There is a difference between being sceptical about a vaccine rushed out to cure a disease which kills only a tiny fraction of the population, Iess than 1% and then mostly only those who are older than the average age at which people die, and scepticism about tried and trusted vaccinations for diseases which killed or permanently harmed huge numbers of children.
It is unscientific to have blind faith in scientists and science which is what is required of the general population in order to accept scientific advice, since they cannot test out scientific theory themselves. Your argument is no different from that of Jesus Christ to ‘Doubting Thomas’ “blessed is he who believes and does not see”. Only because your own faith in scientists and expertise is so absolute you think that because scientists can prove their theories to each other they are therefore true and what you experience when you accept their ideas is not akin to religious faith, but an acceptance of objective truth.
It is possible to argue that scientists on the whole have got at the truth and brought many benefits to mankind and driven progress. So that having blind faith in science and scientists is a relatively safe bet. But it is also true that there have been dreadful errors with vaccination programmes and many other scientific endeavours. Polio vaccines under Bill and Melinda Gates caused harm. Thalidomide caused harm. The blood transfusion service caused harm, and death, spreading HIV and Hepatitis.
When it comes to our own bodies we must weigh up evidence and advice as we see fit. The parents of sons who had haemophilia in the 70s and 80s who died as a result of their blind faith in science and the medical profession and the competence, honesty and good intentions of government health programs and politicians have some interesting lessons to teach you. But perhaps their wisdom and experience are ‘antediluvian’.
1% is a small fraction? it is relative. 1/100 of the people with the disease is a big number with a UK population of 65m – if the whole population get it.
One percent of the population dying from an a widespread illness is not a trivial thing. In any event the covid death rate is much higher than 1%, more like to 2.5% in the UK, and much, much higher among those over 70
Try .18% over 2 full flu seasons, and the average age is over 80, most died in locked down and abandoned care homes last year and the normal annual death rate for the UK is .93% of the population. too many people unable to read. And the UK and others claim people with a so called PCR positive who die withing 28-60 days of any cause die of covid. It’s ridiculous when the NHS have the figures proving 95% died of other causes.
That is nonsense, sorry. The fatality rate for those infected is presently 0.2% and falling. The reason it’s falling is that the first wave killed those that happened to be most susceptible so the remainder are by definition less so, and the fact that we have got better at treating those who develop severe symptoms (eg oxygen assistance works well, but ventilators not so much).
1% of the Uk population in 650,000. You are going to need a big graveyard or burn a lot of gas in the crematoriums . Think of the CO2 that will be created!
The correct figure is 99.97% of all those who catch it, not of the entire population (most of whom already have natural herd immunity). The average age of death for it is 82.2 years old. I can see you have not researched this covid crud at all.
“ It is possible to argue that scientists on the whole have got at the truth and brought many benefits to mankind and driven progress. ”
To argue otherwise would simply be wrong. You only have to look at statistics for infant mortality, deaths of women in pregnancy, life expectancy, the real benefits gained by vaccination programmes with regards polio, measles, hooping cough etc, to see the real benefits gained by science.
“ Iess than 1% and then mostly only those who are older than the average age at which people die,”
Amazing how people are so willing to take a callous disregard to approximately 650,000 people’s lives.
“But it is also true that there have been dreadful errors with vaccination programmes”
Like what?
“ The parents of sons who had haemophilia in the 70s and 80s who died as a result of their blind faith in science and the medical profession and the competence honesty and good intentions of government health programs and politicians,”
The problem wasn’t the science. The problem was politicians and bureaucrats. The science was clear. Blood transfusions saved lives if properly administered. The stupidity of allowing infected blood to be used wasn’t a problem of science.
Science and engineering have bought massive benefits to our lives both in terms of life expectancy and in terms of life quality. The list is too long to write here.
Yes, you are right to point out that literal flaw in my argument, but since we are discussing the vaccination how are vaccination programmes commissioned, paid for, set up, administered? When people object to vaccinations the author of the article assumes their objections are naive and probably unscientific. But a great deal of faith is required in all kinds of people and disciplines Matt Hancock, the SAGE group, whose scientists are often experts in fields totally unrelated to epidemiology, Neil Ferguson who doesn’t have a biology A level and has a history of getting everything wrong. GP practices and hospitals’ storage facilities, nurses and doctors being incorruptible, non psychopathic, clean. Each link in the chain from the well intentioned, but still fallible scientists to the person sticking the needle in has to be trusted.
When the operation has been running for many years there are issues around carelessness, when it is new there are issues around unforeseen consequences. Being sceptical rather than having blind faith or absolute trust is natural, intelligent and healthy. It is an evolutionary instinct that has saved lives over thousands of years.
Unfortunately ‘our evolutionary instinct’ will play no part in this.
It will become axiomatic that one has been vaccinated if you wish to work in many ‘professions’, travel outside this Sceptered Isle or perhaps even inside it.
To be unvaccinated will result in being treated like a Medieval Leper, crying “ unclean, unclean”.
Yep. It is totally unethical. We should be allowed to make an informed decision, after weighing the risks and benefits, knowing that there would not be any repercusions for not providing consent. This was until March 2020 is standard procedure.
Alison, it seems to me your scepticism is very one-sided – a lot of questioning around the lockdown and vaccination programme, no questioning of your own assumptions about the virus. You’re not alone. Charles Stanhope on this thread is a much worse offender.
Specifically, you claim that relatively few people have died of the virus. To the extent this is true, the number would have been a lot higher without lockdowns and restrictions – or people behaving in a far more cautious way of their own accord, even without any legal restrictions, which is actually what would have happened. In such a scenario, the NHS would have been unable to treat a large number of serious cases and many people would have died, painfully. A lot of these would be well under 60 years old. For some weeks or months, it would be difficult to see how civil society could work in anything like a normal fashion. I’ve not cited numbers here, as that would be guesswork, but the so called forecast by Imperial College of 500,000 deaths absent any intervention probably now looks optimistic.
In that context, the vaccination programme becomes a lot more compelling and criticisms of the speed in testing the vaccine look positively bizarre.
Covid is a serious disease affecting the elderly and ill. It is right that people in those categories who have not had it should put themselves forward to be vaccinated against it. But it is also right and natural that young, healthy people should not be asked to participate in experimental programmes of untested drugs in order to prevent the already ill and elderly from contracting a disease and dying. Would you approve of babes in arms and toddlers being experimented on in this way, in order to safeguard the very elderly and ill? If not would your only concern be their inability to give their informed consent? Or would something else strike you as unethical about such a thing? I think most people would think it immoral to ask children with their whole lives before them to take that risk, it would seem immoral, even to people without religious views. The question of whether other healthy, young people should be experimented on, becomes one of a balance of risks. Some people will see it as their duty to help get the country back on its feet and the economy working again and see that herd immunity achieved by vaccination is necessary to prevent further lockdowns. But locking down is a political decision made by government. The trashing of the economy was a political decision, however much you think it was worth it to prevent further deaths. So people are made to choose to put their long term health at risk from an untried drug in order to prevent the government making similar, foolish decisions in the future. And of course since other strains of the virus are more likely to arise when vaccination programmes are in place there is no guarantee that anyone making the decision to have the vaccine will be able to prevent future governments locking down again, because herd immunity for one variant may not be herd immunity for another. Therefore people will be asked to participate in further experimental drugs trials. On the whole it is better to let nature take its course, nobody has the right to eternal life, and drugs companies do not have the right to an endless supply of experimental subjects and tax payers’ money.
If you think the state is always benign in its experimentation on the British public, I suggest you read Norman Baker’s research on the way they experimented on us with Anthrax, among other things, at Porton Down in the 20th Century.
Well put. I understand the first vaccines (emergency use approved) have two more years of clinical testing planned. By then new strains will emerge. Then new vaccines ad nauseum? Cost of each vaccine purportedly could solve world hunger. What am I missing? Plus there are many scientists who admit they don’t know what is going on with this latest coronavirus. And others, pro-vaccine, who say there are dangers using vaccines during a pandemic, that they are best used as prophylactics. I’m just a dumb applied scientist myself, humbled and disappointed by the confusing mess we are in. I remind myself it could have been worse, now one year later.
Over the last 80 years there has been a massive increase in scientists so standards have declined. If one looked at Physics in 1920, there were a few universities but with top quality people publishing in a few journals basically in Britain, USA, Germany , France, Switzerland and perhaps Italy. In 1920 every physicist and chemist of note knew of each other. Scientists could spend time thinking and analysing data, publishing was not that important. Also being a professor was well paid as there were few of them.
We have now thousands of scientists competing for reserach grant and tenure; publish or perish. feuds between academics arre well known.Improve quality, close down bottom fifty percent of scientific research institutes and spend the money on the remainder. Wakefield should never have been allowed to publish as he had inadequate data. Fewer research projects, far better statistical design and using vastly more data; over longer time periods, and larger geographic spreads; better statistical analysis and closure of 70% of journals. Quality not quantity and it is vital papers produce clear cut results; if not, no publication. The tree of knowledge has to be watered and pruned. We have forgot to prune.
Vitamin and protein rich food, potable water for drinking and washing, soap, sanitation and light airy sleeping quarters has done more to improve peoples lives than medicine.
“ Vitamin and protein rich food, potable water for drinking and washing, soap, sanitation and light airy sleeping quarters has done more to improve peoples lives than medicine.”
Most of what you said was unsupported by any back up evidence. However on the above this is true. But we aren’t simply limiting the benefits of science to medicine. It was science that underpinned our understanding as to why these things were needed and what benefits they gave. It was science that has helped identify what caused typhoid and cholera and has saved millions of lives.
Without science and the understandings it has given us, our lives would in the main be brutal, painful and short.
My post criticised mediocre science whose main function is to keep scientists and journal editors employed.
Wakefield should never have been allowed to publish. As the numbers of journals increase, there is the problem of filling them. In Sampson’s Changing Anatomy Britain 1982, there are university Vice Chancellors who admit employing people in the late 1960s, who a few years down the line prove to be inadequate but cannot be sacked.
My father’s Consultant eye surgeon who had a doctorate in microbiology as well, told me clean water and sanitation had more more for health than medicine.
The breakthrough in disease comes in the 1860s with the discovery of bacteria.
I suggest you read about the reforms of Jervis in the RN who greatly improved health of sailors and Nightingale whose work on sanitation on British soldiers in India reduced deaths from about 68 to 18 per 100,000.
C Northcote Parkinson, the naval historian first wrote mockingly about the proliferation of academics and their jounals in the 1950s and Eisenhower warned of the danger as well.
In fact, I suggest a main failure of Western Society is the lack of discernment to define what is vital and what is of the highest quality and what is of little importance and mediocre.
In fairness to the Lancet, my understanding was that Wakefield did not disclose the full facts of his work. It is tough for editors to see through subterfuge…
Light airy sleeping quarters? Where did that come from? Any controlled trials? Having said that, you do have a point. However, immunisation has defeated the scourges of smallpox, polio, and diphtheria – don’t dismiss science completely.
My hens and rabbits like a nice dry, well-ventilated sleeping area. They are not bothered about light so much. Humans are much the same, with the addition of a bedside lamp, if they still read actual books that is. Plenty of space, a clean toilet area, a supply of fresh, clean drinking water and nutritious food and you have usually healthy animals. Humans are not so different really.
As well as your last statement, I definitely add homeopathy. It has saved many lives and especially noted before modern medicine. Modern medicine has also evolved, remember the bloodletting days. If you have not tried homeopathy, then the author and others can have no input into whether it is helpful or not. As for trusting the scientists, tread lightly. Many universities and scientists are backed by big corporations and more often than not the pharmaceutical companies. I want a place for ‘natural’ medicine and I fully support it. There is also a place for modern medicine.
If you truly believed that putting on a yellow jumper and shouting “roundabout” five times will cure you of something, we know (scientifically) that it can sometimes help you.
Just because homeopathy is basically nonsense, doesn’t mean it can’t achieve things.
Its gullibility that does the trick – not infinitesimal dilution.
And what exactly is the placebo effect? What is its scientific basis? If, as you say, it works 30% of the time, that’s pretty impressive. The mind/body connection is clearly powerful, yet I’m not aware of many mainstream scientific studies as to how it operates in practice.
Elizabeth – clearly, you like to think homeopathy is useful. That’s your prerogative. However, it is not reasonable to disseminate fiction on the subject.
Study after study after study has shown it to be at best useless. Your claim that “…homeopathy…has saved many lives…” is simply wrong. I challenge you to cite a single valid, sound study that shows any useful therapeutic effect from homeopathy. Though, I will save you any further effort – you can’t, because there are none.
Sorry, homeopathy cannot possible work. Placebo perhaps, but the law of physical chemistry are clear. If you take a set number of molecules of any substance,a dn dilute them 1000 times, you are left with maybe a few molecules diluted in water. Any vial of the remedy, would therefore contain maybe 10 molecules in 10 cc of water. Every time you take a drop your odds of getting even one molecule of the remedy is 1/1,000,000 or so. Paying a great deal for spirit water.
What you say is true, about research . It is true that public health measures have done more for longevity than medicine. The Dean of our Medical School told us that on our first day in 1972. There are also many recent articles about the data “errors” in research these days; including falsified data and outright bias. Vaccines are somewhat different, and I believe totally safe. With any vaccine, there are independent oversight committees, and of course the FDA, etc., to be sure that there is safety. Of course, there will always be a few with side effects or bad outcomes, but from a public health standpoint, the good will far outway the bad. The one thing we do not know, is how long the immunity will last, “It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”
” is vital papers produce clear cut results; if not, no publication.”
I’m a scientist.
I think that’s not quite right, it’s important to publish findings that arent so clear. One problem is that there is so much pressure to publish important “breakthrough” findings that everyone tries to dress up everything they do as a breakthrough. Its very useful to publish something that isn’t a major finding as long the publication is clear about what the work shows.
But in general I agree with you. Get rid of about 50%, In my own field there is a lot of crap. It’s very competitive though, and someone has to decide which 50%. If you leave that up to administrators and bureaucrats you might cut the wrong people.
Ann On, I agree. No more than one clerk per faculty. Results are usually not clear because there is not enough data aquired, over enough time to detect subtle relationships.
The best comment on British science on why it won so many Nobels with so little resources was by Huxley ( Nobel for Physiology ) in a Radio 4 programme. Basically he said selection at 11 or 13 years of age, with intensive and rigorous training meant one could obtain a degree at 20 years of age and doctorate at 22 years of age; Bill Penney of IC being a good example. Huxley, said most scientists innovative work was done during their first post doc so the younger the age of person the better.
I would suggest that a country the size of the UK can support 10 to 12 top class science and engineering research institutes/universities. The remainder should combine the best attributes of pre WW2 Polys, Fraunhofer Institutes with Birkbeck College, Council of Engineering Exams( Pt 2 is a degree ) and University of London Extra Mural degrees. Worked for Mitchell- Spitfire;Camm- Hurricane; Chadwick- Lancaster; Hives – Merlin, Wallis – Wellington and Bouncing Bomb. de Havilland – Mosquito.
“Amazing how people are so willing to take a callous disregard to approximately 650,000 people’s lives”.
It’s not callous it is pragmatic. I’m fortunate to be of ‘that happy breed “ of the 650K, and am frankly disgusted that the future of my g-g children has been comprised by the infantile response of HMG to this somewhat feeble virus.
God help us indeed if anything really serious occurs, because it will undoubtedly be ‘game over’.
Have you any idea of the impact on society of letting this ‘feeble’ virus run unchecked? The 650k won’t die in an orderly, controlled manner designed to enable an orderly controlled response.
At the peak many thousands will die each day, far beyond the resources of the state to safely manage the disposal of the dead and far beyond the ability of our health system to allow as pain free and dignified death as possible.
This ‘feeble’ virus doesn’t kill kindly.
In addition to the many thousands dying each day, you’d have tens of thousands needing, but not getting hospital treatment, ensuring that the 650k figure, which is based on people accessing the required treatment, will be greatly exceeded.
And what sort of damage will this cause our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren? What impact do you think the chaos of allowing the virus to run unchecked will have? Do you think schools won’t still be severely impacted? Do you think that seeing 100’s of thousands of people dying miserable deaths and the fear this will cause, won’t have an impact on the mental health of our young?
Do you really not have the capacity to imagine what is would look like, if thousands of people were suffocating in understaffed wards, unable to receive adequate oxygen and certainly unable to get to an ICU bed?
Can you imagine the impact on nurses given a checklist and told that if the patient doesn’t score above 77 out of 100 points, they should just be given opiates and left to die alone?
This is not fiction or melodrama. It is what will happen if a respiratory virus runs rampant.
all wrong. You are missing natural immunity, acquired immunity, virus depletion (usual in all the trillions of viruses known) etc. You are perfect for the job of being Ferguson the dodgy model-maker’s spokesperson.
The virus has been with us for over a year now. The Spanish flu pandemic lasted four years. Yes these things happen, but an awful lot of people can die in the meantime time.
Natural immunity hasn’t stopped over a 120k dying in U.K. alone. Virus depletion doesn’t happen over night, as I’ve explained above. Acquired immunity still allows for an awful lot of people to die first. Spanish flu killed up to a 100 million before it fizzled out.
LOL. It is still with us. Yet life goes on. Who would have thought we’d still be alive 100 years later without wearing masks and hiding in our basement.
the virus has been with us for at least TWO years and will NEVER be gone. Please understand this and you see the reality of SAGE’s ‘expert’ advice.
To bring up the 120K figure shows how little you have read and tried to find out about this whole saga. Deaths FROM Covid probably aren’t even 25% of that figure.
Virus depletion happens almost immediately depending on the host/s.
People will die, they do every day. Do a simple piece of homework: take any year and treat flu in the same way as they have treated COVID (obviously I do mean ‘treat’ in the “handle sense, not the medical care sense)…
“…the 120K figure…Deaths FROM Covid probably aren’t even 25% of that figure.” What is the basis for that assertion? Is it an imaginary scenario of a healthy person who had covid having a car accident? While that can happen, the covid-death stats are more thoughtfully compiled than that. Do you really think that the people who put the definitions together, and the doctors certifying death somehow never thought of your idea?
When that science is funded by an industry that makes billions if not trillions you have to be utterly naive to believe that money will not influence results with the science “manipulated” to fit a profitable agenda.
Note how the biggest gains in the past with vaccines were decades before Big pharma became this monster today that funds everybody so nobody dare speaks out. My wife, a retired research nurse, trusts big pharma a massive 0%.
Did the scientists of old lockdown society in order to achieve these great benefits? I don’t think they did. Did our new totalitarian fascist scientists force people to stay in their homes, force people to wear masks when they are allowed to come out, force vaccinate them at the chance to travel and work, force people out of work and into poverty, fill psychiatric care facilities forcing the unwell into living on the streets? This is your science? This is your great benefit to society? You people who support this nonsense are pure evil.
“It is unscientific to have blind faith in scientists and science which is what is required of the general population in order to accept scientific advice, since they cannot test out scientific theory themselves.” It is rational to question scientific process – indeed, it is the essence of scientific process to do so. Scientists publish their work, and it is there for all to see and to pick holes in.
Do you think the average person with an IQ of 100 is qualified to pick holes in the scientific data and experiments of epidemiologists, even if they were ever provided with the material or given text books on the subject? I made the point that we accept the findings as true because we know the work of scientists is reviewed by their peers. And we tell ourselves we are accepting it as objective truth because others can review it and
find its flaws and improve it. But that is not the same as being able to judge it ourselves using our own intellect and reason. What we have instead are instincts and prejudice and wisdom and we use these to gamble and place our faith and trust. Honest people know this is what they are doing, deluded people pretend they are using intellect and reason on subjects of which they are entirely ignorant and data they are hopelessly unqualified to question because they are arrogant and wish to show allegiance to their intellectual superiors.
The scientific process is not a giant conspiracy. It is a large number of people who work diligently to enhance knowledge.
If a flawed paper is submitted, usually, the review process kicks it out (though some grievance studies journals are wonderful exceptions, like the “feminist studies” journal publishing the rewritten chapter of Mein Kampf where “white male” was used in place of “Jew”). If not, it will either be picked up later and corrected, or supplanted by new research.
Papers published are frequently overturned later, as new work is done.
Of course I do not expect the local hairdresser to be able to read, interpret and critique the scientific papers that I might read or write. We make judgements – who is the most likely source of good guidance on this?
In the case of (say) vaccines, do we believe the great swathes of scientists, epidemiologists and doctors who study vaccines and their effects? Or do we believe the astrologer who thinks homeopathy is useful?
Why do you imagine people make a choice between scientists and astrologers? The choices people make when they are unable to evaluate information properly are based on their
instincts with regard to whether all the actors in a given chain are to be completely trusted. It is not that we imagine scientists are corrupt or anything extreme, it is simply more rational to believe that other humans are fallible and that their ideas and theories are better when tested over longer periods and subject to greater scrutiny, than when rushed through. These instincts have served their evolutionary purpose very well for millennia. Things designed and invented in a rush where different companies are in competition for huge shares of
public money are worthy of our
scepticism.
“Why do you imagine people make a choice between scientists and astrologers?” When people break a leg, or develop diabetes, or get cancer, they absolutely make that choice. Of course humans are fallible. No scientist – or thoughtful advocate for scientific method – would deny that. It is for this reason that we have institutions and methods – to get above the flaws of individuals. It is why pilots and anaesthetists use checklists. It is why we have separation of powers in political systems. The reasons for believing that vaccines are safe and effective are not derived from a long chain of “Chinese whispers” message passing. It is because we have effective, public and thorough systems, processes, methods and institutions that assure the risk to be considered and vanishingly low.
” It is because we have effective, public and thorough systems, processes, methods and institutions that assure the risk to be considered and vanishingly low. ”
You have an astounding faith in our institutions. No one knows how effective these vaccines will be or how frequently revaccination will be required. But Big Brother is always right!
Do people choose to lockdown, wear masks, lose their jobs, not help care for family members, denied travel, etc? This isn’t science. This is fascist totalitarianism.
