Apocalypse Now?
Apocalypse Now? Not yet...
I never thought I'd be writing about an Apocalypse! It was always something in the future, a revelation to Saint John as he saw visions of the end-times, and I assumed that the apocalypse, if it occurred in my lifetime, would be sudden and obvious event. But while I was walking the dog today and meditating as I wandered, I realised that an apocalypse could be incremental; it could develop slowly with stealth until it was too big to stop.
Grant
September 2021
Christians who know their Bible will know that Jesus said a few things about the end of the world; prophets like Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel also recorded visions of a future; and St John wrote a whole book which is often called Revelation, meaning the revelation given to St John, or Apocalypse. The study of the end-times, based on all of these sources, is called eschatology.
In the last few decades there have been many books written about the end-times, some of which have been dramatised in films, and some of these contributions have been quite scary. So, for the most part, I have avoided the drama and only focussed on the scriptures. I observed that if Christians get too involved with end-times prophecy they can become pre-occupied with concepts like pre or post tribulation, the mark of the beast, the number 666, identifying the anti-Christ etc., and I have personally known several who have become anxious, fearful and even mentally unstable requiring hospitalisation. So it seems sensible to stand back and be calm and rational, open to an understanding of truths from the Bible, and aware of events around us.
In a secular sense, the idea of an apocalypse has been the topic of various films, lots of books and underlies the concept of prepping. In a post-apocalyptic world there is anarchy, survival in self-protected groups, limited technology and communications, and sadly a great loss of population. Events like an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), a meteor strike, nuclear war, or a deadly pandemic are all triggers for these apocalyptic dramas. Governments can plan for such catastrophes but the heroes in books and films gather their loved ones and survive against all adversity.
The COVID-19 pandemic is less deadly than the mis-named Spanish Influenza at the end of the Great War or World War I. But the virus spread throughout the world causing mild sickness to many, serious illness to some and death to relatively few (when measured against the global population) but numbering in millions. So this particular pandemic is not a candidate for an apocalyptic event. But something else has happened: to limit the spread of a contagious disease most governments introduced public health measures. That is a reasonable response. But those measures gradually evolved into controls. And the controls have morphed into coercion. And the coercion is a kind of blackmail - get vaccinated or lose your job; get vaccinated or lose your freedoms; get vaccinated or lose your children; get vaccinated or be placed in a concentration camp.
Our current generation has no immediate link to past periods like World War II or the holocaust. My grand-father fought in France during WW I, my father was in New Guinea in WW II, and most of my uncles served in our army, navy and air-force. But they have all passed on. Most survivors of German concentration camps have also passed on. I met a Polish lady decades ago who showed me the tattoo on her arm to prove that she had been interned in a concentration camp. That encounter made it all seem so much more real. In France I saw brass plaques on the pavement in Paris which showed where Jewish families lived before being taken away. It was real, it happened and it was not sudden. The holocaust began when Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The Nazi regime terminated the lives of people who were disabled, intellectually challenged, and of Gypsy origin; then gradually tightened restrictions on Jewish citizens before removing them from normal society and concentrating them in camps. These people were deemed enemies of state; the general populace was influenced by Herman Goering's propaganda and Hitler's long rants, or chose to ignore the injustice to save themselves and their family from a similar fate. The rest of the world was pathetically complicit. Even now there are anti-semitic voices in our nations but this paragraph is not about Jews and Gypsies and other minorities. It is about the ability of a State to manipulate public opinion through misleading information and propaganda, to use State forces such as the police and military to achieve an objective supposedly for the good of all, and a State exercising control over their own citizens, denying human rights and freedoms, denying justice and right of appeal, and murdering those selected as being unworthy to live. And that is history. Similar genocidal scenarios have played out in other countries. If it happened in any of those societies it can happen in yours and mine. Sadly it is a reflection of human nature. We are the worst creatures on earth.
And it may be happening in the United States and Australia right now.
I admit I don't understand the motive but the pandemic has become an excuse to introduce the most abusive invasion of personal rights and freedom ever - mandatory vaccination. I have had many vaccines from childhood, to following my doctor's recommendations when my health was compromised, and more recently to improve survival at my age from common diseases like pneumonia. But all of those vaccines were fully approved, tested over time and administered with informed consent, without coercion and blackmail. The products developed during Operation Warp Speed in the U.S., and in parallel in other countries, to reduce the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and minimise the health consequences of the COVID-19 disease were not fully approved, were not tested over a long time, are administered with consent that is not fully informed, and for many people their 'voluntary' submission has been preceded by the stress of probable job loss and consequences like financial ruin, losing their home and splitting their family. Coercion. The public health argument is simple: we are not safe until we are all safe. So we need to reach 70%, 80%, or higher vaccination rates to achieve herd immunity as a pre-requisite to opening our society and removing restrictions. People will be able to open their businesses again, coffee shops will get customers, pubs, bars, restaurants and theatres will be open, churches and sporting venues will be allowed to fill to capacity - if you have been vaccinated. The unvaccinated will be like the vermin of the earth, in the same way that Goering typecast the Jews. Untouchable. A threat to society. Perhaps they will need to be isolated for their protection and to enable the rest of society to be free these people may be concentrated in camps. The unvaccinated have a voice, which generally says they want to retain their freedom to choose, but that perspective is contrary to the government policy and must be suppressed or removed. For your safety.
Don't believe me? Read on...
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) published a guideline Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings which can be summarised by the following extract:
What is the Shielding Approach?
The shielding approach aims to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (“high-risk”) and the general population (“low-risk”). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector or community level depending on the context and setting. They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.
