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The grannies are vaxxed up and raring to go. Credit: BORIS ROESSLER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
The grimness of the pandemic and the prospect of its ending are coming together to breed confused emotions. In a bleak country where more than 1,000 people are being declared dead with Covid-19 every day, many people are starting to dream of a happier, vaccinated future.
For some, the future is now. More than 4 million people have had a shot of a vaccine, each jab sparking a little flash of hope. Social media and family WhatsApp groups ping with people keen to share the news that a parent, a grandparent, a great-aunt, anyone they know has had the vaccine. Each story is offered as proof that the light at the end of the national tunnel is drawing closer. Britain is cautiously optimistic, and that’s good for a government that hasn’t won much praise for managing the crisis so far. YouGov finds 61% think the government is handling the vaccine rollout quite well or very well.
Are we about to emerge from the darkest days and start putting the strains and pains of the pandemic behind us? Don’t bank on it. Britain and Boris are happy right now, but both should enjoy that tentative feeling of vaccine-driven optimism while they can, because a whole new set of problems is on the way. Indeed, if luck is against us — and it generally has been — then it’s ominously possible that vaccinating Britain against Covid-19 will bring about a greater test of faith in the state — in our coherence as a society and in our national character — than the virus itself was.
Will vaccine wars destabilise Britain?
The first act of the vaccine-tension drama is regional, with different bits of the country complaining that other bits are getting more jabs more quickly. Any metro-mayor or local political baron worth his or her salt has already jumped on this bandwagon of grievance already: Sadiq Khan says London is hard done-by; a cross-party group of pols in Birmingham say the same for their city. This will make for good local headlines but will fade away as long as the overall rollout continues well. And thankfully none of our sharp-eyed local leaders has yet decided to copy the health boss in Italy’s rich North who wants vaccine stocks allocated according to regional GDP.
Far more serious is how people behave — and see each other — once some of them have had the vaccine. Will the Covid rules survive the partial vaccination of Britain?
Despite the fretting of politicians and headline-writers, posterity will remark that the most notable aspect of Britain’s early pandemic experience was near-universal acceptance of restrictions meant to protect some of our society from harm. The UCL Covid Social Study found more than 97% compliance with Lockdown 1, with no reduction from March to May last year. Britain really did stick to the rules and, although most people with symptoms still don’t get tested, overall compliance in early 2021 is near the levels of May 2020.
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SubscribeI honestly see no way out of this, given that the vaccines are currently not proven to confer immunity, nor prevent transmission. For those of the “anything is worth it to save one life” persuasion, this means that we must logically continue with hard restrictions forever, because they lessen the chances of transmission of the virus. It does not matter to them that such restrictions are quite literally killing others, and viciously cutting off the lives of those of us who have been thrown under the bus here. No; their stance of total risk aversion means that they will never be able to empathise with returning to something approaching life rather than grim, base existence.
I just hope that none of them ever drives a car, or has a drink, given the massive risks to others which those pursuits entail.
This is my point, as below. I live without any contact with highly educated people except on sites like this. My definition of highly educated is – people who can write a logical argument and persuade me with the power of their thoughts. My family and people around me see that once vaccinated life for them will be ‘normal’. Hugging, meetings in Starbucks, parties at birthdays will go wild after a year of abstinence. Travel bookings are going to be double the normal level. People will meet others in countries where vaccination was not done as professionally as here, so the idea of ‘herd’ protection goes out of the window.
This can’t be correct. We should now be preparing for next winter. In fact, we will party in the summer and fall into winter. Deaths will rise fast, then there will be panic and we will have more lockdowns, albeit on a smaller scale.
You have my sympathies; we appear to be in similar situations. Those who have an established network of like-minded friends in their physical neighbourhood appear not to realise that there are many of us who, for whatever reason, don’t (and therefore we have no-one to actually *talk* to, even from a distance). Yet another of the distinctions between those these restrictions don’t really affect, and those they do, which the former appear to be unable to see.
I have always been supportive of the NHS – many of my family work within it – but I am incandescently angry that preparation was not made, given the virtually unlimited resources on offer – for managing the very predictable winter surge better. Covid-19 is a killer for some, and very nasty for others; but the lack of forethought in managing this is what is behind the continuation of these draconian restrictions of our human rights.
Spot on. I have tried to emphasise one word in my posts – management. The point is not, for example, whether masks are good or not but that people are trained to use them properly.
The summer could have been used for this training.
I agree, with the caveat that training to use them properly (with surgical-grade masks) should be restricted to the vulnerable or those in fear. Home-made cloth masks which can be washed and re-used are perfectly sufficient for the rest of us, in those limited places where we cannot keep our distance from each other.
What about those annoying and persistent reports from clinicians, doctors and eminent virologists that masks don’t actually work, except perhaps in a limited way in very confined spaces?
I can’t get anyone to believe in them, sadly. In the interests of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, therefore, I’m all for those who believe in them getting better at wearing them, so long as it is understood that this is JUST for higher personal protection, rather than to decrease the risk of transmission.
“There will be panic” – our hysterical monotone media will make certain of that on the basis of this last year’s shocking experience.
Will we be given all the un-spun, contextualised facts and see them evaluated objectively and scientifically by a range of expert, suitably qualified opinion?
This has not so far been the case.
Ridiculous. Can’t double. There wasn’t the capacity even before the travel industry was annihilated by the lockdown. It’s over. You can’t stop me living my life any longer
People don’t need to be protected from the virus. They need to be protected from the vastly more deadly rules of lockdown, “social” distancing and enforced mask-wearing. People dying from viruses is just part of normal life.