Exactly and I am appalled by how few, apparently intelligent, well-educated people enthusiastically support it, and worse put it in moral terms. ‘Short-term pain’ as they tell me ‘is worth it for saving lives’. ‘Covid ueber alles’
Now your arrogance is showing. You have no clue about homeopathy which I can determine from your last sentence and if you have never tried it, you have no knowledge to make such a wisecrack.
No, my education is showing. I studied medicine, and have made a career in evidence-based medicine and epidemiology. I happen to have a particular interest in quackery, and have studied the research on homeopathy. Invented in the late 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann, it has now been studied extensively. It is useless.
The difference between our positions is that I can point to published and methodologically sound research that has been repeated, again and again, to support my conclusions.
You cannot.
He is absolutely correct to treat homeopathy with the contempt it deserves. There is no credible scientific evidence to support its use in any medical condition unless the cure for the ailment is simply drinking water. There might conceivably be a placebo effect but a lucky charm would work as well and most likely cost less money
Homeopathy never locked people in their homes, forced people to wear masks, forced people out of work, denied people medical care, filled psych care homes to the brim forcing others onto the street, denied families from advocating and subsidizing care for the sick and elderly. Big Pharma did this. Big Pharma is evil. They took away any freedom of choice you had no matter what risk or circumstance you were in. It is a complete joke.
When totalitarian fascists take people’s lives away everybody needs to question everything. This is not a joke. They have restricted freedom of movement, forced people to wear masks, forced people to isolate, not allowed family members to care for their sick, not allowed family members to care for their elderly. God only knows how many of these elderly have died because of poor care, DNR orders, denial of care to free up resources for the younger, etc. We don’t know. It is also a good thing to note that lockdowns have been used for centuries to maintain power. North Korea does that today. People aren’t allowed freedom of travel. This was done in the Soviet Union for decades also. Less know is the Edo era of Japan 1600-1867 where people were only allowed to stay in their own towns. They could only travel to get rare resources with permission from the local lords. The lords would travel once every 2 years to Tokyo to show their loyalty to the Shogun. The emphasis was on order and control. Knowing your place and limiting use of resources. The arrival of US naval steam ships in 1853 slowly ended this practice as Japan realized the outside threat it was facing. Korea largely from 1616-1853 was the same way, Vietnam and Cambodia from 1975 until the early 90s when trade with the US opened those societies up again. Virtually all countries in the entire world were this way during World War 2. Largely only militaries traveled. Is this virus related or is this World War 3? How about that for a conspiracy theory? Reading about the “Great Reset” and the new “climate change caused pandemic era”. I have little doubt this isn’t WW3. They are forcing our hands. For our own good of course. This isn’t going away. They keep telling you that but you don’t want to believe your own ears. Even with the vaccine they are telling you restrictions will remain in place. This is for your own good of course. Welcome to new normal. Enjoy the lockdown era. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31012-6.pdf
I don’t know about Gates, but I do recall as a child a polio vaccine which gave a lot of children polio. My parents refused the vaccine for me and my siblings on that basis.
You are correct. The oral polio vaccine was not perfect since it was a live attenuated vaccine. When we stopped using it, it was the only cause of polio in the US. Fortunately, the cases where not huge, and it is not used anymore. We are back to the killed injection form.
Isn’t that a rather terrible and callous and highly disrespectful thing to say: it only kills 1% and mostly only older people! In addition, you are dismissing the many who face long Covid and those who spend weeks in hospital!
as for blind faith, I am pretty sure you put your personal blind faith in the construction and engineering industries , or do you refuse to cross a new bridge, enter a new office block, get on a new bus, train, ship etc etc
it may be terrible and callous, but life is full of malicious truths. The victims ARE mostly elderly and people with other health issues. Here we are in an article about science and the covid debate has been driven by the most unscientific claim going, that the virus is an existential threat to society. No, it’s not. It is potentially harsh for a clearly defined set of people.
As someone in that “vulnerable” (how I hate that word) age group, let me say I have had a good life and I don’t expect younger generations to sacrifice their economic prospects and social life for the likes of me. The aged can adapt their lives better to a virus containment strategy than the young who have to go to work.
Wasn’t WSC’ comment: “Scientists should be on tap, not on top”? Either way, it is true. Politicians have the responsibility to put the scientific advice in context and gauge the impact of any decisions across society – economy, education, the people being treated for non-COVID problems, etc.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this Alison. I was too shocked at Unherd publishing this ill-informed bilge to muster up the energy. Lockdown sceptics appear to be acceptable, Covid vaccine sceptics not so.
I 100% agree with you Alison. I find this article badly thought out and typically dismissive of those intelligent people who fail to fall into line with the herd. How ironic that this article is written in ‘unherd’. Let me remind you of the opioid crisis that has killed thousands and continues to kill thousands, created by pharmaceuticals who peddle them as ‘safe and effective’. Should we blindly trust that other medications they produce are as safe as these? I think not and I shall not. I am not a green hippy as you so disparagingly call those who question one version of science. There are many doctors and scientists who are warning against taking these new experimental medicines (they are not vaccines in the traditional sense of the word.) They are a new technology that has been previously untried in a human population. Please Unherd un-herd yourselves and look at this subject in greater depth. Most of those who urge caution have been deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter so you will have to go to other places to find the information like Telegram. See what Dr.Mercola, Dr.Tenpenny, Dr Kelly Brogan, Dr.Coleman have to say before you right any dissenters off as hippy environmentalists. In a week when we are grieving for the loss of yet another young British woman and a week when police have behaved unfairly to women at peaceful vigils, I ask you to google vaccine damage and see what many mothers say about the vaccine damage that their children have sustained. Most of the time they are not believed by their doctors and their concerns are pushed under the carpet. Another example of harmful patriarchy in our society. Why should mothers be disbelieved? Because they are women? The HPV vaccine scandal in Ireland is a good place to start. Un-herd yourself from the view that science is science and to question it make you stupid or uneducated. The reverse that is true.
I have had homeopathic treatments since 1998 or so. Something they have seemed efficacious and sometimes not. Once I hurt my back and was in pain until a homeopath gave me arnica which made me feel better. I have refused the covid vaccine because I too find it is too fast food, not tested enough and also because I have not been living in fear this last year as so many people appear to be.When I see headlines boasting that every adult Briton will be vaccinated by July. I am suspicious rather than reassured. If I am forced to have the vaccine, I should consult an homeopath in the hope of being given something that would mitigate any possible noxious elements in this too-quickly cooked up potion. I may had that I am a doubter about the Climate Change hysteria and not in any way a Green tho’ I have worn green on occasion.
I used arnica during childbirth. That is the only time I have used homeopathic medicines but digitalis is used by regular doctors so I think it is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I can’t imagine having homeopathy as my first call but wouldn’t reject it if everything else had failed.
Very true. I have declined the vaccine, not because I am against vaccinations in principle, but because I don’t believe it has been sufficiently tested and the so-called experts don’t know whether the dose is correct, whether a second vaccination is necessary, or when, or whether it prevents transmission. I am not volunteering to be a guinea pig. If I lived in an area of high infections or deaths then my attitude might be different – the vaccine risk might be less than the coronavirus risk – but the virus is scarcer than hen’s teeth in my region and the risks from my decision are minimal. I am waiting until the scientists understand their vaccine better.
Is this irrational or anti-science? Am I to be grouped in with the irrational Greens? However, I probably do have some common political thinking with the Reform Party since I am one of the lepers that voted for Brexit. And that probably is the key. Some of us can think for ourselves. We are not led by vacuous NHS and Government slogans. And those of us that have studied some science and been closely involved with policy development and decision-making at government level know how bias and political expediency creep in at every level.
You’ve got this back to front, Alison. The vaccines have been exhaustively tested using randomised double-blind trials. The science of climate change, or perhaps more accurately, the policy proposals that have flowed from the science, have not been tested at all. Instead they have been based on worst-case projections of unvalidated models, claiming to be able to predict the planetary climate decades hence.
One might have thought, given that modelling has been the least successful arm of science in the Covid crisis, that climate alarmists would be having second thoughts on the degree to which climate models can be trusted. But apparently not: it’s not really about “the science”, it’s really a new religion.
You write, of the public, ” they cannot test out scientific theory themselves, “and later, “we must weigh up evidence and advice as we see fit.” These seem contradictory. How do those who cannot test out scientific theory weigh up the evidence in any meaningful way?
It is the blind faith which is so troubling. Blind faith in any system is dangerous and never more so than when it is an industry whose focus is profit and power.
Science-medicine gets a lot wrong and you only have to read its history to know that. The tragedy of getting the vaccine theory wrong is that we will have sacrificed generations of children in the name of an unnecessary, dangerous and poorly tested medical treatment.
No system is perfect, ever, and when those who ask valid questions are forcibly silenced, it is certain, the system being so ‘protected’ will become increasingly imperfect and increasingly dangerous.
It beggars belief that anyone could possibly believe a human being needs to be vaccinated dozens of times in the first five years of life, and beyond, in order to survive. It is utterly ridiculous.
What makes it even more ridiculous is that vaccination involves a process of confusing, tricking, manipulating immune function to act unnaturally, i.e. react to a non-threat. How can that ever lead to healthy or robust immune function?
This vaccine unlike most other vaccines is experimental, both in its testing regime and it’s rDNA make up. and unlike others it is in reality being tested on humans not animals! I have never refused any previous vaccine but I do have real concerns regarding this one for various reasons, as stated by many other who have commented! The use of the term ‘antivaxer’ like other such ‘anti’ labels is lazy journalism!
G Harris
3 years ago
There’s this weird thing around the ‘science’ as if you are in any way sceptical of its conclusions then you must be some sort of flat earther to be pitied. Resolutely in denial of the unassailable, generally accepted facts.
‘Science’ so obviously is rarely if ever the last word on anything. Opinions differ, often wildly, within the scientific fields themselves hence the reason that scientific papers are put forward for peer review where methodologies and conclusions can be constantly scrutinized and rightly questioned.
Can we please get over this arrogant, fallacious mindset referenced in this article above that there must be one true, unshakable answer to everything and to begin to even question current wisdom isn’t an act driven by intellectual curiosity and to further inform debate, but an inciteful, dangerous act driven by wilful ignorance.
“Can we please get over this arrogant, fallacious mindset referenced in this article above that there must be one true, unshakable answer to everything?”
Nobody with the slightest grasp of scientific process has that mindset. But, there are good and bad reasons for disputing any given ‘scientific’ conclusion. Disputing a scientific conclusion because it represents Jewish or White science is ignorant and dangerous. Disputing a conclusion because you argue that the wrong statistical method was used, or because the conclusion drawn fails to account for important and relevant data is the very essence of scientific method.
We also have to make rational choices as to where to look for answers, given that neither time nor resources is limitless. There is, for example, no longer any excuse for wasting money investigating the nonsense that is homeopathy. We know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that it is an ineffective therapeutic approach.
Nobody with the slightest grasp of scientific process has that mindset. While that may be true, those with the biggest megaphones – the politicians, the activists, and the media – very much have that mindset. They have elevated science to religion and behave much like the most frothing of zealots – thou shalt not question the high priests in the white coats, skepticism is tantamount to heresy, and so forth.
Again Joe, you are so mistaken. But you have made up your ‘scientific’ mind. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t make it less real or helpful. I have seen people like you over the years and then when they had the good fortune to use homeopathy, had to swallow their words. If you don’t want to use it, leave it to those who do.
I have never tried cyanide either. I believe the research on cyanide to be as valid as the research on homeopathy.
To be clear: I wish you no harm, so just because you are willing to dismiss the evidence and use homeopathy, please do not similarly dismiss the science on cyanide. It interferes with respiration in a really bad way. Unlike homeopathy, it has real biological effects.
As I have said elsewhere in this “discussion,” I am completely open-minded about the subject. If you can point me to good evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy, I will happily reconsider.
Note that “I took it once for my really bad cold” or “it cured my daughter’s allergies” is not “good evidence”.
Homeopathy can at best only have a placebo effect, and anything can serve as a placebo if you believe in it. Voodoo is probably the most powerful placebo. Have you tried it? I suggest you do, it will work much better than homeopathy.
Again, if you have had the good fortune of successful homeopathic treatment, you would come to see the validity of it. I am not here to convince you. I am telling you my experience and those around me. You do not need to be a bully about your opinion. Do as you like but I for one, love homeopathy and will continue to ‘trust’ it.
It would be a waste of money to further investigate the efficacy of homeopathy using the methods that are currently employed. But I have seen homeopathy produce excellent breakthrough results time after time after time, and have benefited myself very significantly on several occasions. The royal family swear by it, for instance. If you wish to denounce all the cured patients produced by its effects throughout many decades as silly idiots, that is up to you, but it is a conclusion which sounds extremely bigoted to me. Beyond all reasonable doubt, homeopathy is a highly effective therapeutic approach. The fact that the science employed to investigate it says it isn’t is not due to any defect in science, but to the limits of our own knowledge and grasp of science. The science is there, because the reality is there. One day, we will understand how the science behind it works.
“Beyond all reasonable doubt, homeopathy is a highly effective therapeutic approach.” With all due respect, this is nonsense. The utter failure of any clinical trial ever to show effectiveness is a very good basis for reasonable doubt. “The fact that the science employed to investigate it says it isn’t is not due to any defect in science, but to the limits of our own knowledge and grasp of science. The science is there, because the reality is there.”
Utter rubbish. Clinical trials do not require there to be an associated understanding of therapeutic mechanism. You can do a clinical trial on “Potion A”, where the ingredients are completely unknown, and where there is not the slightest available science on proposed biological mechanisms involved (in principle, though it is not really sound to do so). We’ve done the research. Over and over again. It is a waste of resources to keep looking at this question. Homeopathy has no therapeutic value. Full stop. It is sheer snake-oil, quackery, bunk, nonsense.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
‘It is hardly surprising there was most hesitancy among supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown Reform Party founded by Nigel Farage.’ I did not read further than this. The severity and length of the lockdowns have been a demented, power-crazed response to a virus that is of no danger to any healthy person below the age of 70. As countries/states like Sweden, Florida and the Dakotas have demonstrated, those places that did not lockdown often experience lower death rates than those that did. This is not surprising given that the virus spreads most effectively in enclosed spaces such as homes and apartments.
As for the Reform Party, they are anything but antediluvian. In fact, they are almost certainly the most forward looking option available, not least because they want to reform the House of Lords, abolish the BBC license fee, strengthen animal health standards, and further distance the UK from the undemocratic and protectionist EU.
Death rate in Sweden: 1,296 per million. In Denmark: 412. In Norway: 117. So Sweden has a higher death rate than its neighbours (which are reasonable comparisons, as they have similar climates, health systems, populations, …) It seems to me that you have not got your facts right.
Take the 3 or 5 year average of those countries. Sweden in 2019 had very low death figures, look up the ‘dry tinder’ papers
Alan T
3 years ago
There’s a bit of a conflict between this and Ian Birrell’s excellent work on the Covid lab leak hypothesis, which shows a deep resistance among the leaders of the scientific community and media to an open investigation into the origins of Covid. I’m not anti-vax, but we need to recognise that people sometimes have good reason to be sceptical about what scientists tell us, and, sadly, this has never been more true than now.
Also, he’s right to point the finger at crackpot beliefs in the Green Party, but won’t extend this to their uncritical embrace of every kind of unscientific gender identity twaddle. He won’t criticise this because, unfortunately, he goes along with it himself.
Robin Taylor
3 years ago
“a successful vaccination policy — and escape from this dystopian nightmare — relies on mass inoculation”
Does it? Where’s the science to support this statement? If those who are at high risk of adverse outcomes from Covid are inoculated, why is it necessary to inoculate healthy children and young people when they are overwhelmingly unaffected by Covid?
“These are the sort of people fixated by “natural” remedies”
Like healthy lifestyle and good food for example? Apart from age, adverse Covid outcomes are particularly associated with Western lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Good health does not come from the end of a needle. The most significant improvements to health over the decades have come from improvements to living conditions including shelter and reduced overcrowding, easy access to clean water, sewage and waste management, good food, etc. While the West and those with power are pushing for the remedy of mass Covid inoculation of the world, aid is being cut to the poorest countries. The approach of the West is both selfish and bordering on obscene.
“supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown”
Lockdowns are not based on science. It is for this reason, on 13 March 2020, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned against lockdown stating that “all the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that, when you release it, then it all comes back again. So, the other part of this is to make sure that we don’t end up with a sudden peak again in the Winter which is even larger and causes even more problems”. How prophetic he was. Lockdown has been extremely costly and those costs will continue to rise into the future, and as Dr John Lee keeps reminding us: “you don’t improve the health of a nation by making it poorer”.
Unfortunately, the only thing I’ve got from this article was an insight into Ian Birrell’s own biases and antediluvian ideas.
Although hygiene and better nutrition have played a large part in reducing mortality, it would be a mistake to ignore the effects of immunisations against diseases like polio, smallpox and diphtheria. The reason for the lockdowns was not to stop the epidemic, but to ‘flatten the curve’ and ensure that hospitals were not overwhelmed. In the absence of immunisation, you are correct that all that the lockdowns would achieve is prolong the epidemic by giving us several waves. It is therefore not correct to say that the lockdowns are not based on science.
I agree. The people who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating protection of the vulnerable but not total lockdown, were for the most part extremely well qualified to defend their ‘antediluvian’ view.
Yep, as Sir Patrick Vallance said on 13 March 2020: “we’ve got a panel of world leading scientists” advising Gov’t and all agree that “we must protect the elderly and vulnerable” and aim “not to get rid of it completely, which you can’t do anyway” but “allow enough of us, who are going to get mild illness, to become immune to this”. His comments were based on science, but there was uproar in MSM leading to the advice becoming politically unacceptable and ever since then ‘the science’ has followed the politics.
Yes, I would much prefer that the article be re-titled ‘The Dangerous Naivety of Ian Birrell’, although I fear that the mentality of it expresses nothing so innocent as naivety. As for the self-interest of the West, it’s worth examining the huge personal financial benefit that will accrue to Hancock et al from the vaccines due to business interests.
Excellent and measured response Robin. I was shocked at the bigotry and invective of Birrel’s piece. It struck me as a misinformed and emotionally biased diatribe. It was poorly written too. I am used to reading Unherd articles that I don’t agree with, and welcome the opportunity to test and challenge my own thinking. But this piece was no better than a rant. I’m disappointed in Unherd for letting it through.
The most dangerous words in the English language are “the science is settled”. It has been used for years by the greens to stop debate and silence alternative views.
Unfortunately the greens have taken this process into other areas such as power generation, GM crops and now vaccines because they believe they have a monopoly on which scientific research is defined as “the view”. Until greens enter into the mainstream of political debate and accept nothing is ever truly “settled” then they will only ever remain on the fringe of politics.
Indeed, certainly any ‘scientist’ who has anything to do with those words is not a scientist at all.
Thomas Laird
3 years ago
No. The scepticism is about Scientists. Not science. Scientists are human with human biases egos and frailties. There are countless examples of where scientists have been co-opted by authoritarian regimes and wealthy business interests to promote an agenda.
Graff von Frankenheim
3 years ago
It is the height of scientific maturity not to trust this vaccine or the motives of those promoting it. I am a research scientist with three advanced degrees, have never been a hippy (while being an adolescent in the 60’s and 70’s) or an enthusiast for environmentalism, and a conservative from age 12. I fully support those who for reasons other than mine distrust the Covid vaccines and hope they will find the strength to keep resisting.
because there is no evidence they work yet! Phase 3 trials are still a year from full results and what we are seeing is in reality a live challenge trial with millions of willing victimsvolunteers. Unbelievable that it has been allowed.
Exactly, plus all the producers have agreed immunity from liability with our governments (how that could possibly be binding on us is a mystery) so that we must basically sue our governments in case of adverse health effects or death caused by the vaccine down the line (and those claims are subject to a maximum amount). Basically that means we will need to sue the IRS (i.e. ourselves and our children) in case the collective gamble on these vaccines turns out to be a colossal mistake. The profits have been privatized (Big Pharma wins) and the losses socialized (the community bleeds).
If people do not want to get vaccines, that is fine. We will get to herd immunity as those people continue to get infected and are immune anyway.
G Harris
3 years ago
I make this point more generally with no particular axe to grind in either case, but surely this article indirectly but logically posits the uncomfortable question that how can these antivaxxer Greens be unswervingly ‘right’ about the irrefutable science that supports climate change/anti-nuclear power/anti-GM foods, but so completely wrong about the irrefutable science that apparently supports the mass deployment of the covid vaccine?
This is where the whole ‘science’ argument, much like the expert argument, breaks down as if there is somehow a polarised, contradictory dynamic at play here and that these Green antivaxxers/climate change advocates are choosing to believe and use the ‘evidence based’ science that suits their own beliefs as appropriate and cheerfully discarding it when it doesn’t.
If nothing else it goes to prove the one thing that I’ve long believed, ultimately, nobody really knows anything.
nobody really knows anything. which leads to the author pounding the table with the sophomoric “anti-vaxxers” pejorative as if skepticism is now a thought crime.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.- Upton Sinclair
Comes to mind, suitably re-arranged to suit the argument debated.
Paul K
3 years ago
I think the key line in this piece may be ‘admitted using homeopathy’. As if someone were admitting to a drug problem or some sexual deviance. This is a screed, not an argument, built on the assumption that ‘science’ is a neutral way of distilling truth, ignoring the reality that scientism, not science, is the problem here, equating capitalism with an unequestioned ‘progress’ and effectively ignoring the smart green critiques of that progress which have been written and propounded for fifty years. Why would people not be concerned or cautious about a vaccine which has been developed in record time by companies with a long record of dishonest conduct, and since when has uncomplicated commitment to the demands of governments and drugs companies been the hallmark of grown up, ‘rational’ politics? The curious effect of this piece is that it sounds like an argument for blindly trusting authority. As for ‘the science’ – well, as people below have pointed out, people tend to pick and choose their scientific findings depending on their cultural prejudices. Science is just a method for examining how some things work, not a guide to how to live, or what values a society should be based on. The modern worship of ‘the science’ is a sign of a culture that is empty of anything deeper to base its values on.
