Unmasking the Paradigm: Reflections on Australia’s Pandemic Response

Interview with Shifted Paradigms

I’m pretty sure it was ExcessDeathAU that first brought my attention to the Substack of Shifted Paradigms. I went on to profile the excellent artcile 13 Ways to Hide the Bodies here:

How to hide 61,000 bodies - Lies are Unbekoming

I’m very happy for the opportunity to present this interview and further promote this important Australian voice.

With thanks to Shifted Paradigms.

Shifted Paradigms | Substack

1. What motivated you to start investigating and writing about Australia's pandemic response? Can you tell us about your background and what led you to this work?

Investigating and writing about Australia's pandemic response was informal to begin with. From the first lockdown in 2020 to the first mask mandate, none of it really seemed to make any sense, and I enjoyed talking about this with family, friends, colleagues and my extended network on social media. But, over time, these discussions became less frequent. By late 2021, mostly everyone had been "vaccinated", either by choice or coercion, and despite ample evidence of the failure of the "vaccines" to do anything to prevent infection, transmission, hospitalisation or death, I think people just stopped wanting to hear a contrary view.

I struggled to understand this perspective for a long time. How could people not want to talk about COVID or the pandemic anymore? I was a nuisance. I had become an awkward reminder of what had happened and how everyone had behaved and mostly everyone seemed to just want to move on with their lives. So, at this point, I started the Substack as a personal project. I wanted to record my thoughts and write more expansively and to preserve some historical record of the absolute, utter madness that was the "pandemic" response in Australia.

2. The term "shifted paradigms" seems significant - what does it mean to you and why did you choose it?

The name "Shifted Paradigms" derives from the idea of "The Paradigm Shift" from Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

Kuhn's analysis, though written for a time long before the "pandemic", seemed to be the perfect description of what we lived through. According to Kuhn, scientific progress doesn’t happen in a linear, cumulative way but through periods of "normal science" punctuated by "scientific revolutions". In normal science, researchers work within an established framework or "Paradigm", a widely accepted set of theories, methods, and assumptions that guided scientific inquiry.

To my mind, the "normal science" of the pandemic was perfectly captured by this idea. We started with a widely accepted set of theories and assumptions (SARS CoV-2 is highly lethal for everyone, early treatments don't work, lockdowns are necessary, masks work, there was a curve and we could flatten it) which guided the methods of scientific inquiry to prove these theories and assumptions: not to challenge them. Indeed, virtually every academic paper in the mainstream journals commenced with acknowledgements about some or all of these assumptions. Gradually, these morphed into digestible slogans for the proles:

• "Two weeks to slow the spread";

• "The new normal";

• "Flatten the curve";

• "Build back better";

• "Safe and effective";

• "The benefits outweigh the risks"; or, my favourite

• "the 'vaccines' saved millions of lives".

A list like this could go on...and....on...and...on....with fanciful computer models "proving" any outlandish claims with the right amount of tweaking. In other words, this would be the perfect example of what Kuhn called "normal science". Scientists operating within the Paradigm do not test the guiding theories of the Paradigm; they simply work within the Paradigm.

It likely runs deeper than this during "normal science" too. Undoubtedly, "normal science" and supporting orthodoxy regarding pandemic policies was financially rewarding for many. Conversely, the brave few who expressed heteredox views or simply raised questions have had their careers and livelihoods dismantled by the State and its propaganda arm through the legacy media.

What breaks this cycle of "normal science" and the censorship of heterodoxy is the emergence of "anomalies" and the inability of the Paradigm to explain them. Anomalies like "vaccine" injuries, "breakthrough infections", continued "COVID-19 deaths", worse outcomes for the "fully vaccinated", better outcomes for the "unvaccinated", pharmacovigilance safety signals and unabated national and global excess mortality in highly COVID-19 "vaccinated" countries. The emerging DNA contamination scandal and the risks it poses to human health is yet another anomaly challenging the Paradigm even today. If these anomalies continue to accumulate and they will drive a shift in thinking about the "vaccines" and the pandemic response in Australia (and globally).

So, Kuhn's analysis offered a superb insight into how scientific dogma of pandemic orthodoxy has always been an important part of my understanding when it came to the hubris of "The Science".

I also wanted to go with "The Paradigm Shift" as the Substack name, but it was already taken!

3. You've written extensively about excess mortality in Australia. What initially drew your attention to this particular aspect of the pandemic response?

Excess mortality was probably the first "smoking gun" in the failure of the "vaccines" which drew my attention to this aspect of the pandemic response. Our health bureaucrats in Australia were always keen to wave away any suggestion of "vaccine" harm by assuring us that "correlation did not imply causation", or "many millions of doses had been administered and we would have noticed the safety signal already if there was one".

But, the duplicity was obvious. For a time, all-cause mortality was the way we captured the total impact of a medical intervention, accounting for both its benefits and potential harms. But then we also had to believe that the "vaccines" saved millions and lives and somehow we have the most significant excess mortality since World War Two and it could have been so much worse so that excess mortality was expected in this setting.