Quite so. So many assumption in this article the most worrying being that the ‘vaccine’ ( more accurately described by pharmacologists who should know as ‘experimental gene therapy’) will actually work.
Problems with delaying the second shot are already concerning virologists who warn of the possibility of even enhancing the virus you are supposed to be controlling. Pfizer admits that they cannot guarantee that the vaccine either stops you catching Covid or prevents you transmitting the infection to others.
If this is the case, what is the point of it? This whole article assumes the success of an unknown, untested quantity.
It is not an unknown or untested quantity. you can read the 3 peer reviewed publications of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines with all the data in the Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. All 3 studies had as their primary end point the prevention of symptomatic covid with a positive test. All 3 vaccines showed many fewer subjects with this after vaccination compared with placebo. Like all trials, there are a number of limitations to the evidence, but the basic result of reducing symptomatic covid in the study population is not in doubt.
This is meaningless. The efficacy of a vaccine has to be measured over time. You can only really say that a vaccine is 94% effective over a period of x months.
Unfortunately, in the cohorts for the Phase III Clinical Trials, no subjects over 70 years of age were included. Neither were people younger than 18, in view of the difficult ethic situation with these groups. So the efficacy of the vaccines in over 70s and those younger than 18 has not even been tested, lot alone proven. Those over 70 have a far higher risk of suffering of comorbidities (risk, they do not all have them), which could receiving the vaccine, especially the mRNA a risky proposition. I myself was treated with mRNA medication in December 2019 to treat an autoimmune disease, which caused me to spend over 2 weeks in hospital with raging sepsis, hooked up to two antibiotics IVs and one morphine IV all the time. Needless to say, I am not about to have the Pfizer vaccine. By the way, I served as non-exec on the board of a small pharmaceutical manufacturer for some 15 years, and am not devoid of common sense. But I will not sign up to being a subject in Pfizer’s ongoing Phase IV trials. If anyone is interested, in a clinical trial the subject must sign an Informed Consent Form before being treated, some 3 to 4 pages long. My husband (NHS worker) was given the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday, after signing a very short declaration that he understood there could be risks of averse reactions. Not an Informed Consent Form to be seen, and even the (middle aged and experienced) nurse confirmed that she had wondered about that too.
I am also very wary of the mRNA method. I have refused to have it, not antivax, I have had all the usual ones, flu, shingles and pneumonia and I will take the Astra Zeneca one if offered as it is a traditional vaccine but as yet our surgery only has Pfizer.
Yes, as above in many discussions there is no real evidence that the vaccine will work. That is why I find the aggressive, ‘Party, party, party’ responses above so sad.
The need to be protected from murderous Covid denying trolls
A troll calling out other trolls? How delightfully ironic.
Ah yes, the vaccine that does not give immunity, doesn’t make you any less infectious, you still have to wear a mask, you still have to do social distance, and you have to remain locked down and in the same bubbles. It just kind of makes you not feel so bad if you get it.
But we should be grateful…
There’s a problem with the messaging I believe.
None of the RCTs for the vaccines tested for the participant’s infectiousness, it would be particularly hard to do.
I think I’m correct in saying that no ‘vaccine’ or previous infection gives you immunity in the way you’re describing it. Immunity dosen’t put a virus forcefield around your body, it’s more like multi layered security. So active Antibodies (from recent exposure) will quickly deal with the virus. If the Antibodies are no longer active (after a few months), then your immune system will produce them again quickly from memory. There’s also killer cells, but that’s another story and I’d have to double check the correct names T/B etc, something anyone can do.
How much affect this will have on you being infectious hasn’t been trialled, it’s probably fair to say if the virus spends less time replicating in your body – due to a quicker immune response then you’ll produce less of the virus and be infectious for a shorter time.
If this improved immune response reduces bad infections significantly (RCTs suggest that they do so massively) then that in itself is great. It’s also highly likely (though not proven) that people will be much less infectous, hopefully by a large amount – this would be enough to lower the R rate significantly.
Apologies if you’re just moaning about the zero Covid zealots who seem to infest to many positions of power.
Thanks for the reply
And your response points up exactly the issues, we don’t know because there has not been a full Clinical Trial carried out for any of the vaccines. MHRA and FDA have licensed the vaccines using their emergency medicines act, or whatever it’s called, based on Phase 1 trials that are still not complete. Phase 2/3 are being carried out now, but as millions are being vaccinated not sure how that will report in Feb’23 when they are scheduled to be completed by
However, we are being told that even if you have had the vaccine you will still be infectious, hence the continuing mask wearing, social distancing and the promise of further periods of house arrest.
So, I guess that no one actually knows yet what the effects of the vaccine will be.
They’ve all been completed at least 1 Phase 3 trial. Look around and I’ve read of at least 5 successful Phase 3 trials for Ptizer.
It is true that their development has been extremely swift, but this has been largely achieved through some very focused hard work from the people involved and a rare can do attitude from government. We complain about red tape constantly, can’t moan when it’s streamlined. They started later trials as soon as possible once the vaccines were deemed safe enough, the regulators worked alongside the developers to speed the process up, with early evidence disclosure etc to help things along.
