I slept with ash in my mouth last night, after our harsh words.
After all the seas we’ve crossed, holding hands capsized in a monstrous storm, speaking heart to heart about children, partners, fear and loss. I thought then, if I were to die, who better than with you?
We’ve fought on the same side of so many battles, intuitively trusting each other’s judgment, morals and perspective. And here we are, distant and sour over COVID-19.
This is the only letter I will write to you, I will not raise it again.
I guess we will not speak for a while. I hope we can meet over coffee and memory when this shit-storm passes. I fear the chasm is too deep.
Friend, at the bottom of every COVID-19 related rabbit hole you voice is a conspiracy so vast, it is highly improbable. When you combine them, the hypothesis is so impossible it beggars’ rational belief. You have, quite simply, gone mad.
Let’s deal with just four of many.
The first is that the death rates from vaccination are being underreported.
I was a coroner for 21 years, and I understand how comprehensive and resilient our death reporting processes are. Of course, they are not flawless (I once recorded a death as onanism, when it was actually aneurism), but to believe that there are thousands of deaths being covered up in Australia would involve tens of thousands of health professionals, public servants, police, independent contractors and even some judicial officers deliberately lying on a raft of reporting measures.
If caught, any one of these doctors and nurses and administrative staff would be sacked or prosecuted. And what is their incentive for putting their entire careers and incomes on the line? And why would they not put their patient’s wellbeing at the forefront like they do every day by diligently reporting any such drastic adverse reaction? And where is the evidence of some overarching international agency pressuring them to commit fraud?
And all this in an environment where deaths are being reported for blood clots, and vaccines are rejected – because they mask other diseases – despite the cost. So, the conspiracy somehow permits reporting of one cause, but not all the others? Beyond a reasonable doubt; improbable.
The second, is that deaths from COVID-19 are being over-reported. In other words, the rabbit hole says that many of those who are not dying with COVID-19 are being reported as dying from COVID-19. If this were true, then the argument goes, COVID-19 is pretty harmless – not as bad as the flu. So, in every country in the world, from Russia to Finland, United States to China, India to New Zealand, millions of times, doctors, when asked to place the cause of death on a certificate, are deliberately telling an untruth. And it is just coincidental that the death rate is pretty similar in all first world countries. Again, what’s in it for them to be lying? In my experience doctors genuinely and diligently report the cause of death even where there is great pressure to do otherwise – think suicides. And how do these doctors get communicated these messages to commit crime and lie every day? Again far-fetched improbable.
The third is that lockdowns and masks don’t work to suppress the virus, and that the government is lying to us about the effectiveness of these preventative measures. So, that’s the Libs, the Nats, Labor and the Greens, the entire mainstream media, and the AMA’s around the country are all part of a vast collective deliberate misinformation campaign in an effort to curtail the liberty of every citizen for no reason at all except the exercise of control. Thereby throwing the country into recession, forcing people out of work, closing businesses – all for nothing (except control). And this determination is being made by governments in every country in the world – and every one of them are part of this massive pile-on of deceit. What are the chances of that?
Finally, the rabbit hole says that these laws and rules are all illegal, that individuals don’t have to follow them because of sovereign rights. Which means that every single cantankerous obstinate defence lawyer I know, and all the judges and magistrates, and the Council for Civil Liberties, and Legal Aid and the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Community Legal Centres and the Law Society and Bar Association are all wrong, and they know they are wrong, and they are suppressing a legal perspective that immediately liberates us all from these rules. And with no internal dissent. Really, what are the chances of that?
But here is the thing – if you combine those four improbabilities above, like you do, then it equates to impossibility. It is utterly impossible that all those four scenarios are happening. And believing in impossibility is delusion. And maintaining those beliefs and speaking of them with such red-faced anger and capital letters is frankly scary. In a desperate effort to make something threatening be less so, you cannot resist or chose dishonesty and delusion to rule your greater guides. The only people in power who maintain these views are on the hard, extreme right. This is Craig Kelly and Pauline Hanson’s ultra-nationalist territory, and that is not where I live. It is not even where you used to visit. That is not who I spend my time with.
So, dear friend, to use my favourite sailing term and our hilarious in-joke, may you ‘scandalize the gaff’ and point true in good health and calmer seas.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
