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Support for KAP amendments and governance amendmentsDear Member,The Australian Institute for Progress is opposed to vaccine mandates, and also believes that this pandemic, and future pandemics, require governance arrangements that are more open and transparent, and that the government should take advice more widely than its state health bureaucrats. Mandates Our opposition to vaccine mandates is based on human rights. All humans have the right to decide for themselves what medications they take and the right to be properly informed about them. The only countervailing circumstances might be where exercising those rights would cause serious injury to others, or the community. That is not the case with the mRNA and DNA vaccines where studies show there is no difference in vulnerability to infection, or infectiousness, between those who are vaccinated or unvaccinated. Each group poses the same risk to the community as the other. There appears to be some benefit in terms of the severity of disease, which may affect the hospital system in terms of case numbers. However recent statistics from Queensland Health demonstrate that while more than 8.5% of those who died from COVID were unvaccinated, most deaths were amongst the vaccinated, and the vast majority of either category were over 65. It's likely that these unvaccinated Queenslanders had health reasons for why they would not risk the shock to their immune system of vaccination. For the vast number of those under 65 who are unvaccinated, which is where the greatest proportion of unvaccinated are to be found, their fatality risk is similar to those who are vaccinated, inferring no additional strain on the hospital system. As a result there is no community benefit to be gained by forcing the remaining 8.5% who are unvaccinated to be vaccinated. It is also likely to be the case that if someone is not vaccinated now, they will continue to resist vaccination. There is also likely to be a large number of those who are double vaccinated who will resist getting a third, as is happening in the USA. If triple vaccination becomes the definition of fully vaccinated, then the population of vaccine resistant will be much higher than 8.5%, making the vaccine mandates even more problematic. So perpetuating vaccine mandates will stigmatise a growing percentage of the population. At some stage COVID vaccines have to gain a similar status to flu vaccines, particularly for the overwhelming number of younger people where the risk from the vaccines is higher than the risk from COVID. How can the state morally justify damaging the health of some of these people for no benefit to anyone? Governance Our institute facilitated an open letter signed by 1,315 Australians. It made the following recommendations: * No forecasting model can be used where the program code is not publicly available for analysis and download; * A cost-benefit analysis, including lives saved versus lives lost, both directly and consequentially, based on the best available information, must be completed before any action is taken; *Weekly or daily non-epidemic death figures should be posted as well as deaths from the epidemic; *The types of people who must be part of the advisory group to government should be specified in writing, and be more inclusive than what we appear to have at the moment; *No directive or regulation restricting individual rights can be promulgated without approval by Parliament within a one-month window. We would recommend the whole letter to you - even though it is almost two years old it predicted the way that COVID would play out, even though it was written before vaccines were even thought to be likely to be available. We also believe that its recommendations ought to be legislated, as well as increased transparency in the decision-making process of the government. Regards,  GRAHAM YOUNGEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 
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