possible referral in my evidence. Finally, a brief word on the future. As the world slowly turns away from wholesale economic lockdowns as the appropriate policy response to Covid, the raison d’etre of this “voices against lockdowns” group will inevitably fade. I will continue to speak out in public forums against lockdowns and other blanket economic restrictions, and I will also speak in favour of what I consider to be positive future directions for the country, as the debate moves on and the focus intensifies on what to do to get Australia out of the economic mess that has been created. I plan to stop using this mailing list once we see Australia ease restrictions, including opening borders. It is an honour to fight with you against this staggeringly damaging policy fumble. Thank you for your continuing efforts in service to this worthy cause. gigi From: Gigi Foster Sent: Friday, 11 September 2020 6:31 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, Another update here on the Covid situation and opportunities to push for sensible policy responses to it in Australia. Please liberally forward this message to others. First, the cost-benefit analysis that I submitted to the Victorian parliament – to my knowledge still the only detailed CBA of wholesale lockdown policies publicly available in Australia – has been posted in toto at the following blog site by my colleague Paul Frijters, and has attracted over 150 questions and comments there: https://clubtroppo.com.au/2020/08/20/professor-fosters-cost-benefit-analysis-for-the-victorian-parliament/ Second, you have likely heard of the Covid Doctors Network that put together a letter to the Victorian premier arguing against the Victorian lockdown due to its detrimental health consequences. I spoke earlier today with the main instigator of this initiative. He asks that anyone with a story to tell about suffering due to lockdowns should feel free to pen it and email it to info@coviddoctorsnetwork.com for possible publication on the network’s website. He also foreshadows that moves are afoot to migrate the doctors’ network’s online presence to another, highly secure website, and to create analogous networks for other professions (e.g., “Covid Legal Network,” “Covid Journalists Network”, “Covid Economists Network”, “Covid Business Network” – all loosely united under the umbrella of “Covid Truth Network”) for which he is in the process of purchasing domain names. If you are interested in being involved in any of these networks, or if you are in the medical profession and wish to add your name to the original petition, please do not sign via the existing website but rather email info@coviddoctorsnetwork.com. Third, amongst us is Liz Bryant (liz.bryant@iinet.net.au) who has instigated a Change.org petition to open Victorian schools that now has nearly 13,000 signatures. You may wish to email her to aid with her efforts, and/or add your voice to the petition: https://www.change.org/getvictoriankidsbackintheclassroom Fourth, in the past few weeks the openness of the mainstream press to alternative views such as ours seems to have been on the increase. One particular opportunity is afforded by Channel 7’s “Spotlight” documentary team, who are putting together a piece about the costs of lockdowns to be aired live (with some pre-recorded interview content) from Sydney on the evening of Sunday, 27 September. I and many others will be interviewed for this piece. If you have a compelling story to tell and are interested in putting your hand up to be interviewed for the program, please let me know and I will pass your name to the producer. Fifth, one amongst us has started a GoFundMe site to raise money for people issued fines in Melbourne for violating the lockdown restrictions. It hasn’t gotten much traction and perhaps feels to some people too much like enabling the Victorian government in its present policies, but I offer the link nonetheless, caveat emptor. https://www.gofundme.com/f/raise-funds-for-melbourne-protest-fines?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_more&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet Finally, some links to recent pieces of possible interest: https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/what-s-a-life-worth-counting-the-cost-of-lockdowns-20200827-p55ps2 (my most recent AFR op-ed) https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/ (one of a number of stories alleging that technical errors fed into initial Covid policy settings) http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/by-dr-guy-campbell/ https://the-iceberg.net/ I’m told that The Spectator is also soon to print an op-ed based on the letter to Australian leaders I co-organised back in June calling for the opening of the economy, mentioned in one of my earlier missives below, which now has over 1200 signatures: https://aip.asn.au/2020/06/open-up-our-country-sign-the-open-letter/ Sending thoughts of solidarity from Sydney to those all over Australia, and especially in Victoria. gigi From: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Sent: Thursday, 20 August 2020 5:10 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: FW: Voices against lockdowns Dear all, An update here on some resources and information about opportunities to work towards sensible policies on Covid in Australia. First, a video recording of my PAEC testimony is available for viewing here: https://youtu.be/mpyYwQFtF-U The supplementary material I sent to the committee subsequently – a draft cost-benefit analysis, and a collection of small snippets of content on different aspects of the problem, informed at many spots by your collective contributions, and including many references – is now available for public download here (look for the two “Tabled Documents” in the row containing my name), where a full transcript of my testimony should also soon appear: https://parliament.vic.gov.au/paec/inquiries/article/4554 I also published an op-ed in the Australian Financial Review earlier this week to follow on from my testimony, linked here: https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/we-can-t-cure-the-virus-by-making-the-economy-sick-20200817-p55mcg Second, for those interested in watching or participating in a lengthier and less-formal discussion of the issues raised in my PAEC testimony, I will be appearing together with Dr Simon Thornley of New Zealand on an hourlong livestream with David Limbrick MP this coming Saturday afternoon, as advertised here: https://www.facebook.com/davidlimbrickldp/posts/2471761086455072 Third, in addition to the class-action lawsuits mentioned in my first missive, a number of other initiatives have begun by various like-minded people. I have sketched these briefly below, together with contact details for people you can make contact with if you’d like to lend your hands to the effort:

  1. Development of a simple message targeting the broad public, and a graphic presentation of that message, and the production of a large advertisement containing that message to be placed in newspapers. This effort requires a graphic designer, someone with experience in business communication/crafting messages to the public, and also a web developer and one or more people to create content for a website to which the ad would direct readers, via a url, to learn more about the policy being proposed. People with experience designing and formatting ads for newspapers would be especially useful. The contact for this effort is Woah Back (bondi.coogee.sydney@gmail.com) – please email Woah if you would like to get involved.

  2. Development of messaging for potential use by, and to be sent to, the PM and/or other Australian political leaders, to show them how a changed Covid policy course could be sold to the public. The contact for this effort is Dijana Dragomirovic (dijana@theleadicon.com) – please email Dijana if you would like to get involved.

  3. Instigation of a Facebook page and associated messenger group called “The People” at facebook/thepeoplecomau, with the following activities in mind and whose contact person is Sibby Ilzhofer (sibbyais@gmail.com):

  • Providing factual and informative material for people to access, without the fear mongering in an attempt to uncover any misconceptions and misunderstandings

  • We are planning to have regular ‘live’ sessions with guest speakers to openly discuss issues that need to be addressed

  • We will have a website, where we plan to have a pool of resources and information for people to access and download

  • We are getting all the MP FB pages researched, to find MP’s that are against the lockdowns or are currently sitting on the fence, with an attempt to include and inform them and gain their support for our objectives of re-opening the borders and putting an end to lockdowns

  • We will track down Sky reporters that have been increasingly critical of the government decisions and lockdowns and seek their support

  • We will create and link a Twitter account to the FB ‘The People’ account and actively try to distribute information and facts to the right circles

  • We will be discussing the legal implications and ramifications of the legislative changes, the lockdowns and other current and future mandatory changes and the impact on society with the attempt to raise legal support in this cause