Oh, it is open – just not so much that my brains fell out.
I can tell you – in all open-mindedness – what it would take to persuade me that homeopathy is effective. A good, decent-sized randomised double-blind controlled trial.
Are you open-minded enough to tell us what would dissuade you of its utility?
I look forward to seeing your research published. If it is, I will consider re-evaluating my position. But using homeopathy to treat a sore throat that has been present for 4 days already doesn’t count.
Vasiliki Farmaki
3 years ago
To die with covid or from a covid vaccine? I read: Norway investigates 23 deaths in frail elderly patients after vaccination. The media-science propaganda though.. goes on and plays with words such as that: there is no evidence that the vaccine caused these deaths, covid vaccines are safe etc.. Is not the same class who also deny the fact that most died with covid and not from covid? And what is the evidence that the deaths assigned to covid is true? Is it not the same class when data is handy to them.. then data is good but is bad once otherwise, and then again playing with words and even manipulate facts and data? The question to be yet answered is: has there been a pandemic at all? So.. what is more dangerous? Corona or vaccines? As for the ‘institutions shape lives’.. that is one more lie. We shape life and the world. If it looks otherwise, it is because they have snatched our free will, freedoms and authorship of all we have created in our thousands of years journey. There is indeed a shift, people are awakening and realizing of the theft of all that belongs to us. And by no means is ‘depressing’ but the spark for celebration and liberation. What corona is after all? An eye opener! ..We can see the enemies. Vaccines is a weapon: chains-sword-bullets & bombs- TV & mobile phones-Vaccination… For how long? How many vaccines?.. who can imagine what is next? Why my lifelong commitment to keep myself healthy, could ever be compromised with shots of dirt!!.. there is no longer distinction between science and dogma.. we see the collapse of the science metanarrative in front of our very eyes..the political one is happening for sometime and the next collapse will be that we know as education. If one only sees what is happening in the schools.. no need to be a prophet. Finally, why there is so much need to give names to anyone who disagrees with you?.. green hippies.. covidiots..? why I only feel sorry in my heart, for those align their lives with the propaganda.. what sort of life is this?
Great post! Every word true. The vaccine should be given to the old and the vulnerable, if they want it. As you say, a whole bunch of elderly Norwegians died very shortly after receiving it, so even the old might choose to forgo it.
Given the age and frailty of most vaccinees, a substantial number will be expected to die at any time. The question is are more than expected dying? The answer appears to be no.
You nailed it perfectly. To see the back and forth talk of public health, the absolute avoidance of real journalism in the mainstream media, the suppressing of things that can help you potentially ward off this virus or healing you when you do get it, watching the politicians pander for votes (they are thinking ahead to election) etc etc. The list goes on as to why we shouldn’t blindly trust them which include the scientists and doctors. Not all are created equal. And there are many doctors and scientists all over the world saying, the brakes should be heavily applied in regard to these experimental jabs.
Brian Dorsley
3 years ago
One of the features of this vaccine campaign is that there is a coercive element behind it. I think it’s putting a lot of people off. A deep failing of mine is that if I feel pressured into doing something, I will dig my heels in and do the exact opposite. I’ve discovered this trait to be both a blessing and a curse. I hate the moralistic messaging of the media, I distrust the medical establishment, I have faith in my own abilities.
At the end of the day, I would rather suffer the consequences of my own actions than someone else’s.
The trouble is Belief.
To believe in something is to say it is true beyond any doubt. That makes you a priest, or a convert. To know something can only ever be true ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ makes you a reasonable person, or a Scientist.
Always beware the ‘true believers’ they gave up reason and doubt because it is easier that way.
To believe something is to say it is true beyond reasonable doubt. It is not reasonable to believe that the rising of the sun tomorrow morning is just as unlikely as likely. This does not push me into the realm of priesthood. It is reasonable to believe that for that kind of bacterial infection, this kind of antibiotic is more likely than not to be effective. It is not reasonable to believe that reiki will cure bone cancer. We should also take account of the fundamental scientific notion that a particular theory is the best we have for now, even though we know it to be incomplete, and that we know where it breaks down. A good example is Newtonian mechanics.
J Bryant
3 years ago
Much as it pains me to cite to a Guardian article, I think it might benefit anti-vaxxers (Green or otherwise) to read this article about the last person in the US still kept alive by an iron lung because of childhood polio. He is now in his seventies and provides some needed insight into life before polio vaccines were developed. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lung-paul-alexander-polio-coronavirus
Thanks for that – it’s great article, and a reminder of what the G used to be. Every now and then they still print a really good article, truthful & thought-provoking.
Richard Lord
3 years ago
The one thing missing from the Greens, Socialist Worker, BLM and many others is pragmatism. What is the perfect human being, human response, course of action? The reality is that we all assess situations and our feelings before deciding what we should do, whether it be right or wrong. Organisations focusing on limited ideas or actions will never get anywhere, everything is interrelated. As for the covid vaccine, I am no supporter of the draconian restrictions we have faced. In many cases these have been inhumane and deeply damaging eg expectant mothers being forced to give birth without their partners, elderly abandoned in care homes and kept apart from loved ones, relatives dying alone in hospitals, young people being completely socially isolated. The effects of these will be felt for years in terms of mental health and general wellbeing. To be pragmatic, if the way out of this is the rapidly developed vaccine then so be it. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. Sometimes we must trust. Scientists throughout the world have worked on these vaccines, millions have already been vaccinated. They have no interest in killing us all. As with every intervention some will have side effects (as I did) and some may die. This is what being human is all about.
Last edited 3 years ago by Richard Lord
C P
3 years ago
I’m not interested in the vaccine argument right now. What I’m interested in is why passionate vaccine man is putting his pro vaccine career/reputation at risk by issuing a warning about the current vaccine plan…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s “Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research. Coordinated Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation’s Ebola Vaccine Program and contributed to the implementation of an integrated vaccine work plan in collaboration with Global Health Partners (WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, UNICEF), regulators (FDA) and vaccine manufacturers to enable timely deployment or stockpiling of Ebola vaccine candidates.
Highlighting the principle of using a prophylactic vaccine in the midst of a pandemic. Likely to create more more viral variants in the process.”
I was waiting for someone to mention this. A truly terrifying observation about the dangers of these vaccines from a mainstream vaccine expert with decades of international experience.
Yes, very disturbing interview considering Bossche’s credentials. What I found even more disturbing though was his fearful expression as he made his closing comments. This was clearly genuine. If this man is scared, then for God’s sake we need to take notice.
frederique.warnerallen
3 years ago
Dear Ian,
Your article is well written and seems to be on the side of science, or at least what science should be: “pragmatic, respectful of life”.
However, it lacks a massive amount of exploration and up to date scientific data. Your opinions are from the past.
The cream of the scientists are coming to the conclusion that, as well said by Zach Bush MD, called by many the Einstein of our generation: “We need to shift our vision to a new scientific paradigm in which we are in constant relationship with the microbiome at every level. (…/…). We must trust that the microbiome makes us more resilient, intelligent and more adaptive. If not, we need to build bigger and bigger nuclear weapons to protect us from the microbiome until we will have eradicate all life on Earth. That is what “we” are doing right now.” Take the time to watch this presentation: https://zachbushmd.com/what-happened-last-year-replay/ It’s 3 hours. The best investment for anybody who writes about science, nature and life.
Take care. Kind regards,
sharon johnson
3 years ago
We in the US have something called The Bill of Rights which guarantees us freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. For the past year our government has shelved those rights in favor of frantic whinings from a slew of ‘scientists’ eager to conquer the populace with lock-downs, masks, isolation, and mindless destruction of livelihoods. Out of mindless fear our government has gone along with every new ‘scientific’ diktat. But, in the meantime, the statistics – see Worldometers – continued to show a static 3% dead either from, or with, Covid. The Great Barrington Declaration, an ode to rationality in these times of insanity, was ignored. (read it, if you haven’t already) And then yesterday news was released that statistics show Covid death rates in the severely locked down states don’t vary much from the rates in the barely locked down states. No surprise.
Carl Goulding
3 years ago
The author obviously has blind trust in authority and the “science” and is therefore uninformed. I recommend he reads the recently published Virus Mania for an alternative view. Even in 1918 there were people who refused to be vaccinated and survived. I wonder what their politics were?
Yes, it is astonishing that this writer, who has now spent some decades witnessing and writing about authority’s disastrous polices and their consequences, around the world, can still have so much faith in any form of authority.
There were no Vaccines for the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Flu. Therefore nobody refused a vaccine, and yes many people survived. There is no logical point being made here.
Apologies I could have been more clear on the vaccination front but my main point was why should this matter be politicised. Also American and presumably all other soldiers in World War 1 were given live smallpox and whole cell typhoid inoculations as well as therapeutic tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins. The incidence of disease has been reported to be seven times higher among vaccinated soldiers (young & healthy) than among the unvaccinated civilians. Therefore the question I am asking myself is apart from recognised short term side effects do vaccines suppress the immune system and if so for how long and what are the consequences. Is that an unreasonable question to be asking?
Quite the contrary, vaccines stimulate the immune system, selectively. Just like exposure to any antigen, the body sees the intruder, and creates immunity. That is the purpose, whether you are exposed playing in the dirt, or putting your finger in your own nose. The old live vaccines were bad actors, as some people’s immune system could not fight off the live virus. The CV vaccine does not even have a remote possibility of creating the infection
Athena Jones
3 years ago
Most people were not sceptical of vaccines until they ramped them up from 2-3 at older ages in the early Seventies to more than 50 vaccinations in the first five years of life, beginning within hours of birth, for a disease common to prostitutes and drug addicts, if not in utero.
And only a fool would not question the Covid vaccines and genetic treatments given how unnecessary they are, for a virus which is no threat to the vast majority and how rushed, poorly tested and experimental they are.
The greater the pressure the greater the resistance. The more force used in the name of vaccines the more cult-like they appear, particularly when those who question anything about them, regardless of how well qualified they are in science or medicine, are pilloried and burned at metaphorical stakes. That bothers many people more than any vaccine risk.
And the more the vaccine cult pushes the public, the more people ask questions and it is not hard to find out that historical facts make it very clear that, by the time vaccines appeared they were not needed.
Anyone bothering to find out how vaccines are made, what they contain and what they are designed to do would not drink the stuff, let alone allow it to be injected into their body or that of their child.
In the max-vax age people have poorer health than ever before and worse in children. And yet, the powers that be refuse to do the one study which could settle this matter – looking at health and disease rates in fully, partially and non-vaccinated children.
All of which makes people rightly suspicious.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
Climate change has become the third most important issue in this country after health and the economy as Brexit fades in importance, What a fascinating statement. This board is full of commentary critical of the NHS. Not that many people want the govt meddling with the economy; we’ve seen how the lockdown mandates have impacted. Yet, I’m to believe that the same govt struggling with the other two issues is the only remedy for climate? No; that fails the logic test on a massive scale. Agencies that can barely manage potholes and have made a hash of public education do not need even more power than they already have.
John Stone
3 years ago
It is not science it is technology and it could go wrong. This lot of products using entirely new techniques, in development less than a year and then rolled out for the entire population pose a particular risk. But what will really defy science and ensure their lack of safety is gaslighting criticism of them, or their possible victims – a priori view that that they are always alright. Characterising vaccine critics as hippies or something is absurd too – most often they are just the witnesses to the damage.
Like others here I am grateful to Ian Birrell for much of his reporting but this is a serious blind spot.
Thats not quite right, although the reality is even less appealing, and is one of the reason I am CV “vaccine” hesitant. The technique has been tried out over at least 10 years, and maybe more (not certain about the timeline).Every time it has been tried ALL the animals subjects have died on exposure to the wild virus the technique was designed for. They claim that they’ve got it right this time – but we won’t know this for some time to come – probably this coming winter.
Yes, that is also an issue but I am talking about the gene technologies.
mike otter
3 years ago
There are still a few die-hards willing to serve science with rigour and falsification within the Mertonian norms. However the broad mass of western science is hostage to the anti-scientific extremism of the left, and the green movement is at the extreme end of that. The voices of Finnish and Italian climate scientists who say we cannot predict the weather but the record shows no significant waring in the last 200 years are supressed. The fake data and ad-hominen attacks of climate activists like Michael Mann are endorsed by scientifically illiterate politicos and tech sales men. So for the moment dangerous disregard for testable knowledge is the norm. Once this mania causes the inevitable mass casualties questions will be asked and we’ll all get back on the cautionary principle bandwagon – until the next time.
Tony Warren
3 years ago
There is too much of an negative tone with the words “anti-vaxxer,” I prefer “pro-plaguer.”
Samir Zulfiquar
3 years ago
The white coats where the ones pushing eugenics and lobotomies back in the day.
That’s what happens when you mindlessly “have faith in science” and don’t question them.
Science in modern times has become more about adherence to dogma than actual evidence.
The white coats are the new clergy.
Welcome to the new secular inquisition.
science denier = heathen
fringe theory = heresy
alternative treatment = witchcraft
skepticism = blasphemy
vaccination = baptism
asymptomatic transmission = original sin
social distancing and masks = penence
Bill Gates = messiah
Fauci, Ferguson, Birx, Tedros = the apostles
WHO = the church
Ian…what science? Please, by all means, provide some links to the ‘science’ you seem to hold so dear while using that ‘science’ to excoriate those who disagree with you. You have an opinion…and, without providing a shred of actual scientific evidence, that’s all you have. So, please, continue your chatterbox….you are unconvincing in the highest degree. I’m from across the pond in the former colonies so I don’t know what euphemism is in the UK, but over here I would just give my own unscientific opinion…you are full of it.
Last edited 3 years ago by Chris Eaton
crawfordwright
3 years ago
Are these the same scientists who said that face masks were useless until politicians changed their minds for them? The same ones who then said they had conspired to keep the mask efficacy secret to save on PPE?
Last edited 3 years ago by crawfordwright
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
People in the US frequently refer to an old Eisenhower speech warning of the military-industrial complex. They tend to leave out a second warning – that of a nexus between scientific research and govt funding. Any industry-funded project can expect to be called out for being, well, industry-funded, but for some reason, those same skeptics see no similarity in research that is govt-funded.
Michael Hanson
3 years ago
I am reassured that many Greens question vaccines. After all they look for less damaging and more sustainable ways of managing the Earth. Keeping our body’s immune system naturally healthy, I would suggest, goes along with keeping the planet’s ecosystem healthy.
Iain McCausland
3 years ago
The question is not why ‘greens’ may be more sceptical of taking a jab for Covid-19, but why anybody would take an experimental vaccine for a disease with a global IFR of 0.2-0.3% a similar lethality to Influenza?
Bits Nibbles
3 years ago
I think this article is misstating lots of issues, and severely conflating others.
“Such skepticism is another depressing indication of the breakdown in trust between citizens and the institutions that shape lives.”
Skepticism is the only scientific reaction to all of the deferral to authority and “experts” that we are seeing. Most “institutions that shape lives” do so out of the profit motive. Most scientists I know that work for Unilever or GSK for example, will never wear deodorant, or allow their children to wear deodorant (because they specifically work with links to cancer which are very real and significant). Are they conspiracy theorists or just insightful practitioners? Likewise, I know one scientist who’s sole work for Novavax on the Covid19 vaccine, was to show due diligence for the government audits, regarding a required compound that *everybody* in the industry knows for a fact, cannot be removed from the human body, once it has been injected. There has been no longitudinal study regarding the safety of this compound, as it only has been an ingredient in the new mRNA vaccine types. He and his family will not be getting the vaccine *ever*. Is he a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer, or an insightful insider?
Most of the parents in our homeschool group, are either teachers, ex-teachers, or children of teachers. Why do you believe that is?
I can tell you as a tech worker in the mobile phone and RF space, when leaving companies at which I’ve worked extensively on proprietary and classified technology specs often shared between companies under non-disclosure agreements, for example chips that won’t be sold or shipped for another 1-2 years, I’ve only been asked to sign an ‘exit-contract’ stating that I would not disclose any research results regarding effects of radio frequency on the human physiology. Ask yourself, why would that be?
Julia Waugh
3 years ago
Even proponents of vaccination recognise that there will be “collateral” damage. This from a report released by Harvard University:
““A physician cannot predict whether a particular child will suffer an adverse reaction to a vaccine and, therefore, vaccine-related injuries or death are extremely difficult to prevent. Because vaccines must be administered in order to protect the general population from disease and because some children will definitely be injured as a result of mandatory vaccination, the question arises as to how vaccine-injured children should be compensated for their adverse reactions to vaccines.” (Page 16 of: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9453695/Davenport%2C_Katherine_NVICP.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y&fbclid=IwAR3XAZtax8F43YZKfWqbPWrZvPSVHQhCNkmD4DObJvitvY2epLGylU8RhZo
This is enough to make any parent hesitate.
raymond.morace
3 years ago
The Global Warming Religion doesn’t believe in science. If they did, then they would understand that the single greatest cause of global warming, and the only cause of any real significance for life on this planet, is the sun. Any kindergarten student knows that. A secondary major effect on climate is the tilt of the earth on it’s access: hence, the four seasons as we move further from the equator. This phenomenon occurs every year, like clockwork (or calendarwork, if you prefer).
Also, human beings have survived on this planet in temperatures ranging from -20 degrees Fahrenheit and below, to 120 degrees and higher. The idea that a 1 or 2 degree change over the next 100 years will destroy life as we know it is not science, it’s the apocalyptic vision of the Global Warming faithful, that they will save us from. Most religions have that as well. Meanwhile, the temperature changed over 25 degrees today, in just one day! We all survived.
Finally, I’ve plotted the 10 day forecast with my grandchildren to show them the absurdity and arrogance of anyone that believes they can predict the average temperature of the planet 100 years from now, within a degree or two. I showed them clearly on the graph that we can’t even predict the high and low temperature in the next ten days with certainty in our neighborhood, within a degree or two. That’s science.
We know from reliable proxy measurements that the planet was hotter in the recent past without any dangerous runaway effects occurring; in fact, it was a better place for both humans and life in general. There is this silly idea that life was better off during the glacial periods that have been the default condition of the planet for the past 2.8million years, but this is of course nonsense.
Iain McCausland
3 years ago
In the US Republicans are less likely to take the vaccine and here Mr Birrell you claim Green Party people are less likely to take a jab for Covid19. Maybe we can say that independently minded people who tend not to swallow government fear mongering and media hype will not take an experimental vaccine for a disease with a global IFR of 0.2-0.3% because it is irrational to do so.
Jacques Rossat
3 years ago
Talking about the Green Party, they seem to show the same skeptisism about the vaccines over here, Switzerland, the same love of science when talking about global warming and the same hate of science when talking about nuclear power.
But, and apart from the obstacle the British two-party system represents to their coming to power, how do we explain that the Greens are now a formidable force in Germany as they are in Switzerland, a decisive segment in Parliament with their Watermelon (“Les Verts”) and Mango varieties (“Les Verts libéraux”), whereas they are almost extinct in the UK and in France (not to speak about other Southern European countries) ?
I think such a question requires more time than most of us here have to spare.
M Spahn
3 years ago
I wonder if the former residents of Fukushima have silly “anti-science” attitudes about nuclear power. I suppose we could ask them if we could track them down wherever they’ve been scattered to.
You conveniently ignored the earthquake and tsunami in your desperate search to make a point.
Pauline Shimell
3 years ago
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site. Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine
I am only listing the adverse effects that could have brought about fatalities or serious disabilities, such as blindness and deafness.
There were 227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?
It is so interesting to see how much widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body. I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening.
Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has probably occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
The attached Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.
Report Run Date:09-Mar-2021
Data Lock Date:08-Mar-2021 19:00:03
All UK spontaneous reports received between 9/12/20and 28/02/21 for mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine analysis print Blood
Thrombocytopenia ( bleeding disorder)fatal 1 Heart
Cardiac Disorders fatal 26
Cardiac Arrest 39 fatal 15
Cardio respiratory arrest fatal 1
Pericarditis fatal 1 Eyes
Eye disorders 72 visual impairment blindness 15 Ears
Ear disorders deafness 20 Gut
GI tract fatal total 12 (fatalities from diarrhoea 4, gastric haemhorrhage 2, vomiting blood 2, vomiting 2, perforation of gut 2, nausea 1) General
Asthenia fatal 1
Fatigue fatal 1
Clinical death1
Death 95
Sudden death 14
Illness fatal 1
Multiple organ dysfunction fatal 1
Sepsis fatal 1
Viral pneumonia fatal1 Brain and Nervous System
Fall fatal 1
Guillane Barre syndrome fatal 1
Brain Stem infarction fatal 1
Cerebral haemhorrhage fatal 3
Cerebro vascular accident fatal 3
Haemhorrhagic stroke fatal 1
Ischaemic stroke fatal 1
Subarachnoid haemhorrhage fatal 1
hypokinesia fatal 1
unresponsive to stimuli fatal 1
Diplegia fatal 1
Seizure fatal 1
Brain injury fatal 2 Premature baby died 1 Respiratory system
Breathlessness fatal 2
Breathlessness from exertion fatal 2
Lack of oxygen fatal 1
Cough fatal 1
Aspirational pneumonia fatal 2
Pneumonitis fatal 3
Pulmonary embolism fatal 1
Acute respiratory failure fatal 1
Aspiration disorders fatal 1
Choking fatal 1 Skin
Toxic dermal necrolysis fatal 1 I am a retired lecturer in health sciences.
I am a retired academic physician, coroner, and professor, so have some knowledge here. As I look at this list above, it is obvious that it makes no sense. To believe that this list of symptoms is related to death and COVID is not comprehensible. Fatal cough? That is not an accepted death certificate diagnosis, come on man. How about lack of oxygen-deceased could have place a bag over his head. These are self reported symptoms and many do not pass serious muster. Patients reporting any untowrd feeling does not make it related to the shot. Coincidence does not prove causality. Secondly, most of the deaths are in us older folks, and many of these causes of death, would have occurred anyway. It does appear that clotting may be associated with the COVID itself, and perhaps with the Pfizer vaccine, and so some of these could have been vaccine related, or maybe they had the virus?
