JL
Kate Hannah has a predetermined view of what is true and not true but was somehow placed in charge of trolling dis- and mis-information.
Not content with just looking at perceived falsehoods, she has made it her mission to discredit all information with which she disagrees: often without reason, tact or discussion.
She is in essence a self-appointed government-backed chief censor.
And she can suppress any information with overarching freedoms because, although funded by the taxpayer, she is deemed independent enough to not be answerable to the taxpayer.
Where one side of the Covid-19 response debate is desperate to have a discussion, Kate Hannah is content to avoid debate and throw unhindered and often demonstrably wrong ideological grenades at the opposition.
She contends that we are all empty vessels prone to believe anything espoused by extremists.
The pamphlet includes established facts, reputable references, reasonable questions and debatable assertions. There are things in it I do not agree with and things that definitely need debate.
Despite being gifted this 3-minute unchallenged soundbite, she comes across as awkward.
It might be because she knows that what she is saying could be countered if those pesky ‘anti-vaxers’ were given a chance.
Firstly she had a crack at one of the journalists because he was “not an expert” on the subject matter.
This criticism was a bit rich from someone overseeing the veracity of scientific evidence armoured with a Master of Arts degree in 19th-century American Literature.
“It kind of seems or feels that it might be real scientific content in terms of there being a lot of links and references,” she says of the flier.
“But when you look through some of those links and references they are from highly biased sources.”
Damn those people referencing stuff from sources you, at your lectern deem unworthy.
This would be a good time for her to engage the science that counters the prevailing view but no, she continues to reveal just how deep her own prejudice lies.
“..and those sources chosen from the likes of the World Health Organisation or the CDC or the FDA have been what we call cherry picked so only one side of the data is being shown as supporting a particular type of narrative around Covid-19.”
Umm. You can see the level of hypocrisy here, can’t you?
Here I was thinking she was employed to filter out genuine bullshit not to cancel world-leading experts.
I mean the British Medical Journal and New England Journal of Medicine are no slouches in the research stakes.
So even credible sources she determines to be legitimate cannot be relied upon because of our inability to interpret them the way Kate Hannah wants them to be interpreted?
That’s pretty arrogant, don’t you think?
The pamphlet was certainly weighted one way, but that was because it was designed to counter the predominant slurry of information engulfing us from those supporting the “the single source of truth”.
Kate Hannah continued to flick through and rubbish the pamphlet without discussing the content:
“We also see really badly displayed graphs or maps that give credence to scientific authenticity without really explaining what’s going on.”
You mean like the distorted graphs shown one month earlier and rightly rubbished and proffered by our prime minister?
“There’s memes,” says Kate Hannah, “that’s not normally what you would see in a document trying to educate you and help you make a good decision for your family.”
“Have a think.” she says, “where real helpful data comes from.”
Like Jacinda Ardern saying: “People who are vaccinated won’t get sick and won’t die”.
Liberally pasting those with diverging viewpoints or inconvenient facts with names such as racist, misogynist, climate denier, conspiracy theorist or anti-vaxer merely serves to highlight the only tool in Kate Hannah’s debate arsenal: ad hominem attack.
Instead of debating the evidence or argument on its own merits, she resorts to name-calling.
Like she was still at kindy!
Kate Hannah tries to convince New Zealanders she is fighting extremism but in reality, she is fighting New Zealanders.
She heads an amateur hatchet job the sole purpose of which was to assist the government’s vaccine roll-out by clamping down on any countering information…No matter what.
We know what she has read and we know what she has suppressed.
Right now in the Rory Nairn inquest, the Ministry of Health is placing blame on a pharmacist who administered the vaccine for not fully informing him of possible harm.
I suspect they will just as readily abandon other organisations that removed vital information about vaccine harm that may have kept him alive.
Information like that sourced from the United States Food and Drug Association (FDA) and highlighted in The Real News.
What we must never accept, once further truths from this debacle reveal themselves, is the oft-used argument from the likes of Kate Hannah that begins with…IN HINDSIGHT.