In normal times a new medicine might get proposed by someone, looked at by several layers of committees in a company for montths, with cost benefits weighed up. Then a restricted budget for development, no great urgency – then organise the different Phases of trials, regulators receving full trial results afterwards, maybe considering the evidence, turns out it’s the holidays so another month gone. If I know any large organisation every little detail and then some is haggled about by some obscure group, largely desperate to make a power grab. Then on phase 2 trials, which now have to be designed, recruited for, financed etc.
If people of this calbire and with this attitude had been involved in the general response to Sars-Cov-2 we might have had a more thoughtful and decisive approach.
I hope that the current negative edicts from those in charge are precautions against people thinking they’re safe too early – for example jab in the arm and then out to party.
This is not to say that there aren’t many people in powerful positions who seem to either love the power and control over little people or are entirely obsessed with Covid at the cost of everything else.
Look at the clinical trials .gov website. Find the vaccine studies. Look at the results tab on the study info.
Then get back to me and let me know what the findings were for Phase 2/3 trials.
Very interesting but not sure what it proves, looking on plenty of other sites multiple phase 3 trials successfully completed by Nov 2020 are reported.
I’m looking at ptizer, Oxford Uni, UK gov, bmj – also massively reported around the world. Now it’s possible that they’re all telling one big organised lie, but why not get the clinical trials site on board too?
Have they held out against the corrupt governments of the world? But I can still find their site easily on google?
Or are the trials just not listed on there?
OK, so you you didn’t look.
Tedros admits for the first time that the Chinese run WHO’s recommended PCR test vastly over- estimates the number of actual ‘cases’ of Covid 19. How does this affect the alarmist figures we are given every day?
Significantly one would think. Here in the UK our government refuses to release information on the level of Cycle Threshold being used in PCR tests. If it’s over 40 – and there is some speculation that it is closer to 45+ – then the exaggerated sensitivity means testing will pick up everything and anything, including dead fragments of coronavirus in people who have already tested positive a while ago.
Even the inventor of the PCR test has let it be known that it is not suited to testing for viruses. I gather the German scientist who recommended its use to the relevant EU health authority (he is on its approval panel apparently) is being sued in Germany for misleading / falsifying regarding its efficacy and reliability.
When every decision and implementation of what passes for a public health policy here and elsewhere is based on this less than reliable test, it is a massive concern that the CT levels being used are not in the public domain. It is also frustrating but unsurprising that noone in the media is asking this question. It is so fundamental to everything being done (imposed on us); what does HMG / SAGE / PHE have to hide?
The other problem with the PCR tests is that the particles of RNA that the test is seeded with are not unique to the – as yet putative virus which has not been purified – but available from all sorts of different illnesses – the second problem is that – all three of the RNA strands should be used to make sure that they match the data provided by PRC but often a single match is allowed to stand as a positive result. There is of course the died “with the virus” rather from the virus in many older and very ill people who often acquired their positive – PCR – test – see above for caveats on that – in hospital despite being admitted for very life threatening other diseases – such as pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes etc which were proving fatal even as they were put on a ward – hence the “within 28 days of a positive PCR test” nonsense.
Matt Hancock was asked in parliament the other day for similar figures of those who died within 20 days of having the vaccine – he looked very shaken and shifty and tried to dodge answering the question by saying that the figures were available from from some group which name escapes me – and stated that he would get back to the Honorable gentleman privately at a later date.
Not at all. 2000 people a day dying in hospital with Covid symptoms and positive Covid test does alarm me however. Aircraft hangers full of unburied dead is pretty convincing too.
The uniformity of compliance is all the more noteworthy given that economic experiences of lockdown are anything but uniform…..Young people haven’t turned their lives upside down just to prevent Covid killing their gran. They’ve done it to protect other people’s grans too.
Let’s not kid ourselves that Britain is bravely showing the Dunkirk spirit, and morally trying to save socialised medicine. People are complying because the uniformed thugs of the state are fining people between £200-£10,000 when they think they can get away with it.
I have come to believe the UK Cops love an easy target.
Pretty much everyone has come to that sorry conclusion.
Always have.
They seem to be particularly brutal to elderly ladies and young women – dragging them to the ground/pinning them/punching in the face/mobbing them.
What happened to engage, explain, encourage, and enforce mantra – the overreach of some police officers has been criminal through lack of knowledge of the law and a seeming desire to look strong and forceful – not a good look.
Thugs is a bit harsh for some poor harassed Bobby trying to make a bunch of drunk kids go home.
I fear that they would ignore some 25 year old rowdy drinks, and prefer to pick up a couple of arthritic pensioners sitting on a park bench…
Personal responsibility is the key here. Am I not to go out driving because some boy racer or elderly driver, who knows they’re no longer competent, might cause an accident? The government must do all it can to convince reluctant groups and minorities of the benefit of the vaccine. If they still choose to avoid it should the majority continue to decimate their lives and mental health to protect them? There’s more than enough evidence that there will be long term economic, social and mental impacts of the pandemic. The sooner restrictions are lifted the better. So no, we must not lockdown for longer than necessary to protect those who, despite the evidence, refuse vaccination. Personal responsibility is the right to do something, or not to do something – despite the serious risk.
“despite the evidence”
What evidence? None of these products claims to reduce transmission.
There appears to be a lack of understanding here about the transmission mechanisms for respiratory viruses, their impact on the human body, and how a vaccine works. You would think that the assembled brains employed by the government would help us here, but it appears not to be in their interest to do so. I wonder why no journalist thinks an explanation would be useful? Perhaps most of them are arts and humanities graduates….
