I had one encounter with NSW's GIPA in 2021 when I wanted justification for being unable to resume bus driving duties due to a mask exemption policy by NSW Transport (fortunately still employed at the time and confined to 'light duties', which was mostly bus refuelling and parking in the depot).
I had realised by then the legalese required to extract blood from the stone that is Government. My GIPA was as follows (22T-0598 in the disclosure log)
"Between and/or about the 16th through 23rd of August, 2021, Transport for NSW has requested that bus drivers possessing valid medical exemptions to mandatory face coverings (masks) cannot drive in public-facing roles. Please see attached email from my former Depot Supervisor for evidence that this policy is currently in place at NSW public service bus depots.
I am hereby requesting the following information from TfNSW concerning the policy decision ("decision") enforced at that time that public bus drivers with valid medical exemptions to mandatory face coverings are prohibited from driving in-service buses:
1. The reasons, grounds and/or rationale supporting the decision;
2. The data supporting the decision, including, but by no means limited to:
a) Reports and/or statistics of COVID-19 acquisition/transmission on NSW public bus services, especially amongst unmasked drivers with medical exemptions;
b) medical and/or scientific studies demonstrating that face coverings are an effective control for the prevention of respiratory illness, especially in, but not necessarily limited to, the enclosed and air-conditioned setting of a bus;
c) if available, a policy-grade report and/or data from an expert (physicist) in fluid dynamics demonstrating the risk of viral nanoparticles suspended in oral or nasal fluid traversing fluid air in an air-conditioned bus environment and the effectiveness of face coverings in mitigating that risk;
3. The risk assessment report supporting the decision;
4. The data analysis report which informed the construction of the risk assessment.
5. Emails and/or communications from and/or between TfNSW staff involved in the consulting, making and implementing of the decision to prohibit bus drivers with valid mask exemptions from operating in-service.
Any documents (including emails and/or communications) which answer the above requests can be supplied in PDF form to the email address provided in this request.”
I eventually got a full release without cost (as the assessing officer waived the costs due to my personal interest in the industry)... mostly consisting of emails surrounding the drafts of the risk assessment and eventual policy statement. It was the most underwhelming example of policy by authoritarianism.
ZERO EVIDENCE/DOCUMENTS PROVIDED FOR Q.2.
Strangely, TfNSW quietly dumped the policy and we returned to driving duties in September 2021.
"One colleague was denied his request for TTD information on reported deaths because the TGA said it did not have the “required software” to collate this information from the Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN)."
I find this stance rather ridiculous, when all you need to do is load that DAEN into MS Excell, then do a column sort or two, and the info is "extracted". Or load it into MS Access and do a simple query with their Query Wizard.
In furtherance to the notion of vax damage, if not to the issue of freedom of information and government bureaucracy, I off er the following and hope some of you find it at least mildly interesting:
‘TRUTH SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE’
I recall having a discussion about covid (specifically vax damage) at a family gathering back in the summer of 2021/2022 with my brother in law (an orthopaedic surgeon who’d taken two jabs, as per AHPRA requirement) and his wife (who’d practiced dentistry a long time ago, was now in the Ministry (religious) and who’d opted out of the vax for herself and her children). All of us having lived lots of life (well, lots of years of life😊), and having 20 years’ worth of tertiary study, between us, one might expect some wisdom to emerge from the conversation. Anyway, it came from the technocrat amongst us – the person who’d single tracked dedicated himself to medicine and who generally had minimal penchant for philosophy, say. The surgeon remarked: As with all this type of thing, the truth probably lied somewhere in the middle (ie somewhere between the claims being made by C19 anti-vaxxers (such as his wife and I) and official government messaging. It is my view that he strongly believed what he said, too … that it was not merely an exercise in diplomacy.
I was recently reminded of this conversational exchange when I watched the following video of Matt Le Tissier discussing (back in Sept 2023) what he perceived to be a spike in the number of collapses and/or deaths of soccer players on football pitches. Indeed, he seemed to be suggesting the phenomenon was new.