Fourth, a few months ago I co-organised this Open Letter calling for the opening of Australia’s economy; it has collected over 1000 signatures so far and is still available for electronic signing: https://aip.asn.au/2020/06/open-up-our-country-sign-the-open-letter/ Finally, for those who did not receive my first message to this group, which now includes about 150 people who support a position against wholesale lockdowns in respond to Covid, please scroll all the way down to view that first message. I will never share this email list with anyone else, and I do not plan to email this group frequently or forever – only to send updates, resources, and information on opportunities to push for sensible policies re: Covid over the next weeks/months. If for any reason and at any point you’d like me to take you off of this list, please just email me. Best wishes and chin up. I sense the tide is starting to turn, and more ways are opening up to help that happen more quickly. gigi PS a bit of humour in these awful times: https://twitter.com/PhaatBoyz/status/1295231862307270656/photo/1 From: Gigi Foster Sent: Tuesday, 11 August 2020 4:12 PM To: Gigi Foster <gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au> Subject: Voices against lockdowns Dear like-minded people, Two opportunities in the near future, described below, allow public voicing of arguments against wholesale lockdown of the populations in Australia and Victoria as a response against Covid-19. The first opportunity is presented by the hearings of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee of the Victorian Parliament into the Victorian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic (for details see https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/paec/inquiry/1000). I will be appearing before PAEC this coming Wednesday afternoon to provide a five-minute statement and answer questions for approximately 30 minutes. The hearing will be live-streamed (https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/video-and-audio/live-broadcasting) and the list of all planned testifiers is here: https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/paec/COVID-19_Inquiry/Hearing_schedule/Round_2_Hearing_Schedule.pdf I plan to use my five-minute statement to highlight first the biggest costs that are most solidly tethered to lockdowns per se and have the strongest evidence basis – specifically, mental health deterioration and increased domestic violence due to people being locked away from the broader social sphere, and costs from children being kept home from school. I plan to mention briefly the myriad other costs that some might claim would have been incurred to some extent even without wholesale lockdowns in a fearful environment – including crowded-out healthcare for non-Covid problems and falls in GDP, resulting in fewer resources being devoted into everything that supports human wellbeing into the future. I plan to briefly put the projected possible deaths into context and estimate based on other countries’ data how bad the death count might have been for Australia in the first wave, contra initial modelling. I plan to report an upper-end estimate for welfare saved and compare that to estimated welfare lost from lockdowns, referring the committee to a short written document presenting a back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit analysis that I will prepare over the next two days and send to the Committee under separate cover, and then to end with “what should the government have done”: it should have controlled fear, directed resources and attention towards protecting the most vulnerable, and generated evidence based on a wide range of expertise (not only from health experts) of the likely impact of any policy choices on total human welfare – evidence that we still await – noting that all of this policy advice is still applicable. I am also compiling a brief document to share with PAEC that collates the most convincing arguments and ideas contributed by other people, whether going further in-depth on any aspects above or discussing other relevant aspects of the problem. The brief given to me is quite broad: to “contribute” to the hearing. If you would like to contribute any thoughts or data to what I will be preparing to accompany my PAEC testimony, please email me within 24 hours with no more than half a page of information, including links; please type your name in the document if you desire not to be anonymous. The second opportunity is that a legal challenge is being proposed against the Victorian Government's declaration of a State of Disaster, and a second legal challenge against the Commonwealth Government’s declaration of a State of Emergency, in response to the novel coronavirus. The law firm pursuing these class action lawsuits, Advocateme.com, is searching for expert witnesses to speak to a number of aspects of the situation. I will be speaking in my capacity as an economist, and according to Serene Teffaha, the lawyer organising this case at Advocateme.com, the following expert witness positions are still unfilled (lifting her text here verbatim):

  1. Infectious disease expert who can assess the actual risks with COVID-19- the substantive analysis of isolating the virus, the testing issues and problems with RT PCR tests, clinical diagnosis based on the tests alone rather than actual diagnosis of symptoms, the causal fatality rate being so small and whether it justifies lockdown, whether there is any benefit in herd immunity thinking, whether appropriate measures would have been sufficient to those that are vulnerable versus everyone who is healthy and any long term effects, including whether there are any genuine risks with people who are asymptomatic being infectious.

  2. Pathology including the merits of the RT PCR tests, serology tests, how are they unreliable and any other issues.

  3. Data collection and Statistician in relation to COVID-19 codifications and recording Deaths.

  4. Vaccine and related experts in relation to criticising the tests and trials taking place and alternative medical alternatives like hydroxychloroquine.

Please email Serene on serene.teffaha@advocateme.com.au if you are able to fill any of the above roles. Please liberally forward news of these opportunities to others you know of who may be interested. All best wishes and thank you for your support, your efforts and your voice. Gigi Foster https://www.business.unsw.edu.au/our-people/gigifoster Handle Your Own PR release.pdf 181K View as HTML Scan and download

305 views1 comment

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page