For almost three years, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stubbornly refused to admit that infection with Sars-CoV-2 provides robust immunity which is broader and more enduring than vaccine-acquired immunity, even though this had been demonstrated in numerous studies.

It meant that people who had infection-acquired immunity – often healthcare workers – were still forced to get vaccinated or lose their jobs. Sometimes the consequences were disastrous. Bobby Bolin who had recovered from Covid was on a list for a double-lung transplant but was forced to be double vaccinated, and developed a pulmonary embolism and atrial fibrillation after his second Moderna shot which killed him.

On 11 August, with no explanation or apology, the CDC quietly made the long-overdue reversal and also belatedly recognised that vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, saying that in its recommendations, it would no longer distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Combined these policy changes should spell the immediate end of vaccine mandates.

It was clear in 2020 that Covid is primarily a serious disease for the sick and the elderly. Data from NSW Health which, between 28 May and 30 July, was the first jurisdiction in Australia to provide some deaths by age, vaccination, and health status showed that only three people out of the 1,108 who died (0.3 per cent) over the nine week period were aged under 65 and healthy, and only 11 people who died (1 per cent) were aged under 65 and unvaccinated (all almost certainly seriously ill).

Hardly the pandemic of the unvaccinated that Gladys Berejiklian conjured up to scare the impressionable into getting vaccinated. As for being a burden and overwhelming the health system, only 11 out of 6,481 people hospitalised (0.17 per cent) and only eight of 591 people in ICU (1.3 per cent) were unvaccinated.

With such a tiny fraction of healthy, unvaccinated people of working age dying of Covid in Australia’s most populous state, during the worst three months of the pandemic, how is it possible that vaccine mandates are still in force in so many workplaces? Former Australian deputy chief health officer Dr Nick Coatsworth wrote in mid-July that there is ‘no longer a public health rationale for businesses terminating employees for failing to be vaccinated’. Yet some of the nation’s biggest employers –Coles, Woolworths, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank and SPC – are still forcing workers to get vaccinated or boosted.

In Ceduna, up to fifteen teachers at the Crossways Lutheran school are prepared to strike rather than get a booster or wear a mask all day and be tested daily. They want to know why they are being pressured to be triple-vaccinated when protection from boosters lasts only 20 weeks, you can still catch and transmit Covid, and vaccine injuries can be permanent or fatal. Who will compensate them or their families if they are injured or die, they ask.

It’s a good question. In Hobart, a police officer who was incapacitated with myocarditis after his Pfizer booster in November is fighting for compensation because the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management claims it isn’t liable even though it told staff they should get vaccinated, claimed the vaccines were safe, and made vaccination mandatory a month after the officer was injured.

With the CDC no longer distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated, why are service members still being kicked out for not taking an ‘ineffective and dangerous experimental jab,’ tweeted Lt. Col. Dr Theresa Long this week, one of the top flight surgeons in the US Armed Forces. Dr Long is one of three military doctors who testified under oath that there was a massive increase in vaccine injuries in the Defence Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) in 2021 showing, for example, a 269 per cent increase in myocardial infarction and a 467 per cent increase in pulmonary embolisms.

If Dr Long’s conclusions are correct, they would explain why excess mortality is so high in Australia and other highly vaccinated countries. In the first four months of 2022, there was an increase in excess mortality of between 6,800 deaths (13 per cent) according to the AI and 8,500 deaths (17 per cent) , according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Either way it’s alarming. Excess deaths for the whole of 2021 were 3,400, yet just for the first third of 2022 excess deaths have increased by up to 150 per cent .

It’s going to get worse. More people died of Covid in July than at any point in the pandemic yet Covid deaths represent only somewhere between 43 per cent and 53 per cent of excess deaths in the first four months of 2022. What is causing the other deaths? Here’s a clue. Deaths from heart disease are up 11 per cent (1,400) and have been above the predicted baseline almost every week since March 2021, a week after the vaccine rollout started on 22 February. Deaths from other unspecified diseases are up by 11 per cent (1,390), continuing a trend observed since April 2021, a month after the vaccine rollout. There was also an increase of 10 per cent in coroner-referred deaths (+680) as well as increases of between five and 11 per cent in diabetes, dementia, and cerebrovascular disease.

A disturbing rise in excess mortality is occurring in many heavily vaccinated countries such as Portugal, experiencing its highest excess mortality in 100 years, Chile, and the US. Up to now doctors in Australia could not criticise any aspect of government management of the pandemic without putting their careers on the line. But in mid-July the left-leaning Victorian Branch of the Australian Medical Association called for a Royal Commission into the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and its muzzling of medical freedom of speech. This week the centre-right Australian Medical Professionals’ Society also called for medical free speech, consideration of scientific data in relation to vaccine mandates and legislative reform to protect the practitioner-patient relationship. With voices across the political spectrum calling for change perhaps an end to the tyranny of bureaucrats is at last in sight.

Rebecca Weisser is an independent journalist. Like what you read?  Consider supporting her work at PayPal.