4. In your analysis of the Actuaries Institute's work, you introduce the concept of "puzzle-solving" versus comprehensive investigation. Could you elaborate on this distinction?

The metaphor of puzzle-solving is derived from Kuhn's idea of how "normal science" contrasts with "revolutionary science". If we are merely puzzle-solvers, then we have very little chance for thinking "outside the puzzle (box)".

I suppose the better way of thinking about the "puzzle-solving" metaphor is not so much about how it contrasts with "comprehensive investigation", but how it contrasts with "critical thinking". We have not suffered from a dearth of information during the pandemic and the idea that "comprehensive investigation" is all that's needed to wade through the nonsense and disinformation (yes, we can use this word too!) from the State, health bureaucrats, the legacy media and, by extension, non-critical thinkers, is "comprehensive investigation" (taken to mean "hard work", essentially), then the metaphor is lost.

Staying with Kuhn's idea, "puzzle-solvers" work within a certain Paradigm where their solutions are determined by the pieces cut by the jigsaw. One can slice the picture in many different ways, but in the end, the picture will always be the same irrespective of how many different ways the picture could be sliced and put back together.

I see the work of the Actuaries Institute and its COVID-19 Mortality Working Group in much the same way. I do not make assertions about their intent in analysing Australia's excess mortality but I do believe, based on my own assessments of the same evidence they have used, that their analysis and conclusions are seriously flawed,

5. You outline several narrative techniques used to deflect attention from excess mortality, like attributing it to ageing populations or delayed care. Can you elaborate on how they “hide the bodies?”

It seems as though the strategy must genuinely be to offer any other possible explanation aside from the simplest and most obvious - it's the "vaccines". My article "13 Ways to Hide the Bodies" provides an overview of the most common attempts at doing so in the Australian context. Looking to the future, they'll probably blame microplastics, forever chemicals, Ozempic, long-COVID, seed oils, climate change, Disease X or Bird Flu.

6. You highlight how complex statistical analyses can be used to obscure rather than illuminate. How do you suggest ordinary citizens can better understand and evaluate mortality data?

There is no substitute for critical thinking. However, ordinary citizens also have the most amazing tools at their disposal with the emergence of AI tools. Without doubt, many of these LLMs are programmed to output orthodox views about the pandemic: masks, lockdowns and "vaccines"; however, they can be used effectively to interrogate the jargon and methodology used in what appear to be complex academic papers.

The task is also becoming easier too. The burden of proof lies with those continuing to make the claims that the "vaccines are safe", "the vaccines are effective", "the vaccines saved millions of lives", or "lockdowns were a good idea". One will usually find that these claims can only be supported with spurious "modelling" or crippled epistemologies. Thankfully, mortality data continues to be published by government agencies like the ABS and AIHW. Although some of it is censored in "privacy-by-design" approaches, there is ample evidence in the publicly available data of the correlation between the number of "vaccines" administered and increases in mortality and general health decline in Australia. These data are being used by more and more dissident journalists and academics to question the official narrative which will further support the ways that ordinary citizens, just like me, can better understand and evaluate mortality data.

7. Your article about Aude Alaskar's case revealed significant discrepancies between media reports and family accounts. What challenges did you face in uncovering this story?

Though the majority of the article was drawing from the information in publicly available legacy media articles without challenge, when I tried to go a little bit deeper by contacting friends and family quoted in the reports, it was like Aude was a ghost. I found and exchanged messages with one of Aude's friends before publishing my article, but he disappeared without a trace and I had to rely on publicly available reports to finish the article. So, there could have been so much more to the story, but to no avail.

But, the story was still very important to the pandemic response in NSW. Aude's was the first story where an apparently fit, young and healthy individual suddenly died from COVID-19. But, like all stories, once you scratched the surface, there was so much more that was not told, and so many other fabrications. It was probable that Aude had serious underlying health conditions. Yet, it was also verifiable that he experienced only a mild COVID-19 infection (didn't we all?) and self-isolated for 13 days and had recovered before suddenly dying on his last day of isolation. On the day he died, he had a family breakfast, phoned his relatives and seemed in good spirits. Nothing seemed untoward. Somehow, later that day, he collapsed and died of COVID-19.

There were several issues that drew me to Aude's story which I wrote about in my article, but the thought that keeps recurring is, what if Aude was "vaccinated" up to and including the 21 days before his COVID-19 infection? He would still have been recorded a death from COVID-19 of an "unvaccinated" person. The manner of his death actually bore the hallmarks of a "vaccine" adverse event death which closely resembles the death of Adriana Takara (covered extensively by the excellent Arkmedic here).

Adriana Takara's death deserves the truth.

No autopsy was performed on Aude.

His was a "COVID-19 death" and an inquest into his death was likely dispensed with by the Coroner because the Paradigm held that COVID-19 could kill Aude suddenly. The story became an effective piece of State propaganda early in our second lockdown, driving the number of "vaccines" administered in NSW by more than one million between August 1 and August 15 2021.

