OPINION
NZDSOS
Health New Zealand have published a July 2024 Interim Update to the New Zealand Pandemic Plan. The inside cover welcomes comments to be made via post or email. NZDSOS have issued a review, which we share here.
Public Outcry Against the New Zealand Pandemic Plan
When Health New Zealand released the July 2024 Interim Pandemic Plan (IPP), public attention was drawn to claims that it legislated forced injection and police restraint. Many overseas media outlets have picked up this story in horror, for example read New Zealand’s Updated Pandemic Plan Sparks Public Outcry.
The plan emerges on a Covid-driven background of gross abuses of human rights and freedoms, and what is obviously a multi-pronged assault on our collective free future. It is important to understand that no such powers are explicitly stated in the plan, however intended they likely are. Authorised police and public health functions mentioned in the plan come from the Health Act of 1956 and the World Health Organisation’s International Health Regulations of 2005.
We are grateful to local lawyers Kirsten Murfitt and Katie Ashby-Koppens for their knowledge and reasonable approach. Hear them speak about the New Zealand Pandemic Plan with Paul Brennan at RCR Legal Hub.
The IPP does have a nod to protecting human rights. However, many have learned to distrust the government after it swept aside protections under the Bill of Rights (BORA) to usher in the Covid Response Act 2020. Claims of suspending rights protections in an emergency did not provide evidence of such an emergency. Nor was the decision process disclosed, and there was no investigation of alternatives to mandates and lockdowns. The timing of the IPP release suggests repeat abuse, ‘prepping the market’ for more egregious controls, and the many promised modified RNA gene jabs being developed and approved.
Gain of Function Experimentation
Missing throughout the document is any reference whatsoever to gain-of-function research. This is scientific experimentation with viruses to make them more infective to human cells, more transmissible and/or more pathogenic (dangerous).
It is clear SARS-CoV-2 is the result of splicing and tinkering by scientists funded and willing to conduct nefarious research. The Bird Flu virus leaves a similar forensic trail of moneyed patents and dangerous experimentation in its wake.
We recommend the Ministry of Health investigate this dangerous research taking place in laboratories across the globe and make a position statement demanding the permanent suspension of all gain of function funding and research activities.
Learn more at National Institutes of Health Gain of Function Research, Rejecting Monopoly Power Over Global Public Health and Totality of Evidence. There are many relevant articles on the subject such as here, here, here, here and here.
One Health Agenda
Whilst not considering gain of function as the main risk for further pandemics, the IPP focuses on spillover to humans from viruses circulating amongst animal species. Although the very existence of viruses is up for passionate debate in some quarters of science, the pandemic plan is being justified on the grounds of ‘inevitable’ viral pandemics. The implicit harms of such plans are very important to push back on and defend ourselves against, especially given this fraudulent basis.
Throughout human history populations have lived very closely with animals, which is a much rarer phenomenon today due to urban lifestyles, modernised practices which limit contact between farm animals and their human keepers, and improved hygiene and sanitation. The claim that animal to human spillover risk is increased today is not supported by these basic facts.
However the spillover theory does support the One Health agenda of the United Nations, converging climate change claims with biowarfare activities to promote a dishonest ideology of alleged threats which are in fact, deliberately manufactured, manipulated and/or propagandised. An unknown number of viruses exist in nature. A few hundred of them have been identified, mainly due to their potential to cause disease. With increased testing, new viruses which have existed in nature for millennia, can be used for false claims of pandemic potential, leading to the alleged need for restrictive measures written into pandemic preparedness, planning and response policies.
The purpose of the One Health agenda has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with global resource governance. Learn more about this false ideology from biowarfare expert, Dr Meryl Nass, public health physician Dr David Bell and reporter Dr Michael Nevradakis.
Critical Analysis of Testing Regimes
The New Zealand Pandemic Plan refers to “testing” multiple times without offering any critical analysis of the most likely technology such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Misuse of PCR testing in Covid was detailed in late 2020, at External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results.
