I was once a proud Australian. Here in the Land of Plenty it felt like we’d always been lucky and when the first wave of Covid came to our shores in 2020 we contained it. It seemed like we had dodged a bullet. Being an island country and locking down our society early appeared to be a good idea at the time. Our cases were low and the death count was tiny compared to our friends and allies overseas who were being ravaged….or so we were told anyway.
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Life under universal lockdown was difficult for many of us in 2020, but as a bit of a lone wolf with the luxury of some financial security behind me (thanks mostly to crypto) that first lockdown was bearable. I never wanted to complain about it because I knew there were many of my fellow Australians who were doing it far tougher. We learnt a lot about Covid during that historic year of 2020 but I won’t go into the science of things in this post, I just want to tell my personal story. This post is about my life experience in 2021 because my psyche has changed a lot this year and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.
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Even though life had returned to some form of “normal” at the start of 2021 during the beautiful Australian Summer, I had always expected there would be another “wave” to hit our shores. We all could see the dreaded Delta running wild in the Northern Hemisphere Winter and our media was pumping up the fear pretty early and clearly preparing us mentally for what was to come. Winter hit and we ended up in lockdown again. It seemed punitive to me at the time because we had testing and tracking for the 2021 wave and parts of the country were locked down even though they had no cases. The fear in society was so palpable that even a suspected outbreak from detection of Covid in our sewerage plants was enough to make peoples heads start spinning with anxiety and the media was heavily reporting on Covid stories daily. We were locking our society down at the drop of a hat while businesses were going broke. Mental health degenerated and suicides started to climb – but most of those inconvenient truths went unreported.
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When news from the outbreak in India disappeared overnight and our politicians and media started pushing the vaccine as the only way out of this mess, it became obvious to me that something was not right and I started diving down rabbit holes to understand the science and try to figure out why. I’ve been struggling with this for months now and I am finally starting to get the clarity of mind needed to write about it. I hope to write a few posts about what’s going on in Australia over the next couple of weeks but for now I just want to stick to my personal story to provide the context for those future posts so please bear with me while I get this off my chest.
Things have moved very quickly these last couple of months. I personally have transitioned from bewildered outrage to blinding fury and now to steely resolve as the politicians and media have pushed their campaign for universal vaccination of the population. They have used such overwhelming coercion that I have never seen, nor expected to ever see, in this country before. What has really shocked me though is that so many Australians are on board and cheering for the blatant human rights abuses that are going on here. We can’t protest any of it effectively because protesting has now become illegal and there is police brutality against unarmed civilians happening on our streets regularly. This has all become normalised.
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The politicians and media have basically told us that the lockdowns would not end until we submitted to their will. They have unashamedly extorted our basic freedoms for compliance and so far it has mostly worked. The lockdowns were hard, but we are now transitioning into a “New Normal” that is even more terrifying. We have instituted Medical Apartheid where those who have not complied with the powers demands are to be excluded from society. Many of my friends and family “got their freedoms back” on October 11 so long as they show their papers on demand. If you want to sit for a coffee, have a meal, or a beer at the pub – it’s papers please. No exceptions and with heavy fines for any non-compliance. Some businesses have tried to stand up and refuse to participate in the discrimination, but they’ve been getting dobbed in by Vaxists and shut down. It is the most un-Australian thing I’ve ever seen.
For me, it’s painful to watch the country I loved and the society I belonged to degenerate into fear, distrust and even hatred in this way. As a non-compliant I am still effectively in lockdown and I barely leave the house apart from the occasional walk for exercise. When the apartheid first started I was angry, but hopeful it would be over soon. Where I am we have the promise of a return to society on December 1, so it could be just 7 weeks – a “free trial” of apartheid if you will. At first I was looking forward to that date, but now it is really dawning on me….
I am not deluded enough to think that this is all going to be over on December 1 and that things will go back to the way they were. We are on a dangerous path here in Australia and until the masses realise this fact it is going to get worse before it gets better. What really terrifies me is the NEXT wave. I have seen what fear can do to people and I’ve seen the politicians and media all too ready to fuel and exploit that fear. They are already talking openly about refusing medical treatment and other basic services to non-compliant citizens. When I look at my kids it breaks my heart to think that this is the society that they are growing up in. I want better for them. I want better for us all.