Officials he’d dealt with had expressed that there had always been such incidents but that there wasn’t as much attention paid to them, pre covid (and C19 vax). In response, I went searching for hard data and came up with the following:
I then organised some of the data into the following table:
YEAR DEATHS
2000 7
2001 3
2002 5
2003 2
2004 4
2005 3
2006 6
2007 5
2008 4
2009 8
2010 11
2011 3
2012 9
2013 11
2014 7
2015 11
2016 14
2017 10
2018 9
2019 9
2020 2
2021 18
2022 7
2023 8
2024 12
In defense of Matt (who is more renowned for having once been an outstanding footballer than for being a high order logician), there was indeed a clear spike during the big vax year. However, in defense of the officials he dealt with, these incidents were around well before covid and had been exhibiting an upward trend prior to 2020. Of course, 2020 was a non-event from a human activity viewpoint. Both parties are right, as it were, and yet both are wrong. Mathematics has a way of being a dispute settler.:)
Interestingly, the Singapore government was advising young males to abstain from serious exercise for a week after their jab. There does seem (to me) to be a causal connection between the covid jab and unwanted cardio-vascular conditions. As to the prevalence, it is obviously VERY small, else the number of fatal collapses on football pitches would have more than doubled, given the number of recently vaxxed professional footballers running around in 2021. Again, I think anti-vaxxers are over stating the vaccine harms, whilst authorities are understating it and that the true harm level lay somewhere in between.
Good point, although I think you underestimate the cardio involved in soccer.
Ollie Wines (Port) is the only AFL player I can think of. He left the ground with alarming irregularities in his heart beating, remained on the bench for the rest of the match, but played the rest of the season, I believe. It sparked quite a reaction from panelists (especially Nathan Brown and Matthew Lloyd) on a football show at the time.
1 incident in over 600 000 man-minutes of football during the 2021 season is hardly anything to write home about.
How would you respond to a person whose explanation for the virtual non existence of onfield collapses of AFL players during the 2021 season is that the players were injected with a saline solution rather than the c19 vax?
Transparency and accountability in government? Free country? Democracy?
You're a champion for negotiating their muddy obstacle course. Apparently they don't like champions. But history does.
I had one encounter with NSW's GIPA in 2021 when I wanted justification for being unable to resume bus driving duties due to a mask exemption policy by NSW Transport (fortunately still employed at the time and confined to 'light duties', which was mostly bus refuelling and parking in the depot).
I had realised by then the legalese required to extract blood from the stone that is Government. My GIPA was as follows (22T-0598 in the disclosure log)
"Between and/or about the 16th through 23rd of August, 2021, Transport for NSW has requested that bus drivers possessing valid medical exemptions to mandatory face coverings (masks) cannot drive in public-facing roles. Please see attached email from my former Depot Supervisor for evidence that this policy is currently in place at NSW public service bus depots.
I am hereby requesting the following information from TfNSW concerning the policy decision ("decision") enforced at that time that public bus drivers with valid medical exemptions to mandatory face coverings are prohibited from driving in-service buses:
1. The reasons, grounds and/or rationale supporting the decision;
2. The data supporting the decision, including, but by no means limited to:
a) Reports and/or statistics of COVID-19 acquisition/transmission on NSW public bus services, especially amongst unmasked drivers with medical exemptions;
b) medical and/or scientific studies demonstrating that face coverings are an effective control for the prevention of respiratory illness, especially in, but not necessarily limited to, the enclosed and air-conditioned setting of a bus;
c) if available, a policy-grade report and/or data from an expert (physicist) in fluid dynamics demonstrating the risk of viral nanoparticles suspended in oral or nasal fluid traversing fluid air in an air-conditioned bus environment and the effectiveness of face coverings in mitigating that risk;
3. The risk assessment report supporting the decision;
4. The data analysis report which informed the construction of the risk assessment.
5. Emails and/or communications from and/or between TfNSW staff involved in the consulting, making and implementing of the decision to prohibit bus drivers with valid mask exemptions from operating in-service.
Any documents (including emails and/or communications) which answer the above requests can be supplied in PDF form to the email address provided in this request.”
I eventually got a full release without cost (as the assessing officer waived the costs due to my personal interest in the industry)... mostly consisting of emails surrounding the drafts of the risk assessment and eventual policy statement. It was the most underwhelming example of policy by authoritarianism.
ZERO EVIDENCE/DOCUMENTS PROVIDED FOR Q.2.
Strangely, TfNSW quietly dumped the policy and we returned to driving duties in September 2021.
Why am I not surprised re #2
Thank you for your perseverance. Truly like getting blood from a stone.
I wonder if this happened in Australia too: https://yournews.com/2025/05/09/3428426/canadas-chief-public-health-officer-among-dozens-who-signed-oath/
All I can say Rebekah, is that you are amazing!👏👍
"One colleague was denied his request for TTD information on reported deaths because the TGA said it did not have the “required software” to collate this information from the Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN)."
