‘The man-baby Nazis who attacked the construction union’s HQ deserve to the have the book thrown at them,’ tweeted once and aspiring Labor leader Bill Shorten about members of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMMEU) who protested in Melbourne against mandatory vaccination due to start this week. ‘These people are a danger to us all. They are spreading Covid and undermining vaccines,’ said Sally McManus, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. New South Wales Labor Senator Kristina Keneally was ‘highly concerned’ about reports that ‘far-right extremists are driving the anti-vaccination protests in Melbourne’. To be ‘far right’ these days, all you have to do is refuse to participate in a potentially lethal medical experiment. You can’t say no to a prick with a prick.

Never has the Labor’s elite looked more divorced from its base. As former Labor opposition leader and now leader of One Nation in NSW Mark Latham said, it was a day of shame as the Labor and trade union establishment used the Victorian police like a private militia for the state repression of workers’ rights.

In their high-vis work gear, Australia’s ‘gilets oranges’ held their ground chanting ‘F–k the jab’ and ‘freedom’ as Victorian CFMMEU secretary John Setka asked the group to ‘calm down’. Mysteriously, Labor Premier ‘Chairman’ Dan Andrews missed his daily press conference and the workers, who suspected Setka was doing more to protect the Premier than them, called him ‘Dan Andrew’s bitch’.

When the Premier shut down the construction industry the next day, it was Setka who vanished, with critics mocking that he had entered a witness protection program after calling his members the ‘scum of the earth’ and ‘drunken fascist un-Australian morons’. The slanging match turned to tragedy when a man committed suicide said to be at the prospect of the economic devastation the shutdown promises.

Melbourne has endured almost eight months ‘to flatten the curve’ and a series of humiliatingly pointless ‘health’ edicts. The arrogance and illogicality are reminiscent of former federal Labor telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy who once said, ‘If I say to everyone in this room, “You’d better wear red underpants on your head”, I’ve got some news for you: you’ll be wearing them on your head.’ The violent zeal with which they are imposed by often overweight, heavily armoured police is also striking. Last weekend was emblematic; they assaulted a woman in her seventies, carrying only an Australian flag, who was thrown to the ground, her face sprayed with pepper as she lay injured and helpless.

The Melbourne protests against mandatory vaccination are unique only in that they were covered in the mainstream media. Last week there were mass demonstrations in Canada, France, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Serbia and Britain which got no coverage.

Perhaps the violent reaction in Australia is in part driven by the fact that in Europe unvaccinated people are not excluded if they are able to provide a recent negative test or proof of recent recovery from infection. No Australian government, state or federal, makes provision for either circumstance. It is as if they assume that unvaccinated is synonymous with infected.

Yet sixteen studies demonstrate that infection-acquired immunity is more robust than vaccine-acquired immunity including an Israeli study that shows vaccinated people are 27 times more likely to get a symptomatic Covid infection than those previously infected. Moreover, a recent study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that infected vaccinated people carry the same viral load as unvaccinated people. Worse, they are more likely do so before showing symptoms making them more likely to infect others.

The failure of vaccination to prevent transmission is borne out by epidemiological evidence which shows that highly vaccinated countries have much higher rates of Covid than countries with low rates of vaccination. Israel with 64 per cent of the population fully vaccinated has 908 cases per million and 2.6 deaths per million, whereas India, with only 15 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, has only 22 cases per million and 0.2 deaths per million.

Worse, the data reported to regulatory agencies on adverse events following vaccination shows alarming rates of deaths and injuries. Dr Jessica Rose, a computational biologist with experience in immunology, microbiology and epidemiology, analysed the US vaccine adverse event data and presented her findings to the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, a panel of scientific advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 17 September.

Rose estimates that for every adverse event reported to VAERS, there are 41 unreported events – an increase in adverse events of over 1,000 per cent. Heart inflammation is occurring 860 times more frequently than the rate of a typical flu vaccine, pulmonary embolism is occurring 473 times more frequently than the background rate, stroke 326 times, deep vein thrombosis 264 times, cardiac arrest 75 times, death 58 times, Parkinson’s disease 55 times and blindness 29 times. Most distressingly, all the deaths of children involved the same symptoms as in adults, with far more vaccine deaths than Covid deaths through the entire pandemic.

Rose points out that in 1976, the FDA halted the H1N1 vaccine after 500 cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome and 32 deaths. This time however there seems to be no stopping mortality condition, despite an estimated 150,000 deaths.

Her concerns are backed up by the warnings of others. Dr Steven Ohana analysed excess deaths in Israel in people aged 20-49 which shows a dramatic increase in mortality at the time of their mass vaccination, comparable only to deaths during a war. Dr Peter Schirmacher, chief pathologist at the University of Heidelberg, studied the autopsies of more than 40 people who died within two weeks of vaccination and estimates 30 to 40 per cent died from the vaccine. Pfizer’s own study showed deaths in the vaccine arm from all causes, outnumbered lives saved by vaccine.

Rose concludes that in view of the mounting risks, waning benefits and long-term uncertainty, vaccine mandates cannot be justified and should be replaced by safe repurposed drugs for prophylaxis and early treatment.

That echoed the sentiment at the Melbourne freedom rally this week. The workers climbed the Westgate Bridge and sang the lyrics of an Australian rock anthem, ‘That’s the way it’s gonna be little darling, we’ll go riding horses,’ in reference to ivermectin, the drug derided as horse dewormer, then chanted ‘that’s all the vaccine we all need’.