PCR technology was developed by biochemist Kary Mullis, who stated that the test was invented for detailed study of DNA samples and could not be used as a diagnostic tool. It is imperative that testing regimes are thoroughly critiqued given the guarantee of new pathogens being discovered through enhanced capacity for laboratory testing.
Critical Analysis of Pandemic Claims
Throughout this century deaths from influenza and pneumonia in New Zealand have numbered between 400 to over 800 per year. The official Covid deaths to date are 4299 in four years, while over the same four years influenza deaths, which affect a similar demographic, plummeted. There are over 600 all-cause deaths per week in New Zealand. With the corrupted misuse of testing, Covid cannot be considered as having pandemic level outcomes to the New Zealand population.
Yet the IPP claims that Covid is “the most severe pandemic New Zealand had experienced since 1918 and caused significant mortality, morbidity and disruption to health services”. It therefore seems likely that as testing for new pathogens is scaled up, detection of pathogens can be used to claim more pandemics with questionable testing, definitions and surveillance practices.
Critical Analysis of Pandemic Intervention Measures
NZDSOS and many relevantly qualified experts argue that pandemic interventions are responsible for much more mortality, morbidity and service disruption than the virus. This argument is most recently supported by the work of Rancourt, Hickey and Linard. Their analysis shows that New Zealand had near-zero excess mortality in 2020, alongside multiple other countries with loose land borders and limited capacity for lockdown such as Thailand, Namibia, Malaysia and Uruguay. A significant correlation is found however, between increased all-cause mortality and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout from 2021.
The IPP describes the need for interventions termed “Keep it Out” and “Stamp it Out” until a vaccine becomes available. This ignores the established public health principle that mass vaccination during a pandemic leads to vaccine-resistant mutations making vaccines ineffective, and leading to negative efficacy. This has clearly been the case during the Covid era, with much-touted claims of a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” being contradicted by the data, including New Zealand’s own population data.
Elimination Strategies vs focused protection
“Keep it Out” and “Stamp it Out” are elimination strategies involving restrictive measures such as border control, social distancing, school and business closures, mask wearing and contact tracing. Despite their aggressive and global implementation during Covid, these measures are not supported by the evidence.
The most recent pre-pandemic evidence is the World Health Organization Global Influenza Programme 2019 systematic review, Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza. On page 3 of this document, Table 1: Recommendations on the use of non pharmaceutical interventions by severity level states contact tracing, quarantine, border screening and closures are “not recommended in any circumstances”, due to low-quality evidence for variable and lacking effectiveness.
Elimination of airborne viruses is an unrealistic goal due to circulation of virus particles on air currents for hours to days. This also makes contact tracing an illogical intervention. Airborne viruses are omnipresent, transmitting constantly and only being detected when tested for. Claims that “there are a lot of bugs going around” have far more to do with the biological terrain, i.e., the individual’s immunity, than the presence or absence of microbes.
For example, in winter when Vitamin D levels are low, many respiratory viruses cause illness which tends to be absent during summer months. In tropical countries respiratory viruses are much less common because populations tend to develop immunity through exposure without experiencing illness.
Another obvious example is immunity to the hepatitis A virus in populations of most third-world nations, who rarely experience hepatitis A sickness. Spread through contaminated water and food, exposure to the hepatitis A virus occurs before the age of five in these populations due to poor sanitation. Children tend to experience hepatitis A without symptoms, or only very mild and transient illness, which proffers lifetime immunity. Adult travellers from wealthy nations who are unlikely to have been exposed to hepatitis A are at risk of disease when they travel to these nations. Hepatitis A vaccine is therefore commonly recommended to international travelers whilst not being recommended to local populations.
Prior to 2020, testing patients presenting with influenza-like illness was usually not considered necessary as a specific diagnosis does not change treatment recommendations. Testing was conducted at sentinel locations for disease surveillance purposes, and it was always contraindicated in those without symptoms as naso-pharyngeal carriage of a range of bacteria and viruses is normal and does not identify the presence of disease, nor of infectivity.