“I am a retired lecturer in health sciences.”
And I am a non-retired doctor who has held a chair in epidemiology and done extensive work in evidence-based medicine. If you actually held a position in an academic health-related subject, you should be ashamed for posting such nonsense.
If you actually knew anything about phase 3 trials or postmarketing surveillance or pharmacovigilance, you would know that it is customary for any clinically significant event that occurs after an agent has been released to be recorded in order that it can be investigated. Is it seriously your contention that the laundry list you cite above are all consequences of vaccination?
Pauline Shimell
3 years ago
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site. Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine
I only listed the adverse effects that could have brought about fatalities or serious disabilities, such as blindness and deafness.
227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?
It is so interesting to see how much widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body. I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening.
Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has probably occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
The Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.
Report Run Date:09-Mar-2021
Data Lock Date:08-Mar-2021 19:00:03
All UK spontaneous reports received between 9/12/20and 28/02/21 for mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine analysis print
This is worth a look
I am a retired lecturer in Health Sciences
Andre Lower
3 years ago
One wonders how long it will take for Covid-deniers and anti-vaxxers to realize that nobody bothers answering to their posts anymore.
Dennis Boylon
3 years ago
The only way out of a dystopian state is to rebel against the totalitarians and force them out of power. That has nothing to do with a vaccine. The virus was just an opportunity to implement a fascist state. Never let a crises go to waste.
Last edited 3 years ago by Dennis Boylon
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
“It is hardly surprising there was most hesitancy among supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown Reform Party founded by Nigel Farage.” I don’t understand their rationale. If you don’t like lockdown – as I don’t – surely you should support vaccination as a way out of lockdown???
You’d think, but in fact many anti-lockdown people see any action which looks like admiting COVID19 is serious as cheering for the other team, even if that action would mean we needed lockdown less. For example, anti-maskers are also anti-lockdown.
Caroline Tinney
3 years ago
It’s either Science or it’s Political Correctness. Guess which one this article is?
Alan Hawkes
3 years ago
I wonder how far the rise of conspiracy theories and the wish to act outside the normal parties is related to Peter Turchin’s theory of over-production of elites. As Janan Ganesh asked in the FT, “What is woke culture if not the howl of a generation of underemployed humanities graduates?”
Pauline Shimell
3 years ago
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site annex1 which contains the following:
“The attached Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.”
Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine. There were 227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?It is so interesting to see the widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body.
I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening. Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
I am a retired health sciences lecturer and I wonder why it is me studying these lists of adverse reactions and not a professional journalist.
John Riordan
3 years ago
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised that people adhering to Green ideals, or I should say ideology, are resistant to science. The popularised so-called science around climate change politics, for instance, is itself scientifically illiterate – it is as ignorant as the denialism on the same subject on the opposite side of the debate. It is one thing to state that we are presently taking risks by putting so much CO2 in the atmosphere and that doing so amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have. It is quite another to say that the IPCC is not strident enough on the subject and that it is near-certain that schoolchildren alive now will die mid-century from a global conflagration brought on by runaway atmospheric heating.
The first statement is reasonable and scientifically defensible, while the second is completely baseless and dishonest. It is quite easy for most people with a basic grounding in science to distinguish between the two statements, if they are willing to examine the evidence. Doing this is a fair bit less easy for the sort of person who is easily persuaded on April 1st that it is, say, possible to power your home by sticking a couple of electrodes in a potato, and people such as this do seem to be the same sort of people who think that going on protest marches and blocking traffic is a helpful contribution to a challenge which in actuality can only be resolved through immense technological progress delivered by the sort of people who can tell scientific truth from political fiction.
Even without people who are genuinely scientifically illiterate however, there are lots of perfectly intelligent people who have radically reduced the extent to which they are prepared to accept the authority of scientific institutions. This, too, is unsurprising, and it is not the fault of the growing number of sceptics, it is also the fault of the scientific establishment itself, for having permitted the growth of political influence in science and having tolerated a commensurate decline in the discipline, objectivity and neutrality that are the foundations for public trust in the scientific method.
Last edited 3 years ago by John Riordan
Brendan O'Leary
3 years ago
Climate change has become the third most important issue in this country
The link for this statement says nothing of the sort.
Just support for a vague statement about “the environment”.
As if we ourselves , and all our works, aren’t part of “the environment”.
Last edited 3 years ago by Brendan O'Leary
John Lewis
3 years ago
Was it really necessary to use the word Antediluvian when referring to the Reform Party? I note that you managed to resist the temptation to attach similar derogatory terms to any of the other parties mentioned.
A pity in what was otherwise an excellent article.
Nirav Smythson
3 years ago
Good piece. To add to the equation is the Steiner Crew. That is devotees of Rudolf Steiner. Wherever there is a Steiner (Waldorf) school you will find anti science sentiment as well as hordes of unvaccinated kids. This is a global phenomena with increased measles cases in catchment areas of Steiner schools. Rudolf Steiner (died 1925) claimed that the function of the heart was not to pump blood around the body and other bizarre observations (homeopathy can function as well as MMR). I read all about BAME and Green groups refusing the vax but have never read a scholarly piece on the followers of Steiner, which also includes those who attend the Christian Science Community church. Could you write on this? You will be amazed how many people support Steiner’s claims
Zorro Tomorrow
3 years ago
Third most cooked up issue. If we turned off everything in UK now and lived in knitted yurts the rest of the world would laugh at our pitiful protest. Climate may be changing but it’s not proven anthropogenic. If you don’t want a jab, fine, but don’t cry when your holiday ambitions are curtailed. As for disparaging Farage why doesn’t he go full Guardian and praise Biden to the hilt?
eugene power
3 years ago
I am one of those anti dilugians. I dont know anyone of my age who has not been vaxxed. We grew up in the shadow of polio and are pissed off with illegal useless lockdown being maintained by crap statistricks with the help of idiot refusers Where did anyone from Oxford find a Brexiter??
Leave your insults where they belong.. pre referendum
Matt Whitby
3 years ago
I’m not taking it because of the coercive authoritarian attitude behind it, not because I deny it’s effectiveness or think of some conspiracy to sterilise the population or whatever
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
“I also struggled to share their concern with genetically modified crops, particularly if they could help feed impoverished people on our planet.” I actively hate Greenpeace for this very reason. Their opposition to GM Golden Rice has facilitated the needless blinding and deaths from Vitamin A deficiency of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of children. My nickname for them is the Vert Rouge.
queensrycherule
3 years ago
Environmentalism is anti-scientific, by nature.
Athena Jones
3 years ago
What seems to be ignored, if not forgotten is that good science and good medicine and safe science and safe medicine, not only demand questions and dissent they require them in order to limit the harm they might do and to remain grounded in integrity and common sense instead of power and profit.
Many scientists and medical professionals have issued warnings and been ignored. If they turn out to be right, who will carry the blame?
Quote: Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, Ph.D., has nothing against vaccines. In fact, the independent virologist formerly worked for Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Bossche says the Covid vaccines approved so far have been developed by “just brilliant” people and he has no criticism of them But, as he tells Dr. Phillip McMillan in an interview, “please use the right vaccine at the right place. And don’t use it in the heat of a pandemic on millions of millions of people.”
Bossche says that a mass vaccination campaign in the middle of a pandemic, with vaccines that don’t prevent transmission, is disastrous at an individual — and at a global — level:
“We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic.”
In an open letterto the World Health Organization (WHO), Bossche wrote that “we are currently turning vaccinees into asymptomatic carriers shedding infectious variants.”
Bossche hasn’t heard back from WHO, which concerns him.
“It is about humanity … I mean, it’s about your children. It’s your family. It’s my family. It’s everyone. Right. And it’s simply for me, I put everything at stake because I’ve done my homework. And this is simply a moral obligation. A moral obligation.”
From Children’s Health Defence.
For those unware, “Children’s Health Defence” is a campaigning organisation well known for spreading disinformation about vaccines. Dedicated anti-vaxxers, they are not a trustworthy source.
Paul Hayes
3 years ago
“In Britain, the Green Party has long been dogged by anti-science views.”
As have all the political parties. Selective pseudoskepticism*, often in the form of (ideologically) motivated reasoning, is the disease and it dogs them all. Right and left alike are prone to appealing to the science when it suits them and rejecting it when it doesn’t.
* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12179
Last edited 3 years ago by Paul Hayes
Marilyn Shepherd
3 years ago
What is this rubbish, they are not vaccines, they are deangerous, deadly poison to vaccinate against nothing at all.
Jonathan West
3 years ago
Anyone should be able to refuse the jab in the UK, but the answer should be: fine, now your name goes to the very bottom of the list and that’s for all the UK & NI. Happy to move up the listing if plenty of idiots opt out.
Pauline Shimell
3 years ago
Blood clots and their breakdown and prevention are complex processes. A balance exists between the processes that protect the body from clots in blood vessels leading to the death of the organs they supply and those, which prevent us from bleeding to death.
If you go to the government website which lists the adverse reactions to the vaccines being administered at present, in annex 1 you can find a table categorised under each body system such as blood as well as various more general categories such as fatigue.
I went through the tables for AstraZeneca when the deaths from blood clots were reported. I went through each system and generality not just the blood because blood clots can occur anywhere in the body.
Given the age of the vaccinated, these could have happened at any time. You would need a proper statistical analysis to ascertain whether these blood coagulation related events were more frequent than you would expect in this age cohort.
These were the clotting related events I found. There may be more that I failed to spot.
coagulanopathies 2,anginas 25,myocardial infarctions 25 including 12 fatalities,myocardial ischaemias 6 including 3 fatalities,there were 39 fatalities from cardiac disorders in total.
retinal vascular thrombosis 1,Ischaemic colitis 1subdural haematoma 1,brain stem infarction 1 fatal,brain stem stroke 1 (could be clot or bleed),cerebral haematoma 1,cerebral infarction 1,cerebral thrombosis 1 fatal,cerebrovascular accident ( could be a clot or a bleed) 41 (6 fatal),embolic stroke 1,ischaemic stroke 9,cerebral small vessell ischaemic disease 1,cerebrovascular disorder 1 (could be clot or bleed),Transient ischaemic attacks 25,Pulmonary embolism 13 fatal 1,pulmonary infarction 1 fatal,haematoma 8,embolism 1,thrombosis 3,blue toe syndrome 3,Deep Vein thrombosis 14,pelvic venous thrombosis 1, thrombophlebitis 1,superficial thrombophlebitis 1,phlebitis 2,varico phlebitis 1
It is only today that there has been a report of bleeding disorders occurring after administration of the AZ vaccine. In Norway there has been a death from thrombocytopenia which means too few of the cells that bring about clotting as well as 3 hospitalisations, according today’s Guardian. There are plenty of adverse reactions connected to bleeding in the table, I just have not had time to list them. Strokes can either be due to clotting or bleeding and can be disabling and fatal.
Perhaps there was nothing unusual about these clotting and bleeding events to alert anyone over here. After all these were all very old people expected to have heart attacks and strokes. There is of course nothing to say that these events were connected with the vaccine but some people have taken the trouble to use the government’s yellow card system to report them.
Keeping the blood flowing is a balancing act for the body especially in those with less mobility and it is possible that for some elderly people this balance has been disturbed by the vaccination process
I would argue for more sensitivity in administering vaccines, taking a case history and having a discussion with the person about how they feel about it might help reduce adverse reactions
This rushed industrial style roll out is not suited to delicate people. From reports I have had many adverse reactions are going unreported and with care they could be avoided.
I am a retired health sciences lecturer.
“I would argue for more sensitivity in administering vaccines, taking a case history and having a discussion with the person about how they feel about it might help reduce adverse reactions. I am a retired health sciences lecturer.”
Your “health sciences” subject clearly did not include anything relevant to this discussion. It is remarkable that someone claiming academic credentials in a health field should be posting such nonsense.
What do you mean by “sensitivity”? What tests or questions are you suggesting would reduce adverse reactions?
Are you suggesting that someone’s feelings affect whether they develop a blood clot?
What aspects of a “case history” do you suggest should be asked about that that are not being asked about?
Your post is dated 16th March, by which time it was already clear that there is no evidence that any of the events you highlight are caused by vaccination. There is even some suggestion that these events happen less frequently in vaccinated groups.
If you have health qualifications, why are you posting such drivel?
Michael Upton
3 years ago
This is a very good analysis of the problems of ‘Green’ politics. We are as ever short on deserved praise and long on minor chiding, but the one criticism is that Mr. Birrell does not seem to explain why holding nuclear power to be a bad thing is rationally or morally equivalent to the same judgment of vaccinations. Although most nuclear power stations may be both safe and reliable, it cannot realistically be suggested that they cannot and will not suffer from accidents, or natural catastrophes, or deliberate attacks; nor that when they do, the consequences are likely to be more physically extensive and temporally enduring than the consequences of an an accident at most other forms of generating plant. Equally, it cannot realistically be denied that they entail a form of waste which is especially noxious and intractable, and (even with deep burial) requires controlled management over timescales longer than any relevant human institution has yet survived. It is one thing to bequeath to your children a world which is 2 degrees Celsius warmer than ours – wrong as that is, they may be able adapt to cope – but quite another to bequeath them a tonnage of inevitably lethal poison, with instructions to be passed on to and honoured by all foreseeable future generations or else see their kin deformed or dying. How would you judge your grandparents had they left you such an inheritance? One may hold absolutely no brief whatsoever for either the anti-vaxxers in particular or for that matter the ‘Green’ movement in general, yet have the most serious reservations about the use of nuclear fission (where not evidently required for national security) on perfectly respectable scientific and moral grounds. Science and morality may find answers in thorium or fusion, but meantime these objections should be regarded as entirely respectable.
Michael Upton
Advocates’ Library,
Parliament House,
Edinburgh.
“Although most nuclear power stations may be both safe and reliable, it cannot realistically be suggested that they cannot and will not suffer from accidents, or natural catastrophes, or deliberate attacks; nor that when they do, the consequences are likely to be more physically extensive and temporally enduring than the consequences of an an accident at most other forms of generating plant.”
It is not realistic to suggest that this is a viable approach to the management of risk. Nuclear power is – by far – the safest form of artificial energy we have, even taking into account the accidents to date – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc – all of which are now all but impossible in new reactor designs.
Simon Sharp
3 years ago
There is a difference between ‘science’ as the actual process of empirical investigation versus ‘science’ as the grubby reality of money, funding battles, politics, personalities and ideology within which that cerebral activity takes place. There is a difference between ‘experts’ as in people who are experienced in a specific field and ‘experts’ as in …why are THESE ones getting wheeled in front of me in the media. What facts are they emphasizing at the expense of others? What ideological battles and vested interests drive their statements?
An increasing number of people have entirely justified concerns about the ‘science’ and ‘experts’ that gets put in front of them (even in supposedly ‘respectable’ publications). Yes some of them resort to unfortunate places such as Alex Jones type conspiracy theories. But that is perhaps also an understandable symptom of the problem of trust breakdown.
Birrel seems to sort of agree with this but then stops short of allowing even slight misgivings about vaccines where truly monumental amounts of money (and therefore politics & business) are involved.
Just in case its not clear – its possible to accept vaccine science and the succeses in that field AND to have misgivings about the political, financial and ideological climate in which they are produced. (i’d suggest researching they way we have abused antibiotics as one parallel here)
Its like lefty friends I know who are willing to criticize the corrupt nature of capitalism all day long and hold forth on its basis in white supremacy… or on the evils of Murdoch owned global news conglomerates. But then suddenly the slightest misgivings about multi-billion dollar corporations producing some of the most expensive and unwieldy medicines and this disappears.. And we are left with only the cerebral ‘pure’ image of scientists in white coats. An image of ‘science’ which only ‘anti-vaxxers’ and other deplorable ‘anti-scientism’ specimens would ever cast any shadow on.
Last edited 3 years ago by Simon Sharp
Corrina McFarlane
3 years ago
Sorry to hear you drank the Monsanto Kool Aid, that we need GMO crops to feed the world. They are utterly incorrigible, they don’t care how many lawsuits they lose.. and they have the deep pockets to keep churning out PR puff pieces despite a trail of disasters in the wake of their lab crops.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
The Netherlands, along with a number of other European countries, has just halted its use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. (Lead story in Het Parool this morning). I am by no means an anti-vaxxer and consider mass vaccination programmes to be one of the very few things the state does effectively, and one of the very few activities the state should be entrusted with.
However, inflicting upon the whole population a vaccine that is completely unnecessary for most people, and a vaccine that cannot have been tested properly given the time scale, is an act of ethical vandalism.
We have seen a number of young(wish) or middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated. In fact, the vaccine will probably kill more healthy young(fish) people than the virus itself, just as more young(Ish) people will die from suicides etc due to the lockdown than from the virus itself.
“We have seen numerous middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated.” No we haven’t. That is simply not true.
It seems to be the case that healthy, young(wish) medics and nurses in the US, Portugal, Italy, and Poland have died shortly after being vaccinated. We know of one woman in Austria who died from blood clotting shortly after being vaccinated, and blood clotting seems to have occurred across Europe as a consequence of the AZ vaccine. This is why numerous European countries have halted AZ vaccinations.
I have no doubt that the vaccinations will be safe in 99.99% of cases, although we have no idea of longer term side effects due the rushed development. However, some of the vaccines, perhaps due to batch variation etc, do seem to be causing some deaths.
It doesn’t seem remotely likely. Some younger doctors in Europe have complained about side effects, like fever, which they did not like. Please do not post fake news.
Well the Italians have initiated manslaughter charges following the death of a 57 year old, four days after he was given the AZ vaccine. He looks pretty healthy in the photo, and very unlikely to have been vulnerable to the virus itself.
“We have seen a number of young(wish) or middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated.”
That statement is false. It is fiction. You cannot provide a shred of evidence to support it.
The (few) cases of blood clots have not been shown to have any relationship to vaccination.
Joe if you truly supported science you would be more open to recognize that there is a problem here. You think that is normal that people ‘just’ develop blood clots and interestingly enough, just after this jab. Your head is in the sand.
Try listening to this morning’s R4 “Today” program.
About 3,000 people per month in the UK develop blood clots that are clinically meaningful, and did so before the covid pandemic came along. So that base-frequency is nothing to do with vaccinations.
The question “does anyone develop a blood clot after the vaccine?” is therefore not very helpful. You might as well ask if anyone reads a newspaper after getting the vaccine.
The question of interest is this: is there a significant rise in the number of cases of blood clots in populations that have received the vaccine?
The answer appears to be “no.”
Your argument is nonsense. In the UK, the incidence of DVT is about 1 per 1000 persons per year, probably more in the elderly, This works out to about 100 per week. 25 million people in the UK have had at least one vaccination , most with AZ vaccine. If we take it over 3 months, that would work out that about 6000 cases of DVT in that time regardless of vaccination. There have been 30 cases reported. Hardly proof of a causative connection.
It is always the rejoinder of vaccine proponents (lobbyists, government, officials etc), of “prove it” when institutionally everything is raked against being able to do so. What it actually does is demonstrate their unwillingness ever to accept responsibility for anything: the morality of “hit and run”. They are asserting huge benefits for products while implausibly not accepting any risks, and they skew the evidence base with their ruthless strategy. It is demonstrably a try-on: if they were genuine about science they would be looking sympathetically at prima facie evidences of harm, but they don’t they just get hot under the collar, call for people to be banned etc. And of course what they are actually doing is making loads of money.
The problem of iatrogenic gaslighting was brought into context last year by Baroness Cumberlege’s report: there is no reason why things should be any different for vaccines.
“They are asserting huge benefits for products while implausibly not accepting any risks…” This is simply false. Extensive research and resources go into evaluating risks.
There is a difference between being sceptical about a vaccine rushed out to cure a disease which kills only a tiny fraction of the population, Iess than 1% and then mostly only those who are older than the average age at which people die, and scepticism about tried and trusted vaccinations for diseases which killed or permanently harmed huge numbers of children.
It is unscientific to have blind faith in scientists and science which is what is required of the general population in order to accept scientific advice, since they cannot test out scientific theory themselves. Your argument is no different from that of Jesus Christ to ‘Doubting Thomas’ “blessed is he who believes and does not see”. Only because your own faith in scientists and expertise is so absolute you think that because scientists can prove their theories to each other they are therefore true and what you experience when you accept their ideas is not akin to religious faith, but an acceptance of objective truth.
It is possible to argue that scientists on the whole have got at the truth and brought many benefits to mankind and driven progress. So that having blind faith in science and scientists is a relatively safe bet. But it is also true that there have been dreadful errors with vaccination programmes and many other scientific endeavours. Polio vaccines under Bill and Melinda Gates caused harm. Thalidomide caused harm. The blood transfusion service caused harm, and death, spreading HIV and Hepatitis.
When it comes to our own bodies we must weigh up evidence and advice as we see fit. The parents of sons who had haemophilia in the 70s and 80s who died as a result of their blind faith in science and the medical profession and the competence, honesty and good intentions of government health programs and politicians have some interesting lessons to teach you. But perhaps their wisdom and experience are ‘antediluvian’.
Very well said.
1% is a small fraction? it is relative. 1/100 of the people with the disease is a big number with a UK population of 65m – if the whole population get it.
‘Iess than 1% and then mostly only those who are older than the average age at which people die’
Or put another way, hardly anybody and even then, predominantly those with “one foot in the grave” already.
However, the age skew is massive, to the point where vaccinating a quarter of the population cuts the death rate to 0.01-0.1% if everyone gets it.
Who says it cuts the death rate? The number-crunching modellers who have consistently been totally wrong?
The hospital admission numbers since the start of the vaccination program do prove this point fairly conclusively.
One per cent is a small fraction whatever the size of the population. Get a perspective!
