Are Australians ready to go to jail for expressing opinions which displease the government? Popular, even if maybe wrong opinions?
Because that’s exactly what the bonkers bureaucrats at Australia’s drug regulator are hinting at.
Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), is considering referring Facebook posts containing claims about COVID vaccine deaths to the police after a post showing Labor backbencher Julian Hill getting his vaccine was met with mass pushback from vaccine skeptics.
Many people are sceptical, rightly or wrongly, about the COVID vaccines. That includes a great many people who are otherwise positive, even enthusiastic, about vaccines.
But, according to our overlords, that is ThoughtCrime. As revealed on The BFD, Facebook is banning anything that isn’t whole-hearted cheer-squadding for COVID vaccines. “Anything that questions the vaccine or the narrative regarding the vaccine, which is, you know, everyone should get the vaccine and the vaccine is good and you’re not going to get many bad side effects, anything outside of that realm” will be banned, according to now-sacked Facebook whistleblower Morgan Kahmann.
Remember: Facebook spent the past 18 months also banning anything that supported the “lab-leak” theory, before quietly lifting its ban.
So Facebook can be absolutely wrong – but nobody is allowed to say so.
“Vaxholes” – people who intentionally brag about their vaccination status in order to signal to others their moral superiority – can post their narcissistic selfies of getting jabbed all they like. But no one is allowed to voice a whisper of disagreement. Not even pregnant mothers at home in their pyjamas, with their families.
[Hill’s] post was ratioed with almost twice the number of comments to engagements – a common sign that a post is unpopular.
Many of the comments noted that the vaccine is “experimental,” described Hill’s post as “propaganda,” and voiced their objections to the vaccine.
“Experimental” is not exactly wrong, even if it over-eggs the pudding, but the rest is perfectly reasonable opinion.
But Facebook doesn’t do perfectly reasonable opinion. No more than the rest of our ruling elite.
But The Guardian Australia focused on alleged posts from some Facebook users that purportedly contained an image that cited the TGA and claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have caused more than 200 deaths.
The figure is a reference to the TGA’s disclosure in its May 27 COVID-19 vaccine weekly safety report that it has received “210 reports of deaths following immunisation.” However, the TGA insists that only one of these deaths was caused by the vaccines.
With the posts removed, we only have The Guardian’s word for it – they failed to provide screenshotted evidence, for instance – that the posts said “caused”. Still, it’s not beyond imagination – or reason – that some people will read this and conclude that the 210 deaths following immunisation were causally related.
It hardly seems the sort of thing to send the Feds kicking people’s doors in for, let alone hauling them off to the slammer for two years.
After The Guardian Australia contacted the TGA, it said the alleged posting of claims that the vaccine had caused more than 200 deaths were “particularly concerning” and that it would consider referring these posts to the federal police.
Additionally, the TGA noted that it’s a criminal offense, punishable by two years in prison, to represent oneself as a commonwealth body or claim to act on behalf of one.
The proof of anyone actually doing so is…?
But even this dictatorial heavy-handedness isn’t enough for vaxhole Hill.
Despite the threat of police referrals from the TGA and Facebook removing the posts, Hill demanded that Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, take further action to “combat vaccine hesitancy, and the bat shit crazy conspiracy theories circulating online.”
Reclaim the Net
Does that include the “bat shit crazy conspiracy theory” that the virus might have originated in a lab?
Oh, wait: that’s not a “conspiracy theory” any more. Facebook says so, and we must trust Big Zuck.
You know, if the media-political elite really wanted the hoi polloi to stop thinking that there’s a massive conspiracy to enact a “COVID dictatorship”, they could stop, well, acting like a COVID dictatorship.
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