Respiratory viruses cannot be ‘stopped’ by a vaccine, because a vaccine only suppresses its replication in the blood stream (which, hopefully, stops you getting very ill). But respiratory diseases initially invade the mucous lining of the nasal and upper respiratory tract, which has a completely different defense mechanism to that in the bloodstream, and which is not enhanced by vaccination.
So, if you inhale a virion which replicates in your sinuses and nasal cavity, respiratory tract mucus is the first interaction that it will have with you. This mucus layer controls the infectivity, and potentially the transmissibility, of respiratory viruses such as influenza and Covid. It is not affected by blood-stream vaccines. If it defeats the virus, well and good. You are likely to experience this as a short ‘head cold’. And while you are sneezing, you are spreading the virus to other individuals. You may even be asymptomatic at this point – but still have some Covid in your nasal cavities.
IF a flu virus defeats the mucus layer and the various respiratory defences, it may end up in the bloodstream, and attack various other parts of the body. You will experience this as ‘full-blown flu’, with joint pains and other ailments. Elderly or vulnerable people may die as a result of this phase (and the rest of us might feel that we want to). The Covid virus can also do this if it gets into the bloodstream, and is then well set up for attacking human cells in many organs. However, WHEN a virus is in the bloodstream, THEN the antibodies stimulated by the vaccine come into play, and the illness has a good chance of being rapidly suppressed.
So you can see that a vaccine:
– does not stop you ‘getting’ the virus
– does not stop you spreading the virus
– can stop you getting very ill with the virus
Hope that helps….
..
Interesting. I’d heard about that concern before re. immunity in the respiratory system being different. Do you have a useful link?
‘Britain and Boris are happy right now,…’
I stopped reading, right there. Second sentence of the third paragraph. Perhaps we should have a little competition to establish the earliest point at which someone has stopped reading an UnHerd article. There could probably be a separate category for article by Mr Kirkup
I gather he is a scientist so it must be a fact.
Sorry, he’s just a hack journalist with a fancy title.
Bar Tuesdays and Sundays, I get very little time to read things in full so by then I’d committed.
Ploughing on regardless with the clock ticking in the hope of reading something a little more nuanced than this.
Alas, you were right, and I’m off to work now.
Mr Kirkup is an establishment journalist – what do you expect? “Unheard” he certatinly is not!
You could have saved me some time by not posting that – then I wouldn’t have felt obliged to read it.
So how come you commented?
“In a bleak country where more than 1,000 people are being declared dead with Covid-19 every day”
Shock horror, hide behind the sofa…..except that around 1700 die every day and always have because humans are not immortal despite the implication that we would be were it not for Covid! Of those 1700 many were pneumonia, heart disease, flu (in winter) and yet these have all disappeared. If anyone truly believes that then I have some snake oil here which will cure everything, I will leave my email address at the bottom, buy one get one free offer is still open.
Many in this country, and the author of this article, have been sucked into a neurotic world where a typical respiratory illness practically harmless to the young fit and healthy is now likened to bubonic plague in it’s deadly effects.
Governments around the world have spent billions on pre-purchased vaccines which are now looking like a waste of money. So people have to be kept frightened because the moment we stop and think then this happens: what a waste of money, we need a new approach, Ivermection can treat the sick (what!!!), no need for vaccines, no need for lockdowns, no need for masks, we had Ivermectin several months ago, we have wasted several months for nothing and trashed the economy for nothing and ruined peoples lives for nothing………
right who can we put in jail for this almighty screw up.
We have all been put in jail for this almighty screw up.Don’t know about you, but me.?
JAILBREAK!!!!!!!!
Careful though, informers are sending police to arrest and fine those who do not acquiesce-3 people in an apartment?-if one is not resident you’re busted. It all has a whiff of Vichy to me…
I assume this is irony. If not, can I divert you to the thread about 1984 The Stage Musical.
As usual, it is OK if someone else is dying.
Dear Malcolm, thanks for posting the only reasonable reply to this article which is only whisking up the ongoing covid story.
When is somebody going to write about life and its multifactorial risks that come with it? Tell us something about how it is worth living. Yes, common spirit is part of this but saving ‘my granny, my friend, my dad, …’ while scarifying a whole generation of young people and a large sway of poor people and putting the fear of god in another part … I am not sure that is a common spirit I would like to be part of. (Not to forget the millions dying of hunger ‘we think we saved from dying from covid…???)
Of course, the government has used clever techniques to convince us that was the right way forward ‘for the country’ and to safe the NHS. We only needed to safe the NHS because of lack of investment, effective running and also a type of medicine we want but nobody can afford; not because of Covid: it is overrun every winter…
Where is common sense gone? I will tell you: too often, as soon as rationality kicks in common sense goes out of the window. Common sense is only one way of approaching the reality that confronts us…
…and about the vaccines: there is nothing to say as yet: we are still in the/an experiment which will end in 2 years. For now its main benefit (which I think is already really a good thing) is its placebo effect on politics, the press and the frightened part of the population…
I feel sorry for all these people who have been so affected by the simplistic way in which the West has approached the covid episode, Just remember, in 2015 the editor of the Lancer wrote that 80% of all published peer reviewed medical articles were either poor quality or of no value to medicine..
Time we rethink medicine…. one way to start is learn about salutogenesis…
“The grimness of the pandemic and the prospect of its ending are coming together to breed confused emotions. In a bleak country where more than 1,000 people are being declared dead with Covid-19 every day, many people are starting to dream of a happier, vaccinated future.”
Dead WITH is not the same as DIED FROM.
