Perhaps nothing exemplifies the bureaucratic lunacy crushing Australians in the name of “covid rules” than the case of Nikolai Petrovsky.
Professor Petrovsky is one of Australia’s most respected vaccinologists. He has led the development of an Australian-made covid vaccine: a vaccine currently in phase 3 trials and ready to be manufactured by an Australian company and already in use overseas
Yet Professor Petrovsky could be arrested if he turns up for work and faces immediate dismissal from Adelaide’s Flinders Medical Centre, despite being fully vaccinated.
Why? Because he is vaccinated with his own vaccine — which is not approved yet by the Therapeutic Goods Association.
As of Monday, staff at all South Australian public and private hospitals have had to provide proof of vaccination in order to continue working. But Professor Petrovsky insisted he will not be subjecting himself to another round of vaccination to satisfy “arbitrary bureaucracy”, telling The Australian it would be “dangerous” and potentially “counter-productive” to his health.
“There is no clinical data on what would happen if someone who is fully vaccinated subjected themselves to a whole further round just to satisfy an arbitrary mandate. It would not be safe.”
Professor Petrovsky said it was inappropriate to demand an individual to get vaccinated again “just for the purposes of satisfying some bureaucratic requirement” that is not based on public health.
Covax-19 is already approved for use in Iran. It has entered Phase 3 trials after the vaccine demonstrated high efficacy and safety during phase 2 studies.
Recall that the US FDA, under Operation Warp Speed, approved vaccines such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty before Phase 3 trials had concluded. The TGA in Australia approved them barely a month after Phase 3 data was released.
Ridiculously, Professor Petrovsky can now be classed as an “anti-vaxxer”.
“I’m fully vaccinated. I’m not against vaccines, I’m a vaccine developer. Nobody could be more pro-vaccine. It would be a bit paradoxical if I wasn’t allowed to work,” he said.
The Australian
This bureaucratic pettifogging is not just symptomatic of the covid derangement syndrome that has gripped the political class and public health bureaucracy, it hearkens back to an even older trend that has bedevilled Australian inventors and entrepreneurs — the “innovation drain”. Call it a technological cultural cringe.
Australian Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall had to literally give himself a stomach ulcer, to prove that a bacterium was the cause, in contrast to established medical dogma.
Australian history is littered with ground-breaking technologies that were lost to foreign interests because of the timidity of local investors or the boneheaded bloody-mindedness of local bureaucrats and politicians. From the once world-leading film industry in the 1900s, and Sister Elizabeth Kenny’s pioneering work which ultimately founded physiotherapy, to the black box flight recorder, Australian innovation has fought a constant battle against the dead hand of bureaucracy.
Now, we have an Australian-invented vaccine, ready to be manufactured by an Australian company.
Arrotex had decided to back Professor Petrovsky’s vaccine after hearing of its effectiveness. “I heard about Professor Petrovsky’s vaccine candidate from my international business partners, he hadn’t gotten a lot of attention here in Australia,” [Dennis Bastas, Arrotex’s founding chair and CEO] said. “And their reviews of it were that it’s got to be one of the best vaccine candidates they’d seen.”
Professor Petrovsky said having onshore production of an Australian-developed Covid-19 vaccine would be a boon for the country. “It means Australia would get first dibs on what’s produced but then all the rest would be exported, which could generate enormous export revenues when you look at the sales that have been generated of different vaccines.”
The Australian
All that counts for nothing if its inventor can’t even legally show up for work.
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