One percent of the population dying from an a widespread illness is not a trivial thing. In any event the covid death rate is much higher than 1%, more like to 2.5% in the UK, and much, much higher among those over 70
Am I understanding you to say that 2.5% of the UK population has died of Covid?
We don’t really know who has died of Covid and who has died from other maladies which have wrongly been attibuted to Covid.
Try .18% over 2 full flu seasons, and the average age is over 80, most died in locked down and abandoned care homes last year and the normal annual death rate for the UK is .93% of the population. too many people unable to read. And the UK and others claim people with a so called PCR positive who die withing 28-60 days of any cause die of covid. It’s ridiculous when the NHS have the figures proving 95% died of other causes.
No, he’s saying that the death rate among those who have contracted Covid in the UK has been 2.5%.
Would you take the same approach to other diseases?
That is nonsense, sorry. The fatality rate for those infected is presently 0.2% and falling. The reason it’s falling is that the first wave killed those that happened to be most susceptible so the remainder are by definition less so, and the fact that we have got better at treating those who develop severe symptoms (eg oxygen assistance works well, but ventilators not so much).
BS
1% of the Uk population in 650,000. You are going to need a big graveyard or burn a lot of gas in the crematoriums . Think of the CO2 that will be created!
The correct figure is 99.97% of all those who catch it, not of the entire population (most of whom already have natural herd immunity). The average age of death for it is 82.2 years old. I can see you have not researched this covid crud at all.
“ It is possible to argue that scientists on the whole have got at the truth and brought many benefits to mankind and driven progress. ”
To argue otherwise would simply be wrong. You only have to look at statistics for infant mortality, deaths of women in pregnancy, life expectancy, the real benefits gained by vaccination programmes with regards polio, measles, hooping cough etc, to see the real benefits gained by science.
“ Iess than 1% and then mostly only those who are older than the average age at which people die,”
Amazing how people are so willing to take a callous disregard to approximately 650,000 people’s lives.
“But it is also true that there have been dreadful errors with vaccination programmes”
Like what?
“ The parents of sons who had haemophilia in the 70s and 80s who died as a result of their blind faith in science and the medical profession and the competence honesty and good intentions of government health programs and politicians,”
The problem wasn’t the science. The problem was politicians and bureaucrats. The science was clear. Blood transfusions saved lives if properly administered. The stupidity of allowing infected blood to be used wasn’t a problem of science.
Science and engineering have bought massive benefits to our lives both in terms of life expectancy and in terms of life quality. The list is too long to write here.
Yes, you are right to point out that literal flaw in my argument, but since we are discussing the vaccination how are vaccination programmes commissioned, paid for, set up, administered? When people object to vaccinations the author of the article assumes their objections are naive and probably unscientific. But a great deal of faith is required in all kinds of people and disciplines Matt Hancock, the SAGE group, whose scientists are often experts in fields totally unrelated to epidemiology, Neil Ferguson who doesn’t have a biology A level and has a history of getting everything wrong. GP practices and hospitals’ storage facilities, nurses and doctors being incorruptible, non psychopathic, clean. Each link in the chain from the well intentioned, but still fallible scientists to the person sticking the needle in has to be trusted.
When the operation has been running for many years there are issues around carelessness, when it is new there are issues around unforeseen consequences. Being sceptical rather than having blind faith or absolute trust is natural, intelligent and healthy. It is an evolutionary instinct that has saved lives over thousands of years.
Unfortunately ‘our evolutionary instinct’ will play no part in this.
It will become axiomatic that one has been vaccinated if you wish to work in many ‘professions’, travel outside this Sceptered Isle or perhaps even inside it.
To be unvaccinated will result in being treated like a Medieval Leper, crying “ unclean, unclean”.
Yep. It is totally unethical. We should be allowed to make an informed decision, after weighing the risks and benefits, knowing that there would not be any repercusions for not providing consent. This was until March 2020 is standard procedure.
Alison, it seems to me your scepticism is very one-sided – a lot of questioning around the lockdown and vaccination programme, no questioning of your own assumptions about the virus. You’re not alone. Charles Stanhope on this thread is a much worse offender.
Specifically, you claim that relatively few people have died of the virus. To the extent this is true, the number would have been a lot higher without lockdowns and restrictions – or people behaving in a far more cautious way of their own accord, even without any legal restrictions, which is actually what would have happened. In such a scenario, the NHS would have been unable to treat a large number of serious cases and many people would have died, painfully. A lot of these would be well under 60 years old. For some weeks or months, it would be difficult to see how civil society could work in anything like a normal fashion. I’ve not cited numbers here, as that would be guesswork, but the so called forecast by Imperial College of 500,000 deaths absent any intervention probably now looks optimistic.
In that context, the vaccination programme becomes a lot more compelling and criticisms of the speed in testing the vaccine look positively bizarre.
Covid is a serious disease affecting the elderly and ill. It is right that people in those categories who have not had it should put themselves forward to be vaccinated against it. But it is also right and natural that young, healthy people should not be asked to participate in experimental programmes of untested drugs in order to prevent the already ill and elderly from contracting a disease and dying. Would you approve of babes in arms and toddlers being experimented on in this way, in order to safeguard the very elderly and ill? If not would your only concern be their inability to give their informed consent? Or would something else strike you as unethical about such a thing? I think most people would think it immoral to ask children with their whole lives before them to take that risk, it would seem immoral, even to people without religious views. The question of whether other healthy, young people should be experimented on, becomes one of a balance of risks. Some people will see it as their duty to help get the country back on its feet and the economy working again and see that herd immunity achieved by vaccination is necessary to prevent further lockdowns. But locking down is a political decision made by government. The trashing of the economy was a political decision, however much you think it was worth it to prevent further deaths. So people are made to choose to put their long term health at risk from an untried drug in order to prevent the government making similar, foolish decisions in the future. And of course since other strains of the virus are more likely to arise when vaccination programmes are in place there is no guarantee that anyone making the decision to have the vaccine will be able to prevent future governments locking down again, because herd immunity for one variant may not be herd immunity for another. Therefore people will be asked to participate in further experimental drugs trials. On the whole it is better to let nature take its course, nobody has the right to eternal life, and drugs companies do not have the right to an endless supply of experimental subjects and tax payers’ money.
If you think the state is always benign in its experimentation on the British public, I suggest you read Norman Baker’s research on the way they experimented on us with Anthrax, among other things, at Porton Down in the 20th Century.
very well said
Excellent! Thank you!
Well put. I understand the first vaccines (emergency use approved) have two more years of clinical testing planned. By then new strains will emerge. Then new vaccines ad nauseum? Cost of each vaccine purportedly could solve world hunger. What am I missing? Plus there are many scientists who admit they don’t know what is going on with this latest coronavirus. And others, pro-vaccine, who say there are dangers using vaccines during a pandemic, that they are best used as prophylactics. I’m just a dumb applied scientist myself, humbled and disappointed by the confusing mess we are in. I remind myself it could have been worse, now one year later.
You are not me.
And you appear not to know much about vaccines or viruses.
“the number would have been a lot higher without lockdowns and restrictions”
MUCH evidence against this assertion. Virtually none supporting it. See
Super Strict Military Quarantine shows negative effect – more quarantined soldiers tested C-19 positive in the quarantine group than in the control group.
and this
and Lockdowns do not control the virus – meta-study
Over the last 80 years there has been a massive increase in scientists so standards have declined. If one looked at Physics in 1920, there were a few universities but with top quality people publishing in a few journals basically in Britain, USA, Germany , France, Switzerland and perhaps Italy. In 1920 every physicist and chemist of note knew of each other. Scientists could spend time thinking and analysing data, publishing was not that important. Also being a professor was well paid as there were few of them.
We have now thousands of scientists competing for reserach grant and tenure; publish or perish. feuds between academics arre well known.Improve quality, close down bottom fifty percent of scientific research institutes and spend the money on the remainder. Wakefield should never have been allowed to publish as he had inadequate data. Fewer research projects, far better statistical design and using vastly more data; over longer time periods, and larger geographic spreads; better statistical analysis and closure of 70% of journals. Quality not quantity and it is vital papers produce clear cut results; if not, no publication. The tree of knowledge has to be watered and pruned. We have forgot to prune.
Vitamin and protein rich food, potable water for drinking and washing, soap, sanitation and light airy sleeping quarters has done more to improve peoples lives than medicine.
“ Vitamin and protein rich food, potable water for drinking and washing, soap, sanitation and light airy sleeping quarters has done more to improve peoples lives than medicine.”
Most of what you said was unsupported by any back up evidence. However on the above this is true. But we aren’t simply limiting the benefits of science to medicine. It was science that underpinned our understanding as to why these things were needed and what benefits they gave. It was science that has helped identify what caused typhoid and cholera and has saved millions of lives.
Without science and the understandings it has given us, our lives would in the main be brutal, painful and short.
My post criticised mediocre science whose main function is to keep scientists and journal editors employed.
Wakefield should never have been allowed to publish. As the numbers of journals increase, there is the problem of filling them. In Sampson’s Changing Anatomy Britain 1982, there are university Vice Chancellors who admit employing people in the late 1960s, who a few years down the line prove to be inadequate but cannot be sacked.
My father’s Consultant eye surgeon who had a doctorate in microbiology as well, told me clean water and sanitation had more more for health than medicine.
The breakthrough in disease comes in the 1860s with the discovery of bacteria.
I suggest you read about the reforms of Jervis in the RN who greatly improved health of sailors and Nightingale whose work on sanitation on British soldiers in India reduced deaths from about 68 to 18 per 100,000.
C Northcote Parkinson, the naval historian first wrote mockingly about the proliferation of academics and their jounals in the 1950s and Eisenhower warned of the danger as well.
In fact, I suggest a main failure of Western Society is the lack of discernment to define what is vital and what is of the highest quality and what is of little importance and mediocre.
In fairness to the Lancet, my understanding was that Wakefield did not disclose the full facts of his work. It is tough for editors to see through subterfuge…
Light airy sleeping quarters? Where did that come from? Any controlled trials? Having said that, you do have a point. However, immunisation has defeated the scourges of smallpox, polio, and diphtheria – don’t dismiss science completely.
My hens and rabbits like a nice dry, well-ventilated sleeping area. They are not bothered about light so much. Humans are much the same, with the addition of a bedside lamp, if they still read actual books that is. Plenty of space, a clean toilet area, a supply of fresh, clean drinking water and nutritious food and you have usually healthy animals. Humans are not so different really.
As well as your last statement, I definitely add homeopathy. It has saved many lives and especially noted before modern medicine. Modern medicine has also evolved, remember the bloodletting days. If you have not tried homeopathy, then the author and others can have no input into whether it is helpful or not. As for trusting the scientists, tread lightly. Many universities and scientists are backed by big corporations and more often than not the pharmaceutical companies. I want a place for ‘natural’ medicine and I fully support it. There is also a place for modern medicine.
If you truly believed that putting on a yellow jumper and shouting “roundabout” five times will cure you of something, we know (scientifically) that it can sometimes help you.
Just because homeopathy is basically nonsense, doesn’t mean it can’t achieve things.
Its gullibility that does the trick – not infinitesimal dilution.
Again, if you haven’t had the good fortune of using homeopathy, your voice is only an opinion.
That was the point! Placebos work 30% of the time.
And what exactly is the placebo effect? What is its scientific basis? If, as you say, it works 30% of the time, that’s pretty impressive. The mind/body connection is clearly powerful, yet I’m not aware of many mainstream scientific studies as to how it operates in practice.
Elizabeth – clearly, you like to think homeopathy is useful. That’s your prerogative. However, it is not reasonable to disseminate fiction on the subject.
Study after study after study has shown it to be at best useless. Your claim that “…homeopathy…has saved many lives…” is simply wrong.
I challenge you to cite a single valid, sound study that shows any useful therapeutic effect from homeopathy. Though, I will save you any further effort – you can’t, because there are none.
Sorry, homeopathy cannot possible work. Placebo perhaps, but the law of physical chemistry are clear. If you take a set number of molecules of any substance,a dn dilute them 1000 times, you are left with maybe a few molecules diluted in water. Any vial of the remedy, would therefore contain maybe 10 molecules in 10 cc of water. Every time you take a drop your odds of getting even one molecule of the remedy is 1/1,000,000 or so. Paying a great deal for spirit water.
As I suspect I’ve told you before, even though you probably encountered it in your extensive Youtube “research”, this film is not a documentary.
What you say is true, about research . It is true that public health measures have done more for longevity than medicine. The Dean of our Medical School told us that on our first day in 1972. There are also many recent articles about the data “errors” in research these days; including falsified data and outright bias. Vaccines are somewhat different, and I believe totally safe. With any vaccine, there are independent oversight committees, and of course the FDA, etc., to be sure that there is safety. Of course, there will always be a few with side effects or bad outcomes, but from a public health standpoint, the good will far outway the bad. The one thing we do not know, is how long the immunity will last, “It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”
” is vital papers produce clear cut results; if not, no publication.”
I’m a scientist.
I think that’s not quite right, it’s important to publish findings that arent so clear. One problem is that there is so much pressure to publish important “breakthrough” findings that everyone tries to dress up everything they do as a breakthrough. Its very useful to publish something that isn’t a major finding as long the publication is clear about what the work shows.
But in general I agree with you. Get rid of about 50%, In my own field there is a lot of crap. It’s very competitive though, and someone has to decide which 50%. If you leave that up to administrators and bureaucrats you might cut the wrong people.
Ann On, I agree. No more than one clerk per faculty. Results are usually not clear because there is not enough data aquired, over enough time to detect subtle relationships.
The best comment on British science on why it won so many Nobels with so little resources was by Huxley ( Nobel for Physiology ) in a Radio 4 programme. Basically he said selection at 11 or 13 years of age, with intensive and rigorous training meant one could obtain a degree at 20 years of age and doctorate at 22 years of age; Bill Penney of IC being a good example. Huxley, said most scientists innovative work was done during their first post doc so the younger the age of person the better.
I would suggest that a country the size of the UK can support 10 to 12 top class science and engineering research institutes/universities. The remainder should combine the best attributes of pre WW2 Polys, Fraunhofer Institutes with Birkbeck College, Council of Engineering Exams( Pt 2 is a degree ) and University of London Extra Mural degrees. Worked for Mitchell- Spitfire;Camm- Hurricane; Chadwick- Lancaster; Hives – Merlin, Wallis – Wellington and Bouncing Bomb. de Havilland – Mosquito.
“Amazing how people are so willing to take a callous disregard to approximately 650,000 people’s lives”.
It’s not callous it is pragmatic. I’m fortunate to be of ‘that happy breed “ of the 650K, and am frankly disgusted that the future of my g-g children has been comprised by the infantile response of HMG to this somewhat feeble virus.
God help us indeed if anything really serious occurs, because it will undoubtedly be ‘game over’.
Have you any idea of the impact on society of letting this ‘feeble’ virus run unchecked? The 650k won’t die in an orderly, controlled manner designed to enable an orderly controlled response.
At the peak many thousands will die each day, far beyond the resources of the state to safely manage the disposal of the dead and far beyond the ability of our health system to allow as pain free and dignified death as possible.
This ‘feeble’ virus doesn’t kill kindly.
In addition to the many thousands dying each day, you’d have tens of thousands needing, but not getting hospital treatment, ensuring that the 650k figure, which is based on people accessing the required treatment, will be greatly exceeded.
And what sort of damage will this cause our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren? What impact do you think the chaos of allowing the virus to run unchecked will have? Do you think schools won’t still be severely impacted? Do you think that seeing 100’s of thousands of people dying miserable deaths and the fear this will cause, won’t have an impact on the mental health of our young?
The issues aren’t simple they are complicated.
You’ve obviously been reading too many John Wyndham novels.
I’m glad you didn’t respond with a ad hominem response.
You sound like a male hysteric, but I was taught not to mock the afflicted, so will stop here.
Do you really not have the capacity to imagine what is would look like, if thousands of people were suffocating in understaffed wards, unable to receive adequate oxygen and certainly unable to get to an ICU bed?
Can you imagine the impact on nurses given a checklist and told that if the patient doesn’t score above 77 out of 100 points, they should just be given opiates and left to die alone?
This is not fiction or melodrama. It is what will happen if a respiratory virus runs rampant.
all wrong. You are missing natural immunity, acquired immunity, virus depletion (usual in all the trillions of viruses known) etc. You are perfect for the job of being Ferguson the dodgy model-maker’s spokesperson.
The virus has been with us for over a year now. The Spanish flu pandemic lasted four years. Yes these things happen, but an awful lot of people can die in the meantime time.
Natural immunity hasn’t stopped over a 120k dying in U.K. alone. Virus depletion doesn’t happen over night, as I’ve explained above. Acquired immunity still allows for an awful lot of people to die first. Spanish flu killed up to a 100 million before it fizzled out.
LOL. It is still with us. Yet life goes on. Who would have thought we’d still be alive 100 years later without wearing masks and hiding in our basement.
the virus has been with us for at least TWO years and will NEVER be gone. Please understand this and you see the reality of SAGE’s ‘expert’ advice.
To bring up the 120K figure shows how little you have read and tried to find out about this whole saga. Deaths FROM Covid probably aren’t even 25% of that figure.
Virus depletion happens almost immediately depending on the host/s.
People will die, they do every day. Do a simple piece of homework: take any year and treat flu in the same way as they have treated COVID (obviously I do mean ‘treat’ in the “handle sense, not the medical care sense)…
“…the 120K figure…Deaths FROM Covid probably aren’t even 25% of that figure.”
What is the basis for that assertion? Is it an imaginary scenario of a healthy person who had covid having a car accident? While that can happen, the covid-death stats are more thoughtfully compiled than that.
Do you really think that the people who put the definitions together, and the doctors certifying death somehow never thought of your idea?
This particular coronavirus is not Spanish flu!
When that science is funded by an industry that makes billions if not trillions you have to be utterly naive to believe that money will not influence results with the science “manipulated” to fit a profitable agenda.
Note how the biggest gains in the past with vaccines were decades before Big pharma became this monster today that funds everybody so nobody dare speaks out. My wife, a retired research nurse, trusts big pharma a massive 0%.
I don’t understand how this is a response to the point I was making? Are you suggesting the big pharma created this crisis?
Did the scientists of old lockdown society in order to achieve these great benefits? I don’t think they did. Did our new totalitarian fascist scientists force people to stay in their homes, force people to wear masks when they are allowed to come out, force vaccinate them at the chance to travel and work, force people out of work and into poverty, fill psychiatric care facilities forcing the unwell into living on the streets? This is your science? This is your great benefit to society? You people who support this nonsense are pure evil.
“It is unscientific to have blind faith in scientists and science which is what is required of the general population in order to accept scientific advice, since they cannot test out scientific theory themselves.”
It is rational to question scientific process – indeed, it is the essence of scientific process to do so. Scientists publish their work, and it is there for all to see and to pick holes in.
Do you think the average person with an IQ of 100 is qualified to pick holes in the scientific data and experiments of epidemiologists, even if they were ever provided with the material or given text books on the subject? I made the point that we accept the findings as true because we know the work of scientists is reviewed by their peers. And we tell ourselves we are accepting it as objective truth because others can review it and
find its flaws and improve it. But that is not the same as being able to judge it ourselves using our own intellect and reason. What we have instead are instincts and prejudice and wisdom and we use these to gamble and place our faith and trust. Honest people know this is what they are doing, deluded people pretend they are using intellect and reason on subjects of which they are entirely ignorant and data they are hopelessly unqualified to question because they are arrogant and wish to show allegiance to their intellectual superiors.
The scientific process is not a giant conspiracy. It is a large number of people who work diligently to enhance knowledge.
If a flawed paper is submitted, usually, the review process kicks it out (though some grievance studies journals are wonderful exceptions, like the “feminist studies” journal publishing the rewritten chapter of Mein Kampf where “white male” was used in place of “Jew”). If not, it will either be picked up later and corrected, or supplanted by new research.
Papers published are frequently overturned later, as new work is done.
Of course I do not expect the local hairdresser to be able to read, interpret and critique the scientific papers that I might read or write. We make judgements – who is the most likely source of good guidance on this?
In the case of (say) vaccines, do we believe the great swathes of scientists, epidemiologists and doctors who study vaccines and their effects? Or do we believe the astrologer who thinks homeopathy is useful?
Why do you imagine people make a choice between scientists and astrologers? The choices people make when they are unable to evaluate information properly are based on their
instincts with regard to whether all the actors in a given chain are to be completely trusted. It is not that we imagine scientists are corrupt or anything extreme, it is simply more rational to believe that other humans are fallible and that their ideas and theories are better when tested over longer periods and subject to greater scrutiny, than when rushed through. These instincts have served their evolutionary purpose very well for millennia. Things designed and invented in a rush where different companies are in competition for huge shares of
public money are worthy of our
scepticism.
“Why do you imagine people make a choice between scientists and astrologers?”
When people break a leg, or develop diabetes, or get cancer, they absolutely make that choice.
Of course humans are fallible. No scientist – or thoughtful advocate for scientific method – would deny that. It is for this reason that we have institutions and methods – to get above the flaws of individuals. It is why pilots and anaesthetists use checklists. It is why we have separation of powers in political systems.
The reasons for believing that vaccines are safe and effective are not derived from a long chain of “Chinese whispers” message passing. It is because we have effective, public and thorough systems, processes, methods and institutions that assure the risk to be considered and vanishingly low.
” It is because we have effective, public and thorough systems, processes, methods and institutions that assure the risk to be considered and vanishingly low. ”
You have an astounding faith in our institutions. No one knows how effective these vaccines will be or how frequently revaccination will be required. But Big Brother is always right!
Do people choose to lockdown, wear masks, lose their jobs, not help care for family members, denied travel, etc? This isn’t science. This is fascist totalitarianism.
Exactly and I am appalled by how few, apparently intelligent, well-educated people enthusiastically support it, and worse put it in moral terms. ‘Short-term pain’ as they tell me ‘is worth it for saving lives’. ‘Covid ueber alles’
“This is fascist totalitarianism”
Godwin alert. Godwin alert.