Useless stats
This is the argument used to stop treatment for prostate cancer. It was also used in the 70s about lung cancer. My father had one lung removed and died from an infection. The certificate said infection. Which was correct?
Uh, no. When you have 2-3 other conditions that seriously impact health, covid is simply the thing that pushes an already compromised system over the edge. Cancer is pretty good about killing a person all by itself. It is true that the treatment weakens a person and things like pneumonia can happen but no one deludes themselves into thinking pneumonia was the cause. In your own example, the infection came AFTER the lung removal which was brought on by the cancer. The infection was not present beforehand.
Uh, no. The immune system was weakened by the treatment of the cancer. So you are wrong and I feel angry because it is personal.
This is why is seems to be so easy for people on this site to be wise – as they see themselves as invulnerable so it seems nothing to talk about vulnerable people and associated figures – it is just a pastime.
It is interesting that no mention has been made of the quality of the clinical research into the vaccine. I worked for 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry before moving to academia and have been involved in numerous clinical trials.
The expedited process done here is fantastic at measuring the short term risks of the vaccine and for high risk groups it is all that is needed – immediate high risk of harm against possible low risk of harm a few years in the future.
The same equation doesn’t hold for low risk groups. If you have a very low risk from covid, then a low risk of another problem in a few years time will be of significance to you, I recall that a promising drug which I had a small part in developing failed clinical trails after 6 years when a low, but significant, proportion of recipients began to develop kidney tumours. When whole populations are taking a drug this can be even more of an issue, particularly when many of those taking it have a negligible risk of the disease (for whom medium to long term effects are more of a concern). Medium and long term effects of these drugs have been extrapolated rather than empirically observed. This is particularly true for the Pfizer vaccine as there is an absence of data about previous similar vaccines.
By the time vaccines are rolled out to less vulnerable groups, more information will be available but I am concerned when senior government have stated that there have been no deviations from normal clinical trial procedures. This is at best misleading.
Being in an older group, though with no known health issues, I will take the vaccine knowing as I believe that for me it is worth it weighing a short term known risk with a long term unknown one, This is called informed consent.
If I were younger I may not do so and would certainly want more information.
I hope this doesn’t count as being an anti vaxxer!
Thank you for this – I have already been told off in this thread for discussing the meaning of the 94% efficacy figure. I also have a point/question. Surely, the efficacy of a vaccine has to be described as a function of time? So a vaccine is 94% effective for 3 months, 90% effective for the next three months, etc?
An interesting paper by Prof. Peter Doshi in the BMJ shows how the sexy sounding 95% efficacy for the Pfizer vaccine in their RCT actually translated into 0.7% absolute risk advantage of developing the disease.
The second part of this blog explains it in layman’s terms.
https://gis.blog.ryerson.ca/2020/12/13/understanding-risk-ordered-weighted-averaging-and-relative-vs-absolute-risk-reduction/
Thank you, that’s interesting. Are you prepared to take the Pfizer vaccine or will you insist on the Oxford one?
I’ll happily take either, but hen I am likely to be offered it soon if you know what I mean.
Let’s face it, what is this about? While the government has been gung-ho about the vaccines or pseudo-vaccines, it has been vastly obstructive over Vitamin D, HCQ and Ivermectin. The HCQ trials were a scandal, but were they re-instated on a rational footing? Absolutely not. They waste time on Vitamin D: where might we be if we’d all focussed a year ago on getting everyone’s Vitamin D levels up to scratch, while the government stuck with irrelevant RDA dose. There was no need to subject it to a year and a half of trials. It has after all been with us a long time. Ivermectin has many good reviews but again they have kicked it into touch – we will probably never see it. But all these were almost certainly safer than the “vaccines” based on entirely new technologies and rushed to the market.
“then it’s ominously possible that vaccinating Britain against Covid-19 will bring about a greater test of faith in the state”
Seems to me there has long been far too much misplaced faith in the state.
First came faith in religion, then faith in Marx, then faith in the state. I have never been religious but if people only have faith in themselves it will be a very bleak future.
Actually very deep
The author seems to be simultaneously trying to argue that restrictions should remain beyond the point that who are most susceptible to severe disease have been vaccinated, while also pointing to the obvious risks to societal cohesion of pursuing this policy that stem from its inherent flaws. As the author states, instinctive human behaviour will identify and unpick these flaws and make the policy unworkable.
He is tying himself in knots trying to justify and problematise something for which there is no clinical justification. Once the over 60s have been vaccinated Covid is no longer a serious threat to life.
..
I didn’t think the author was arguing one way or the other. I think he was simply setting out the various dilemmas that lie ahead.
You are right but it has brought out the usual fixed opinions. I would really like to see somebody come into the thread with one argument and go out with another. “I was wrong!!!”
Okay, you first. 😉
I’ve done it – yesterday I thanked someone for the lucidity of his argument so that he had led me to understand things properly. But, really my point is that there are aggressive poisonous people who talk in silly jargon and can’t really explain what they think. They hide behind the jargon as a protection.
I was just being a little facetious, Chris. I freely admit that I don’t often change my mind in online debates.
I try to avoid jargon, though, and I do try not to be poisonous. Having said that, if I think someone is arguing in bad faith or dishonestly, or is using unwarranted smears and insinuations, I feel no compunction about being as vicious as I can get away with being.
Especially if the other person seems to be suffering from the delusion that calling everyone else wicked magically makes them virtuous – that really winds me up.
Thanks for that.
