The team currently organising the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19 have misleadingly and mistakenly linked their publicity to a wholehearted endorsement of Covid vaccines.
This article is available as a PDF document and on the video below
Digital Advocacy or Information Control? Navigating the Nuanced Realm of a Pro-Vaccine Campaign
A 30 second YouTube video with 331,000 views entitled “Look back to move forward – Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons Learned” is paired with New Zealand Government material promoting Covid vaccination.
The video, set to music, depicts joyous family scenes of people working from home and celebrating in their gardens and living rooms. It encourages people to share their stories as a means of moving forward and bonding.
If you click the link below the video offering more information, you are taken to this Health New Zealand website which encourages Covid vaccination from 6 months old and up. It also promotes new Pfizer booster shots, masking, and antiviral medication. It describes side effects from the COVID-19 vaccines as rare, despite the fact that reports of adverse effects subsequent to COVID-19 vaccination dwarf any previously reported vaccination side effects by a huge factor.
If you are viewing the video on a smart TV, a runner advises you to click on the title of the video for more information. When you do so, it gives you a series of options, the first of which takes you to a QR code which links to the same Health New Zealand pro-COVID-19 vaccine information.
The comments section below the video is turned off. Clearly the Royal Commission organisers don’t want us to be able to make public comments accessible to others or hold online conversations around the topic. They want to control the flow of information. The video turns up frequently as an advertisement on YouTube which interrupts your viewing. In essence, it manipulates the viewer towards a feel good framework and creates a bland narrative that obfuscates the issues.
Overlooking Rights for Regulation: A Critical Analysis of Public Discourse and Policy Decisions Amidst the Pandemic
Crucially, it doesn’t initiate a public discussion of key concerns. For example, the New Zealand Bill of Rights guarantees the right to refuse medical treatment and experimentation. It also guarantees freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and, particularly, expression. All of these rights were curtailed during the pandemic as the government set them aside and instead instituted vaccine mandates and lockdowns which were enforced by police action, threats of criminal prosecution and actual loss of employment. Moreover, the government censored discussion on social media platforms.
None of these crucial issues which require widespread social discussion and consideration are being directly raised by the Inquiry publicity.
There is no suggestion in the video that the Royal Commission is intended to respond to concerns or that its terms of reference need revising, rather it leaves you with the impression that the Inquiry process is all about picking the approach that the government will adopt during the next pandemic (referred to as “whatever comes next”). The implication of the Health New Zealand link is that this will be a simple process of choosing from among the past and current official COVID policies.
Echoes of Prejudgment: Questioning the Integrity and Objectives of the COVID-19 Inquiry Process
Clearly, there is a suspicion that those organising the Inquiry have already made up their minds what comes next and are just going through the motions without offering a clear idea of the huge issues at stake affecting not just health and the right to life but also social cohesion, employment rights, freedom of expression, the economy, and full disclosure of vital information.
The bias evident in this video underlines the need to completely revise the scope and personnel of the current Inquiry which was set up with very limited terms of reference by the previous government. The web address which leads to the actual process of making a submission on the terms of reference of the Inquiry at Covid19Inquiry.nz occupies a corner of the screen for just five seconds at the end of the video and is not actually directly linked. In other words, you have to copy it down and enter it into your device as a separate process, whereas a direct link to the Health New Zealand pro-COVID-19 vaccine information is available throughout the 30 seconds of the video as a website link and as a QR code.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry should be a process of restoring public trust, this cannot happen until a public dialogue is instituted. As we have repeatedly reported, the Covid years have been marked by a health crisis involving record rates of hospitalisation and death which are still continuing whose causes are little understood and hardly investigated. If the public are not trusted, but rather manipulated we are in for more of the same, perhaps worse.