Now your arrogance is showing. You have no clue about homeopathy which I can determine from your last sentence and if you have never tried it, you have no knowledge to make such a wisecrack.
No, my education is showing. I studied medicine, and have made a career in evidence-based medicine and epidemiology. I happen to have a particular interest in quackery, and have studied the research on homeopathy.
Invented in the late 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann, it has now been studied extensively. It is useless.
We will agree to disagree.
The difference between our positions is that I can point to published and methodologically sound research that has been repeated, again and again, to support my conclusions.
You cannot.
He is absolutely correct to treat homeopathy with the contempt it deserves. There is no credible scientific evidence to support its use in any medical condition unless the cure for the ailment is simply drinking water. There might conceivably be a placebo effect but a lucky charm would work as well and most likely cost less money
Homeopathy never locked people in their homes, forced people to wear masks, forced people out of work, denied people medical care, filled psych care homes to the brim forcing others onto the street, denied families from advocating and subsidizing care for the sick and elderly. Big Pharma did this. Big Pharma is evil. They took away any freedom of choice you had no matter what risk or circumstance you were in. It is a complete joke.
The “lived experience” position does not carry much weight in these debates I’m afraid.
When totalitarian fascists take people’s lives away everybody needs to question everything. This is not a joke. They have restricted freedom of movement, forced people to wear masks, forced people to isolate, not allowed family members to care for their sick, not allowed family members to care for their elderly. God only knows how many of these elderly have died because of poor care, DNR orders, denial of care to free up resources for the younger, etc. We don’t know. It is also a good thing to note that lockdowns have been used for centuries to maintain power. North Korea does that today. People aren’t allowed freedom of travel. This was done in the Soviet Union for decades also. Less know is the Edo era of Japan 1600-1867 where people were only allowed to stay in their own towns. They could only travel to get rare resources with permission from the local lords. The lords would travel once every 2 years to Tokyo to show their loyalty to the Shogun. The emphasis was on order and control. Knowing your place and limiting use of resources. The arrival of US naval steam ships in 1853 slowly ended this practice as Japan realized the outside threat it was facing. Korea largely from 1616-1853 was the same way, Vietnam and Cambodia from 1975 until the early 90s when trade with the US opened those societies up again. Virtually all countries in the entire world were this way during World War 2. Largely only militaries traveled. Is this virus related or is this World War 3? How about that for a conspiracy theory? Reading about the “Great Reset” and the new “climate change caused pandemic era”. I have little doubt this isn’t WW3. They are forcing our hands. For our own good of course. This isn’t going away. They keep telling you that but you don’t want to believe your own ears. Even with the vaccine they are telling you restrictions will remain in place. This is for your own good of course. Welcome to new normal. Enjoy the lockdown era. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31012-6.pdf
You are mistaken about the polio vaccine.
https://fullfact.org/online/gates-polio-vaccine/
I don’t know about Gates, but I do recall as a child a polio vaccine which gave a lot of children polio. My parents refused the vaccine for me and my siblings on that basis.
You are correct. The oral polio vaccine was not perfect since it was a live attenuated vaccine. When we stopped using it, it was the only cause of polio in the US. Fortunately, the cases where not huge, and it is not used anymore. We are back to the killed injection form.
My sentiments exactly… very well said, thank you.
Isn’t that a rather terrible and callous and highly disrespectful thing to say: it only kills 1% and mostly only older people! In addition, you are dismissing the many who face long Covid and those who spend weeks in hospital!
as for blind faith, I am pretty sure you put your personal blind faith in the construction and engineering industries , or do you refuse to cross a new bridge, enter a new office block, get on a new bus, train, ship etc etc
it may be terrible and callous, but life is full of malicious truths. The victims ARE mostly elderly and people with other health issues. Here we are in an article about science and the covid debate has been driven by the most unscientific claim going, that the virus is an existential threat to society. No, it’s not. It is potentially harsh for a clearly defined set of people.
As someone in that “vulnerable” (how I hate that word) age group, let me say I have had a good life and I don’t expect younger generations to sacrifice their economic prospects and social life for the likes of me. The aged can adapt their lives better to a virus containment strategy than the young who have to go to work.
Absolutely correct.
As WSC put it so eloquently, “Scientists should be on hand not on top”.
Wasn’t WSC’ comment: “Scientists should be on tap, not on top”? Either way, it is true. Politicians have the responsibility to put the scientific advice in context and gauge the impact of any decisions across society – economy, education, the people being treated for non-COVID problems, etc.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this Alison. I was too shocked at Unherd publishing this ill-informed bilge to muster up the energy. Lockdown sceptics appear to be acceptable, Covid vaccine sceptics not so.
Absolutely. Eugenics was accepted and mainstream science for a long time. Scientists must always be questioned, both scientifically and spiritually.
I 100% agree with you Alison. I find this article badly thought out and typically dismissive of those intelligent people who fail to fall into line with the herd. How ironic that this article is written in ‘unherd’. Let me remind you of the opioid crisis that has killed thousands and continues to kill thousands, created by pharmaceuticals who peddle them as ‘safe and effective’. Should we blindly trust that other medications they produce are as safe as these? I think not and I shall not. I am not a green hippy as you so disparagingly call those who question one version of science. There are many doctors and scientists who are warning against taking these new experimental medicines (they are not vaccines in the traditional sense of the word.) They are a new technology that has been previously untried in a human population. Please Unherd un-herd yourselves and look at this subject in greater depth. Most of those who urge caution have been deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter so you will have to go to other places to find the information like Telegram. See what Dr.Mercola, Dr.Tenpenny, Dr Kelly Brogan, Dr.Coleman have to say before you right any dissenters off as hippy environmentalists. In a week when we are grieving for the loss of yet another young British woman and a week when police have behaved unfairly to women at peaceful vigils, I ask you to google vaccine damage and see what many mothers say about the vaccine damage that their children have sustained. Most of the time they are not believed by their doctors and their concerns are pushed under the carpet. Another example of harmful patriarchy in our society. Why should mothers be disbelieved? Because they are women? The HPV vaccine scandal in Ireland is a good place to start. Un-herd yourself from the view that science is science and to question it make you stupid or uneducated. The reverse that is true.
Absolutely well written!
I have had homeopathic treatments since 1998 or so. Something they have seemed efficacious and sometimes not. Once I hurt my back and was in pain until a homeopath gave me arnica which made me feel better. I have refused the covid vaccine because I too find it is too fast food, not tested enough and also because I have not been living in fear this last year as so many people appear to be.When I see headlines boasting that every adult Briton will be vaccinated by July. I am suspicious rather than reassured. If I am forced to have the vaccine, I should consult an homeopath in the hope of being given something that would mitigate any possible noxious elements in this too-quickly cooked up potion. I may had that I am a doubter about the Climate Change hysteria and not in any way a Green tho’ I have worn green on occasion.
I used arnica during childbirth. That is the only time I have used homeopathic medicines but digitalis is used by regular doctors so I think it is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I can’t imagine having homeopathy as my first call but wouldn’t reject it if everything else had failed.
Very true. I have declined the vaccine, not because I am against vaccinations in principle, but because I don’t believe it has been sufficiently tested and the so-called experts don’t know whether the dose is correct, whether a second vaccination is necessary, or when, or whether it prevents transmission. I am not volunteering to be a guinea pig. If I lived in an area of high infections or deaths then my attitude might be different – the vaccine risk might be less than the coronavirus risk – but the virus is scarcer than hen’s teeth in my region and the risks from my decision are minimal. I am waiting until the scientists understand their vaccine better.
Is this irrational or anti-science? Am I to be grouped in with the irrational Greens? However, I probably do have some common political thinking with the Reform Party since I am one of the lepers that voted for Brexit. And that probably is the key. Some of us can think for ourselves. We are not led by vacuous NHS and Government slogans. And those of us that have studied some science and been closely involved with policy development and decision-making at government level know how bias and political expediency creep in at every level.
Your militant ignorance is on display
You’ve got this back to front, Alison. The vaccines have been exhaustively tested using randomised double-blind trials. The science of climate change, or perhaps more accurately, the policy proposals that have flowed from the science, have not been tested at all. Instead they have been based on worst-case projections of unvalidated models, claiming to be able to predict the planetary climate decades hence.
One might have thought, given that modelling has been the least successful arm of science in the Covid crisis, that climate alarmists would be having second thoughts on the degree to which climate models can be trusted. But apparently not: it’s not really about “the science”, it’s really a new religion.
You write, of the public, ” they cannot test out scientific theory themselves, “and later, “we must weigh up evidence and advice as we see fit.” These seem contradictory. How do those who cannot test out scientific theory weigh up the evidence in any meaningful way?
It is the blind faith which is so troubling. Blind faith in any system is dangerous and never more so than when it is an industry whose focus is profit and power.
Science-medicine gets a lot wrong and you only have to read its history to know that. The tragedy of getting the vaccine theory wrong is that we will have sacrificed generations of children in the name of an unnecessary, dangerous and poorly tested medical treatment.
No system is perfect, ever, and when those who ask valid questions are forcibly silenced, it is certain, the system being so ‘protected’ will become increasingly imperfect and increasingly dangerous.
It beggars belief that anyone could possibly believe a human being needs to be vaccinated dozens of times in the first five years of life, and beyond, in order to survive. It is utterly ridiculous.
What makes it even more ridiculous is that vaccination involves a process of confusing, tricking, manipulating immune function to act unnaturally, i.e. react to a non-threat. How can that ever lead to healthy or robust immune function?
This vaccine unlike most other vaccines is experimental, both in its testing regime and it’s rDNA make up. and unlike others it is in reality being tested on humans not animals! I have never refused any previous vaccine but I do have real concerns regarding this one for various reasons, as stated by many other who have commented! The use of the term ‘antivaxer’ like other such ‘anti’ labels is lazy journalism!
There’s this weird thing around the ‘science’ as if you are in any way sceptical of its conclusions then you must be some sort of flat earther to be pitied. Resolutely in denial of the unassailable, generally accepted facts.
‘Science’ so obviously is rarely if ever the last word on anything. Opinions differ, often wildly, within the scientific fields themselves hence the reason that scientific papers are put forward for peer review where methodologies and conclusions can be constantly scrutinized and rightly questioned.
Can we please get over this arrogant, fallacious mindset referenced in this article above that there must be one true, unshakable answer to everything and to begin to even question current wisdom isn’t an act driven by intellectual curiosity and to further inform debate, but an inciteful, dangerous act driven by wilful ignorance.
“Can we please get over this arrogant, fallacious mindset referenced in this article above that there must be one true, unshakable answer to everything?”
Nobody with the slightest grasp of scientific process has that mindset. But, there are good and bad reasons for disputing any given ‘scientific’ conclusion. Disputing a scientific conclusion because it represents Jewish or White science is ignorant and dangerous. Disputing a conclusion because you argue that the wrong statistical method was used, or because the conclusion drawn fails to account for important and relevant data is the very essence of scientific method.
We also have to make rational choices as to where to look for answers, given that neither time nor resources is limitless. There is, for example, no longer any excuse for wasting money investigating the nonsense that is homeopathy. We know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that it is an ineffective therapeutic approach.
Nobody with the slightest grasp of scientific process has that mindset.
While that may be true, those with the biggest megaphones – the politicians, the activists, and the media – very much have that mindset. They have elevated science to religion and behave much like the most frothing of zealots – thou shalt not question the high priests in the white coats, skepticism is tantamount to heresy, and so forth.
Again Joe, you are so mistaken. But you have made up your ‘scientific’ mind. Just because you don’t understand it, doesn’t make it less real or helpful. I have seen people like you over the years and then when they had the good fortune to use homeopathy, had to swallow their words. If you don’t want to use it, leave it to those who do.
I have never tried cyanide either. I believe the research on cyanide to be as valid as the research on homeopathy.
To be clear: I wish you no harm, so just because you are willing to dismiss the evidence and use homeopathy, please do not similarly dismiss the science on cyanide. It interferes with respiration in a really bad way. Unlike homeopathy, it has real biological effects.
I think you’re the one dismissing the evidence here!
As I have said elsewhere in this “discussion,” I am completely open-minded about the subject. If you can point me to good evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy, I will happily reconsider.
Note that “I took it once for my really bad cold” or “it cured my daughter’s allergies” is not “good evidence”.
If you dilute cyanide enough, you get bitter almonds. My Mum’s jam had a little bit of it and I quite enjoy the taste.
Homeopathy can at best only have a placebo effect, and anything can serve as a placebo if you believe in it. Voodoo is probably the most powerful placebo. Have you tried it? I suggest you do, it will work much better than homeopathy.
Again, if you have had the good fortune of successful homeopathic treatment, you would come to see the validity of it. I am not here to convince you. I am telling you my experience and those around me. You do not need to be a bully about your opinion. Do as you like but I for one, love homeopathy and will continue to ‘trust’ it.
Can you explain, in scientific terms, exactly how the ‘placebo effect’ works?
It would be a waste of money to further investigate the efficacy of homeopathy using the methods that are currently employed. But I have seen homeopathy produce excellent breakthrough results time after time after time, and have benefited myself very significantly on several occasions. The royal family swear by it, for instance. If you wish to denounce all the cured patients produced by its effects throughout many decades as silly idiots, that is up to you, but it is a conclusion which sounds extremely bigoted to me. Beyond all reasonable doubt, homeopathy is a highly effective therapeutic approach. The fact that the science employed to investigate it says it isn’t is not due to any defect in science, but to the limits of our own knowledge and grasp of science. The science is there, because the reality is there. One day, we will understand how the science behind it works.
“Beyond all reasonable doubt, homeopathy is a highly effective therapeutic approach.”
With all due respect, this is nonsense. The utter failure of any clinical trial ever to show effectiveness is a very good basis for reasonable doubt.
“The fact that the science employed to investigate it says it isn’t is not due to any defect in science, but to the limits of our own knowledge and grasp of science. The science is there, because the reality is there.”
Utter rubbish. Clinical trials do not require there to be an associated understanding of therapeutic mechanism. You can do a clinical trial on “Potion A”, where the ingredients are completely unknown, and where there is not the slightest available science on proposed biological mechanisms involved (in principle, though it is not really sound to do so).
We’ve done the research. Over and over again. It is a waste of resources to keep looking at this question. Homeopathy has no therapeutic value. Full stop. It is sheer snake-oil, quackery, bunk, nonsense.
‘It is hardly surprising there was most hesitancy among supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown Reform Party founded by Nigel Farage.’
I did not read further than this. The severity and length of the lockdowns have been a demented, power-crazed response to a virus that is of no danger to any healthy person below the age of 70. As countries/states like Sweden, Florida and the Dakotas have demonstrated, those places that did not lockdown often experience lower death rates than those that did. This is not surprising given that the virus spreads most effectively in enclosed spaces such as homes and apartments.
As for the Reform Party, they are anything but antediluvian. In fact, they are almost certainly the most forward looking option available, not least because they want to reform the House of Lords, abolish the BBC license fee, strengthen animal health standards, and further distance the UK from the undemocratic and protectionist EU.
me neither!
Death rate in Sweden: 1,296 per million. In Denmark: 412. In Norway: 117. So Sweden has a higher death rate than its neighbours (which are reasonable comparisons, as they have similar climates, health systems, populations, …)
It seems to me that you have not got your facts right.
Take the 3 or 5 year average of those countries. Sweden in 2019 had very low death figures, look up the ‘dry tinder’ papers
There’s a bit of a conflict between this and Ian Birrell’s excellent work on the Covid lab leak hypothesis, which shows a deep resistance among the leaders of the scientific community and media to an open investigation into the origins of Covid. I’m not anti-vax, but we need to recognise that people sometimes have good reason to be sceptical about what scientists tell us, and, sadly, this has never been more true than now.
Also, he’s right to point the finger at crackpot beliefs in the Green Party, but won’t extend this to their uncritical embrace of every kind of unscientific gender identity twaddle. He won’t criticise this because, unfortunately, he goes along with it himself.
“a successful vaccination policy — and escape from this dystopian nightmare — relies on mass inoculation”
Does it? Where’s the science to support this statement? If those who are at high risk of adverse outcomes from Covid are inoculated, why is it necessary to inoculate healthy children and young people when they are overwhelmingly unaffected by Covid?
“These are the sort of people fixated by “natural” remedies”
Like healthy lifestyle and good food for example? Apart from age, adverse Covid outcomes are particularly associated with Western lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes. Good health does not come from the end of a needle. The most significant improvements to health over the decades have come from improvements to living conditions including shelter and reduced overcrowding, easy access to clean water, sewage and waste management, good food, etc. While the West and those with power are pushing for the remedy of mass Covid inoculation of the world, aid is being cut to the poorest countries. The approach of the West is both selfish and bordering on obscene.
“supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown”
Lockdowns are not based on science. It is for this reason, on 13 March 2020, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, warned against lockdown stating that “all the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that, when you release it, then it all comes back again. So, the other part of this is to make sure that we don’t end up with a sudden peak again in the Winter which is even larger and causes even more problems”. How prophetic he was. Lockdown has been extremely costly and those costs will continue to rise into the future, and as Dr John Lee keeps reminding us: “you don’t improve the health of a nation by making it poorer”.
Unfortunately, the only thing I’ve got from this article was an insight into Ian Birrell’s own biases and antediluvian ideas.
Although hygiene and better nutrition have played a large part in reducing mortality, it would be a mistake to ignore the effects of immunisations against diseases like polio, smallpox and diphtheria. The reason for the lockdowns was not to stop the epidemic, but to ‘flatten the curve’ and ensure that hospitals were not overwhelmed. In the absence of immunisation, you are correct that all that the lockdowns would achieve is prolong the epidemic by giving us several waves. It is therefore not correct to say that the lockdowns are not based on science.
I agree. The people who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating protection of the vulnerable but not total lockdown, were for the most part extremely well qualified to defend their ‘antediluvian’ view.
Yep, as Sir Patrick Vallance said on 13 March 2020: “we’ve got a panel of world leading scientists” advising Gov’t and all agree that “we must protect the elderly and vulnerable” and aim “not to get rid of it completely, which you can’t do anyway” but “allow enough of us, who are going to get mild illness, to become immune to this”. His comments were based on science, but there was uproar in MSM leading to the advice becoming politically unacceptable and ever since then ‘the science’ has followed the politics.
Of course we immunize children against the flu! Where did this come from?
Ha,ha, I’m showing my age – duly edited
Yes, I would much prefer that the article be re-titled ‘The Dangerous Naivety of Ian Birrell’, although I fear that the mentality of it expresses nothing so innocent as naivety. As for the self-interest of the West, it’s worth examining the huge personal financial benefit that will accrue to Hancock et al from the vaccines due to business interests.
Excellent and measured response Robin. I was shocked at the bigotry and invective of Birrel’s piece. It struck me as a misinformed and emotionally biased diatribe. It was poorly written too. I am used to reading Unherd articles that I don’t agree with, and welcome the opportunity to test and challenge my own thinking. But this piece was no better than a rant. I’m disappointed in Unherd for letting it through.
Sweden didn’t lock down and it still came back.
The most dangerous words in the English language are “the science is settled”. It has been used for years by the greens to stop debate and silence alternative views.
Unfortunately the greens have taken this process into other areas such as power generation, GM crops and now vaccines because they believe they have a monopoly on which scientific research is defined as “the view”. Until greens enter into the mainstream of political debate and accept nothing is ever truly “settled” then they will only ever remain on the fringe of politics.
Indeed, certainly any ‘scientist’ who has anything to do with those words is not a scientist at all.
No. The scepticism is about Scientists. Not science. Scientists are human with human biases egos and frailties. There are countless examples of where scientists have been co-opted by authoritarian regimes and wealthy business interests to promote an agenda.
It is the height of scientific maturity not to trust this vaccine or the motives of those promoting it. I am a research scientist with three advanced degrees, have never been a hippy (while being an adolescent in the 60’s and 70’s) or an enthusiast for environmentalism, and a conservative from age 12. I fully support those who for reasons other than mine distrust the Covid vaccines and hope they will find the strength to keep resisting.
Why?
because there is no evidence they work yet! Phase 3 trials are still a year from full results and what we are seeing is in reality a live challenge trial with millions of willing
victimsExactly, plus all the producers have agreed immunity from liability with our governments (how that could possibly be binding on us is a mystery) so that we must basically sue our governments in case of adverse health effects or death caused by the vaccine down the line (and those claims are subject to a maximum amount). Basically that means we will need to sue the IRS (i.e. ourselves and our children) in case the collective gamble on these vaccines turns out to be a colossal mistake. The profits have been privatized (Big Pharma wins) and the losses socialized (the community bleeds).
If people do not want to get vaccines, that is fine. We will get to herd immunity as those people continue to get infected and are immune anyway.
I make this point more generally with no particular axe to grind in either case, but surely this article indirectly but logically posits the uncomfortable question that how can these antivaxxer Greens be unswervingly ‘right’ about the irrefutable science that supports climate change/anti-nuclear power/anti-GM foods, but so completely wrong about the irrefutable science that apparently supports the mass deployment of the covid vaccine?
This is where the whole ‘science’ argument, much like the expert argument, breaks down as if there is somehow a polarised, contradictory dynamic at play here and that these Green antivaxxers/climate change advocates are choosing to believe and use the ‘evidence based’ science that suits their own beliefs as appropriate and cheerfully discarding it when it doesn’t.
If nothing else it goes to prove the one thing that I’ve long believed, ultimately, nobody really knows anything.
nobody really knows anything. which leads to the author pounding the table with the sophomoric “anti-vaxxers” pejorative as if skepticism is now a thought crime.
You mean it isn’t?
Or that all knowledge is relative to ones status, income and unconscious prejudices.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.- Upton Sinclair
Comes to mind, suitably re-arranged to suit the argument debated.