Just give us back our freedom.
You are already getting the excuses in early why the lockdown will just carry on, vaccinate people but still lockdown, so what’s the point then?
As a working class man who still has a job, luckily, I have not stopped going to work since this started, so I get all the hard parts work, paying bills but no enjoyment of life.
So we shall cry….
What’s the point?
We have been arguing about this for a while on this thread. I think the point is that the vaccine will not prevent deaths from Covid in the future but people around definite think that it will. So, if everything goes into overdrive and people start taking serious risks – like holidaying in Russia where nobody knows what is going on – because they think they are 100% safe, then next winter could be a problem as well. So get vaccinated and be very careful.
Nah, It’s over. get your life back as soon as you can
Of course those people who have been vaccinated will no longer adhere to lockdown rules. Freedom was always the narrative we were sold re the vaccine. And why on earth should young people be expected to be chained to their homes when their grannies are out socialising?
Crazy to think otherwise.
The vaccine should provide some reduction in the numbers of people dying and therefore the NHS should be able to cope. If you choose not to have the vaccine, that is your choice but the majority of people should no longer be expected to put their lives on hold for a minority of people a minute longer than they absolutely have to.
What mainstream propaganda! UnHerd barely lives up to its name these days, we hear too much from conformists and mainstreamers, not enough from those asking genuinely interesting or challenging questions.
I disagree. A reasonable case is being put. I entirely disagree with it. And personally I am ending my lockdown now, and devil take the hindmost. Nevertheless, its helpful to understand the other side of the argument.
So, you must be the guy asking the interesting questions. What are they?
What is the point of an EXPERIMENTAL vaccine, that is in itself could be damaging to our health, that does not confer immunity or prevent cross infection? Per the government’s own stats (see Office of National Statistics) the total mortality rate is no worse than previous years. This is a government made crisis. Viruses are in the air, on any given year some will succumb to them, most not. The answer is to boost peoples health/immunity, scaring the shit out of them does the complete opposite.
The grimness of the pandemic and the prospect of its ending are coming together to breed confused emotions.
About that ending – when is it going to happen? No one can tell you. You get pabulum like “when it’s safe,” but no one can define what safe means or looks like, so no one will be able to recognize it when it arrives. Perhaps it’s already here. Perhaps the numbers are crystal clear about the relative threat of covid to society, and the numbers are starting to emerge about the impact the various draconian measures are having.
A trio of researchers in the US – Harvard, Duke, and Johns Hopkins – estimate about 900K deaths to follow because of teh lockdowns. Not from the virus; from the reaction to it. The BBC had an interview with someone saying much the same about the UK. Other factors like increases in abuse and overdose, suicide or thoughts of it, and overall mental health have already begun to manifest.
I can tell you. It;s ended now as far as I’m concerned. Join me and create critical mass
Whenever I see a rare occurrence of civil disobedience – like the restaurant people in Italy or San Diego saying ‘we will open’ – it makes me smile.
I see that the authorities are already paving the way to extend lockdown towards the summer months and there is a suggestion that the hospitality industry could be forced to remain closed until at least May.
Separately I have just read a report from a highly regarded regional Insolvency Practitioner whose firm has advised that 40,000 (yes forty thousand!) businesses are reporting financial distress in Yorkshire alone and it is reliably estimated that 80% of hospitality businesses employing 2-3M people (which includes a lot more than just pubs and bars) cannot now survive beyond March. At this rate I fear that we will emerge from this tunnel of gloom to a scene of utter devastation and unemployment to dwarf the experiences of the 1970s.
At this point, with no more funding for the NHS possible, economic collapse will make vaccine discrimination the least of our problems
One particular line I found of great interest.
“Public health policy and basic humanity both dictate that they must be protected even if they’ve chosen not to take up the vaccine.”
I can’t for the life of me think why. Yes, people should be treated if sick, but is this a serious suggestion that we should remain unable to work, see friends’ faces or have any human contact because some people refuse the vaccine?
It seems to have been written as a self evident truth, with no discussion at all. How many refuseniks need there be for restrictions to remain in perpetuity?
‘Public health policy and basic humanity both dictate that they must be
protected even if they’ve chosen not to take up the vaccine’
No.
I don’t support mandatory vaccinations, but the idea of the majority being held hostage by conspiracy nutjobs is sickening, evil even. If these groups are given fair access to vaccinations, then they live with their decisions.
As has been noted elsewhere in the press: only Whacko stupid evil idiotic far-right conspiracy white nutjobs or understandably sceptical minority groups are oppossed to the vaccine.
For a huge variety of reasons we must release the population as soon as possible. If we’re ‘happy’ with locking up 67million people to reduce Covid pressure on the NHS, we must reduce the lockdown measures as soon as that Covid pressure has been reasonably reduced.
Mr Kirkup seems to think that for the lucky lockdown is merely: “staying at home is an annoying way to save money” – no, missing a night out with friends or family is an annoying way of saving money. Not seeing friends or family for a year, not being able to live anything like your normal live – is far more than merely ‘annoying’ You may argue that it’s on balance worth it, but do not dismiss the pain of it.
This is so true, spoke to an elderly gentleman the other day who has not seen anyone ( friends or family) face to face since before Christmas.
His only interactions are with shop staff and his postman, I felt quite upset after our brief chat waiting in line at the local supermarket.
Struggle to understand the downvote for this.
I think that everyone would share the sympathy of Isla C. That is not in question. The point is, would that person have instead volunteered for euthanasia because he was so upset. Why not hug everybody and get out of the world fast?