8. How has your understanding of institutional accountability in Australia evolved through your investigations?

I now believe that "institutional accountability" is like the Hydra. I think we can make the Hydra uncomfortable by cutting off its head from time to time, but it's so strangely perverse how the Hydra has many heads that seem to be independent of political affiliation. We have now been subjected to a pandemic response that spans the duo-party in Australian Federal and State politics. What has become increasingly clear is that there appears to be the same indifference from both sides of the political spectrum to the idea of taking a proper look at what constituted our "pandemic response" in Australia. Despite the continued courageous efforts of a few like Senators Rennick, Roberts, Antic, Canavan and Babet, MP Broadbent or MP Davies and MLC Ruddick (both in NSW State Parliament) so many are lacking and have lacked the political will to be accountable human beings responding to the needs of their constituents facing a cost-of-living crisis caused by the unprecedented lockdown policies and the health crisis facing our country.

9. Your analysis of COVID-19 Response Inquiry submissions revealed numerous personal stories about vaccine mandates. What surprised you most while reviewing these accounts?

Though I was familiar with the extent of reports of vaccine adverse events, many leading to death, I was surprised at how the COVID-19 Response Inquiry Submissions were openly published on the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's Inquiry page. I was deeply suspicious that these submissions would be censored (acknowledging many were actually published but heavily redacted), or accepted only as "correspondence" (in other words: censored by other means). So, it was first that these reports of injury and death saw the light of day in the first place. The content of the submissions themselves did not wholly surprise me as we had been exposed to these personal stories for many years, albeit in a limited way in the legacy media. Despite moving through the first series of articles trying to catch the specific AEFI keywords, the one on "vaccination mandates" took over a month and by my estimate represented close to half of all the published submissions. The sheer extent of the number of people subjected to mandates, many of whom also experienced shocking adverse events, was the most saddening part of collating those stories.

10. How has Australia's pandemic response affected trust in institutions, based on your research?

The COVID-19 Response Inquiry submissions paint a very worrying picture about Australians' level of trust in institutions, and rightly so. With the fewest of exceptions, there was not an institution that was not captivated by peak COVID-19 hysteria in their mask or "vaccine" fanaticism and the denigration of the "unvaccinated".

Though the articles I've written have only captured this distrust in an anecdotal, more observational way, I think there are other indications of this growing distrust in the legacy media, the bureaucracy and the medical establishment and there are emerging data to support all of these observations.

11. What patterns have you observed in how official bodies respond to questioning or criticism of their pandemic policies?

It appears it is unchanged and is straight from a public relations playbook.

1. Deny

2. Delay

3. Distract

4. Distort

12. Looking back at your investigations so far, which findings do you consider most significant?

The articles collating the stories from the COVID-19 Response Inquiry were the most significant in their reach, yet, were probably the most unoriginal pieces of work given that they were primarily exercises in searching and screenclipping from over 1,800 individual submissions to preserve these important stories for the public record.

I am proud of all of my work, but I am particularly fond of the first very long-form piece I wrote "The Science Behind the Headlines". It was published in September 2023 and was prompted by Senator Rennick's exchanges with CMO Paul Kelly from Senate Estimates concerning excess mortality. Kelly, keen to deflect from questions about the role of the "vaccines" in Australia's excess mortality, cited the "very good data" from a (then) recent preprint, commissioned by the NCIRS to claim the "vaccines" reduced the death rate in the over 65s by 93% (the study was later published in The Lancet). I was curious to see if the study actually exonerated the "vaccines" and was shocked to read the evidence in the study showed evidence of significant "vaccine" harm for many of the cohorts. Though Kelly accurately quoted the result of just one of the many cohorts in the study, somehow he, and even the authors of the study seemed to ignore the more troubling findings to conclude we should all get more and more boosters.

13. What are you currently investigating, and what themes are you exploring in your upcoming work?

So many plans and so little time!

A big focus of mine over the coming months is to probe the vague "health advice" which must have existed in some form, somewhere, to suggest that "vaccines" would reduce transmission of SARS CoV-2 and COVID-19 disease, which was then relied upon (if it ever existed) to justify mandates.

I intend to do the same for the "health advice" regarding face masks too. I believe this "health advice" likely never existed, or at the very least, had questionable scientific basis, however, it will be interesting to see how this particular peculiarity of the pandemic response, particularly in NSW will be explained after the fact.

I have also been scouring PBS data for the past month and am planning to write more about the medicines data from the pandemic, including a follow-up piece from my most recent piece on Australia's hydroxychloroquine restrictions in 2020. There are some very revealing data about the explosion of sedatives prescriptions since the commencement of the pandemic which I intend to explore.

14. How can readers stay connected with your work and contribute to these important discussions about public policy and accountability?

I have a limited social media presence for Shifted Paradigms, and I was going to connect these articles to a broader audience, I realise I would need to try and build this some more. The Substack community is thriving, but I feel we have limited reach beyond our own closed circles, so, I would implore others to continue sharing and discussing the issues I and others raise in this community of like-minded people.

As an aside, a huge thank you to Aussie17 and especially ExcessDeathAU for their support and promotion of my work.

Shifted Paradigms | Substack

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