Emergency Powers: [11] The capture of the media & the judiciary
From my April 2022 paper COVID-19 Emergency Powers: The New Zealand State, Medical Capture & the Role of Strategic Ignorance
Democracies are only as robust as the institutions tasked to hold power to account. Neither media nor the judiciary have critically analysed 2 key issues – whether the legislation and orders were appropriate to risk iterated in the scientific literature at the time of implementation of those legislation and orders; and whether the battery of legislation enacted by government ministers and the Parliamentary Counsel Office was possibly ultra vires.
The legislation set in place a case chase and case fear narrative, leaving out the obligation to protect and promote health, and traditional principles of infectious disease and in the process, dispensing with the principle of informed consent.
Were institutional checks appropriate, or was the excess of law-making far in excess of identified risk in the scientific literature. An excess of law-making often spells trouble, eliding democratic norms of accountability and transparency for, ‘the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.’
Two years into the pandemic, New Zealand’s media, captured by the first financial windfall in three decades, remain neutered, a fourth estate that cannot hold power to account. The following issues remain largely unaddressed in court cases or by the accredited media:
➢ Whether representations by the Crown in judicial review relating to mandates, first, misled the judiciary into conflating the safety profiles of genetic vaccines with conventional vaccines; and second, did not appropriately and transparently review the peer reviewed, scientific literature as befits the obligations of the Crown to protect the public.
➢ Does the absence of analysis of peer reviewed, evidence based science in government literature to support policy and lawmaking, and the reliance on local modelling strategies (funded by the agency with interest in the rollout of the emergency response strategy) present an alarming tactical precedent for deployment in future emergencies, such as pandemics?
➢ Do the mandates tied to acceptance of a novel mRNA technology, where the government was not reviewing the scientific literature on risk, raise legal and ethical dilemmas of constitutional morality, natural justice and human rights, and what precedent does this set for future pandemics?
➢ By ignoring the role of scientifically established role of broad-based immunity in modelling scenarios did the Crown deviate public health norms in such a way as to endanger the New Zealand population?
➢ Did Medsafe fail to protect the population by first, not requiring compulsory reporting of adverse events and death; and second, by not drawing attention to the disproportionate risk of not-at risk from COVID-19 groups from exposure to the novel medical intervention?
➢ Did the conflating of groups who died with or because of COVID-19 increase fear in the population.
➢ Has appropriate record-keeping of the status individuals who were hospitalised or die with COVID-19 occur? Inflammatory and/or metabolic conditions; nutrient status, including vitamin D levels; and blood glucose are risk factors for adverse outcomes identified in the scientific literature.
➢ Masking in educational institutions does not protect students who are not at risk of hospitalisation and death; and in April 2022 mask rules continue despite Omicron surging through all secondary and tertiary institutions. How could legislation requiring young people to wear a mask 6-8 hours a day remain unquestioned with evident policy failure?
➢ Which analysts and scientists in New Zealand are now tasked with assessing long-term societal costs from lifetime disability or death following genetic vaccination, and ensuring adequate compensation?
Insisting on vaccine mandates without drawing attention to scientific and biological nuances – infection fatality rate, age- stratified risk, the risk of adverse events, and the knowledge there is little asymptomatic transmission of infection – not only draws attention to ethical and moral dilemmas – but whether fundamental tenets of public and administrative law are known or even understood by public servants.
Continue Reading: Emergency Powers: [12] Doctors: Lined up & suspended for practicing informed consent. here
References are available on the original PDF at TalkingRisk.NZ