Current evidence indicates that older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions are at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19. In most humanitarian settings, older population groups make up a small percentage of the total population. For this reason, the shielding approach suggests physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population to prioritize the use of the limited available resources and avoid implementing long-term containment measures among the general population.
In theory, shielding may serve its objective to protect high-risk populations from disease and death. However, implementation of the approach necessitates strict adherence to protocol. Inadvertent introduction of the virus into a green zone may result in rapid transmission among the most vulnerable populations the approach is trying to protect.
This is actually the very opposite of traditional infection control. Near my home town there was a tuberculosis hospital on a rural property. The sick went there to get well in the fresh air, but they were also isolated from the healthy population in the city. But in the Shielding Approach it would be the healthy people who would be evacuated to the green zone because they are at risk of the disease. Can you see the way the concept twists your thinking into believing it is right and rational to remove 'at risk' people to a camp? This is the kind of propaganda that the gullible would accept to believe is necessary to prevent the spread of disease to those who have been effectively vaccinated against it. Of course fact checkers have sanitised the concepts, claimed that this is not what the CDC meant, and all is well. The U.S. already has quarantine facilities and the influx of Afghan refugees has created the need for a few more. But the fact check articles were generally written before President Biden decided to make vaccination as mandatory as possible. Methods include denying federal funds to hospitals, universities, aged care facilities and other recipients if they do not have a mandatory vaccination policy. People who lose their income this way are likely to be angry. Angry people may pose a domestic terrorism risk. Angry people who have beliefs which are contrary to the official narrative could be classified as insane. The existing camps in the U.S. could be repurposed.
The situation is different here in Australia. We already have detention centres for refugees, many of whom have been detained for years. We are not committing to take a lot of Afghan refugees so there is no immediate need for new facilities. We have offshore facilities, including at Christmas Island. We have been dealing with the pandemic for nearly two years, using hotels for quarantine and also a former mining camp in the Northern territory. The Delta variant has been a challenge. But if we were to build quarantine facilities modelled on the mining camp that should have been initiated a over a year ago. Yet new camps, each called a Centre for National Resilience, are being built in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. The justification initially was for returning citizens to quarantine before entering the community. But by the time construction has finished in 2022 anyone returning to Australia will likely be required to show proof of vaccination and maybe quarantine will not be necessary. The camps will free up hotel accommodation which can revert to tourists but that will still lead to surplus capacity in the new camps. It was announced in August 2021 that the camp proposed near Jandakot Airport in Western Australia will instead be constructed on contaminated Defence Department land near Bullsbrook. So, what will they really be used for after the immediate need? Dissidents? The unvaccinated?
In New South Wales at present construction workers who attend a job outside their own Local Government Area (LGA) have to be vaccinated. An LGA is equivalent to a Shire or a County in other countries. No jab, no job. Residents of Western Australia returning to their home from interstate need to be vaccinated, tested negative and quarantine for two weeks just to enter their own State. Melbourne and Sydney have both had night-time curfews. Adelaide residents were limited to a range of 2km from their own home and then only for permitted reasons. Measures 'necessary' to contain the Delta strain. A NSW regional town was locked down when there were no reported cases - no-one was sick but apparently traces of the virus were detected in waste water so businesses were closed, and residents were locked down until people were tested and 'cases' were detected. People who are angry about losing their jobs and businesses and being coerced to get vaccinated so they can recover some freedoms have joined several large protests. In Melbourne the police shot them with rubber bullets. Is this the Australia my father and relatives fought to protect? Is this the example of democracy and freedom that the West tried to export to Afghanistan? I don't like what has happened there but if Sharia Law is imposed there at least people will know their limits in black and white. Here the principle of Westminster style government has been sidelined as emergency management committees review health advice in secret, and make health orders based on that advice which we never see, which have never been debated in Parliament, and which police enforce with vigour, supplemented by our military. These health orders are made under legislation like public health acts, but they are not laws or regulations in the traditional sense. They are not signed by a State Governor. They are changed frequently. No-one has access to the data which informs the decisions. But Police enforce these orders with extreme prejudice. Thankfully the army personnel are not armed, although they did use military vehicles to block access to Sydney's business district recently.
To those Australians overseas who want to come 'home' may I say 1) the country is not the same one you left; 2) if you come back you may not be allowed to leave; and 3) if you get sick (with Covid) here your chances of survival are fairly low. That is because the regulator has limited access to drugs which are beneficial, and has not included drugs which are progressively recommended by the WHO. Basically medicide.
Is this apocalyptic? Maybe, but it can get worse. A candidate for the current role of an anti-Christ, Klaus Schwabe, has predicted a cyber war in the near future. If you don't know what that will look like then picture Lebanon at the present with power rationing, failed currency, and deep levels of misery. In a cyber-war you can expect limited access to the Internet, whether from home or by mobile phone. That means limited access to your electronic currency - the plastic cards you wave at checkouts or use at ATMs. No more than 30km from my home I recently visited a pharmacy and, despite the close location of mobile phone towers, I was unable to access an electronic prescription or e-script for medication, and when I bought fuel for the vehicle there were signs everywhere advising to pay with cash because electronic transactions were not possible. The mobile network was 'down'. Scale that problem up to a city, a State, a Nation and you see how vulnerable you may be when (not if) a real cyber war begins. Schwabe and his friends were preparing for a pandemic and it happened. So if he predicts a cyber-war get ready for one. Are these like the plagues and disasters that the book of Revelation describes? You decide.
Note: Since writing the above, the world is facing global supply chain disruptions. What's next?
Update January 2023: Since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022 there has also been an energy crisis.