Have I read something like this in The Guardian?
Is that the ability to slate any group they hate as anti-vaxer scum, whilst massively back peddling if the anti-vaxer ticks a special box.
It part of the fraud of identity politics, many white conspiracy theorists are driven by the same victimhood paranoia that infects other groups. The Guardian condemns one, whilst stoking the fires of the other.
I’m sorry but I just don’t understand this – too much jargon and not enough content.
I will explain what I think he means:
– white people who are wary of the vaccine are inexcusably dangerous and gullible idiots who have fallen for all kinds of conspiracy theories;
– BAME people who are wary of the vaccine, either because they have fallen for a conspiracy theory that the state has nefarious intentions vis-a-vis BAME people, or because they suffer from a delusion about what god (or gods) wants vis-a-vis certain animals, are perfectly justified in being wary.
Hm. Thanks, I think. He is surely insulting everyone’s intelligence by assuming that discussion of the efficacy of the vaccine is the same as being dangerous, doubly so by posting in Klingon.
I didn’t find his post particularly hard to understand, personally.
His point is not about “discussion of efficacy” vs “danger”. It is about the different response to various groups who have expressed scepticism or wariness about the vaccine, even though all the reasons for scepticism or wariness are a bit silly and unfounded and the outcome of refusing the vaccination (or the danger posed by refusing) is the same whatever the reasoning.
Yeap, I think Chris Wheatley is from other posts very interested in the efficacy” vs “danger” discussion.
I was more interested in the authors idiotic/evil idea that we should all remain locked up for those who decide not to vaccinated. They can stayed under house arrest if they wish.
No. Efficacy versus ‘Next Step’. Not at all interested in conspiracy theories.
My concern is the translating of all of this into something simple for normal people. I defined ‘highly educated’ people as those who could make lucid arguments which could persuade me of something. Those people are not really ordinary people. I was concerned that if the vaccine was seen as a panacea, that people would not merely return to normal but would over react.
I make the point above that a vaccine is deemed to have an efficacy of x% over a certain time. A worst-case scenario is that the 94% is good for six months and reduces to 80% afterwards. Then where are we?
baQa! (Klingon for a general expletive)
Pretty much.
As has been noted elsewhere in the press: only Whacko stupid evil idiotic far-right conspiracy white nutjobs or understandably sceptical minority groups are oppossed (sic) to the vaccine.
And some medical bio-chemists and others who know something about it…
But is is a fun sentence with its evil far right nutjobs and understandably skeptical minority doing the same thing. Sounds like something Biden would say of the vaccine.
Guardian speak.
Indeed, but it is mocking Guardian speak.
Ah, I understand. So I apologise for the Klingon comment but I have spent a lot of time working in the USA and they don’t understand irony there
I am really struggling to understand the logic of this article. So we vaccinate the older and more vulnerable part of the population, responsible for 99% of deaths, and then keep severe restrictions to prevent a much smaller number falling ill, including people who refuse the vaccine? As mentioned elsewhere, that is a recipe for a never ending restrictions with huge economic damage and more people dying and suffering from other causes.
By the way the author rather ignores the obvious point that saying you support restrictions and following them are two different things. I am often amused for example about how many people self righteously condemning others do so while standing less than 2 metres away from their interlocutors. Do some observations of your own and see…
I suspect the vaccines are fool’s gold.
Whether people will continue to take infection precautions after vaccination depends on how hard it is to understand that the vaccine will prevent you from being seriously ill with Covid, but it will not stop you from catching it, or passing it on to an unvaccinated person. You may find it hard to believe but the majority of people over 70 are neither stupid nor selfish.
It is also sadly true that young people are not immune. The hospitals are filling up with younger people who are dying of Covid. It already killed most of the oldies that it could. It’s more of a crisis because they last longer and take a bed up for longer before either recovering or dying.
This crisis will not end until 80% of the population are immunised.
Those that don’t want vaccination should be left to get on with whatever is their destiny and no special efforts or allowances made if they succumb to the virus.
Does that also go for drinkers, smokers, overweighters, junkfooders, couch potatoes and generally people who don’t look after themselves?
Gosh! What a lovely, liberal, humanitarian turn of phrase. It must be wonderful to be so certain of your moral superiority and rectitude.
In the event serious complications and side-effects from the vaccines were to arise, would you still be advocating no special efforts or allowances to be made?
“A risk to social coherence” (because) “Britain is still a coherent society”. Well, that’s woke drivel isnt it? Does kirkup really believe this? Multicultural fragmentation of our cities has utterly devastated the class based social cohesion which had functioned with difficulties for generations. There is no US. Would I sacrifice myself for sadiq Khan and his like? I dont think so
Is this entire discussion ( like the article itself) some sort of joke? Lobotomised is the adjective that springs to mind.
An interesting article that sets out some tricky dilemmas ahead.
Perhaps because I’m not religious myself, I find objections to the vaccine based on religious sentiments – supposed pork or beef content – to be utterly disgraceful. Is it more important to your god(s) to avoid consuming/harming a certain animal or to save human lives?
The wartime unity Kirkup so adores seems somewhat akin to that of Germany in WW2. Ther will be no place for dissenters, scepticism verboten
It is really unlikely that the vaccines will NOT reduce transmission. After both doses, the patient may not have full sterilising immunity but the trials have shown that they are protected against severe disease. This strongly suggests that even if infected they will have less symptoms for a shorter period and thus shed less virus for less time.
