Propaganda narratives shift slowly over time to absorb aspects of undeniable reality, whilst minimising damage to the interests of those benefiting from the big lie.

First, the Covid vaccines were safe and effective, and we were set to experience a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Get vaccinated to protect your community!

Next, the shots were safe and effective, but with rare side-effects, mostly mild. Still, the benefits outweighed the risks. Get vaccinated to protect your healthcare system!

In the latest narrative update, experts say all the shots except AstraZeneca's are safe and effective, and they admit that vaccine injuries can be life-ruining, though still very rare. But Covid is worse. Get vaccinated to protect against Long Covid!

In an 'After Covid' Spotlight special on commercial media channel 7NEWS over the weekend, a panel of experts reflected on Australia's Covid response. Tellingly, vaccine safety (or rather, lack thereof) occupied 17 out of a total 53 minutes, more than a quarter of the airtime.

Highlights:

The parents of 34-year-old Katie Lees, who died from the AstraZeneca shot, told Katie's story and said they've still received no acknowledgement or apology from anyone in charge.

Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former head of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), discussed her Pfizer injury and said "There is an incredible lack of medical curiosity about investigating [Covid vaccine injuries]" and that the roughly 140,000 injury reports on the national safety surveillance database (the DAEN) are a "drop in the ocean compared to the number of actual adverse reactions that there are... because a lot of them aren't being reported, because certainly in the early days they weren't being recognised".

Jackie Stricker-Phelps (Kerryn's wife) said the Pfizer shot "has ruined my life" and that even if she could take another vaccine, which she now can't, "I wouldn't go near them with a 10-foot barge pole". She added that "the compensation scheme is hopeless", only covering a narrow selection of injuries.

An audience member said she "fundamentally got long haul Covid from the vaccine" which caused her to be "pretty much bed bound for two and a half years", and asked "when will there... be a proper acknowledgment by the Government as to actual vaccine injury?"

Another audience member asked why there is no large scale study of the Australian population comparing immune responses of unvaccinated people against people who have had one, two, three and more doses. "We have a society that is chronically ill.. and it is not the unvaccinated," she said.

Friend of the blog Alison Bevege criticised a panelist's assertion that data collection from the the mass worldwide rollout hasn't turned up any usual side-effects. "You're not collecting the data in a controlled manner, that's not a test, that's just giving it to everybody."

After panelists told concerned audience members they were wrong, emphasising Covid vaccine safety and effectiveness, an audience member yelled out, "they're not safe and they're not effective".

Host Michael Usher said "with vaccinations rushed through there was no time to properly test.. and that led to ongoing health problems for some people who got the jab", before revealing that of the roughly 140,000 adverse events reported to the national safety surveillance database in relation to Covid vaccines, 22,000 were classified as serious. He also said "we were all forced to get the jab".

As an Australian, I cannot overstate the significance of this much airtime being dedicated to criticism of Covid vaccines on mainstream TV.

In the first year of the Covid vaccine rollout, only a single media story was published on the vaccine injury experience of Australians, despite 117,147 adverse events and 777 deaths being reported to the national safety surveillance database during that time.

News.com.au ran the first personal vaccine injury story in November 2021, but it wasn't until Dr. Phelps went public with her own Covid vaccine injury in December 2022 that the issue gained wider coverage.

Dr. Phelps claimed:

"The medical regulator AHPRA had censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that 'might undermine the Government's vaccine rollout' or risk suspension or loss of their regulation".

Indeed, doctors and healthcare workers were investigated and even suspended for expressing concerns over Covid vaccine safety and for issuing medical exemptions, creating a culture of fear and silence in the medical profession.
In the toxic silence around Covid vaccine injuries, many injured Australians found there was no help and no support available. I personally interviewed scores of Australians seriously injured by the Covid shots for archive project Jab Injuries Australia. Many of the injured reported being gaslit by doctors, socially shunned as 'anti-vaxxers' despite having rolled up their sleeves in the first place, and unable to access compensation to cover medical expenses and loss of income.

Total media silence on the issue at first, and then the odd "sad but exceedingly rare" story two years too late exacerbated the sense of abandonment and betrayal felt by scores of Covid vaccine-injured Australians. (Not to mention that anyone who publicly expressed hesitation about the safety of the Covid vaccines was smeared in the media as an "anti-vaxxer".)

Fast forward to mid-2024, and AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine has been withdrawn worldwide following the company's admission that the vaccine can cause fatal blood clots. There are now thousands of peer-reviewed studies documenting Covid vaccine harm. An article recently published in Australia's major journal for GPs suggested that Covid vaccinations may also be a secondary cause of Long Covid (known as "Long Vax").

Though the average citizen may not read peer-reviewed journals, a good many no longer buy the safe and effective narrative. In Australia, fewer than 10% are 'up-to-date' with Covid vaccinations. In the US, a recent survey found that a quarter of those who had had the Covid shots regretted it. A fifth say they know someone who experienced a severe health problem after Covid vaccination, and over half of Americans believe the jabs may be causing unexplained deaths.