I think the key line in this piece may be ‘admitted using homeopathy’. As if someone were admitting to a drug problem or some sexual deviance. This is a screed, not an argument, built on the assumption that ‘science’ is a neutral way of distilling truth, ignoring the reality that scientism, not science, is the problem here, equating capitalism with an unequestioned ‘progress’ and effectively ignoring the smart green critiques of that progress which have been written and propounded for fifty years.
Why would people not be concerned or cautious about a vaccine which has been developed in record time by companies with a long record of dishonest conduct, and since when has uncomplicated commitment to the demands of governments and drugs companies been the hallmark of grown up, ‘rational’ politics? The curious effect of this piece is that it sounds like an argument for blindly trusting authority.
As for ‘the science’ – well, as people below have pointed out, people tend to pick and choose their scientific findings depending on their cultural prejudices. Science is just a method for examining how some things work, not a guide to how to live, or what values a society should be based on. The modern worship of ‘the science’ is a sign of a culture that is empty of anything deeper to base its values on.
Using homeopathy is an indicator that you do not care about the fact (FACT) that the potion you have chosen to swallow is known (KNOWN) to be useless.
Homeopathy is amazing Joe – open up your mind.
Oh, it is open – just not so much that my brains fell out.
I can tell you – in all open-mindedness – what it would take to persuade me that homeopathy is effective. A good, decent-sized randomised double-blind controlled trial.
Are you open-minded enough to tell us what would dissuade you of its utility?
I have witnessed first hand of homeopathy’s success.
I look forward to seeing your research published. If it is, I will consider re-evaluating my position. But using homeopathy to treat a sore throat that has been present for 4 days already doesn’t count.
To die with covid or from a covid vaccine? I read: Norway investigates 23 deaths in frail elderly patients after vaccination. The media-science propaganda though.. goes on and plays with words such as that: there is no evidence that the vaccine caused these deaths, covid vaccines are safe etc.. Is not the same class who also deny the fact that most died with covid and not from covid? And what is the evidence that the deaths assigned to covid is true? Is it not the same class when data is handy to them.. then data is good but is bad once otherwise, and then again playing with words and even manipulate facts and data? The question to be yet answered is: has there been a pandemic at all? So.. what is more dangerous? Corona or vaccines? As for the ‘institutions shape lives’.. that is one more lie. We shape life and the world. If it looks otherwise, it is because they have snatched our free will, freedoms and authorship of all we have created in our thousands of years journey. There is indeed a shift, people are awakening and realizing of the theft of all that belongs to us. And by no means is ‘depressing’ but the spark for celebration and liberation. What corona is after all? An eye opener! ..We can see the enemies. Vaccines is a weapon: chains-sword-bullets & bombs- TV & mobile phones-Vaccination… For how long? How many vaccines?.. who can imagine what is next? Why my lifelong commitment to keep myself healthy, could ever be compromised with shots of dirt!!.. there is no longer distinction between science and dogma.. we see the collapse of the science metanarrative in front of our very eyes..the political one is happening for sometime and the next collapse will be that we know as education. If one only sees what is happening in the schools.. no need to be a prophet. Finally, why there is so much need to give names to anyone who disagrees with you?.. green hippies.. covidiots..? why I only feel sorry in my heart, for those align their lives with the propaganda.. what sort of life is this?
Great post! Every word true. The vaccine should be given to the old and the vulnerable, if they want it. As you say, a whole bunch of elderly Norwegians died very shortly after receiving it, so even the old might choose to forgo it.
Given the age and frailty of most vaccinees, a substantial number will be expected to die at any time. The question is are more than expected dying? The answer appears to be no.
You nailed it perfectly. To see the back and forth talk of public health, the absolute avoidance of real journalism in the mainstream media, the suppressing of things that can help you potentially ward off this virus or healing you when you do get it, watching the politicians pander for votes (they are thinking ahead to election) etc etc. The list goes on as to why we shouldn’t blindly trust them which include the scientists and doctors. Not all are created equal. And there are many doctors and scientists all over the world saying, the brakes should be heavily applied in regard to these experimental jabs.
One of the features of this vaccine campaign is that there is a coercive element behind it. I think it’s putting a lot of people off. A deep failing of mine is that if I feel pressured into doing something, I will dig my heels in and do the exact opposite. I’ve discovered this trait to be both a blessing and a curse. I hate the moralistic messaging of the media, I distrust the medical establishment, I have faith in my own abilities.
At the end of the day, I would rather suffer the consequences of my own actions than someone else’s.
It isn’t a failing, it’s a failing to be a sheep
The trouble is Belief.
To believe in something is to say it is true beyond any doubt. That makes you a priest, or a convert. To know something can only ever be true ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ makes you a reasonable person, or a Scientist.
Always beware the ‘true believers’ they gave up reason and doubt because it is easier that way.
There seems an oxymoronic quality in your comment, an either/or element with a hard line between you and the simple-minded villagers. You might consider that we are all born little, godless communists awaiting domestication, housebreaking, and humanization through the administration of traditional family values. This latter expression, TFV, is viewed by many, if not you, as a transgenerational curse upon the world, the cause of deep-seated psychological problems, poverty, war, even head lice in some conversations. The problem is that families aren’t capable of reasoning with children for the lack of juvenile gray matter, and without an external source of moral authoirty, such as in a loving deity that admonishes our animal (sinful) nature. TFV is the foundation of human civilization. Science is the foundation of cultural Marxism, lowercase and uppercase Communism, Naziism, and other tyrannies devoid of a culturally based moral code that is not governmental, but in the ancestral heritage of each, individual family. Thus sayeth the Founders, the Framers, of the United States Constitution ©1791. All rights reserved.
To believe something is to say it is true beyond reasonable doubt. It is not reasonable to believe that the rising of the sun tomorrow morning is just as unlikely as likely. This does not push me into the realm of priesthood.
It is reasonable to believe that for that kind of bacterial infection, this kind of antibiotic is more likely than not to be effective. It is not reasonable to believe that reiki will cure bone cancer.
We should also take account of the fundamental scientific notion that a particular theory is the best we have for now, even though we know it to be incomplete, and that we know where it breaks down. A good example is Newtonian mechanics.
Much as it pains me to cite to a Guardian article, I think it might benefit anti-vaxxers (Green or otherwise) to read this article about the last person in the US still kept alive by an iron lung because of childhood polio. He is now in his seventies and provides some needed insight into life before polio vaccines were developed.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/26/last-iron-lung-paul-alexander-polio-coronavirus
Thanks for that – it’s great article, and a reminder of what the G used to be. Every now and then they still print a really good article, truthful & thought-provoking.
The one thing missing from the Greens, Socialist Worker, BLM and many others is pragmatism. What is the perfect human being, human response, course of action? The reality is that we all assess situations and our feelings before deciding what we should do, whether it be right or wrong. Organisations focusing on limited ideas or actions will never get anywhere, everything is interrelated. As for the covid vaccine, I am no supporter of the draconian restrictions we have faced. In many cases these have been inhumane and deeply damaging eg expectant mothers being forced to give birth without their partners, elderly abandoned in care homes and kept apart from loved ones, relatives dying alone in hospitals, young people being completely socially isolated. The effects of these will be felt for years in terms of mental health and general wellbeing. To be pragmatic, if the way out of this is the rapidly developed vaccine then so be it. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. Sometimes we must trust. Scientists throughout the world have worked on these vaccines, millions have already been vaccinated. They have no interest in killing us all. As with every intervention some will have side effects (as I did) and some may die. This is what being human is all about.
I’m not interested in the vaccine argument right now. What I’m interested in is why passionate vaccine man is putting his pro vaccine career/reputation at risk by issuing a warning about the current vaccine plan….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZxiNxYLpc&t=2128s
“Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research.
Coordinated Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation’s Ebola Vaccine Program and contributed to the implementation of an integrated vaccine work plan in collaboration with Global Health Partners (WHO, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CDC, UNICEF), regulators (FDA) and vaccine manufacturers to enable timely deployment or stockpiling of Ebola vaccine candidates.
Highlighting the principle of using a prophylactic vaccine in the midst of a pandemic. Likely to create more more viral variants in the process.”
Sucharit Bhakdi raised similar concerns.
I have watched his interview. If he is scared, we should all be taking notes.
I was waiting for someone to mention this. A truly terrifying observation about the dangers of these vaccines from a mainstream vaccine expert with decades of international experience.
Yes, very disturbing interview considering Bossche’s credentials. What I found even more disturbing though was his fearful expression as he made his closing comments. This was clearly genuine. If this man is scared, then for God’s sake we need to take notice.
Dear Ian,
Your article is well written and seems to be on the side of science, or at least what science should be: “pragmatic, respectful of life”.
However, it lacks a massive amount of exploration and up to date scientific data. Your opinions are from the past.
The cream of the scientists are coming to the conclusion that, as well said by Zach Bush MD, called by many the Einstein of our generation:
“We need to shift our vision to a new scientific paradigm in which we are in constant relationship with the microbiome at every level. (…/…). We must trust that the microbiome makes us more resilient, intelligent and more adaptive. If not, we need to build bigger and bigger nuclear weapons to protect us from the microbiome until we will have eradicate all life on Earth. That is what “we” are doing right now.”
Take the time to watch this presentation:
https://zachbushmd.com/what-happened-last-year-replay/
It’s 3 hours. The best investment for anybody who writes about science, nature and life.
Take care. Kind regards,
We in the US have something called The Bill of Rights which guarantees us freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. For the past year our government has shelved those rights in favor of frantic whinings from a slew of ‘scientists’ eager to conquer the populace with lock-downs, masks, isolation, and mindless destruction of livelihoods. Out of mindless fear our government has gone along with every new ‘scientific’ diktat. But, in the meantime, the statistics – see Worldometers – continued to show a static 3% dead either from, or with, Covid. The Great Barrington Declaration, an ode to rationality in these times of insanity, was ignored. (read it, if you haven’t already) And then yesterday news was released that statistics show Covid death rates in the severely locked down states don’t vary much from the rates in the barely locked down states. No surprise.
The author obviously has blind trust in authority and the “science” and is therefore uninformed. I recommend he reads the recently published Virus Mania for an alternative view. Even in 1918 there were people who refused to be vaccinated and survived. I wonder what their politics were?
Yes, it is astonishing that this writer, who has now spent some decades witnessing and writing about authority’s disastrous polices and their consequences, around the world, can still have so much faith in any form of authority.
There were no Vaccines for the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Flu. Therefore nobody refused a vaccine, and yes many people survived. There is no logical point being made here.
Apologies I could have been more clear on the vaccination front but my main point was why should this matter be politicised. Also American and presumably all other soldiers in World War 1 were given live smallpox and whole cell typhoid inoculations as well as therapeutic tetanus and diphtheria antitoxins. The incidence of disease has been reported to be seven times higher among vaccinated soldiers (young & healthy) than among the unvaccinated civilians. Therefore the question I am asking myself is apart from recognised short term side effects do vaccines suppress the immune system and if so for how long and what are the consequences. Is that an unreasonable question to be asking?
Quite the contrary, vaccines stimulate the immune system, selectively. Just like exposure to any antigen, the body sees the intruder, and creates immunity. That is the purpose, whether you are exposed playing in the dirt, or putting your finger in your own nose. The old live vaccines were bad actors, as some people’s immune system could not fight off the live virus. The CV vaccine does not even have a remote possibility of creating the infection
Most people were not sceptical of vaccines until they ramped them up from 2-3 at older ages in the early Seventies to more than 50 vaccinations in the first five years of life, beginning within hours of birth, for a disease common to prostitutes and drug addicts, if not in utero.
And only a fool would not question the Covid vaccines and genetic treatments given how unnecessary they are, for a virus which is no threat to the vast majority and how rushed, poorly tested and experimental they are.
The greater the pressure the greater the resistance. The more force used in the name of vaccines the more cult-like they appear, particularly when those who question anything about them, regardless of how well qualified they are in science or medicine, are pilloried and burned at metaphorical stakes. That bothers many people more than any vaccine risk.
And the more the vaccine cult pushes the public, the more people ask questions and it is not hard to find out that historical facts make it very clear that, by the time vaccines appeared they were not needed.
Anyone bothering to find out how vaccines are made, what they contain and what they are designed to do would not drink the stuff, let alone allow it to be injected into their body or that of their child.
In the max-vax age people have poorer health than ever before and worse in children. And yet, the powers that be refuse to do the one study which could settle this matter – looking at health and disease rates in fully, partially and non-vaccinated children.
All of which makes people rightly suspicious.
Climate change has become the third most important issue in this country after health and the economy as Brexit fades in importance,
What a fascinating statement. This board is full of commentary critical of the NHS. Not that many people want the govt meddling with the economy; we’ve seen how the lockdown mandates have impacted. Yet, I’m to believe that the same govt struggling with the other two issues is the only remedy for climate? No; that fails the logic test on a massive scale. Agencies that can barely manage potholes and have made a hash of public education do not need even more power than they already have.
It is not science it is technology and it could go wrong. This lot of products using entirely new techniques, in development less than a year and then rolled out for the entire population pose a particular risk. But what will really defy science and ensure their lack of safety is gaslighting criticism of them, or their possible victims – a priori view that that they are always alright. Characterising vaccine critics as hippies or something is absurd too – most often they are just the witnesses to the damage.
Like others here I am grateful to Ian Birrell for much of his reporting but this is a serious blind spot.
Thats not quite right, although the reality is even less appealing, and is one of the reason I am CV “vaccine” hesitant. The technique has been tried out over at least 10 years, and maybe more (not certain about the timeline).Every time it has been tried ALL the animals subjects have died on exposure to the wild virus the technique was designed for. They claim that they’ve got it right this time – but we won’t know this for some time to come – probably this coming winter.
Yes, that is also an issue but I am talking about the gene technologies.
There are still a few die-hards willing to serve science with rigour and falsification within the Mertonian norms. However the broad mass of western science is hostage to the anti-scientific extremism of the left, and the green movement is at the extreme end of that. The voices of Finnish and Italian climate scientists who say we cannot predict the weather but the record shows no significant waring in the last 200 years are supressed. The fake data and ad-hominen attacks of climate activists like Michael Mann are endorsed by scientifically illiterate politicos and tech sales men. So for the moment dangerous disregard for testable knowledge is the norm. Once this mania causes the inevitable mass casualties questions will be asked and we’ll all get back on the cautionary principle bandwagon – until the next time.
There is too much of an negative tone with the words “anti-vaxxer,” I prefer “pro-plaguer.”
The white coats where the ones pushing eugenics and lobotomies back in the day.
That’s what happens when you mindlessly “have faith in science” and don’t question them.
Science in modern times has become more about adherence to dogma than actual evidence.
The white coats are the new clergy.
Welcome to the new secular inquisition.
science denier = heathen
fringe theory = heresy
alternative treatment = witchcraft
skepticism = blasphemy
vaccination = baptism
asymptomatic transmission = original sin
social distancing and masks = penence
Bill Gates = messiah
Fauci, Ferguson, Birx, Tedros = the apostles
WHO = the church
Well said Samir. 🙂
Ian…what science? Please, by all means, provide some links to the ‘science’ you seem to hold so dear while using that ‘science’ to excoriate those who disagree with you. You have an opinion…and, without providing a shred of actual scientific evidence, that’s all you have. So, please, continue your chatterbox….you are unconvincing in the highest degree. I’m from across the pond in the former colonies so I don’t know what euphemism is in the UK, but over here I would just give my own unscientific opinion…you are full of it.
Are these the same scientists who said that face masks were useless until politicians changed their minds for them? The same ones who then said they had conspired to keep the mask efficacy secret to save on PPE?
People in the US frequently refer to an old Eisenhower speech warning of the military-industrial complex. They tend to leave out a second warning – that of a nexus between scientific research and govt funding. Any industry-funded project can expect to be called out for being, well, industry-funded, but for some reason, those same skeptics see no similarity in research that is govt-funded.
I am reassured that many Greens question vaccines. After all they look for less damaging and more sustainable ways of managing the Earth. Keeping our body’s immune system naturally healthy, I would suggest, goes along with keeping the planet’s ecosystem healthy.
The question is not why ‘greens’ may be more sceptical of taking a jab for Covid-19, but why anybody would take an experimental vaccine for a disease with a global IFR of 0.2-0.3% a similar lethality to Influenza?
I think this article is misstating lots of issues, and severely conflating others.
“Such skepticism is another depressing indication of the breakdown in trust between citizens and the institutions that shape lives.”
Skepticism is the only scientific reaction to all of the deferral to authority and “experts” that we are seeing. Most “institutions that shape lives” do so out of the profit motive. Most scientists I know that work for Unilever or GSK for example, will never wear deodorant, or allow their children to wear deodorant (because they specifically work with links to cancer which are very real and significant). Are they conspiracy theorists or just insightful practitioners? Likewise, I know one scientist who’s sole work for Novavax on the Covid19 vaccine, was to show due diligence for the government audits, regarding a required compound that *everybody* in the industry knows for a fact, cannot be removed from the human body, once it has been injected. There has been no longitudinal study regarding the safety of this compound, as it only has been an ingredient in the new mRNA vaccine types. He and his family will not be getting the vaccine *ever*. Is he a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer, or an insightful insider?
Most of the parents in our homeschool group, are either teachers, ex-teachers, or children of teachers. Why do you believe that is?
I can tell you as a tech worker in the mobile phone and RF space, when leaving companies at which I’ve worked extensively on proprietary and classified technology specs often shared between companies under non-disclosure agreements, for example chips that won’t be sold or shipped for another 1-2 years, I’ve only been asked to sign an ‘exit-contract’ stating that I would not disclose any research results regarding effects of radio frequency on the human physiology. Ask yourself, why would that be?
Even proponents of vaccination recognise that there will be “collateral” damage. This from a report released by Harvard University:
““A physician cannot predict whether a particular child will suffer an adverse reaction to a vaccine and, therefore, vaccine-related injuries or death are extremely difficult to prevent. Because vaccines must be administered in order to protect the general population from disease and because some children will definitely be injured as a result of mandatory vaccination, the question arises as to how vaccine-injured children should be compensated for their adverse reactions to vaccines.” (Page 16 of:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9453695/Davenport%2C_Katherine_NVICP.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y&fbclid=IwAR3XAZtax8F43YZKfWqbPWrZvPSVHQhCNkmD4DObJvitvY2epLGylU8RhZo
This is enough to make any parent hesitate.
The Global Warming Religion doesn’t believe in science. If they did, then they would understand that the single greatest cause of global warming, and the only cause of any real significance for life on this planet, is the sun. Any kindergarten student knows that. A secondary major effect on climate is the tilt of the earth on it’s access: hence, the four seasons as we move further from the equator. This phenomenon occurs every year, like clockwork (or calendarwork, if you prefer).
Also, human beings have survived on this planet in temperatures ranging from -20 degrees Fahrenheit and below, to 120 degrees and higher. The idea that a 1 or 2 degree change over the next 100 years will destroy life as we know it is not science, it’s the apocalyptic vision of the Global Warming faithful, that they will save us from. Most religions have that as well. Meanwhile, the temperature changed over 25 degrees today, in just one day! We all survived.
Finally, I’ve plotted the 10 day forecast with my grandchildren to show them the absurdity and arrogance of anyone that believes they can predict the average temperature of the planet 100 years from now, within a degree or two. I showed them clearly on the graph that we can’t even predict the high and low temperature in the next ten days with certainty in our neighborhood, within a degree or two. That’s science.
We know from reliable proxy measurements that the planet was hotter in the recent past without any dangerous runaway effects occurring; in fact, it was a better place for both humans and life in general. There is this silly idea that life was better off during the glacial periods that have been the default condition of the planet for the past 2.8million years, but this is of course nonsense.
In the US Republicans are less likely to take the vaccine and here Mr Birrell you claim Green Party people are less likely to take a jab for Covid19. Maybe we can say that independently minded people who tend not to swallow government fear mongering and media hype will not take an experimental vaccine for a disease with a global IFR of 0.2-0.3% because it is irrational to do so.
Talking about the Green Party, they seem to show the same skeptisism about the vaccines over here, Switzerland, the same love of science when talking about global warming and the same hate of science when talking about nuclear power.
But, and apart from the obstacle the British two-party system represents to their coming to power, how do we explain that the Greens are now a formidable force in Germany as they are in Switzerland, a decisive segment in Parliament with their Watermelon (“Les Verts”) and Mango varieties (“Les Verts libéraux”), whereas they are almost extinct in the UK and in France (not to speak about other Southern European countries) ?
I think such a question requires more time than most of us here have to spare.
I wonder if the former residents of Fukushima have silly “anti-science” attitudes about nuclear power. I suppose we could ask them if we could track them down wherever they’ve been scattered to.
You conveniently ignored the earthquake and tsunami in your desperate search to make a point.
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site. Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine
I am only listing the adverse effects that could have brought about fatalities or serious disabilities, such as blindness and deafness.
There were 227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?
It is so interesting to see how much widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body. I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening.
Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has probably occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
The attached Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.
Report Run Date:09-Mar-2021
Data Lock Date:08-Mar-2021 19:00:03
All UK spontaneous reports received between 9/12/20and 28/02/21 for mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine analysis print
Blood
Thrombocytopenia ( bleeding disorder)fatal 1
Heart
Cardiac Disorders fatal 26
Cardiac Arrest 39 fatal 15
Cardio respiratory arrest fatal 1
Pericarditis fatal 1
Eyes
Eye disorders 72 visual impairment blindness 15
Ears
Ear disorders deafness 20
Gut
GI tract fatal total 12 (fatalities from diarrhoea 4, gastric haemhorrhage 2, vomiting blood 2, vomiting 2, perforation of gut 2, nausea 1)
General
Asthenia fatal 1
Fatigue fatal 1
Clinical death1
Death 95
Sudden death 14
Illness fatal 1
Multiple organ dysfunction fatal 1
Sepsis fatal 1
Viral pneumonia fatal1
Brain and Nervous System
Fall fatal 1
Guillane Barre syndrome fatal 1
Brain Stem infarction fatal 1
Cerebral haemhorrhage fatal 3
Cerebro vascular accident fatal 3
Haemhorrhagic stroke fatal 1
Ischaemic stroke fatal 1
Subarachnoid haemhorrhage fatal 1
hypokinesia fatal 1
unresponsive to stimuli fatal 1
Diplegia fatal 1
Seizure fatal 1
Brain injury fatal 2
Premature baby died 1
Respiratory system
Breathlessness fatal 2
Breathlessness from exertion fatal 2
Lack of oxygen fatal 1
Cough fatal 1
Aspirational pneumonia fatal 2
Pneumonitis fatal 3
Pulmonary embolism fatal 1
Acute respiratory failure fatal 1
Aspiration disorders fatal 1
Choking fatal 1
Skin
Toxic dermal necrolysis fatal 1
I am a retired lecturer in health sciences.