I find this stance rather ridiculous, when all you need to do is load that DAEN into MS Excell, then do a column sort or two, and the info is "extracted". Or load it into MS Access and do a simple query with their Query Wizard.
Obfuscation, thy name is TGA.
OMG!!!! I am exhausted.
Reading this reminded me in many ways of the Soviet power structures described in The Gulag Archipelago.
The comparison between the swiftness of licencing the jabs with the obstruction in identifying and broadcasting the harms is stark.
The work you do is outstanding, Rebekah, well done. Gotta keep pushing those buttons 💪🏻
In furtherance to the notion of vax damage, if not to the issue of freedom of information and government bureaucracy, I off er the following and hope some of you find it at least mildly interesting:
‘TRUTH SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE’
I recall having a discussion about covid (specifically vax damage) at a family gathering back in the summer of 2021/2022 with my brother in law (an orthopaedic surgeon who’d taken two jabs, as per AHPRA requirement) and his wife (who’d practiced dentistry a long time ago, was now in the Ministry (religious) and who’d opted out of the vax for herself and her children). All of us having lived lots of life (well, lots of years of life😊), and having 20 years’ worth of tertiary study, between us, one might expect some wisdom to emerge from the conversation. Anyway, it came from the technocrat amongst us – the person who’d single tracked dedicated himself to medicine and who generally had minimal penchant for philosophy, say. The surgeon remarked: As with all this type of thing, the truth probably lied somewhere in the middle (ie somewhere between the claims being made by C19 anti-vaxxers (such as his wife and I) and official government messaging. It is my view that he strongly believed what he said, too … that it was not merely an exercise in diplomacy.
I was recently reminded of this conversational exchange when I watched the following video of Matt Le Tissier discussing (back in Sept 2023) what he perceived to be a spike in the number of collapses and/or deaths of soccer players on football pitches. Indeed, he seemed to be suggesting the phenomenon was new.
https://youtu.be/FD54szPWxHo?si=Kg7pJQ-hF0rR9Bgj
Officials he’d dealt with had expressed that there had always been such incidents but that there wasn’t as much attention paid to them, pre covid (and C19 vax). In response, I went searching for hard data and came up with the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_association_footballers_who_died_after_on-field_incidents
I then organised some of the data into the following table:
YEAR DEATHS
2000 7
2001 3
2002 5
2003 2
2004 4
2005 3
2006 6
2007 5
2008 4
2009 8
2010 11
2011 3
2012 9
2013 11
2014 7
2015 11
2016 14
2017 10
2018 9
2019 9
2020 2
2021 18
2022 7
2023 8
2024 12
In defense of Matt (who is more renowned for having once been an outstanding footballer than for being a high order logician), there was indeed a clear spike during the big vax year. However, in defense of the officials he dealt with, these incidents were around well before covid and had been exhibiting an upward trend prior to 2020. Of course, 2020 was a non-event from a human activity viewpoint. Both parties are right, as it were, and yet both are wrong. Mathematics has a way of being a dispute settler.:)
Interestingly, the Singapore government was advising young males to abstain from serious exercise for a week after their jab. There does seem (to me) to be a causal connection between the covid jab and unwanted cardio-vascular conditions. As to the prevalence, it is obviously VERY small, else the number of fatal collapses on football pitches would have more than doubled, given the number of recently vaxxed professional footballers running around in 2021. Again, I think anti-vaxxers are over stating the vaccine harms, whilst authorities are understating it and that the true harm level lay somewhere in between.
Also you know what’s strange - AFL players run harder than probably any soccer players and I’m not sure we saw any collapse on field.
Good point, although I think you underestimate the cardio involved in soccer.
Ollie Wines (Port) is the only AFL player I can think of. He left the ground with alarming irregularities in his heart beating, remained on the bench for the rest of the match, but played the rest of the season, I believe. It sparked quite a reaction from panelists (especially Nathan Brown and Matthew Lloyd) on a football show at the time.
1 incident in over 600 000 man-minutes of football during the 2021 season is hardly anything to write home about.
How would you respond to a person whose explanation for the virtual non existence of onfield collapses of AFL players during the 2021 season is that the players were injected with a saline solution rather than the c19 vax?
I would ask if they had any evidence … as if they did, that would be the scoop of the year ;)
🤣🤣🤣
917317 wants to ensure that I haver sesigned & unsubscribed to Dystopian Down Under due to health and age problems