And so the narrative shifts. Just as all the people who got the jabs "to protect the community" catching Covid multiple times necessitated a pivot to focus on protecting the healthcare system instead, the sheer number of people still suffering health problems after Covid vaccination necessitates that the 'safe and effective' narrative be updated.

Now, a little bit of vaccine regret is allowed on the news. You're allowed to say the shots ruined your life and that you'd like an apology. But not without a side of gaslighting.

On the 7NEWS special, the gaslighting was served by panelists: Professor Robert Booy, a vaccinology, epidemiology and infectious diseases specialist; Associate Professor Sanjaya Senanayake, a doctor and infectious diseases specialist; and former Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Also on the panel was UNSW Economics Professor Gigi Foster, who publicly and consistently called for the panic to be dialled down and for governments to make rational decisions during the height of the Covid response.

When she wasn't speaking, Foster's face said it all, such as this clip in whichformer Queensland (QLD) Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk justified trampling civil liberties over a virus with an IFR of 0.04%. Foster's cost-benefit analysis of Australia's Covid lockdowns found they cost at least 68 times more than the benefits delivered.


Both Booy and Senanayake repeatedly downplayed the harms of the Covid vaccines.

Booy is the former Head of the Clinical Research team at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) and currently serves on the Therapeutic Goods Administration's (TGA) Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee. He insisted that the TGA hasn't ignored Covid vaccine side-effects and has done the necessary research to follow up on potential harms.

"I totally encourage anyone who's had a vaccine and they've had a side-effect, to report it. We will look at it closely, and we'll collate the information, and we'll examine it."

It's hard to know how to respond when someone that high up the chain is so detached from the reality experienced by people on the ground and in the studio audience.

Every Covid vaccine injured person I've ever spoken to says that the TGA has done zero follow up after confirming the initial report. The TGA has no idea how many of the more than 140,000 adverse events reported in relation to Covid vaccines are causally linked, and is not trying to find out.

The regulator has ignored safety signals, won't release batch testing results and hid post-vaccine deaths of children from the FOI public disclosure log because disclosure "could undermine public confidence". Sure, the TGA has conducted follow-up and research on a handful of safety signals, but nothing close to addressing the full scope of harms suffered by Australians as a result of the mass rollout.

Worse, the TGA never withdrew approval for the the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, despite admitting that it killed 13 Australians. This is an outrageous even by the TGA's own standard. In 2010, the TGA withdrew a flu vaccine after after 25 febrile convulsions were reported and no deaths.

When an audience member asked why longitudinal testing comparing the immune systems and response of the unvaccinated to the vaccinated by dose rate isn't being done, Booy said "you're wrong". That's half true. Small studies with limited findings exist. But the only large project of this nature, called QoVax, was defunded by the Queensland Government last year with no explanation, and Queensland Health has refused my numerous requests for further information.

Palaszczuk, who mostly repeated variations of "it was so hard but we did what we had to do" got off scot-free for her Government's coercive vaccine mandates, lies about vaccine efficacy and bullying of the unvaccinated - none of this was probed in the special.
Of all the experts, Foster seemed most in tune with the audience. As the tension between the audience and panellists became palpable (even to those viewing at home), Foster told the panel:

"I think that what we're seeing here is a symptom of a modern problem that we have, with people who are often making decisions, in positions of authority, trying to do the right thing - I think, usually - very separated from the people on the street.

"And the people on the street are getting their information from sources other than the mainstream news, other than the health head of the department... other than mainstream peer-reviewed journals. They're getting information from a lot of independent media, from a lot of independent scholars, some of whom are extremely good.

"And I would very strongly recommend that you guys have a look at non-mainstream sources of information. You may discover something."

In one of the most gaslighty moments of the segment, Senanayake immediately followed with:

"One of the major things that the WHO has said to continue doing with Covid is to look at disinformation and address it".

Later, the restless audience heckled when Senanayake said that he thought vaccines were the reason we have freedom to travel and do fun things. He doubled down:

"We will have another pandemic and we need the public on board. They need to have faith in the Government's surveillance systems."

These experts seem to think that beating people over the head with "safe and effective" and blocking access to independent sources of information will achieve that.

Foster's closing remark was the only one that got a round of applause from the audience. She said:

"What we have learned is that people in a lot of power in an emergency will abuse that power. We need to find ways in our democratic societies to return power to the people."

The platforming of Covid vaccine (and mandate) criticism on 7NEWS over the weekend is not in isolation. Last month, a conservative mainstream journalist called for a "major apology" for Covid vaccine mandates, and the Australian reported that millions of Americans regret taking the shots. In May, the New York Times finally acknowledged that the Covid vaccine injured are "just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted".
The good news is that these narrative adjustments may make it easier for the Covid vaccine-injured to access medical, social and financial support. People will increasingly find opportunities to share about their injuries and express vaccine regret openly.

The bad news is that just like Joe Biden's Presidential candidacy, the big lie stumbles on, propped up by experts and stakeholders who either stand to gain from it, or are so out of touch that they can't see the wood for the trees.
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