I am a retired academic physician, coroner, and professor, so have some knowledge here. As I look at this list above, it is obvious that it makes no sense. To believe that this list of symptoms is related to death and COVID is not comprehensible. Fatal cough? That is not an accepted death certificate diagnosis, come on man. How about lack of oxygen-deceased could have place a bag over his head. These are self reported symptoms and many do not pass serious muster. Patients reporting any untowrd feeling does not make it related to the shot. Coincidence does not prove causality. Secondly, most of the deaths are in us older folks, and many of these causes of death, would have occurred anyway. It does appear that clotting may be associated with the COVID itself, and perhaps with the Pfizer vaccine, and so some of these could have been vaccine related, or maybe they had the virus?
The trouble with all this is that you have no control sample. Many (most/all) of these events would have happened anyway.
“I am a retired lecturer in health sciences.”
And I am a non-retired doctor who has held a chair in epidemiology and done extensive work in evidence-based medicine. If you actually held a position in an academic health-related subject, you should be ashamed for posting such nonsense.
If you actually knew anything about phase 3 trials or postmarketing surveillance or pharmacovigilance, you would know that it is customary for any clinically significant event that occurs after an agent has been released to be recorded in order that it can be investigated.
Is it seriously your contention that the laundry list you cite above are all consequences of vaccination?
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site. Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine
I only listed the adverse effects that could have brought about fatalities or serious disabilities, such as blindness and deafness.
227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?
It is so interesting to see how much widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body. I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening.
Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has probably occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
The Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.
Report Run Date:09-Mar-2021
Data Lock Date:08-Mar-2021 19:00:03
All UK spontaneous reports received between 9/12/20and 28/02/21 for mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine analysis print
This is worth a look
I am a retired lecturer in Health Sciences
One wonders how long it will take for Covid-deniers and anti-vaxxers to realize that nobody bothers answering to their posts anymore.
The only way out of a dystopian state is to rebel against the totalitarians and force them out of power. That has nothing to do with a vaccine. The virus was just an opportunity to implement a fascist state. Never let a crises go to waste.
“It is hardly surprising there was most hesitancy among supporters of the antediluvian anti-lockdown Reform Party founded by Nigel Farage.”
I don’t understand their rationale. If you don’t like lockdown – as I don’t – surely you should support vaccination as a way out of lockdown???
You’d think, but in fact many anti-lockdown people see any action which looks like admiting COVID19 is serious as cheering for the other team, even if that action would mean we needed lockdown less. For example, anti-maskers are also anti-lockdown.
It’s either Science or it’s Political Correctness. Guess which one this article is?
I wonder how far the rise of conspiracy theories and the wish to act outside the normal parties is related to Peter Turchin’s theory of over-production of elites. As Janan Ganesh asked in the FT, “What is woke culture if not the howl of a generation of underemployed humanities graduates?”
Thanks to a friend I was signposted to this government site annex1 which contains the following:
“The attached Vaccine Analysis Profile contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions or that have been reported to the MHRA via the Yellow Card scheme for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. This includes all reports received from healthcare professionals, members of the public, and pharmaceutical companies.”
Out of interest I have looked through the adverse reactions reported for the Pfizer vaccine. There were 227 deaths over 3 months (9/12/20and 28/02/21)which is very much less than the CoVid ones. These include the oldest people in the population, whose deaths could have been expected at any time.
The disabilities require more information and analysis. How bad and how permanent was the blindness/visual impairment or deafness, tinnitus or loss of balance? How disabling and permanent were the 12,823 muscle tissue disorders or the 18,059 nervous system disorders reported?It is so interesting to see the widespread disturbance the vaccine can cause to the body.
I think it is bad practice to insist that every body except the extremely allergic have the vaccine at the allotted time regardless of their current state of health but I get the impression this is happening. Elderly people often have several conditions, which they have adapted to with much fine tuning of their systems with one thing compensating for another and so on. Anything that disturbs the balance of these mechanisms can throw them into potentially lethal pathology and it seems to me that this has occurred in many instances.
The predominant ideology seems to be that the only thing you can die of is CoVid, which overrides the common sense and the experience of the health care workers, who know better but dare not say so. Such are the times we live in where it is increasingly difficult to swim against the tide.
The underlying assumption is that the few should suffer for the many and it is all right so long as it is not me or my loved one, whose health or life is sacrificed. Individual sacrifice for the sake of the greater good is considered acceptable in the Communist societies, whose value systems we distance ourselves from.
Meanwhile the coercion involved in the endorsement of “no jab no job” employment policies together with the continued speculation about introducing domestic vaccine passports are examples of “ends justifying means” rationales for cruelties and injustices, which characterise the regimes of the far right.
It can’t be right to make life less free and even in some cases impoverished for those, who refuse to have an intervention that may cause them suffering.
I am a retired health sciences lecturer and I wonder why it is me studying these lists of adverse reactions and not a professional journalist.
I don’t understand why anyone is surprised that people adhering to Green ideals, or I should say ideology, are resistant to science. The popularised so-called science around climate change politics, for instance, is itself scientifically illiterate – it is as ignorant as the denialism on the same subject on the opposite side of the debate. It is one thing to state that we are presently taking risks by putting so much CO2 in the atmosphere and that doing so amounts to an uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have. It is quite another to say that the IPCC is not strident enough on the subject and that it is near-certain that schoolchildren alive now will die mid-century from a global conflagration brought on by runaway atmospheric heating.
The first statement is reasonable and scientifically defensible, while the second is completely baseless and dishonest. It is quite easy for most people with a basic grounding in science to distinguish between the two statements, if they are willing to examine the evidence. Doing this is a fair bit less easy for the sort of person who is easily persuaded on April 1st that it is, say, possible to power your home by sticking a couple of electrodes in a potato, and people such as this do seem to be the same sort of people who think that going on protest marches and blocking traffic is a helpful contribution to a challenge which in actuality can only be resolved through immense technological progress delivered by the sort of people who can tell scientific truth from political fiction.
Even without people who are genuinely scientifically illiterate however, there are lots of perfectly intelligent people who have radically reduced the extent to which they are prepared to accept the authority of scientific institutions. This, too, is unsurprising, and it is not the fault of the growing number of sceptics, it is also the fault of the scientific establishment itself, for having permitted the growth of political influence in science and having tolerated a commensurate decline in the discipline, objectivity and neutrality that are the foundations for public trust in the scientific method.
The link for this statement says nothing of the sort.
Just support for a vague statement about “the environment”.
As if we ourselves , and all our works, aren’t part of “the environment”.
Was it really necessary to use the word Antediluvian when referring to the Reform Party? I note that you managed to resist the temptation to attach similar derogatory terms to any of the other parties mentioned.
A pity in what was otherwise an excellent article.
Good piece. To add to the equation is the Steiner Crew. That is devotees of Rudolf Steiner. Wherever there is a Steiner (Waldorf) school you will find anti science sentiment as well as hordes of unvaccinated kids. This is a global phenomena with increased measles cases in catchment areas of Steiner schools. Rudolf Steiner (died 1925) claimed that the function of the heart was not to pump blood around the body and other bizarre observations (homeopathy can function as well as MMR). I read all about BAME and Green groups refusing the vax but have never read a scholarly piece on the followers of Steiner, which also includes those who attend the Christian Science Community church. Could you write on this? You will be amazed how many people support Steiner’s claims
Third most cooked up issue. If we turned off everything in UK now and lived in knitted yurts the rest of the world would laugh at our pitiful protest. Climate may be changing but it’s not proven anthropogenic. If you don’t want a jab, fine, but don’t cry when your holiday ambitions are curtailed. As for disparaging Farage why doesn’t he go full Guardian and praise Biden to the hilt?
I am one of those anti dilugians. I dont know anyone of my age who has not been vaxxed. We grew up in the shadow of polio and are pissed off with illegal useless lockdown being maintained by crap statistricks with the help of idiot refusers Where did anyone from Oxford find a Brexiter??
Leave your insults where they belong.. pre referendum
I’m not taking it because of the coercive authoritarian attitude behind it, not because I deny it’s effectiveness or think of some conspiracy to sterilise the population or whatever
“I also struggled to share their concern with genetically modified crops, particularly if they could help feed impoverished people on our planet.”
I actively hate Greenpeace for this very reason. Their opposition to GM Golden Rice has facilitated the needless blinding and deaths from Vitamin A deficiency of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of children. My nickname for them is the Vert Rouge.
Environmentalism is anti-scientific, by nature.
What seems to be ignored, if not forgotten is that good science and good medicine and safe science and safe medicine, not only demand questions and dissent they require them in order to limit the harm they might do and to remain grounded in integrity and common sense instead of power and profit.
Many scientists and medical professionals have issued warnings and been ignored. If they turn out to be right, who will carry the blame?
Quote: Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, Ph.D., has nothing against vaccines. In fact, the independent virologist formerly worked for Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Bossche says the Covid vaccines approved so far have been developed by “just brilliant” people and he has no criticism of them But, as he tells Dr. Phillip McMillan in an interview, “please use the right vaccine at the right place. And don’t use it in the heat of a pandemic on millions of millions of people.”
Bossche says that a mass vaccination campaign in the middle of a pandemic, with vaccines that don’t prevent transmission, is disastrous at an individual — and at a global — level:
“We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic.”
In an open letter to the World Health Organization (WHO), Bossche wrote that “we are currently turning vaccinees into asymptomatic carriers shedding infectious variants.”
Bossche hasn’t heard back from WHO, which concerns him.
“It is about humanity … I mean, it’s about your children. It’s your family. It’s my family. It’s everyone. Right. And it’s simply for me, I put everything at stake because I’ve done my homework. And this is simply a moral obligation. A moral obligation.”
From Children’s Health Defence.
For those unware, “Children’s Health Defence” is a campaigning organisation well known for spreading disinformation about vaccines. Dedicated anti-vaxxers, they are not a trustworthy source.
“In Britain, the Green Party has long been dogged by anti-science views.”
As have all the political parties. Selective pseudoskepticism*, often in the form of (ideologically) motivated reasoning, is the disease and it dogs them all. Right and left alike are prone to appealing to the science when it suits them and rejecting it when it doesn’t.
* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12179
What is this rubbish, they are not vaccines, they are deangerous, deadly poison to vaccinate against nothing at all.
Anyone should be able to refuse the jab in the UK, but the answer should be: fine, now your name goes to the very bottom of the list and that’s for all the UK & NI. Happy to move up the listing if plenty of idiots opt out.
Blood clots and their breakdown and prevention are complex processes. A balance exists between the processes that protect the body from clots in blood vessels leading to the death of the organs they supply and those, which prevent us from bleeding to death.
If you go to the government website which lists the adverse reactions to the vaccines being administered at present, in annex 1 you can find a table categorised under each body system such as blood as well as various more general categories such as fatigue.
I went through the tables for AstraZeneca when the deaths from blood clots were reported. I went through each system and generality not just the blood because blood clots can occur anywhere in the body.
Given the age of the vaccinated, these could have happened at any time. You would need a proper statistical analysis to ascertain whether these blood coagulation related events were more frequent than you would expect in this age cohort.
These were the clotting related events I found. There may be more that I failed to spot.
coagulanopathies 2,anginas 25,myocardial infarctions 25 including 12 fatalities,myocardial ischaemias 6 including 3 fatalities,there were 39 fatalities from cardiac disorders in total.
retinal vascular thrombosis 1,Ischaemic colitis 1subdural haematoma 1,brain stem infarction 1 fatal,brain stem stroke 1 (could be clot or bleed),cerebral haematoma 1,cerebral infarction 1,cerebral thrombosis 1 fatal,cerebrovascular accident ( could be a clot or a bleed) 41 (6 fatal),embolic stroke 1,ischaemic stroke 9,cerebral small vessell ischaemic disease 1,cerebrovascular disorder 1 (could be clot or bleed),Transient ischaemic attacks 25,Pulmonary embolism 13 fatal 1,pulmonary infarction 1 fatal,haematoma 8,embolism 1,thrombosis 3,blue toe syndrome 3,Deep Vein thrombosis 14,pelvic venous thrombosis 1, thrombophlebitis 1,superficial thrombophlebitis 1,phlebitis 2,varico phlebitis 1
It is only today that there has been a report of bleeding disorders occurring after administration of the AZ vaccine. In Norway there has been a death from thrombocytopenia which means too few of the cells that bring about clotting as well as 3 hospitalisations, according today’s Guardian. There are plenty of adverse reactions connected to bleeding in the table, I just have not had time to list them. Strokes can either be due to clotting or bleeding and can be disabling and fatal.
Perhaps there was nothing unusual about these clotting and bleeding events to alert anyone over here. After all these were all very old people expected to have heart attacks and strokes. There is of course nothing to say that these events were connected with the vaccine but some people have taken the trouble to use the government’s yellow card system to report them.
Keeping the blood flowing is a balancing act for the body especially in those with less mobility and it is possible that for some elderly people this balance has been disturbed by the vaccination process
I would argue for more sensitivity in administering vaccines, taking a case history and having a discussion with the person about how they feel about it might help reduce adverse reactions
This rushed industrial style roll out is not suited to delicate people. From reports I have had many adverse reactions are going unreported and with care they could be avoided.
I am a retired health sciences lecturer.
“I would argue for more sensitivity in administering vaccines, taking a case history and having a discussion with the person about how they feel about it might help reduce adverse reactions.
I am a retired health sciences lecturer.”
Your “health sciences” subject clearly did not include anything relevant to this discussion. It is remarkable that someone claiming academic credentials in a health field should be posting such nonsense.
What do you mean by “sensitivity”? What tests or questions are you suggesting would reduce adverse reactions?
Are you suggesting that someone’s feelings affect whether they develop a blood clot?
What aspects of a “case history” do you suggest should be asked about that that are not being asked about?
Your post is dated 16th March, by which time it was already clear that there is no evidence that any of the events you highlight are caused by vaccination. There is even some suggestion that these events happen less frequently in vaccinated groups.
If you have health qualifications, why are you posting such drivel?
This is a very good analysis of the problems of ‘Green’ politics. We are as ever short on deserved praise and long on minor chiding, but the one criticism is that Mr. Birrell does not seem to explain why holding nuclear power to be a bad thing is rationally or morally equivalent to the same judgment of vaccinations. Although most nuclear power stations may be both safe and reliable, it cannot realistically be suggested that they cannot and will not suffer from accidents, or natural catastrophes, or deliberate attacks; nor that when they do, the consequences are likely to be more physically extensive and temporally enduring than the consequences of an an accident at most other forms of generating plant. Equally, it cannot realistically be denied that they entail a form of waste which is especially noxious and intractable, and (even with deep burial) requires controlled management over timescales longer than any relevant human institution has yet survived. It is one thing to bequeath to your children a world which is 2 degrees Celsius warmer than ours – wrong as that is, they may be able adapt to cope – but quite another to bequeath them a tonnage of inevitably lethal poison, with instructions to be passed on to and honoured by all foreseeable future generations or else see their kin deformed or dying. How would you judge your grandparents had they left you such an inheritance? One may hold absolutely no brief whatsoever for either the anti-vaxxers in particular or for that matter the ‘Green’ movement in general, yet have the most serious reservations about the use of nuclear fission (where not evidently required for national security) on perfectly respectable scientific and moral grounds. Science and morality may find answers in thorium or fusion, but meantime these objections should be regarded as entirely respectable.
Michael Upton
Advocates’ Library,
Parliament House,
Edinburgh.
“Although most nuclear power stations may be both safe and reliable, it cannot realistically be suggested that they cannot and will not suffer from accidents, or natural catastrophes, or deliberate attacks; nor that when they do, the consequences are likely to be more physically extensive and temporally enduring than the consequences of an an accident at most other forms of generating plant.”
It is not realistic to suggest that this is a viable approach to the management of risk. Nuclear power is – by far – the safest form of artificial energy we have, even taking into account the accidents to date – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc – all of which are now all but impossible in new reactor designs.
There is a difference between ‘science’ as the actual process of empirical investigation versus ‘science’ as the grubby reality of money, funding battles, politics, personalities and ideology within which that cerebral activity takes place. There is a difference between ‘experts’ as in people who are experienced in a specific field and ‘experts’ as in …why are THESE ones getting wheeled in front of me in the media. What facts are they emphasizing at the expense of others? What ideological battles and vested interests drive their statements?
An increasing number of people have entirely justified concerns about the ‘science’ and ‘experts’ that gets put in front of them (even in supposedly ‘respectable’ publications). Yes some of them resort to unfortunate places such as Alex Jones type conspiracy theories. But that is perhaps also an understandable symptom of the problem of trust breakdown.
Birrel seems to sort of agree with this but then stops short of allowing even slight misgivings about vaccines where truly monumental amounts of money (and therefore politics & business) are involved.
Just in case its not clear – its possible to accept vaccine science and the succeses in that field AND to have misgivings about the political, financial and ideological climate in which they are produced. (i’d suggest researching they way we have abused antibiotics as one parallel here)
Its like lefty friends I know who are willing to criticize the corrupt nature of capitalism all day long and hold forth on its basis in white supremacy… or on the evils of Murdoch owned global news conglomerates. But then suddenly the slightest misgivings about multi-billion dollar corporations producing some of the most expensive and unwieldy medicines and this disappears.. And we are left with only the cerebral ‘pure’ image of scientists in white coats. An image of ‘science’ which only ‘anti-vaxxers’ and other deplorable ‘anti-scientism’ specimens would ever cast any shadow on.
Sorry to hear you drank the Monsanto Kool Aid, that we need GMO crops to feed the world. They are utterly incorrigible, they don’t care how many lawsuits they lose.. and they have the deep pockets to keep churning out PR puff pieces despite a trail of disasters in the wake of their lab crops.
The Netherlands, along with a number of other European countries, has just halted its use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. (Lead story in Het Parool this morning). I am by no means an anti-vaxxer and consider mass vaccination programmes to be one of the very few things the state does effectively, and one of the very few activities the state should be entrusted with.
However, inflicting upon the whole population a vaccine that is completely unnecessary for most people, and a vaccine that cannot have been tested properly given the time scale, is an act of ethical vandalism.
We have seen a number of young(wish) or middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated. In fact, the vaccine will probably kill more healthy young(fish) people than the virus itself, just as more young(Ish) people will die from suicides etc due to the lockdown than from the virus itself.
“We have seen numerous middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated.” No we haven’t. That is simply not true.
It seems to be the case that healthy, young(wish) medics and nurses in the US, Portugal, Italy, and Poland have died shortly after being vaccinated. We know of one woman in Austria who died from blood clotting shortly after being vaccinated, and blood clotting seems to have occurred across Europe as a consequence of the AZ vaccine. This is why numerous European countries have halted AZ vaccinations.
I have no doubt that the vaccinations will be safe in 99.99% of cases, although we have no idea of longer term side effects due the rushed development. However, some of the vaccines, perhaps due to batch variation etc, do seem to be causing some deaths.
It doesn’t seem remotely likely. Some younger doctors in Europe have complained about side effects, like fever, which they did not like. Please do not post fake news.
Well the Italians have initiated manslaughter charges following the death of a 57 year old, four days after he was given the AZ vaccine. He looks pretty healthy in the photo, and very unlikely to have been vulnerable to the virus itself.
“We have seen a number of young(wish) or middle aged doctors and nurses around the world collapse and die shortly after being vaccinated.”
That statement is false. It is fiction. You cannot provide a shred of evidence to support it.
The (few) cases of blood clots have not been shown to have any relationship to vaccination.
Joe if you truly supported science you would be more open to recognize that there is a problem here. You think that is normal that people ‘just’ develop blood clots and interestingly enough, just after this jab. Your head is in the sand.
Try listening to this morning’s R4 “Today” program.
About 3,000 people per month in the UK develop blood clots that are clinically meaningful, and did so before the covid pandemic came along. So that base-frequency is nothing to do with vaccinations.
The question “does anyone develop a blood clot after the vaccine?” is therefore not very helpful. You might as well ask if anyone reads a newspaper after getting the vaccine.
The question of interest is this: is there a significant rise in the number of cases of blood clots in populations that have received the vaccine?
The answer appears to be “no.”
Your argument is nonsense. In the UK, the incidence of DVT is about 1 per 1000 persons per year, probably more in the elderly, This works out to about 100 per week. 25 million people in the UK have had at least one vaccination , most with AZ vaccine. If we take it over 3 months, that would work out that about 6000 cases of DVT in that time regardless of vaccination. There have been 30 cases reported. Hardly proof of a causative connection.
It is always the rejoinder of vaccine proponents (lobbyists, government, officials etc), of “prove it” when institutionally everything is raked against being able to do so. What it actually does is demonstrate their unwillingness ever to accept responsibility for anything: the morality of “hit and run”. They are asserting huge benefits for products while implausibly not accepting any risks, and they skew the evidence base with their ruthless strategy. It is demonstrably a try-on: if they were genuine about science they would be looking sympathetically at prima facie evidences of harm, but they don’t they just get hot under the collar, call for people to be banned etc. And of course what they are actually doing is making loads of money.
The problem of iatrogenic gaslighting was brought into context last year by Baroness Cumberlege’s report: there is no reason why things should be any different for vaccines.
“They are asserting huge benefits for products while implausibly not accepting any risks…”
This is simply false. Extensive research and resources go into evaluating risks.