This, perhaps optimistic, point aside, this alleged vaccine “war” isn’t going to last very long. Once everyone over 50 and/or immune compromised has had the OPPORTUNITY to get their 2 jabs (of any of the approved vaccines), the ethical argument for protecting them takes a nose dive. At that point they have been given their chance. If they choose not to take it, it is their look out, though like smokers who refuse to quit, the health service will still attempt to repair their self-inflicted damage. I feel no moral obligation to protect someone’s gran who refuses to protect themselves.
By the time it gets to the autumn, every adult in the UK is likely to have had this opportunity. Vaccine trials have now begun in children, thus there may even be the option of protecting this group against the (apparently much lower) risks of SARS-Cov-2 infection.
The real downside to this supposed vaccine envy is that some desire to preserve equality between the rates at which individual regions or groups of people get vaccinated causes us not to get as many people vaccinated as soon as we can.
Surely, as time goes on, the people who have yet to be vaccinated, increasingly don’t need to be vaccinated, except for public health reasons, and the situation in the hospitals (which, as I recall, is supposed to be the reason for these ‘lockdowns’ in the first place) will become normalised. After that, there can be no valid reason for maintaining the current set of restrictions. Unless there’s more to it than that….
Where I am all over 60’s are complying with the regs, and I and everyone I know will not stop doing so once we are vaccinated. Despite what the author thinks the elderly are not stupid, and not selfish. And the only way we could be out and about splashing the cash is if the whole economy is open anyway.
It seems to me the young, who have never been much at risk, are most keen on ending Lockdowns, went on most marches, attended raves etc.
In any case the rate we are going at they will all be jabbed very soon.
I would reorder the considerations above: the first group I’m concerned about is the unvaccinated under-30 group. We are already past the point where there is any need for these people to be restricted in any way at all: they are not in danger from the virus, and there are no unvaccinated high-risk groups they can endanger by being carriers themselves.
As far as the stuff about race goes, if there are religious minority groups that are refusing to take the vaccine when offered, let them refuse, and then ignore them. They are owed nothing from anyone else.
This whole nonsense about an escape variant that might render the vaccinated unprotected also misses the point that we should evaluate that risk from a position of having got rid of lockdown, not from a position of remaining in lockdown until we’re sure it won’t happen, because lockdown merely extends indefinitely that uncertainty.
At present, we are stuck with a broken formula that ensures lockdown must persist until the government can promise immortality to everyone.
Our Kingdom has done the best it could considering the circumstances and in its own way has been leading the world and a great company sadly has been maligned undermining the efficacy of its great work, hats off to Astra Zeneca for doing so much to save the world, sad to see cheap European politicians trying to promote the vaccines which they have and to which the UK contributed more than them as well. Some European politicians have stooped that low, unthinkably low!
UK also had a bad pandemic like USA because it is very difficult to take our freedoms away, so Boris was damned if he locked down and damned if he didn’t, I was campaigning for us to follow Sweeden for example, however perhaps UK has done the best it could and has of late really our country is setting world standards. So that is a bad thing for Marxists, “the enemy within”.
The “enemy within” is now attacking our success, as they attacked the British Empire destroying so many countries and that is how the 1945 Marxists created all the refugees today..
So here the Marxists are out again and are saying that UK which paid for so many vaccines to be developed for mankind has “done the wrong thing” and has been protecting its own people first and is not committing suicide and giving everything it has got today over to the disaster the Marxists left behind after 1945 when they destroyed the Empire!
I have rarely read a more biased fear mongering piece.
The author completely ignores that fact that this is specifically stated to be an ‘experimental’ vaccine and many people may well have decided after careful thought that they prefer to rely on their God given immune system which has served mankind for centuries, rather than take part in a world wide ‘experiment’ in order to virtue signal.
Th author hasn’t even considered the dangers of a mass overuse of vaccination – one would have thought that our experience with overuse of antibiotics might be worth a mention, but no, this piece concentrates on pushing the canard that the vaccinated are the good guys, when in fact they may in the future be working with a compromised immune system unable to efficiently fight off the Covid mutations that will inevitably happen over time, and if this happens they will be a danger not just to themselves but to everyone else.
Already we are being told that future vaccinations are being planned and, like with the ‘flu they will always be playing catch up rather than enabling the virus to naturally weaken and die out.
We are in the grip of an unprecedented medical tyranny predicated on ‘the science’ espoused by a certain group within Government, where open debate has been shut down and the very real concerns of many virologists have been completely ignored. This kind of virtue signaling article may be found to be an extremely dangerous if not catastrophic stance to take, but none of us will know for sure until the long term effects of this experiment are known.
Why is this article high on the Unherd list in the week the clocks go forward?
Once I have had the vaccine and it has taken effect, I intend to live entirely normally. I really don’t care what hypochondriacs and the workshy choose to do; I choose to avoid them anyway. What I will not be doing, however, is going abroad. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to when there is the chance of getting stuck in another, less vaccinated, country’s sudden draconian lockdown. The ‘plague village’ of Eyam did not cut its citizens off from each other. In an agricultural community of large families in tiny cottages that would have been impossible. It closed its borders. That’s what we must do. The obsession with holidays is absurd and the government was wrong to allow them in the summer.
I agree with you that the obsession with holidays ABROAD is stupid. But holidays, away from the same routine really make me feel better.
I think people go abroad, either because they have a peculiar theory about vitamin D or because they want to drink cheaply.