Only those with risk factors are vulnerable to disease, and vulnerability varies with each exposure depending on the dose of exposure and the state of an individual’s immunity at any given time. Exposure to Covid via children often proffers immunity to the elderly because of the small dose that children tend to carry and transmit, which protects from disease whilst eliciting an immune response. Sometimes exposure results in asymptomatic elicitation of immunity or nothing more than a runny nose; other times, in more severe symptoms.
The best, time-tested effective response is to offer focused protection to vulnerable groups such as the elderly whilst ensuring society continues to function. Robust economies and functioning societies have much healthier populations. Focused protection is described in the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by three of the world’s leading infectious disease epidemiologists.
Beyond their ineffectiveness at keeping out or stamping out a specific virus, elimination strategies have a serious negative impact on the overall health and wellbeing of populations. It has been demonstrated that elimination policies employed during Covid and being written into the IPP, caused excessive harm. Learn more at Collateral Global.
Lack of Evidence in the New Zealand Pandemic Plan
The IPP is scattered with recommendations such as social distancing, contact tracing, use of personal protective equipment e.g., face masks, and restrictive measures on individual movement. None of these measures are supported by real-world evidence as having any effect on airborne virus transmission. A recent study by researchers at Stanford and Harvard concluded there is no evidence of a relationship between government responses and the outcomes of Covid. False assumptions underpin many of the recommendations in the plan.
Rational Policy over Dishonest Propaganda
A research project at the UK University of Leeds, partnering with Belgium’s University of Ghent called Re-Evaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse agenda (REPPARE) offers rational insights into the One Health and pandemic preparedness and response agendas. For example, Rational Policy Over Panic is a pandemic risk policy brief challenging the data and evidence of current pandemic risk assumptions.
REPPARE researchers provide evidence that Covid is an outlier rather than reflective of a trend in increasing epidemic risk. This contradicts claims by global institutions seeking exorbitant amounts of public funding, that the world is suddenly at exponential risk of outbreaks. As we outlined above, increasing technologies, often being misused to promote fear, are responsible for the increased detection of omnipresent microbes.
A major implication in the planned diversion of health resources towards epidemics and pandemics, is the deterioration in services addressing diseases which significantly impact populations, such as tuberculosis, malaria, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This will have an especially oppressive impact on the world’s poor, who already face resource deprivation. The beneficiaries of this diversion of funds, described as “the most infallible wealth concentration scheme in history”, are the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and other medical products, at the expense of human health and societal functioning.
An Alternative to the New Zealand Pandemic Plan
The false assumptions underpinning the IPP need to be challenged. This includes:
- Review of evidence determining the scale and urgency of pandemics;
- Analysis of testing regimes to determine whether claimed “diseases” are in fact a health concern or naturally occurring microbes being detected opportunistically in the healthy, or in those falling ill from other causes (including iatrogenic harm);
- Cost-benefit analysis of disease burden to ensure resources are not being diverted from high-impact health issues, to low-impact diseases which generate profit for the pandemic business beneficiaries, including many “experts” promoted in our media;
- Protection of existing systems to ensure quality health care is not replaced by profit-generating practices causing harm to individuals.
NZDSOS proposes that the New Zealand Pandemic Plan is re-evaluated with these basic principles in mind. Evidence, ethics and human rights must underpin all health policies, and the profit-generating diversion of resources towards a centralised, totalitarian structure must be halted before it is too late.
NZ needs a committee of appropriately qualified public health professionals, without conflicts of interest, willing to review and rewrite the document. The embedding of exploitative pandemic ideology across all health and government services must be removed, and replaced with robust, scientifically sound and ethical policy.
This is consistent with other movements pushing back against the corruption of our public systems. One example is Taking Control of Local Councils/Governments. Learn more in this short video.
This article was originally published by New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science.
