ABOUT 30 anti-COVID vaccination protesters and one dog quietly stood outside Mornington Peninsula Shire’s Mornington offices on Tuesday last week.
Mornington Police Senior Sergeant Paul Edwards described the gathering as being well-behaved and resembling a “group of middle-aged residents getting out for a coffee”.
Senior Sergeant Edwards said members of the group disbanded after he warned that unless they moved on, they would be issued infringements for breaching the Chief Health Officer’s regulations.
“About 95 per cent were wearing masks and, if they weren’t, they were offered one by police or allowed exemptions because of underlying health issues,” Senior Sergeant Edwards said.
He estimated the average age of the protesters was mid-50s.
In the days leading up to the protest, pamphlets had been distributed at Mornington and Mount Martha, claiming the efficacy of the vaccines was unknown and that they were untested and that the “cure is worse than the disease”.
“If you are not sick, why would you let a stranger inject an unknown, untested substance into your body,” the pamphlet stated. “Especially when it doesn’t stop you getting COVID, and doesn’t stop you spreading it? What’s the point?”
The pamphlet claimed censorship was stifling scientific debate and covering up the number and degree of adverse reactions and deaths. It said masks “don’t work – in fact they are dangerous [as] we are supposed to breathe oxygen”.
“There is a 97 per cent recovery rate from COVID-19 and an 80 per cent failure rate of the vaccine,” the pamphlet stated, before demanding to know why hydroxychloroquine and “other known treatments” had been banned. The medication was controversially recommended by former President Donald Trump as a cure for the disease and subsequently dismissed by medical experts.
The pamphlet also claimed COVID-19 was “just a flu” being peddled as part of a “planned global takeover”. It said QR codes were being used to “track and trace you, exactly the same as in China, getting you ready for vaccine passports where you will be under total control”.
